Frontline: The Way the Music Died

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The wonderful folks at Frontline (PBS) have a new documentary on what ails the music business available for viewing May 29. As always, the companion website elaborates on the story.

From the introduction:
In the recording studios of Los Angeles and the boardrooms of New York, they say the record business has been hit by a perfect storm: a convergence of industry-wide consolidation, Internet theft, and artistic drought. The effect has been the loss of billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and that indefinable quality that once characterized American pop music.

― frankE (frankE), Friday, 28 May 2004 13:56 (twenty-two years ago)

last night on PBS, there was a show about Velvet Revolver and some young singer trying to make a hit single. Pretty good (if not that groundbreaking) look at how hits are made

― dleone (dleone), Friday, 28 May 2004 13:57 (twenty-two years ago)

that indefinable quality that once characterized
American pop music. = hand over fist money?

― The Huckle-Buck (Horace Mann), Friday, 28 May 2004 13:58 (twenty-two years ago)

When I was a kid, I remember football being a game where one lad at the front kicked the ball around the pitch and everyone else followed, until a miskick meant someone else got the ball and everyone else chased him.

Seems appropriate to add this tale, here...

― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 28 May 2004 13:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, that's the same one. My original posting should say "available for viewing *online* on May 29"

― frankE (frankE), Friday, 28 May 2004 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I was a little disappointed that it wasn't focused more on the industry downfall side of things, but rather a compare/contrast exercise for Sarah Hudson and Velvet Revolver.

David Crosby was funnier than I'd planned on him being, tho.

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Friday, 28 May 2004 14:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I loved when the dweeby executives were jamming out to the "slither" single; the epitome of sadly distant executive buffoonery.

Fuck Corporate Rock!

― christoff (christoff), Friday, 28 May 2004 14:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, that one radio guy was slamming the whole concept of velvet revolver ("it's uninspired"). I think the message of the show is that safe and already-established music sells, or at least that's the music labels/clearchannel will push. Surprise

― dleone (dleone), Friday, 28 May 2004 14:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the message of the show is that safe and already-established music sells, or at least that's the music labels/clearchannel will push. Surprise

That's why the thing left me cold. Frontline is usually great at developing investigations/stories in detail, and the one last night seemed patched together just to fill up a free hour. Already famous people doing a new thing sells well?! Shocking. Upstart nobody goes nowhere? Even more so!

I wish they would have exposed a new payola scandal, or at least cut off one of Jimmy Iovine's fingers or something.

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Friday, 28 May 2004 14:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Are you people kidding me? Frontline last night was TERRIBLE! The whole take on the music industry downfall was shallow, the "sources" were scarce and barely relevant, and I could not believe that the filmmakers did not see the irony in the likes of David Crosby and Nic Harcourt (the radio DJ) slamming the dominance and nature of manufactured hit radio singles and manufactured bands, while the documentary focused on two prime examples of just that. Sure, they hinted at Velvet Revolver being that way, but when they dropped that somber voice-over about Sarah Hudson's single not going anywhere at the end, I laughed out loud. There was nothing real or credible about that girl- she was a no-talent who had an easy "in" because her whole family was "in the business". What a joke. It's bad enough I have to find out 2/3 of NPR's sources are right-wingers, but PBS totally half-assing an issue and missing the point is just sad.

― jsoulja (jsoulja), Friday, 28 May 2004 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I think it would've been better had they exposed the record companies' "problems" as not really existing, 'cause they don't.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 28 May 2004 15:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I bet this is rockist as fuck

― Be sure to Loop! Loop, Loop, Loop. (ex machina), Friday, 28 May 2004 15:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Upstart nobody goes nowhere?

D00D! She's Kate Hudson's cousin!

― Vic Funk, Friday, 28 May 2004 15:17 (twenty-two years ago)

D00D! She's Kate Hudson's cousin!

Chris Robinson's her husband, and just look what it's done for his career.

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Friday, 28 May 2004 15:52 (twenty-two years ago)

even more atrocious is the interview the producer did with brian lehrer on WNYC.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/05262004

― maria tessa sciarrino (theoreticalgirl), Friday, 28 May 2004 16:13 (twenty-two years ago)

The wonderful folks at Frontline

Include with sarcasm tags.

― George Smith, Friday, 28 May 2004 20:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah, but no one here enjoyed the Spinal Tap-ish comedic value of the two dimwit Velvet Revolver guys?! First there was the drummer talking about "explanatives" (when he means "expletives"), the Velvet Revolver bassist bragging about smoking crack in the Guns & Roses 727 jet, then there was this deluded gem:

"You know, we played in Colombia once, and we were more powerful than the government at that point. There was guys with submachine guns inside the stage. If Axl were singing, or one of us would have said, 'Revolution, now!' You know, these kids would've done it."

And what about that fool Mark Hudson? Interesting dye job(s), surely.

Other than that, however, this doc was an incoherent piece of shit.

― kjoerup, Friday, 28 May 2004 20:16 (twenty-two years ago)

D00D! She's Kate Hudson's cousin!

D00D! She's the daughter of one of the Hudson Brothers!

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Friday, 28 May 2004 20:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Don't bash on Frontline! "American Pr0n"!

― Leee's a Simpson (Leee), Friday, 28 May 2004 20:56 (twenty-two years ago)

The wonderful folks at Frontline

Include with sarcasm tags.

No tags. You must not have seen doc on the lessons Sadaam Hussein's rise to power and America's tolerance of him. Or any of the presidential candidate biographies over the past few campaigns. Or the one about why a kid would kill his parents then a gun to school and kill his classmates. Or...

(xpost)

― frankE (frankE), Friday, 28 May 2004 21:13 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, frontline is easily one of the few redeeming features of television (alongside cspan, mtv jams and commercial-free movie channels).

i'm sad to hear this one was no good :-(

is the show dominique is talking about the same as the frontline episode?

― vahid (vahid), Friday, 28 May 2004 21:28 (twenty-two years ago)

yes. i recommend the website, though. it's got some fairly interesting stuff. though i too have to wonder about their sources.

― frankE (frankE), Friday, 28 May 2004 21:30 (twenty-two years ago)

D00D! She's the daughter of one of the Hudson Brothers!

Bah, My Guide To Becoming a Rock Star is the only decent rock'n'roll tv show a Hudson family member has done.

― Vic Funk, Friday, 28 May 2004 21:41 (twenty-two years ago)

You must not have seen doc on the lessons Sadaam Hussein's rise to power and America's tolerance of him.

Old news by the time Frontline got to it.

Or any of the presidential candidate biographies over the past few campaigns.

Wow. Just what you can read in a big daily newspaper.

If you're familiar with the topics Frontline touches, they're very rarely extremely fresh. The series has been particularly mediocre to just plain bad on anything related to national security and the war on terror.

― George Smith, Friday, 28 May 2004 23:00 (twenty-two years ago)

D00D! She's the daughter of one of the Hudson Brothers!

See also Horror comedy with lighthouse

― martin m. (mushrush), Friday, 28 May 2004 23:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Uh, yeah. Newspapers come out daily. Frontline produces a season's worth of documentaries over a period of months. So yeah, freshness may be a factor. But go to the websites of their programs and page through the aggregated information. It's a hell of a lot of information in one place. Granted, if you knew all about energy trading before the collapse of Enron, then their program on it was useless to you. But I didn't. Nor did I know anything about Kip Kinkle's family. I guess I'm just an ignoramous.

― frankE (frankE), Saturday, 29 May 2004 00:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Last week's Frontline (as mentioned in this thread), was excellent.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Saturday, 29 May 2004 00:26 (twenty-two years ago)

The about the small Georgia town where all the teens got veneral disease from each other was classic.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Saturday, 29 May 2004 00:33 (twenty-two years ago)

i agree with everyone who has said that this was shitty. i was really disappointed when i saw it. boring. frontline usually does an ok job, i think.

― dfghfd, Saturday, 29 May 2004 07:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm watching the doc online now. It's pretty pathetic, a slick mish-mosh of truisms about the artistic impulse, rock history and fame: a slightly more respectable version of Behind the Music.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Saturday, 29 May 2004 19:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Here's a priceless quote from the website frontpage:

But surprisingly, there are those who now argue MTV was a negative force.

"What it did really is make the business a one trick pony -- and everything became about the three minutes, the single, the hit single," entertainment attorney Michael Guido tells FRONTLINE. "I think the album died with MTV. The culture in the record companies in the last 20 years has been to reward artists for three minutes of music, not for 40 minutes of music."

WHAT FUCKING ROCK & ROLL PLANET do you have to hermetically seal yourself in where there exists a music industry that's not (and never was!) trend- or hit-obsessed? I mean, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Saturday, 29 May 2004 20:03 (twenty-two years ago)

And MTV? Not entirely regarded as a positive force for the industry? This is a SURPRISE?

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Saturday, 29 May 2004 20:05 (twenty-two years ago)

This sort of reminded me of the Frontline episode "Merchants of Cool" although Merchants of Cool was much more comprehensive and introduced a lot of things I hadn't heard of before. This is a re-hash of the old argument of "music sharing killed the biz vs. bad music did" (and you know what? personally, I don't think file sharing is killing the biz AND I don't think mainstream music has gotten any better or worse than it ever was). This was a lot more comedic than any other Frontline I've ever seen, a lot of zany unintentionally sad/hilarious/actually just really-fucking-sad guys like that guy who was in the Hudson brothers.

The old Frontline (it's online, as one of the classics) about the teacher who segregated the class almost made me cry it was so good.

― David Allen (David Allen), Sunday, 30 May 2004 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

From what I understand Frontline has been in some rather dire financial straits of late -- even more so than is normal for public television programming -- and the shoddy feel of a portion of its recent work may be a manifestation of that. But it's had an amazing run, and generally gets nowhere near the credit it deserves when it gets the story right.

― rasheed wallace (rasheed wallace), Sunday, 30 May 2004 18:29 (twenty-two years ago)

the Kip Kinkle episode was very good.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Sunday, 30 May 2004 18:36 (twenty-two years ago)

And really, holy shit is their website fantastic.

― David Allen (David Allen), Sunday, 30 May 2004 19:48 (twenty-two years ago)

i watched the show online and i was waiting the whole time for something to happen, and it didnt. i mean, i really dont know where i stand on this issue. there was never really any golden era to go back to. aesthetics are pretty subjective, but its pretty certain that most artists have been aware of image and how it affects perceptions and sales,, and its never been just about the music. britney spears:current pop music::robert zimmerman:the romantic ideal of the authentic artist/poet. and are things really that bad right now? i dont want people to lose their jobs, and i dont want small stores to go out of business (mp3s are cool but cities are boring without independant retail! and it is already happening in DC, so your "too large to be affected" city may be next). but there is a lot of good mainstream music.

― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Sunday, 30 May 2004 23:25 (twenty-two years ago)

I like how that Hudson girl protested that she "isn't jut a manufactured pop singer like Britney Spears". As if any person of sound mind actually setting out to manufacture a pop star would come up with HER!

― Curt (cgould), Monday, 31 May 2004 02:30 (twenty-two years ago)

two years pass...

I just had to watch this for a journalism class. (old news contrasting with new news, irrelevant to music.)

I found nothing completely horrible about the documentary itself, but most of the content just made me feel, "ew." Why do I have to watch this, it's not even 'real' information, just repeated knowledge spit back out by a rolling stone journalist.
That rep for Hudson's record label, drone.
David Crosby, Nic Harcourt, small redemption, but gross how Hudson and VR were worthy of being profiled.
And, the CD saved music sales? is that even right?

― mox twelve (Mox twleve), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 16:47 (nineteen years ago)

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