James Lileks has an interesting account of attending his high school reunion in Fargo, ND, presumably his 30th. Among the things that Lileks mentions is that: "The band is too loud. Of course, the band is always too loud. Everywhere. It’s what bands do: be too loud."
I attended only one HS reunion, my 5th, in 1975, in Rockford, IL. It was outside in a park, so the band was not too loud. The band, however, was Cheap Trick, which was pretty unusual for a reunion of perhaps 100 people (the band must have been fairly recently formed). Of course, we didn't pay too much attention to them, since talking to friends was the top priority. I remember going up after Cheap Trick's last set and talking to the drummer, Bun E. Carlos (aka Brad Carlson). We had been to a lot of the same concerts in Chicago in the 1960s (not together) and I told him that IMO the band (and his drumming in particular) compared very favorably with some of the groups we saw and used to talk about. He politely thanked me for the compliment.
At my HS in the late 1960s, our regular band for homecoming and senior prom was REO Speedwagon (a Univ. of IL band). At other dances, we had one of the two precursor bands of Cheap Trick. Today, many high schools have DJs.
I'm not sure what the point of this is. A prom is not a concert, it's a dance. The music of high schoolers even in the 1990s was generally so diverse that no one band could possibly span all the genres the students would want, even if the music didn't include stuff so totally wedded to electronic production that it couldn't be "played" by a "band" in any traditional sense. Of course high schools have disk jockeys rather than live bands. How could it reasonably be any other way?
The one-man band (based in Cleveland) who played at my brother's wedding makes a selling point out of this. His phone number is 1-800-NOT-LOUD.
What I find so interesting about the high school age kids in my neighborhood is that when they are looking for dance music, they often play 80s tunes! I think there was a real lack of good accessible dance music in the 90s. The 80s, on the other hand -- what a treasure trove.
Men Without Hats comes to mind....
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[erase this comment if Truther's is erased or people will think I'm crazy]
Very funny.
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I'm not one of those who thinks that a blogger is implicitly responsible for everything posted on one's blog.
If Truther begins posting incessantly his 9/11 nonsense, then that might be a different matter.
Sucks to be in high school these days, doesn't it?
The problem with this reasoning is that the DJ's aren't making kids happy, either: we've put 4 through high school, and I can't remember a single dance or prom where they and their friends didn't agree that the music was pretty terrible.
Wow... really?
Most people: "You guys rock!"
Prof. L: "You compare very favorably to others."
Sweet.
For you old fogies out there, today, DJs are musicians. Or have you been living in a closet since 1987?
I don't know who is amazed more, those of my generation who see kids dancing to the songs of my youth, or those kids who realize that we know the words to all the songs and sing them loudly.
"For you old fogies out there, today, DJs are musicians. Or have you been living in a closet since 1987?"
Hip Hop/Techno/Electronica DJs are indeed musicians, combining and manipulating existing recordings as sound sources for new pieces of music. But a traditional DJ who simply plays one whole track after another, however artfully segued, is not a subsitute for live musicians of any sort. The best live musicians have the capacity to change tempi, expression, and style in real time response to the event in progress, and the disappointing trend against live musicians in favor of canned music is evidence that the public is becoming desensitized to the potential of live music to go beyond the fixed confines of a recording.
Ugh, I think I just created the next American Idol knockoff...