Well, when I saw the entreaty for help on the music column on The #Ytsejam Mirror, I just thought, "This has me written all OVER it!" Who better to rant and rave than a slightly unstable high school student such as myself? I intend to write some potentially thought provoking, possibly time-wasting, and at least amusing rants about the state of popular music today. As in, it sucks and needs fixing BADLY. One often wonders how records it would take a trained chimpanzee five minutes to write constantly appear on the Billboard charts and eMpTyV. At the same time, intelligent, sensitive, and often hard-rocking music like Dream Theater, Fates Warning et al can barely keep on the album charts for five minutes (despite having a near cult following) and is only seen at the glue-sniff hours on "music" television. Even former bastions of great music such as Jimmy Page have forsaken our cause, and collaborated with no-talent morons like Sean "Plagiarism" Combs. What is the cause of all this musical stupidity? Is the general populous as stupid as many of us have assumed? Or are they just trend-following conformists who wouldn't know good original music if it clawed its way into their brains? For whatever reason, prog and metal bands simply can't get hardly any airplay and have seemingly minuscule sales. As tempting as the former answer is to cite, I believe that it is the latter that is the root of all that is evil about popular music today.

      Lack of exposure is one reason why prog and metal bands can't seem to get airplay or stay on the charts very long or at all. The record companies will hire a prog band, thinking that it will, like DT, have a cult following and is a "good bet" on slow but steady record sales. They'll make a video every now and then, and advertise in musicians' magazines (such as Guitar World, Modern Drummer, Modern Bassist) and figure that their work is done. They're wrong, and they probably know it. To make a band successful, one needs to constantly plug it. Talk it up around the music industry, don't just write gleaming synopses on the backs of promo CDs and rosters. Now that MTV's gotten it in its head that we want music from "music television", it's created bunches of shows about music, and some that cover so-called "underground" music (i. e. stuff that isn't in constant rotation on MTV). Why not do a show about prog music? After all, there's really not a shortage of prog bands that have limited exposure, and they do have fairly large global fan bases. It would help raise awareness of good music and possibly cause airplay to go up. However, that won't be enough. To get airplay to rise, people NOT watching or listening at the glue-sniff hours need to see or hear the videos/singles. That means actually giving some attention to a new prog video when it debuts and playing prog singles during prime hours. That means we, since the record companies have not taken it upon themselves to do so, must incessantly request good music on MTV and the radio stations.

      Once prog music is exposed to the public eye, will it become popular? Maybe. For those trendies who simply must have the latest thing, no matter what it is, it may create a passing fancy worth a few hundred thousand record sales. Some of them may even see the light and realize that it is good music and decide to make some of their own, perpetuating the sub-genre. But, more importantly, will its popularity last in a music industry that is becoming increasingly flavor-of-the-minute? It enjoyed a period of about 4 or 5 years of popularity in the 1970s, then faded back into obscurity as punk rock and disco took the forefront of popular music. I don't see anything currently that could seriously overtake it, but then again, neither did many prog fans in the 70s. However, we must remain in eternal vigilance for good music and never use our music-buying power for evil. For ours is the Kingdom and the power, and the glory... the power and glory of prog! Oops... sorry about that. ?

~Craig Griffith is a merry little who uses music to escape.er.ahh.transcend.reality.or something