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Postmodern

Music

Postmodern music is both a musical style and a musical condition. As a


musical style, postmodern music contains characteristics of postmodern
art—that is, art after modernism. It favours eclecticism in form and
musical genre, and often combines characteristics from different genres,
or employs jump-cut sectionalization. It tends to be self-referential and
ironic, and it blurs the boundaries between "high art" and kitsch. Daniel
Albright (2004) summarizes the traits of the postmodern style as
bricolage, polystylism, and randomness.
As a musical condition, postmodern music is simply the state of music in
post modernity. In this sense, postmodern music does not have any one
particular style or characteristic, and is not necessarily postmodern in
style. However, the music of post modernity is thought to differ from that
of modernity in that whereas modern music was valued for its
fundamentals and expression, postmodern music is valued as both a
commodity and a symbolic indicator of identity. For example, one
significant role of music in postmodern society is to act as a language by
which people can signify their identity as a member of a particular
subculture.
The modern period, recording of music was seen as a way of transcribing
an external event, as a photograph is supposed to record a moment in
time. However, with the invention of magnetic tape in the 1930's the
ability to directly edit a recording, and create a result which did not
actually occur, made it possible for a recording to be viewed as the end
product of artistic work itself. Through the 1950's, most music, even
popular music, presented itself as the capturing of a performance, even if
that performance was mic'ed to improve hearing of different parts

Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd is a British psychedelic rock band famous for its songwriting,
harmonic classical rock compositions, bombastic style and elaborate live
shows. Pink Floyd is one of rock's most successful acts, ranking seventh in
number of albums sold worldwide.
HISTORY
Pink Floyd formed in 1964 from an earlier band whose names included
Sigma 6, T-Set, Megadeaths, The
Screaming Abdabs, The Architectural
Abdabs, and The Abdabs. The band
was again renamed The Pink Floyd
Sound and then simply The Pink
Floyd (after two blues musicians,
Pink Anderson and Floyd Council).
The definite article was dropped by
the time their debut album was
released.
Pink Floyd originally consisted of Bob
Klose (lead guitar), Syd Barrett
(vocals, rhythm guitar), Richard Wright (keyboards, vocals), Roger Waters
(bass, vocals) and Nick Mason (drums). They covered rhythm and blues
staples such as "Louie, Louie". As Barrett started writing tunes more
influenced by American surf music, psychedelic rock, and British whimsy,
humor and literature, the heavily jazz-oriented Klose departed and left a
rather stable foursome. The band formed Blackhill Enterprises, a six-way
business partnership with their managers, Peter Jenner and Andrew King.
In 1968, guitarist David Gilmour joined the band to carry out the playing
and singing duties of Barrett, whose mental health was deteriorating, but
nevertheless was intended to remain as the band's figurehead and
songwriter. With Barrett's behavior becoming less and less predictable,
the band's live shows became increasingly ramshackle until, eventually,
the other band members simply stopped taking him to the concerts.
Once Barrett's departure was formalized, Jenner and King decided to
remain with him, and the six-way Blackhill partnership was dissolved.
Whilst Barrett had written the bulk of the first record, The Piper at the
Gates of Dawn (1967), he contributed little to the second A Saucerful of
Secrets (1968).
After the film soundtrack More, the next record, the double album
Ummagumma (part recorded at Mothers Rock Club, Birmingham, and in
Manchester in 1969), was a mix of live recordings and unchecked studio
experimentation by the band members, with each recording half a side of
vinyl as a solo project (Mason's wife makes an unaccredited contribution
as a flautist).
1970's Atom Heart Mother, a UK number one album, is somewhat dated
and has been described by Gilmour as the sound of a band "blundering
about in the dark". The title piece owes much to orchestration by Ron
Geesin.
The band's sound was considerably more focused on Meddle (1971), with
the 23-minute epic "Echoes" (in this track the band used the Zinovieff's
VCS3 synth for the first time). This album also included the atmospheric
"One of These Days" (a concert classic, with a distorted, disembodied one-
line vocal, "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces"-
courtesy of drummer Nick Mason) and the pop-jazz styling of "San
Tropez". Their taste for experimentation was expressed on "Seamus"
(earlier, "Mademoiselle Nobs"), a pure-blues number featuring lead vocals
by a Russian wolfhound.
A less-well-known album, Obscured by Clouds, was released in 1972, as
the soundtrack for the film "La Vallee" and was the band's first US Top 50
album.
Despite their never having been a hit-single-driven group, their massively
successful 1973 album, Dark Side of the Moon, featured a US number Top
20 track ("Money"), and more importantly remained in the top 100 for
over a decade, breaking many records on the way, and making it one of
the top selling albums of all time. Dark Side of the Moon was a concept
album dealing with themes of insanity, neurosis and fame. Thanks to the
use of new 16-track recording equipment at Abbey Road Studios and the
investment of an enormous amount of time by engineer Alan Parsons, the
album set new standards for sound fidelity.
Dark Side of the Moon and the three following albums (Wish You Were
Here, Animals and The Wall) are held up by some fans as the peak of Pink
Floyd's career. The first of those, Wish You Were Here, released in 1975, is
a theme album about absence. In addition to the classic title track, "Wish
You Were Here" includes the critically acclaimed, mostly instrumental
nine-part "Shine on You Crazy Diamond", a tribute to Barrett in which the
lyrics deal explicitly with the aftermath of his breakdown. The album also
includes the epics "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar."
By 1977, and the release of Animals, the band's music came under
increasing criticism from some quarters in the new punk rock sphere as
being too flabby and pretentious, having lost its way from the simplicity of
early rock and roll. Animals contained more lengthy songs tied to a theme,
taken in part from George Orwell's Animal Farm, using pigs, dogs and
sheep as metaphors for members of contemporary society. Animals were
a lot more guitar-driven than the previous albums and marked the start of
tensions between Waters and Wright.
1979's epic rock opera, The Wall, conceived mainly by Waters, gave Pink
Floyd renewed acclaim and another hit single with their foray into critical
pedagogy - "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II." It also included
"Comfortably Numb," which, though never released as a single, became a
cornerstone of AOR and classic-rock radio playlists and is today one of the
group's best-known songs. It is also one of a very small number of songs
on Pink Floyd's first four concept albums not to segue at either the
beginning or end. The album also became a vastly expensive and money-
losing tour/stage show, although the album's sales got the band out of the
financial hole they were in. During this time, Waters increased his artistic
influence and leadership over the band, prompting frequent conflicts with
the other members and even leading to the firing of Wright from the band.
Wright returned, on a fixed wage, for the album's few live concerts.
Ironically, he was the only member of Pink Floyd to make any money from
the "Wall" shows, the rest having to cover the excessive costs. The album
was co-produced by Bob Ezrin, a friend of Waters who shared songwriting
credits on "The Trial" and whom Waters then kicked out of the Floyd camp
after Ezrin inadvertently talked about the album to a journalist relative.
The Wall remained on best-selling-
album lists for 14 years. A film starring
Boomtown Rats founder Bob Geldof was
adapted from it in 1982, written by
Waters and directed by Alan Parker,
and featuring striking animation by
noted British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe.
The creation of the film saw a further
deterioration of the Waters/Gilmour
relationship, as Waters came to
completely dominate the band.
1983 saw the release of The Final Cut.
Even darker in tone than The Wall, this
album re-examined many of the themes
of that album while also addressing
then-current events, including Waters'
anger at Britain's participation in the
Falklands War ("The Fletcher Memorial
Home") and his cynicism toward, and
fear of, nuclear war ("Two Suns in the Sunset"). Wright's absence meant
this album lacked the keyboard effects seen in previous Floyd works,
although guests Michael Kamen and Andy Bown both contributed
keyboard work. Though released as a Pink Floyd album, the project was
clearly dominated by Waters and became a prototype in sound and form
for later Waters solo projects. Only moderately successful by Floyd
standards, the album yielded only one rock radio hit, "Not Now John". The
arguing between Waters and Gilmour by this stage was rumored to be so
bad that they were never seen in the recording studio simultaneously.
There was no tour, and the band unofficially disbanded in 1983.
After The Final Cut, the band members went their separate ways, each
releasing solo albums, until 1987, when Gilmour and Mason began to
revive the band. A bitter legal dispute with Roger Waters (who left the
band in 1985) ensued, but Gilmour and Mason were upheld in their
contention that they had the legal right to continue as Pink Floyd (Waters,
however, gained the rights to some traditional Pink Floyd imagery,
including almost all of the Wall props and characters and all of the rights
to "The Final Cut"). The band under Gilmour returned to the studio with
producer Bob Ezrin. Richard Wright re-joined during the recording sessions
of A Momentary Lapse of Reason first as a session musician, paid a weekly
salary, and later reinstated as a full-fledged member of the band for the
1994 release of The Division Bell and its subsequent tour, which was
promoted by legendary Canadian concert impresario Michael Cohl and
became the highest-grossing tour in rock history to that date.
All of the members of Pink Floyd have released solo albums which have
met with varying degrees of commercial and critical success. Waters'
Amused to Death was the most praised of these albums, though it was
met with mixed reviews.
THE BEATLES
As an artistic movement, postmodernism
starts roughly in the 1960’s after the high
modernism of the 1920’s lost its direction. It
has been described as the period which is
‘less serious and moralistic than modernism’,
a time when artists in many fields began
mixing media and incorporating kitsch and
popular culture into their aesthetic.
Postmodernism was a part of the intellectual
and artistic zeitgeist of the late 1960’s that
also included The Beatles- especially John
Lennon, who had recently become involved with the Yoko Ono and the artistic
culture of New York and London. Some of its principal ideas, which directly
influenced artists and writers during this period, can be recognised in the music on
the White Album and usefully assembled for analysis.

The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960 and one of the
most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of
popular music. From 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon (rhythm guitar,
vocals), Paul McCartney (bass guitar, vocals), George Harrison (lead guitar, vocals)
and Ringo Starr (drums, vocals). Rooted in skiffle and 1950s rock and roll, the
group later worked in many genres ranging from folk rock to psychedelic pop,
often incorporating classical and other elements in innovative ways. The nature of
their enormous popularity, which first emerged as the "Beatle mania" fad,
transformed as their songwriting grew in sophistication. The group came to be
perceived as the embodiment of progressive ideals, seeing their influence extend
into the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s.
In their initial incarnation as cheerful,
wisecracking moptops, the Fab Four
revolutionized the sound, style, and attitude of
popular music and opened rock and roll's doors to
a tidal wave of British rock acts. Their initial
impact would have been enough to establish the
Beatles as one of their era's most influential
cultural forces, but they didn't stop there.
Although their initial style was a highly original,
irresistibly catchy synthesis of early American
rock and roll and R&B, the Beatles spent the rest
of the 1960s expanding rock's stylistic frontiers,
consistently staking out new musical territory on
each release. The band's increasingly
sophisticated experimentation encompassed a variety of genres, including folk-
rock, country, psychedelic, and baroque pop, without sacrificing the effortless
mass appeal of their early work.

In The Beatles as Musicians, Walter Everett points out Lennon and McCartney's
contrasting motivations and approaches to composition: "McCartney may be said to
have constantly developed—as a means to entertain—a focused musical talent with
an ear for counterpoint and other aspects of craft in the demonstration of a
universally agreed-upon common language that he did much to enrich. Conversely,
Lennon's mature music is best appreciated as the daring product of a largely
unconscious, searching but undisciplined artistic sensibility."[
Ian MacDonald, comparing the two composers in Revolution in the Head, describes
McCartney as "a natural melodist—a creator of tunes capable of existing apart from
their harmony". His melody lines are characterised as primarily "vertical",
employing wide, consonant intervals which express his "extrovert energy and
optimism". Conversely, Lennon's "sedentary, ironic personality" is reflected in a
"horizontal" approach featuring minimal, dissonant intervals and repetitive
melodies which rely on their harmonic accompaniment for interest: "Basically a
realist, he instinctively kept his melodies close to the rhythms and cadences of
speech, colouring his lyrics with bluesy tone and harmony rather than creating
tunes that made striking shapes of their own." MacDonald praises Harrison's lead
guitar work for the role his "full-of-character lines and textural colourings" play in
supporting Lennon and McCartney's parts, and describes Starr as "the father of
modern pop/rock drumming... His faintly behind-the-beat style subtly propelled
The Beatles, his tunings brought the bottom end into recorded drum sound, and his
distinctly eccentric fills remain among the most memorable in pop music."

Influences
The band's earliest influences include Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry,
whose songs they covered more often than any other artist's in performances
throughout their career. During their co-residency with Little Richard at the Star
Club in Hamburg from April to May 1962, he advised them on the proper technique
for performing his songs. Of Presley, Lennon said, "Nothing really affected me until
I heard Elvis. If there hadn't been Elvis, there would not have been The Beatles".
Other early influences include Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Carl Perkins and Roy
Orbison. The Beatles continued to absorb influences long after their initial success,
often finding new musical and lyrical avenues by listening to their contemporaries,
including Bob Dylan, Frank Zappa, The Byrds and The Beach Boys, whose 1966
album Pet Sounds amazed and inspired McCartney. Martin stated, "Without Pet
Sounds, Sgt. Pepper wouldn't have happened... Pepper was an attempt to equal
Pet Sounds."

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