Are books dead, and can authors survive?

[Joe Allonby]

Looks like my analogy is breaking down under analysis.

I was making a generalization which doesn't hold up when specifics are
cited. White flag waving.

I''ll regroup and try again. I really don't think that reading is
really in danger because the format that people do it in is changing.
In my own experience, I read even more voraciously now than before
(which I didn't think possible) because of access to books
electronically. What might be suffering is my old habit of going back
and rereading stuff on my shelf simply because of access to new (or
new to me) material at the touch of a button.

A better analogy might have been the switch from magnetic recording
formats to digital formats in the music world which led to a certain
democratization on the part of the producers and performers of
recorded music, though accompanied by a loss of audio quality at least
in the short term.

Nevertheless, I concede to David's point.



On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 9:01 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry, I just don't agree with your formula.
>
> Rock's infancy was the early 50's.  Serious jazz was already well
> established by the start of the 50's.  I don't think Charlie Parker
> ever felt the need to be "relieved of the burden of having to be
> popular."  It was his lead in this regard that freed his
> contemporaries, not the emergence of Rock, which barely existed at the
> time.
>
> Charlie Parker:
> "By 1950, much of the jazz world had fallen under Parker's spell. Many
> musicians transcribed and copied his solos. Legions of saxophonists
> imitated his playing note-for-note. In response to these pretenders,
> Parker's admirer, the bass player Charles Mingus, titled a tune
> "Gunslinging Bird" (meaning "If Charlie Parker were a gunslinger,
> there would be a whole lot of dead copycats") featured on the album
> Mingus Dynasty. In this regard, he is perhaps only comparable to Louis
> Armstrong: both men set the standard for their instruments for
> decades, and few escaped their influence."
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 5:30 PM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Jazz wasn't taken seriously, it was popular dance music. Once it
>> ceased to be, it was .
>> It's path was not obscurity. I don't think you can call Bitches Brew
>> obscure. Jazz flourished during the rock era because it was less
>> popular. Jazz musicians could take risks that pop musicians couldn't
>> because they weren't expected to be teen heartthrobs. They were free
>> to be real musicians.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 3:01 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Pickin' a few nits here on your theory/history re. rock & jazz:
>>>
>>> Dominant forms of popular musical mass entertainment change with the
>>> generations.  Dominant audiences change (are born and die) parallel
>>> with genres.
>>>
>>> Jazz didn't get "serious" in response to rock displacing its audience.
>>>  It was following its own path, and that path led it to its own
>>> obscurity.  Serious listeners and pop music don't usually cross paths.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 1:22 PM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I'm reminded of the critics of popular culture who thought that rock 'n' roll would kill jazz by replacing it as the dominant form in musical mass entertainment. In fact, rock 'n' roll made jazz better by allowing it to take its place as a serious art form as opposed to mere dance music for the masses.
>>>
>>
>