Some other 'popular' memes to look for in songs would be memes about how money is bad or evil and it's better to be a poor 'honest' person than a rich 'bad' one. Also that the lower classes have more fun and the upper classes are just a bunch of stuck-up snobs.

A song that jumps to mind is 'Money Can't Buy Love,' by the Beatles. This one just about covers all the bases. To be fair the Beatles also did 'Give Me Money' (That's what I want!) (Now was this this Paul doing Money Can't Buy Love [I know this was his] and John doing 'Give Me Money' ?)

At any rate songs with these memes in them abound and, if Randy Gage is right, it's these awful memes that made these songs so popular, since everyone with these memes is attracted to them.

Weren't these particular memes sort of the thrust of the Hippy movement? Drop out of society because the establishment squares have all the money and are running (ruining?) everything.

How ironic is that idea? Now all the hippies are lawyers and CEOs.

This would certainly explain why the blues has dominated the song business for so long. A sobering thought. So all you new music artists out there, study up on your memes and you'll do well in the song business.

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Randy Gage, the Millionaire Messiah@ http://www.randygage.com/  has been reviewing movies with an eye to the sorts of memes that are in the movies. Memes are ideas that get inserted into our 'subconscious' and are passed around like a virus via the media and all sorts of 'social' interaction. They are most always detrimental to our mental well being and ability to be truly rational on all topics.

For example, Randy chose to point out all the social memes there are in the movie The Titanic; how it portrays rich people as stuffy, boring and even evil while poor people are fun and honest and more spiritual. If you want to get up to speed om what memes are about, Randy's blog is a great place to go.

One of the more provocative things Randy says is that the reason these movies are so popular is that they have all these lousy memes in them; the more of these memes that people have rolling around in their brains, the more they are attracted to these kinds of stories. I am happy to say that I have always found movies like The Titanic repellent.

I thought since there is a musical and new music artist theme to this blog, it would be fun to look at memes in the song business. If it works that way for movies, it must be the same in the song business.

Let's see if we can think of an example.

O.K., that took about ten seconds. The first meme that comes to mind is that love should be painful. If you fall in love, your partner is destined to tear your beating heart out with their bare hands and walk on it like an Egyptian. Then they'll be unfaithful. Your 'cheatin' heart' and all that sort of thing.

It would be hard to come up with any examples of this in the song business (and be able to limit it to, oh, say, one hundred.)

I will just use one of my favorite examples; 'Bye, Bye, Love.' The narrator in this song starts by saying 'there goes my baby-with someone new-she sure looks happy-I sure am blue.' In the chorus, he sings 'Bye bye love- bye bye happiness, hello loneliness, I think I'm going to cry.' In the second verse he substitutes, 'I think I'm going to die.'

Now you would think that lyrics like this would be accompanied by a dirge, but it's a very upbeat tune, kind of like that standard of Tom Jone's, 'It's Not Unusual,' which is total love-pain-bondage but completely upbeat and fun to sing.

I often find myself at a store or restaurant and suddenly having a 'I feel like snuffing it,' moment, focusing suddenly on morbid thoughts and whatever the worst thing that could happen would be, and I realize that it's the dreadful music they are piping in. I feel like going to the manager and complaining bit I know I'll just get a vacant look while he mumbles 'sorry, sir, it's corprate policy.'

'I see, no problem, I'm doing business with a company whose corporate policy is that I should be suicidally depressed.'

So maybe this is a lesson for some new music artists out there; if you want your music to be really popular, study up on your memes and work as many into your lyrics as you can.

As for myself, I will continue the fight as I view memes as a major part of the vortex of controls that society installs in the human mind and, make no mistake, the goal is to be free.

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Here's something you don't hear discussed much these days; does the new music artist have a role in society or not and, if so, just what is that role?

I think it best if I begin by giving my definition of this term I use so much; new music artist. By new music artist I do not mean a cardboard cut-out that society habitually pops into our face and calls 'new.' I mean 'new' as in the sense of never before having graced the surface of this planet.

Society, American society especially, has particular trouble with the whole concept of new. Understandable, since when you've been locked into reinventing the wheel for so long, there comes a point when you can't even imagine something new.

Manikins and cardboard cut-outs have negligible value to offer society so I think we can dispense with that side of the debate especially since the followers of manikins and cardboard cut-outs will not have made it to this conversation anyway. We will move forward with our discussion on the assumption that the new music artist does have a role in society.

As to what the role is, I think breaks down into two camps or schools of thinking:

The first says that people in general are pretty clueless and helpless and require 'guidance' or 'instruction.'

The second, much less popular way of thinking says that people could be self determined and fully capable of making wise decisions on their own if only their brains were allowed to function without the matrix of controls that society installs in the human mind.

History shows us many examples, actually, of people with the very best of intentions offering help or 'guidance' to others. History equally shows us that humans are capable of putting a spin on something as simple as how to get around the block and, in due time, you have more divisions and factions than you can count arguing, bickering and fighting over the one true way to get around the block.

The irony is that no one gets around the block. They go everywhere but around the block. Sadly, once something has been spun, no matter how well intended it originally was, it becomes part of the matrix of controls that society installs in the human mind.

I am in the second camp that is in favor of removing the matrix of controls and letting people figure it out for themselves. Being in this camp, my view is that the role of the new music artist is mainly deconstructionist in nature.

Anything that jars or shocks people into waking up a bit and taking notice of where they are is fair game. This role is a heck of a lot more fun than being a cultural policeman anyway.

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L.Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, had many motivational words to say to artists. He truly believed that the artist was very important to society. By artist we mean, of course, anyone who is involved in an expressive, creative endeavor, be they a new music artist, a painter or a writer.

Here is one of the many motivational inspirational quotes from L. Ron Hubbard;

"The modern trend of ‘don’t do’ accompanies the modern trend of an increased percentage of the insane in the society.

"The crazier a person is, the less he accomplishes or does.

"So we live in a world which is oriented to drive men mad.

"But, more pertinent to us, we suffer from the continuous bait – ‘do it the easy way.’ ‘Do it in the way that will demand the least effort.’

"We see this in manufacturing, particularly – the easiest way is the cheapest way is the most profitable way.

"So we get into a ‘do it the easy way.’

"Well, that may apply to making spoons for profit, but it does not apply to presentation.

"The whole world of the arts is directly opposed to the philosophy of the businessman or manufacturer.

"Art seeks to create an effect. An effect is not always created the easy way. Indeed, the better effects are quite difficult to achieve.

"One can fall into creating easy effects to such a degree that one fails completely."

– L. Ron Hubbard, ARTISTIC PRESENTATION

 

One of the 'easy' routes to take in any art is to simply copy what others have done. This what they will teach you to do in school and is also what the very vocal 'experts' in society expound as the 'right way' and the 'safe way.'

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It was John Lennon who said 'who the hell do you think you are; a superstar? Well, right you are!'

Unfortunately, society has all these ideas, memes, that get hard-wired into our brains and keep us from being the superstars we truly are. We are encouraged to think like the herd because that's the 'safe' thing to do.

We believe that kings, presidents and idols are somehow superior beings and they have the wisdom to make our decisions for us, tell us how to live and that they will 'fix' all our problems for us, and brother, will they ever!

This kind of herd mentality is particularly bad for the new music artist. The new music artist is faced with 'experts,' who will evaluate and judge whatever he does and tell him just how it should be done until you don't actually have a new music artist but a 'panel of informed experts.'  None of them can tell someone the manner in which it is right for them to create because that comes from a very personal place within the individual.

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You may well wonder what Alchemy has to do with music and the new music artist. Perhaps you picture a guy in a dungeon with beakers and test tubes feverishly pouring one ingredient into another, trying to concoct a new type of music. Certainly this is how some have gone at it and would seem to be the way that theory teachers would like you to believe it's done.

Let's have a look at the definition of Alchemy from Wikipedia, which happens to be quite good;

Alchemy became known as the spagyric art after Greek words meaning to separate and to join together in the 16th century, the word probably being coined by Paracelsus

They are referring to one of the dictums of Alchemy; Solve et Coagula, meaning separate or join together. It is the 'join together' part that has to do with the development of the new music artist.

Musical historians often paint the new music artists of the past, such as Beethoven, as being totally a 'bolt out of the blue,' but it's actually quite easy to trace the 'influences' of these new music artists. For Beethoven, his influences would clearly be Haydn, Handel and a bit of Mozart for starters.

The same is true of rock and pop music, even though the media banked on presenting rock as something completely new. Still, these new music artists all had their influences.

Rather than being mixed in test tubes and beakers, however, the fusion occurred in a much more natural process that is a reflection of the new music artists personality and musical tastes and not so much of a analytical decision making process, which brings us to another dictum;  'Know Thy Self.'

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Here is a resource for the new music artist who wants to get involved in the business in music. It's a website that you can become a member of and maybe find a producer. It's called, appropriately enough, Meet A Producer, and here's the link;

http://www.meetaproducer.com    

I signed up, but I haven't actually logged in yet. Most membership sites of this type has a free membership and, of course, an upgrade. As I said, I don't know for sure about this one yet, I'm not actually looking for a producer but I plan to go in and start a profile just to see what it's all about. Who knows, maybe it can nelp new music artists who are serious about the business in music. I will be doing more posts about this one soon, meanwhile you might want to go check it out for yourself.

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Here’s another in a series of motivational inspirational quotes. We’ve all heard the Beatles song that says; “There’s nothing you can sing that can’t be sung-all you need is love.” And, well, maybe we thought this was just a product of the times or controlled substance speaking.

Well here’s what another well known musician of his day had to say about the subject;

“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Again, more testimony to the fact that genius is not some number on a chart but a connection to one’s own spiritual source. Since the source is pure love energy, you must connect by matching that vibration. This has been another in the series of motivational inspirational quotes.

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As part of the ultimate chord guitar series, we offer the 3 most used chords on guitar. These are the definitive blues chords. Now I know lots of folks will chime in and say they have blues chords they like a lot better but if you surveyed all the blues music ever written, I bet you these three chords would be in the top ten.

This is my opinion, anyway, since I’m not about to survey all the blues music ever written. You can certainly use these chords in the twelve bar blues formula I posted before.

Here they are. They belong to the ‘Key’ of E Major, by the way.

Since they belong to E Major, the E chord is ‘one’ or I, the A chord is ‘four’ or IV and the B7 is ‘five’ or V. As always, have fun! As I have pointed out before in this ultimate chord guitar series, there are three ‘primary chords’ for each key and you should learn these chords as a group in each key. There will be more posts in the ultimate chord guitar series to help you learn these ‘primary chords’ for many different keys.

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