What happened to that wasted talent?

We all have one of those friends, or acquaintances or dude or dudette we have only met once that has a talent, or knack or is just hardwired for something so perfectly that it almost makes you sick to your stomach. So sick that you become in awe of this person and the relative ease at which they apply their craft time and time again. In most instances this person is not even aware of how they are doing it and in most instances this person can do what they do better than anyone else whilst high, drunk or carrying a serious injury.

These people are the naturals, or what I like to call “Mozart” syndrome. If you’ve ever seen the film Amadeus and remember the one-way rivalry directed at young Mozart from a jealous Salieri then you’ll know what I’m on about. If not click this link, it pretty much speaks for itself – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ciFTP_KRy4

Now whether or not this was a true chronicling of their relationship is beside the point, it displays clearly how some people can just turn it on while others toil hard and still produce mediocre results. Actually there is a quote in a Roger Ebert review of the film which sums up Mozart and his approach and knack for composing in one clean sentence.

“True geniuses rarely take their own work seriously, because it comes so easily for them”

But it’s also because of this reason that a lot of these people who possess this God given talent don’t further nurture it or follow it to it’s farthest extent. There is an argument by author Malcolm Gladwell that argues that this talent doesn’t come naturally but through a dedication of hardwork spanning roughly 10,000 hours. He sites examples in his book “Outliers” including that of Mozart, stating that he didn’t actually compose anything of true greatness until he reached his late teens. I like to agree with this theory, it bodes well for the notion of hardwork = success formula. Break it down to it’s basic common principal ,and you simply become good at something because you practice it over and over and over again.

This comes back to those people who are naturals, they love their craft so much that it becomes the only focus of their life, hence the practice feels nothing more than repetitive undertakings of the craft they love so dearly and their skill in it is merely a by product. But what about those people who are just f-ing naturals, you can’t deny those ones, and they are usually the kids who kick ass at sport that I’m talking about. We’ve seen them, the kid who picks up a football and can already kick thirty metres, the kid who picks up a tennis racquet and has no trouble hitting the lines Roger Federer styles. The kid who picks up a f-ing guitar and can already play stairway to heaven.

They exist and they are out there, and to use a John Mayer term those are the people that are just “Wired” to perform a specific task. It’s in their genetic make up and for them it’s no harder than tying up their shoe.

So for this entry in particular I decided to focus on two people, Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell and Dogtown skateboarder Jay Adams. Two prime examples of gents with talent to burn but never really got a shot or took their shot at the big time because they were missing that guiding hand.

Maybe it was a stern father or maybe just a loyal friend, but both had the talent and the world at their feet and both unfortunately ended up in jail. Below I’ll link clips to both characters that explain their journey and how and why they ended up where they did.

I’m sorry this is such a short entry, for some reason I was convinced this topic had legs but to be honest I think the links below outline what I’m trying to say, in a fashion twice as articulate with the added bonus of pictures and footage. I will go on and say this, maybe it’s the reckless abandon in which they treat their gift that makes people jealous, well at least at the time when they aren’t in jail. It’s the idea that something that means so much to someone can mean so little to someone else yet he is the one creating the product by which you measure your own. Maybe it gives off an air of disrespect for the craft, but then again a surplus of respect and seriousness is what blocks the sub conscious from truly tapping into your own genius.

Remember my topic about getting laid by turning off the conscious and letting your sub conscious do the work for you? Remember that? Of course not, because no one reads this f –ing blog.

Anyway that’s it for me, it’s late, I’m tired and I have work tomorrow.

But feel free to comment, because as the weeks pass, and the comments box remains empty, then the prize compounds in size! First comment receives a…

Jay Adams – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdnytjEuGZA

“Hook” Mitchell – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEwnZ-Yxw4U

Auto-Tune killed the Hip Hop and or radio star.

I promise you next week I’ll dedicate an entire post to Sergeant Clifford Stone and touch on anti gravity propulsion and the fact that it already exists. But for the meantime you’re just going to have to settle for my rant about auto tune and it’s myriad of hacks, I mean users, I mean artists.

Sometimes if I’m lucky and to be honest I’ve been quite lucky these last few weeks, I’m given the duty of working in the gatehouse. What does that mean you ask? It means that I sit in a box ala Adam Sandler in Big Daddy and arrange what docks the trucks get to park in. It’s easier than the manual labour expected of us inside the factory and it affords me a great deal of time to read and or write. Well the other day I did a bit of the former finding a men’s magazine that had a four-page article detailing the death of Hip Hop. Now it would be easy to blame Auto-Tune for the entire crumbling of the genre but a lot of the blame has to go to the lack of creativity and the constant if not absurd amount of showboating that goes on in the videos and the lyrics.

But for me the beef can be most easily articulated in a tool that essentially pioneered one thing amongst artists and one thing only; laziness. I’ll start with basic pop and radio fare and by the end of the post I’ll segway into Hip Hop territory. Anyway like I said with the advent or at least the acceptance of this machine as a tool of engineering it has brought about a sameness in top forty pop that has rendered nearly every pop song f- ing useless.

I seriously have not listened to the radio in years, well at least since my car was installed with ipod connectivity. The only time I hear it is when I’m at the gym and even there you can hear the groans from the clientele and my mates when some asinine 3 minute pile of trash is sprayed over the airwaves at 110% so the station can fit in three more adds per break. Wait scrap that, I do listen to my car radio when I listen to the footy. SEN, Triple M, sometimes even ABC.

But really to have this shit passed as music these days is in actual fact a blatant f – ing insult to the public. I think what we’re seeing here is a focus on image and image alone. To be honest I don’t think record companies’ look for a talent so much as a face, a body and a personality. Now this is no surprise that Record companies are looking for a complete package but I think now in 2010 it’s gotten to the point where singing is no longer secondary or tertiary, it’s the final piece of the puzzle that can be fixed with the least amount of effort. The fact that they peddle this shit to the consumer really irks me, but what irks me more is the artists themselves acting like music’s second gift after Sinatra and Martin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpx9hRnv9AI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXsTVS7LQH4&feature=related

Dino is f- ing sitting down for f&%#’s sake and he’s still singing better than most modern day dipshits!

And like Ben says in Barry Levinsons “Liberty Heights” – “You never walk out on Sinatra.”

Well guess what I would walk out on most artists today because they are full of shit. I think a lot of this can go back to my generational argument. Back in the 40’s through to the 60’s a lot was expected of you and if you didn’t cut the mustard they didn’t have much that could help you. If you want another example look at this and tell me of another actor sans Fred Astaire who would ever be able to perform like this today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aus1PA5-SyI

Yeah that’s right not a f – ing soul. Yeah that’s right I’m a little off topic but who cares.

We created this problem of creative mediocrity by lowering the bar and allowing technology to help people slide right under it. What’s more incredible is that we don’t see it, actually music purists and most music writers see it or they wouldn’t be writing about it but the people who make these artists who they are, the public, don’t. I find it almost impossible not to notice how every song sounds the same. They are almost hybrid children all stemming from Cher’s “Believe” which evidently and coincidently was really the beginning of all this shit. Auto – Tune may have been used before but never touched the listener like it did back then.

So how has this affected Hip Hop? Simple, it’s made it wussy. Back when I was ten and just after the death of Tupac I began listening to Hip Hop, or just Rap music, which I think it, should be called. Yes I am white but if I let my beard grow I can almost pass as a light skinned dude. It would explain why I always get looks from Black girls. But I digress. Back in the day when you listened to something by Tupac, Nas, Boys 504, Ice Cube, Ice – T, N.W.A, South Central Cartel, Dre and even Bone Thugz you heard something raw. Granted that most of it could be considered Gangsta Rap it still carried an emotion to it and a force that needed nothing bar the conviction of it’s delivery.

What stood out back then were the lyrics, the passion and even the music videos that in some cases showed it’s artists in a city tip next to crumpled up cars. No mugging for the camera, no club’s where the artists was given instant access, no women half naked and $200 000 dollar cars and definitely no Auto- Tune. Hell on one of my CD’s I could hear Tupac take a breath and then near the end of the track the sound of actual spittle being flung from his mouth. Yes I am aware that on California Love at the end a guy uses Auto Tune to do some be bopping and scatting but that itself had nothing to do with Tupac’s rhymes.

The problem is what we are left with now, I’ll tell you what we are left with.

Man I seem to ask a lot of rhetorical questions in my blog, but I guess that doesn’t matter because nobody reads it so nobody complains.

Anyway I was saying what we are left with is this guy.

And his song – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoG5jJ3E8rg

Can you imagine if this over produced under rapped crap was peddled back in the early nineties! You could bet your life savings that Easy – E would probably take a bat to his head. There were times when all you had was your talent and your tude (short for attitude) now all that is needed is the tude. Even listen to the lyrics, he’s talking about an ipod stuck on replay, a f –ing ipod!

Yeah I can really feel the tension when he brings his ipod to the Mac store to get it fixed and one of the Mac dudes gives him a new one because he’s still under warranty. Wow the richness and the vividness of his tales really makes me feel like I’m there at the store with him, wait let’s by an ipad as well and put that in the video. A guy sounding like a robot, singing on a beach about a girl whose personality reminds him of a song on his ipod.

I’m sold!

The only thing good about that clip was the flag in the back sort of resembles an Australian flag. Now honestly I could get started on T – Pain who is essentially the godfather of Auto–Tune, or at least the young Coroleone in this saga but I won’t.

Yet it’s times like these that I’m glad I’m a ninties child because all I have to do is wack in my ipod and be transported to a time when talent was the only thing on offer. And yes I’m aware of the irony of using an ipod to go back in time.

So there you have it, essentially what we have been listening to for the past couple years are singers and artists no more talented than ourselves yelling over a microphone and then mugging around like they have a voice. I’m aware that there are artists out there who absolutely admonish the use of the machine including Jay – Z  and other Rap artists who are on the verge of exploding – Kid Cudi but to be fully fair on this subject I propose that we have a national year of no Auto–Tune.

Yeah that’s how much I hate music right now that I want to dedicate a year to it.

Until next time…whatever.