HYPES AND ANTI-HYPES
Most Americans have fallen into the trap of being controlled by the media in their musical tastes. Often a name can sell a million albums even though quality is non-existent.
An example of this is the (ouch) Monkees. Before one note of new music was sounded, hundreds of thousands of kids were ready for the “New Beatles”. Although quality was absent, so many kids were brain-washed by a multi-million dollar advertising campaign that the name “Monkees” was synonymous with good, and the group sold millions (one of the worst musical abortions of the century).
The “Underground” is not immune. What I feel must be one of the biggest riffs on the American people of all time is the audacity of Columbia to combine some of the worst musicians of all time, calling it blues, pumping a million dollars worth of advertising into it, and passing it off as “Big Brother and the Holding Company”.
