Brian Funk

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The Threat to New Music - David Rowell - Music Production Podcast #388

Brian Funk

David Rowell is a veteran music journalist who has worked as an editor and writer at the Washington Post for over 20 years. Stewart Copeland of the Police said "David Rowell is the kind of critic that scares us musicians. He really gets it, maybe even more than we do." 

David is here to talk about his new book The Endless Refrain: Memory, Nostalgia, and the Threat to New Music. In it he expores the popularity of legacy acts and tribute acts and the challenges it creates for new musicians trying to get their music heard. David raises the question "do we even want new music?" We discuss his take on the trajectory of the music industry and what it means for artists like many of us, who create original music, and our culture in general.

Finish-February 3-Day In-Person Workshop at Ableton's Pasadena Headquarters -

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Takeaways:

  • The abundance of new music can be overwhelming for listeners.

  • Investing in music through purchase creates a deeper connection.

  • Nostalgic listening experiences shape our relationship with music.

  • MTV revolutionized music consumption and artist visibility.

  • The desire for new music is declining among audiences.

  • Tribute bands reflect a growing preference for familiar music.

  • Hologram performances raise ethical questions about music consumption.

  • Nostalgia is a powerful marketing tool in the music industry.

  • The emotional connection to music is vital for artists and fans.

  • Venture capitalists are reshaping music consumption.

  • Listeners are increasingly exposed to nostalgic music.

  • Streaming services have changed how we discover music.

  • Albums today don't linger in cultural impact as before.

  • Tribute bands provide a living for many musicians.

  • New music discovery requires intentional effort.

  • Cultural references in music are becoming less shared.

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Thank you for listening. 

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Episode Transcript:

Brian Funk (00:00.922)

David, thanks for taking the time to be here.

David Rowell (00:03.564)

Hey Brian, great to be with you.

Brian Funk (00:06.16)

It's really good to have you. Your book is really hitting on some important topics, I think, with music, the endless refrain. I'm on the third part now, so I still have a little bit to go. But I've gotten through a lot of it, and a lot of it has really struck me a lot as a musician that tries to write his own music and then struggles to get it out there, posts it online to crickets, and then posts a picture of my dog.

chasing her tail and it gets all kinds of interaction.

David Rowell (00:36.164)

Sure, I mean there's an endless sea of new music out there and it can be so overwhelming that some people just don't even try to find it.

Brian Funk (00:41.467)

you

Brian Funk (00:47.191)

Yeah, it is kind of like the beauty and the curse of what we have now without as many gatekeepers as we used to have. You can reach anybody at any time, but so can everyone else.

David Rowell (00:50.393)

Yes.

David Rowell (00:55.032)

Right.

David Rowell (01:00.078)

Right, where to even begin in finding, know, if you say one day, I'd like to just discover a new musician today, you can do that. But, you know, how you would begin that is it can make that idea go away pretty quickly, I think.

Brian Funk (01:03.536)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (01:17.492)

Hmm. Yeah, and it's like an overwhelming choice. It used to be if I was going to take a chance on a new artist, I bought the CD, took it home, and now I'm invested. I've spent money and some of my favorite records grew on me. The first listen didn't strike me, but it was the need to get my $15 worth. Suddenly you like it.

David Rowell (01:39.684)

It's absolutely, so that's why I don't stream music because there's inherently something in that in which I'm not as invested because I haven't paid anything for it. And it's also easy to multitask when you are streaming music. And I really try not to do that either because multitasking is some interrupted listening.

you know, some distracted listening. So I'm with you. If I buy music, I've bought the CD, I really like to listen to it in the car many times first before I even start to ask myself, what do I think of this?

And then in some ways that's just going back to the time when I was a teenager when on a Friday night or Saturday night we were just so content to drive around for hours with no destination in mind, just listening to the music. We would talk, but there were long stretches when we wouldn't talk. We were just truly listening, you know? And part of that time was, you know, if you went out and you bought an album, you might not buy another album for three months or more.

Brian Funk (02:36.454)

Yeah, I have a lot of those memories.

David Rowell (02:46.52)

you know, or maybe not until Christmas, maybe you would get another album at Christmas. So you had this one album and, you know, you would put it on and I was very into the liner notes. You know, Leland Sklar played bass on this one track.

You know, over time that information kind of sits with you you make some other connections. I know his work from this album or this album. But to just sit there, it was really an art of listening to just sit there and absorb the music, try and hear everything. And then you finished it and now you're ready to listen to it again. You know, I mean, that's how my generation grew up listening to music. We just sat in a room and we just listened.

Brian Funk (03:25.066)

Hmm.

David Rowell (03:32.324)

It's different now.

Brian Funk (03:33.45)

I have so many nice memories as a kid when my friends first got cars and you would ride around with them. Freedom, first of all, you know, and you've got whatever you're listening to as that soundtrack became really important and just kind of gets printed into you on a very deep level.

David Rowell (03:51.884)

Yes. Right. mean, and you know, and so I get at that repetition in the book, but I mostly talk about repetition in terms of MTV and the ways that that just, you know, we were listening to the same music wherever we went, whether we were at home or whether we were.

and we had the radio on, it was playing the same songs, you know, there had always been top 40 radio and all that, but MTV brings in that new level of repetition where there was not a time basically where you weren't listening to those same songs, you know, because it was so different and mesmerizing.

A lot of it was weird and confusing, but it was interesting. But in the beginning MTV didn't have a lot of music videos. You know, there were a lot of artists who weren't really sold on doing that. know, there's this sense of, I have to show up on a film lot and do what? You know, these were artists who would just...

made the records in the studios and then went on tour and here was this whole new thing and so in the beginning there was some of those songs were just played over and over and even if we didn't like those songs it kind of didn't matter because we were just trying to take in this whole new art form you know but then all these generations later all these decades later we find that we listen to those songs so much that

We just have almost like a Pavlovian response to them. You know, you'll be in Target and you hear men at work and for some people it's just like this kind of comfort food. You know, it just takes you back to that time where you remember when men at work was a big deal and people were playing men at work. Or you can be someone who is at Target and you hear men at work a little bit like me and just think, it's 2024.

David Rowell (05:47.822)

Why am I still hearing men at work? At Target? You know?

Brian Funk (05:51.502)

Yeah. we have a funny, that's what you say about the musicians with the music videos. I don't know if I ever really thought of it on that level because I think today now a lot of musicians say, I have to be on social media. I have to do this. I want to just do the music and have it speak to me. Little did they know, I guess, in the early 80s when MTV was hitting that that was just the beginning. It was just the start.

David Rowell (06:19.886)

Well, it just turned out that there were a lot of artists who were naturals at that and that became as important as their music. Or so it seemed to Or it's like the Eurythmics or Duran Duran or Madonna. I they just... You can look at those videos now and think, well, that's dumb or that's goofy. Why are they on a sailboat or something?

Brian Funk (06:26.701)

Yeah.

David Rowell (06:43.396)

But it was all new and they were just incredibly, you know, the four minute videos. I mean, there was a lot to take in and they just seemed very, they were like natural performers, you know. But it just meant that because the record labels were still a very big deal back then, that there was such a rush to get a hit single out and get a video, you know, back on the airwaves that there was not always

a great emphasis on the music. And sometimes they signed bands because they had crazy looking hair. You know, they just, they wore, hey, this singer wears a muumuu. You know, was so about the visuals. And so they signed these bands, but it turned out those bands weren't meant to last because they weren't great songwriters.

you know, something happened or they were paired with the wrong producer. But a lot of those bands in the height of the MTV era didn't necessarily last because they came to our attention for lots of reasons. But being great songwriters was not always their hallmark.

Brian Funk (07:56.496)

Yeah, the look for music video became a big reason why they stuck around and why we heard them over and over again. They have the... they look good on TV.

David Rowell (08:08.76)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, so much of that technology was new too. know, drum machines and drum programming and MIDI and the synthesizers were so evolving and that was just what we knew at the time. But when I hear a lot of that 80s music now and I...

hear it wherever I go, I'm very aware of, for me, how antiquated those sounds are. I don't think that they've aged very well. But you know what? Everything I've written in this book and everything I think about music is just entirely subjective. So there are people who love that kind of splat sounding snare, you know? Or all those vocals that had a ton of reverb on.

Brian Funk (08:53.679)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (09:01.5)

Right. I think for me, some of my interest in synthesis, synthesizers and getting into that was a lot of nostalgia from hearing it when I was younger, growing up in the eighties. And sometimes in an ironic way, like this cheesy sound from some song from some new wave band was like kind of a funny thing to stick in my music. And I think I've sort of forgotten.

David Rowell (09:11.47)

Go realing.

Brian Funk (09:30.032)

in a way that it was on some level a little bit of an ironic enjoyment to have these kind of like driving drum machines at certain times or, you know, clearly synthetic sounds that it might say electric guitar sound on the preset, but it's nothing like it. But that's kind of fun in a way. And now it's just like part of it. We've seen so much

David Rowell (09:49.047)

Yes, right, right.

Brian Funk (09:57.5)

resurgence in the new music that we actually do get to hear with a lot of these dated sounds.

David Rowell (10:04.065)

Yeah, yeah, the bass synthesizer.

Brian Funk (10:07.325)

Hmm.

You have, I mean, I think it might be the first line in the book or one of the first lines in the book, like a central question you're raising is, we even want new music?

Do we need it? Do we have enough that already kind of tickles our emotional Pavlovian responses, like you said? do we really crave it? Because it is hard sometimes. I know for myself, as somebody that I think tries to find new music actively and wants to like new stuff, if I'm driving to work, a lot of times the...

I get like kind of tired of sifting through the stuff I don't know and I just want something I can sing along to.

David Rowell (10:52.612)

Well, I tried to be so careful to not be a hypocrite in the book because I understand that impulse. I love the old music and there's so much old music that I play all the time. me, music discoveries have been some of the greatest moments of my life. And so it would be weird if at 57 I just said, I really don't need to make any more again.

that I have listened to all the music, this is all the music that I want to listen to now. Now, I have so much music that could fill out the rest of my life, you know, but a new discovery where you like a song, you like a band or an artist, and you get that album and it turns out to be really special for you, that's a hard thing to beat, you know, all this time later. I mean, that's just thrilling to me and so...

I know that there are lots of people who say, just listen to what I want to listen to, what's wrong with that? part of, I mean, on one hand my answer is, well, nothing. But there are implications to that. And those implications are that, for example, if you love an artist and that artist has put out a bunch of albums,

and now the artists put out some new albums in recent years and you don't really want that new music and you don't really buy that new music, then the artist understands to not really try and play that new music in concert. And I just see so many bands who've been around a long time, they might have a new album out and they play one new song and then everything else is what they've been playing for decades. Some people want that.

But if we continue in this place where we're not wanting new music, then artists will give up recording new music, this is what I think at least, and they'll just spend the rest of their career playing the hits.

David Rowell (12:52.612)

on tour year after year and maybe they'll mix up the sequence or something or maybe they'll do an acoustic arrangement of this song but basically if the message is only these songs then I mean ultimately they have to make a living you know and so if they feel like being defiant and only playing their new music they can do that because they're artists but then word gets out on the internet

Right? And then suddenly people aren't buying the tickets. It just, so this is what I mean. It just has all kinds of implications. If you don't have to like the new music, but if we get to this point, and I feel like in many ways we have, if we get to the point where we don't, we're not even open to the new music.

then that's what worries me. And so I kind of think of the book as an alarm bell of sorts, because I'm exploring this question of, we want new music anymore? In many ways, it worries me that I think that we don't. so the book is showing some ways that I think that's true, the rise of tribute bands, for example, because there's no more surefire way to avoid a new song than go see a tribute act.

Brian Funk (13:52.886)

Yeah.

David Rowell (14:00.292)

And it's the same with music holograms, too. The music holograms, which is a newer phenomenon and some people may not be familiar with that, but it's basically digitally recreating, at this point, dead artists, with the exception of ABBA. They're very much alive, but they don't want to tour and they mostly don't want to be seen. And so it's using technology to bring these performers on stage again, but it's always going to...

it's always going to be their old songs, the music we already know, you know? And so how big a development that becomes in music in the concert industry remains a little bit to be seen, but that ABBA show was hugely successful. And what does Kiss do?

But at the end of their last show at Madison Square Garden, before they've even left the stage, this big video comes on the screen and it says, here's the next chapter of Kiss, and it's a bunch of Kiss avatars flying around with superpowers. you know, you watch this video for two minutes and you understand, well, Kiss is not going anywhere. And so you can just go see them in concert with these avatars. And so you can think,

Hey, that's great! Or you can think, well, that's just one more way to keep us stuck listening to the same old music. How about we find the next kiss? You know, the next group that's trying to make vital music in some way.

Brian Funk (15:32.088)

Yeah, it's made it to where I think a lot of the bands that are playing their stuff over the years and decades, you start to hear them with more backing tracks. So it's a more safe performance because we want it safe in terms of the content that we're hearing because we want to hear it and we want to hear it the way we heard it on the record.

David Rowell (15:51.971)

Right.

Right, right. But vocally sometimes they're not able to replicate that. so, like speaking of this, mean, that's what Paul Stanley, know, there were criticisms that Paul Stanley couldn't sing like that anymore. So there were backing tracks, you know.

Brian Funk (15:59.642)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (16:09.188)

Yeah, and I get that. mean, what do you expect? Right. But it's also I find that a little uncomfortable when I'm watching a band and I can't tell what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing. that is that I hear like a guitar that that's not there or I hear it doesn't seem like those background vocals are coming from anywhere. It's. And I think, you know, that's just

being musician, paying attention to this stuff, I would be looking at their guitar pedals if I was close enough and all of that. But yeah, it kind of takes some of the performance aspect of the danger of it. That's always kind of the fun of a live performance is there's a little bit of the unknown. Tonight's going to be a one off thing that's not going to ever happen anywhere else ever again. But most.

David Rowell (16:56.653)

Right.

David Rowell (17:01.742)

Yeah. Just when you see, you know, like the moment where a drummer hits a cymbal at the wrong moment. And I just can remember times where the guitarist has looked back and the drummer now howls in delight because he's saying, yeah, yeah, I got that wrong. And it's thrilling. And there's like, there's no reason to stay with me, but I remember it. So I was saying yes. And Bill Brufer, who's the master drummer, you know, at least he, he had a cymbal in place where

Brian Funk (17:18.822)

And there's an interaction. Yeah.

David Rowell (17:32.494)

Trevor Abel was not expecting it and he looked back and you know, just like that's right. It's so live and and that's thrill of live music and so when you see a hologram performance, I mean my perspective, it's all very controlled, you know, or I mean you sometimes have live musicians in the hologram shows but there's not going to be a change in the vocals because those vocals are of course pre-recorded.

So, you know, with the hologram shows, I mean, it's the same kind of thing. For some people, they're up for it. It's not like they are being fooled. It's not like they go see, they sit down, the lights go out, and now here's Ronnie James Dio hologram, and someone says, wait a minute, why does he look so shiny? We know he's dead, you know? And so no one's really been fooled if they've gotten to that point. So it's just a question of...

Brian Funk (18:22.393)

All right.

David Rowell (18:30.572)

For some people it's not even an ethical question. like, well, this is another way we can experience music. And for some people it is an ethical question. It just depends on what you want from music and how you think about music.

Brian Funk (18:47.496)

I see a little bit of a parallel maybe to like professional wrestling where fighters, people that are into the combat sports can't understand it, but that's not why we're here. We know, we understand we're not being fooled. We're here for the drama and the story of it. And it's obviously predetermined and we get that. There's other things to appreciate that are still obviously impressive, but it's...

David Rowell (19:15.256)

Sure, and can be entertaining.

Brian Funk (19:17.617)

It's a different, we're looking at different things here. you're, if you're going to watch a combat sport, you're, you're going to be disappointed. It's not what you're getting.

David Rowell (19:27.128)

Right. I mean, I think it goes back to what was your relationship to music when you were young? Did you get to the point where...

you no longer really care about those kinds of things or were you just so hardcore? And hardcore is not right. Or, you know, there's no right or wrong here, but were you just so hardcore about music and everything that went into it that the idea of a hologram show is just too troubling? I mean, for some people, there's nothing wrong with just wanting to have an entertaining night, you know? But it raises those questions for people, I think. The people I talked to who went to see hologram shows,

Brian Funk (19:45.693)

Right.

Brian Funk (20:01.022)

Mm-hmm.

David Rowell (20:07.366)

think about it. know, they're not saying that wrestle with it but they had to think huh what would that be like what would I think about that? Some people said you know what that sounds cool and other people stayed away.

Brian Funk (20:09.214)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (20:17.268)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (20:20.887)

Yeah, I've had this experience with tribute bands where I've had a great time enjoying this like kind of celebration of an artist or certain music, but I also have other feelings too, and especially on like the local level. So being here, I've been, lived my whole life on Long Island and played

in bands, played venues, original music, you know, all that kind of stuff. Seen the actual music scene change over the years and so many of the venues that pop up now are basically all tribute band venues. And there's really no way to get in. No one wants to hear the original music. They want to go and hear the songs.

David Rowell (21:08.824)

That's right. There is no way to miss that message. And so, it makes... if you can't play in your local bar, play original music, and increasingly that's the case, then it's a difficult message to try and reconcile. If you can't play in those places, where... how are... you and I were talking earlier, then how are you supposed to get your music out? And it just speaks to how much people want the music they know.

And so, you know, as I spent time with this one trippy band, I mean, I came to appreciate lots of things about it. they're, some of these bands take it so seriously and they play the music expertly, you know.

or they put the wigs on so they replicate the of the feeling of a particular band and their stage batter can try and replicate the feeling of that band. There are so many of them though.

So it's like new music in that there's so many who are the best ones because they're the ones that will cut through. There's so many, like in Florida, were so many Journey Tribby bands. And so the question for them is like, well, how do we distinguish ourselves from all the others? And that's what they're all...

through but I mean it's amazing that you can type in Roy Orbison tribute in Google and before you finish it says Roy Orbison tribute act near me as if you're looking for like an oil change place I mean they're everywhere you know and some people love that but it but we've gotten to that point not accidentally and we've gotten to that point because the level I mean I'm so what I'm arguing in the book

Brian Funk (22:46.231)

Yeah.

Alright, McDonald's, sir.

Brian Funk (22:54.646)

Hmm.

David Rowell (23:03.516)

The grip of nostalgia is unrelenting right now and that shows up in all kinds of places. It shows up in commercials. Here's the scorpions rock me like a hurricane and it's promoting a fiber product. Or it's Boston's more than a feeling and it's promoting Yoplait. Or...

Brian Funk (23:20.824)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (23:25.516)

Right.

David Rowell (23:26.218)

or TurboTax says Spando Ballet. so, you know, on one hand you think, well, why is that? Why would, it's just tapping into the people who grew up on that music. It's just that simple. And so part of what's connected to that is so, you know, all these musicians are selling their back catalogs for 50 million, 70 million, hundreds of millions of dollars. And so,

If you think that you're hearing a lot of that old music now, just wait because those venture capitalists are buying that music and they are gonna find ways that we can't even imagine for that music to show up anywhere and everywhere. And you know, I say for the bands that sold it and make that money, well, that's great for you.

But as a listener, as a consumer of music, it worries me just how much am I going to be exposed to the songs. Sometimes I can't even escape now.

Brian Funk (24:30.002)

Yeah, I can't think of too many things less rock and roll than a Turbo Tax commercial. You take like your punk rock and...

David Rowell (24:36.674)

No, no, but you know, if the, but I think we have to conclude that if that wasn't having its dividends, they wouldn't be doing that. But you just, don't hear.

Brian Funk (24:47.205)

Yeah.

David Rowell (24:49.432)

You know, don't hear the original jingles nearly as much. I they just go with what works. And this is the same thing anytime you see a movie trailer for some big action movie, some superhero movie, it's always some song that you've been hearing your whole life. ELO. And, you know, opening the trailer used to always be Motown songs. And now it's just kind of 70s classic rock songs because it's the same thing we're talking about. It's that instant response.

Brian Funk (25:08.154)

Yeah.

David Rowell (25:19.368)

And this is not just for the people who grew up on that music because those people raised their children, because I certainly did, on the music. You know, we were that generation for whom it was so important to expose our children to the music that we thought was great. My parents didn't do that. My parents didn't say, okay, I really want you to hear this Perry Como album.

or here's this Jim Neighbors album you gotta listen to. Like they didn't really care about what music I listened to so I made my own discoveries. But when I had children, know, having them listen to the Beatles Revolver album or the Yes album, that was as important as getting them vaccinated. Like this is hugely important time right now. We're gonna drive in the car and we can talk a little bit but we're also just gonna listen.

And so that was important for me to, for my sons to just listen to music and absorb it. You know, they didn't have to like it all. But I was trying to give them, I wanted to give them a foundation of what I thought was great music, just in the way that, you you give your child a book that you think is great, you know, or show them a movie you think is great. Because I wanted them to go off and find their own music. But what my point is,

So they know the music of their time, but they also know the music from my time because I'm like so many millions of parents who kind of said, all right, we want you to hear this music. they they know that music as well as their own, essentially. So that in some ways that's a nice thing. And, there may be some, I don't know if that's a curse exactly, but we have a much younger generation of listeners who are nostalgic for music that wasn't even part of their growing up.

Brian Funk (27:09.32)

Yeah. So much identity was wrapped up in the music you listen to as I, I wonder if it's, maybe only a couple of generations really had this where I don't think it was really happening. I don't know. I wasn't in the forties and the fifties, but when things like you were the Beatles or you the Rolling Stones, and then you were like Led Zeppelin or maybe you were like Boston or whatever it was. And then you were

David Rowell (27:22.338)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (27:38.951)

Nirvana or Pearl Jam or you were hip hop. There was so much of that going on because we had this sort of like common cultural reference point that we all watch the same things on TV. We all watch the same movies. We all had the same radio stations and now we have, yeah.

David Rowell (27:42.403)

Yeah.

David Rowell (27:56.44)

There weren't endless choices. That's the thing, you know?

Brian Funk (28:01.289)

Yeah, because now we can all go down our really idiosyncratic wormhole and get into my, you know, all kinds of sub genres of sub genres that no one will ever know unless there's a few people on the other side of the world here and there scattered around that does make for a viable community. However, in our day to day lives, we don't have that. I see that a lot with my students in the high school.

David Rowell (28:29.208)

I bet.

Brian Funk (28:29.757)

I used to be able to talk to them about the movies that were out or what was on television or the new artists. And now it's much harder to get those references to make points and connections to things because we don't share them as much anymore.

David Rowell (28:45.528)

Well, they also just move on so incredibly quickly. You know, I mean, when I was growing up, an album would come out and if it was a monumental album, then that album just felt like it never really went away, you know? And it would stay on the charts for years. Like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon is the perfect example of that. We didn't just, like three months later, we weren't not listening to Dark Side of the Moon.

Brian Funk (28:47.977)

And they're fleeting,

David Rowell (29:14.372)

Now the albums will come and they'll get written about so much in the early days and weeks and then it just kind of, within a few months, we've moved on to the next thing and I think it's very hard in this century to know what the impact of the big albums is going to be 30 years, 40 years from now versus what it was 50 years ago.

know, Led Zeppelin IV or Eagles, Hotel California, mean, those continue to have such a cultural impact, you know, in lots of ways. And that may be the case with music from this century. And I'm not comparing the music itself. I'm just saying this, don't, the albums come out and they don't seem to linger now.

as much as they used to. But I think part of it is what you're saying, because there are just so many other things to fire for our attention, musically or musical things and just other things.

Brian Funk (30:20.706)

Yep, it's an endless stream, literally, that you can just scroll right through. Yeah, things that, if I catch on to anything that's current, half the time it's too old already and it was last month. They're like, that's so old, dude. That was the fall.

David Rowell (30:33.825)

Right. Right.

David Rowell (30:41.24)

Right, so but it doesn't mean it makes you wonder, you know, then in 50 years from now, will the music that is around the music that's being made now, or will it still be the music from the 80s and the 90s, 70s? If I had to bet, just to look and see how these back catalogs are selling, I think no, I think it's that music that's going to stand the test of time more. And thus, though, you know,

But therein lies the trap because there is a lot of great new music being made, but we have to want to listen to it or give it a try. You don't have to love it. You don't have to listen to it at length. You know, if I get a new CD and I just know I don't like it, at some point I'm content to give up on it, you know, but for me it's important that I listened many times and I was open to it.

Brian Funk (31:34.812)

As somebody that's buying CDs and investing the time, how do you make the decision of what to choose to purchase or listen to next?

David Rowell (31:44.728)

Well, I do read a lot about music. mean, there's a lot of artists that I've read a lot about, but actually haven't gotten around to hearing. I try, I mean, there's a lot of great music writing on the internet. And so I found my sites that I pay attention to and think about. And that's generally how it is. But, you know, so in that way, it's not so different from when I was growing up because I was getting the music magazines, you know, Dream Magazine or

Rolling Stone, but also other magazines that didn't hold up as long, but there weren't that many of them. Guitar magazine, Modern Drummer, those, I mean, that was how I kind of stayed aware of things.

Brian Funk (32:29.664)

We even had like zines that were very locally made.

David Rowell (32:34.23)

Right, right, right, very passionate pleas for this music. Yeah, yeah. And so, so I, you know, I basically, read about music. Sometimes I catch interviews, you know, but that's how I like it. There are music writers that I think are really smart and I'm interested to know what they think. And I'm always willing to give something a chance if, if, if...

Brian Funk (32:36.91)

Yeah, handmade, photocopied.

David Rowell (33:00.056)

But I do it more based on what I read. I don't go to Spotify and give it a listen. I would rather just, as you said, put down the money and make my investment and hopefully it's worth it.

Brian Funk (33:15.11)

Yeah, always has that risk, I guess. That was the danger. No, that's true. You know, a funny thing that's happened to me over the last, I guess like 15 years or so with, with new music discovery was it's, lot of it is all this behind the scenes stuff we see on social media. So it might be an artist picking apart the production, opening up their Pro Tools section.

David Rowell (33:18.648)

But in the scheme of things, it's not the greatest risk.

David Rowell (33:43.571)

yeah, yeah.

Brian Funk (33:44.411)

session and like showing how they got the drum sound and I I might have arrived there because I want to know how to compress my snare drum properly and I'm like this is a cool song let me check it out

David Rowell (33:47.712)

Right, do, love those.

David Rowell (33:56.593)

Right. And it can make you appreciate the song that much more, right? We didn't have those kinds of things, you know, when I was growing up. I Internet can be its own trap and the Internet can make you stuck in the past. You know, I wrote

Brian Funk (34:12.281)

Yeah.

David Rowell (34:18.66)

recently about how the internet just has these endless ranking albums from Steely Dan or Trafix albums and it's everywhere and I'm not saying there's not a place for that kind of reflection or Rolling Stone yet again and other greatest guitarists of all time from Rolling Stone. So I'm not immune to some of that.

But it is everywhere on the internet and it just makes you... Or you can go on YouTube and you can watch whole concerts by Grand Funk Railroad. know, and on the one hand if you're a big fan of Grand Funk Railroad then great. But it is just one way to just stay stuck in the past. You know, I think so much of the internet...

Whether it's someone on Facebook who's dug up an old album cover and posted it, you remember this album? There's so much on Facebook particularly, but there's so much on the internet that makes us always looking back. There's always this implication, well those were better times. They were simpler times. that may be true. Some people can feel like that.

But I'm just saying the internet seems to exist in part sometimes to just help us remember previous decades. Someone posted the Macarena. Well, great. But I don't know if I need to think about the Macarena now. 2024, maybe I'll think about something a little more present.

Brian Funk (35:46.887)

Here we go. Yeah.

Brian Funk (35:55.835)

Yeah, well, those algorithms are trained to give you what you already like and what it might think you will like or at least react to.

David Rowell (36:00.426)

Yeah.

David Rowell (36:04.749)

Well, there's a huge danger in that because it keeps you siloed. It contains the kind of metadata that down to the instrumentation of a song, if you like this song, there's another song that also had violin. Or also it's the same tempo or lyrical content, pretty similar here. And it just keeps you in that place. It doesn't want to...

doesn't want you to leave, you know? So, that's, I mean, there's so much to say about all of that, but that's one of the dangers of streaming services like Spotify. You have to really work willfully to make discoveries, because if you just sit there and you let it kind of spoon feed you stuff, it can be great music, but it's gonna be all of the same kind of music that you already know and that you're listening to.

Brian Funk (37:02.525)

It could really stagnate the culture in general.

David Rowell (37:05.666)

Yes, yeah. I don't think that's overstating it at all. But it's, you know, the thing is, it's so weird is, I mean, we have algorithms for all kinds of things, but like, we're always consuming new TV shows. know, people get, they'll go through a whole series that's on Netflix in a couple of days or podcasts. You know, people consume new podcasts and they don't go to the movie theater as much as they used to. But...

Brian Funk (37:10.707)

Yeah.

David Rowell (37:34.402)

people are interested in new movies. There's something about music, and this is part of what I'm exploring in the book, but it's different with music. We don't have the same impulses to keep being exposed to new things. There's someone in the book who describes it as like a hard drive being filled, and that's how I thought of it for years. For some people, it is just...

know, a storage thing. It's just, okay, I think that I have enough now. And it's weird, though, for me, because it just doesn't extend itself to all the other art forms.

Brian Funk (38:13.716)

But I will say the last movie I saw was Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. And I have, we had planned to watch Deadpool and Wolverine next, which are all, you know, these recurring things, franchises that have existed and been brought back over and over again.

David Rowell (38:25.058)

Yes.

David Rowell (38:34.04)

Yeah, it knew but not knew exactly. But you're still... Yeah, that's true, but it is still a new product. know, versus, you know, we're talking about with music. Yes, right, right.

Brian Funk (38:36.486)

familiar. Yeah. We don't we don't we're getting. Yeah.

Yeah, right, I gotcha. It's like the new album from Beetlejuice.

Brian Funk (38:52.542)

Right. Yeah, it's tricky. I do, I share a lot of your feelings, you know. I like that you are very clear too in the book about how this is your opinion and it's not right, it's not wrong. It's just your perspective. And if anyone's watching our interview right now, you can get a pretty good sense of who you are just looking at your background. You're obviously somebody that's interested in music, musical instruments. And I read that you're a collector of

David Rowell (39:15.812)

Ha.

Brian Funk (39:22.197)

unusual instruments and even before we started recording when I flipped this on you were there playing I think a ukulele maybe just kind of waiting for so you're somebody that cares about this stuff clearly

David Rowell (39:29.815)

That's right.

David Rowell (39:37.06)

Well, I tried, you know, so I was being interviewed the other day and someone said, I wish your book had been angrier. And I understood that, because this guy had the same kind of rage of, like we're stuck in the past. But music is supposed to be fun.

And I don't have a judgment or, you know, I have opinions, but I don't judge people if they want to listen to old music. But that's what I mean when I, but I've written this book in part because I want to underscore that there are consequences to that. And some people can say, well, I don't care. And, you know, and that's fine. So I don't have anger about the situation exactly, but I have concerns.

Brian Funk (40:22.4)

I do have this sort of running joke that I'm half serious about and half joking about that maybe tribute bands should be illegal for the sake of original music. Sometimes I'll be out and I'll be like, we better give these guys a fine. This is Tom Petty, you know? Just...

David Rowell (40:31.093)

good heavens.

David Rowell (40:39.588)

But the thing about that is...

The thing that I think is great about tribute bands and artists in that way is, there are, so the Journey tribute band that I spent a week with, several of the members thought that they, you their whole dream was to make it playing their own music. And I don't think anyone has a dream to be in a tribute band. Tribute band is what you end up in because maybe things didn't go quite the way you wanted, but these guys that I'm thinking about that I spent all this time with,

They're so thrilled to be making a living or making the money that they do.

playing this music. If they hated that music, they wouldn't be playing it. Or the bassist said, and he was very reluctant to join the band, and now he's amazed that he still loves it, you know, but he does. And so, trippy bands, I think there used to be this feeling that they were, like in the very beginning, there used to be this feeling that they were kind of the bottom of the totem pole of musical entertainment.

Brian Funk (41:32.973)

Yeah.

David Rowell (41:46.344)

And clearly that's not how people see that anymore. But I think if you wanted to play music as a living and you are doing that and you're happy, you know, even if it's not the music you had wanted, but you know, if you are doing that and you're avoiding situations where HR says, well, we need to schedule your annual review.

or here's the new software we all have to get drained on. You know, there are a lot of things. Yes.

Brian Funk (42:20.14)

playing guitar in Journey or Never Stop Believing is more appealing to any meeting I can imagine.

David Rowell (42:25.374)

Right, well, I'm just saying... Yeah, right. I mean, it depends on who you are and what you want, but the people that I spent time with in the tribute bands feel very glad to be in those situations.

Brian Funk (42:32.44)

Yeah.

Brian Funk (42:39.384)

Yeah, I know a lot of players that are in tribute bands or cover bands that have no interest in writing their own music and just want to play the songs they love and they have a lot of fun doing it. I mean, I love it. I think it's great. I love to see people playing and having a good time. It's a fun thing I like to say to stir up a little controversy with people. But there is a part of me that feels that maybe if we were a little less

into that maybe we would have a little more new music because I do share your thoughts and your fear and the kind of ringing the alarm bell that I fear that we can be kind of just turning into our culture can really suffer from that without any innovation and Not that I think it's cool to you know, you wouldn't expect an actor to write every movie they're in

David Rowell (43:29.442)

You feel like that? You are.

David Rowell (43:37.741)

Right. Right.

Brian Funk (43:39.513)

So to expect every musician to have to come up with everything is also kind of unfair too. But it's an interesting thing you're bringing up. And I think the book, Endless Refrain, really, it's entertaining. It's got a nice sense of humor to it. It's, I think you probably made a good call not being too angry, because I think it comes through a little bit.

David Rowell (43:45.646)

Yeah.

David Rowell (43:58.639)

good.

Brian Funk (44:07.087)

without turning people off to your overall message, which is an important one to hear.

David Rowell (44:10.211)

Yeah.

Well, I had fun writing it and if I wrote a book that's not fun to read then I made a fatal mistake. You know, was fun talking to these musicians and these fans and going to these shows and observing and just kind of wrestling with all these ideas. You know, and it felt fun to be the one who would, as far as I can tell, to be the first one to kind of write a book getting at all these issues within music.

Brian Funk (44:20.23)

Right.

David Rowell (44:41.26)

So I'm glad that it went over well with you.

Brian Funk (44:44.98)

Yeah, I'm excited to finish the last part of it. So great. So David Rowell, the endless refrain. Anything else before we say goodbye to everybody?

David Rowell (44:47.982)

Good, good, thank you.

David Rowell (44:58.724)

Keep listening.

Brian Funk (45:00.457)

Keep listening. I like that.

Thank you, David, very much.