Funk is ending up like the Blues

[bolophonic]

I really want to like Vulfpeck. It's undoubtedly skillful, but to me it comes across as quantized, sterilized, Berklee Funk 101. There's something missing...

I love funk and I love pretty much any type of music, but there is an intangible level of cleanliness that I cannot exceed with any genre. Like... the groove will be exquisite but I can’t escape the feeling that it was grown in a lab.

 

[guy n. cognito]

I like funk....the color of the musician that makes it is irrelevant to me...

 

[Stranger Danger]

I like funk....the color of the musician that makes it is irrelevant to me...

Everybody knows purple is the best color for funk

 

[BassBrass]

Because of GAS. I'm older than you and always on the prowl for another bass. Matter of fact I may pull the trigger before the end of the weekend. You're at the age where you can probably afford what you couldn't 40 years ago. Enjoy it!

You're doing the market (and humanity) a service, absorbing that new price and getting a barley used good bass into the used market.

One thing that's interesting to me is that there was a big change between my generation and my parents, acoustic/analog radio vs electric and digital media, the generation gap was between rock beats vs swing etc, dionesian visceral energy vs that's not allowed and lightness but now there is a shared culture that's about 60 years old.
Funk and blues are the same in that they are so codified that they seem like holy writ so there is really no reason to attribute influences which are just new arrangements of the same basic song played by supreme stylists.

 

[alack]

I have two Basses coming in the next few months, but at 59, I have to ask myself, “why keep accumulating basses that my will dang give away soon as I am dead?”

Thanks for talking my 58 year old a$$ out of that Rickenbacker I was gassing for last night.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Funk is no longer the major style of music enjoyed by the community that created it. The same thing happened to the Bues two generations ago.

Blues, country, folk, bossanova. Isn't this the case for every genre?

 

[TwentyHz]

The hippie Jam bands that I love also play a lot of funk music. Phish and Widespread Panic are my favorites but there's younger bands coming up doing it too. Spafford crushes. So does Lettuce.

I can relate to @Dr. Cheese’s observation in a way that kind of contrasts with @Stranger Danger’s.

As a music goes further down the road amazing things happen, but it also somehow loses its grit or edge or bloom or intitial beauty... it gets polished and smoothed in a way that just makes ya sigh a little. It’s emotional origins get kind of coated with candy.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

One thing I should note is that girls and women of all races are holding up the bass and funk like never before. I just bumped into this cover of a collaboration between a Thundercat and the late Mac Miller.

After hearing that from someone so young I should probably just give up.

 

[-Asdfgh-]

One thing I should note is that girls and women of all races are holding up the bass and funk like never before. I just bumped into this cover of a collaboration between a Thundercat and the late Mac Miller.

Actually she's one of the better YouTube bassists out there - all the notes and pocket down but not overly flash like some. Hopefully she goes far.

 

[Whousedtoplay]

I wonder why nobody said anything about two different renditions of slap
1 Marcus
And
2 Pilichowski - super technical but sterile.

 

[Whousedtoplay]

After hearing that from someone so young I should probably just give up.

Wrong!!!

 

[-Asdfgh-]

Wrong!!!

I should have given up sooner???

 

[ElMon]

I saw Gary and his band in a little bar in San Antonio with about 30 people in it. They were playing Curtis Mayfield and he was playing a 12 string and making it sound like a Stratocaster. Blew my mind

Really wanna catch them live.

 

[Whousedtoplay]

I should have given up sooner???

No, you are playing your vision, your arrangement, your feel,etc.

 

[Diamond_Dave]

He's only 27.

Point taken! That’s why I don’t want to criticize the guy. He has decades of great music ahead of him!

 

[REV]

The beauty of any Art form is that it continues to evolve.

 

[brianrost]

Did it start with RHCP?

It started with the Dapps, if not before. They recorded at least one single backing JB himself, "I Can't Stand Myself", and they also backed other R&B artists on the King label in Cincinatti, their home town.

Invalid Link Removed

Bassist Tim Drummond later went on to work with Neil Young. He's on "Licking Stick", too, and did some touring with JB as well. Here's a pic of Tim with JB on a tour of Asian military bases during the Vietnam war.

 

[Whousedtoplay]

I love funk and I love pretty much any type of music, but there is an intangible level of cleanliness that I cannot exceed with any genre. Like... the groove will be exquisite but I can’t escape the feeling that it was grown in a lab.

Way too many musicians/bass players tend compare the “evenness” as a very important technical skill with evenness while playing Music!
Funk does not like evenness!

 

[TNCreature]

My older brother used to say, once you hear a style of music migrate to tv commercials in a sterilized form, it is over as something cool.
That wa in the 70's, I liked it when music scenes traveled a little slower.

 

[Kmonk]

It’s still, to his point, becoming more and more a niche genre. I had a music discussion with a hip-hop focused black co-worker the other day, who is helping ME scope out some of the current hip-hop guys worth listening, and he had never heard of:

Charles Mingus
Albert or Freddie King
John Lee Hooker

I played some stuff on my phone amd got ‘that’s my dad’s stuff’.

There are also rap and hip hop artists who never heard of Paul McCartney until he collaborated with Kanye West.

One of the definitions of "niche" is "A Specialized Market". Therefore, every genre is a technically a "niche" genre. Some people like blues, some don't; some like jazz, some don't; some like rap, some don't; and so on.

If blues is dead then why did Gary Hoey's new album "Neon Highway Blues" debut at number 1 on ITunes when it was released on Friday?