The Music Scene

Oh, what desperate lengths a Beatles fan will go to to exaggerate their legacy (Letters, Dec. 5). Now we’re told by Roger Garvin that without the Beatles, the music scene would have been taken over by the likes of Wayne Newton or Liza Minnelli. With all due respect to the sanctity of the Beatles, I beg to differ.

It was Bob Dylan who inspired the Beatles to write meaningful songs, and the Rolling Stones who would influence the future of rock music, both in style and presentation. That’s one reason why the Stones are still thriving and the Beatles have been long defunct. I dare say these two contemporaries of the Beatles could have prevented the tyranny of Newton and Minnelli all by themselves.

Hats off to Michael Stipe for recognizing elevator music when he hears it.

ARNO KEKS

El Monte

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I was especially interested in Robert Hilburn crediting “the song” as the most important single element in pop music both past and future (“Outsiders Looking In,” Nov. 28).

Writing great songs, however, seems too important a responsibility to be left only to those who perform them, so I’m hopeful the music industry will again allow writing to be done by writers and singing by singers rather than forcing the combination of the two, which-- albeit with important exceptions--too often results in diminishing both.

DAVID ROSNER

President, the Bicycle Music Co.

Los Angeles

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I totally agree with Hilburn. Virtually every new form of music has been greeted with scorn and disgust.

I’m pretty involved in the underground music scene in Southern California and it does look to be the next form of pop music (look at London right now). The only thing Hilburn may not realize is how evolved it’s become. In the last year, I have heard tracks from jungle to house that would put virtually any of the music on the radio to shame. And yet, because it’s technically part of the “rave” scene, it is and will be viewed with contempt because it’s “bad for the youth” and “dangerous.”

It’s good to know that some people in the mainstream media realize there is more to life than Ricky Martin and the Backstreet Boys.

STEPHEN ROOME

Simi Valley

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Don Heckman’s apologia for including fusion with jazz (“It’s Not So Long a Way From Satchmo,” Nov. 28) and the letters that followed last week all overlook a most perplexing question: Exactly when did it start, this amazing declaration that any instrumental was automatically “jazz”?

Once upon a time, there were lots of pop-rock instrumental hits, and their creators were at least honest enough to call them just plain “instrumentals.” Even highly talented, hard-core jazz artists who, for financial reasons, cranked out cute novelty pop instrumental recordings--Herb Alpert, Al Hirt, Wes Montgomery--differentiated between those fluff things and their jazz recordings, and urged their fans to listen to their “real stuff.”

Can you name any such recent pop instrumental? No, because one day, magically, they all became “jazz.” That is the reason why jazz lovers object to fusion--no matter what trendy name it happens to be calling itself these days--being included as a kind of jazz. Just as classical lovers would vehemently object to Mantovani or Muzak or Lawrence Welk being included with “classical” music merely because violins are used, so do jazz lovers object to that other mediocre drivel being called “contemporary jazz” or “smooth jazz.”

TOM BURNS

Tucson

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Egon Alapatt’s nomination of David Axelrod as the originator of fusion is most interesting, and he makes a good case for Axelrod’s considerable talent and originality in the ‘60s (Letters, Dec. 5). But to argue he was more influential than Miles Davis is rather hard to swallow!

Consider for a moment the musical entities that directly came out of Miles after “Bitches Brew”: Chick Corea (Return to Forever, and thence Stanley Clarke, Al DiMeola), John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu, and thence Billy Cobham, Jan Hammer, et al), and Weather Report via Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul. Consider the influences those folks wielded. Add the legitimacy the great icon subsequently gave to funk, soul and rock that opened the gates for all these forms into the fold. Given enough time and space, it might be possible to trace the overwhelming majority of what is today thought of as fusion back to this one wellspring!

Sorry, and with all due respect to Axelrod (anyone who could make the Electric Prunes sound decent was indeed a talent!), Miles is still the man who made it all happen!

TONY GLEESON

Los Angeles

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Neither Steve Hochman nor Spin magazine’s Alan Light seem to know much about “female sensibility” (Pop Eye, Nov. 14).

As a woman rock fan and musician, I can only say that bands like Limp Bizkit, Korn and Tool express my sensibility far better than Tori Amos or Gwen Stefani do. Good music is good music. The “testosterone-fueled trend” is getting airplay because it appeals to XXs as well as XYs, and it rocks!

I’d love to hear a female Fred Durst or Jon Davis or Anthony Kiedis or Zach de la Rocha, too, but until I do I’m happy with the masculine sensibility.

PATRICIA DAVIS

Woodland Hills