When I was a kid, finding inspiration in music was a hard endeavor. We were at the mercy of the AM of FM DJ’s to discover new sounds. Digging through the past to learn of the old greats and gain inspiration from them was usually a haphazard affair; hearing of a band from a friend’s older brother, or losing yourself in the bins of record stores.

There’s no doubt that some of the music we loved was really the result of being the only music we could hear. Would we have really been into bands like BOSTON if they hadn’t dominated AM radio? Would we have spent our time with VAN HAGAR if the underground had a ready access to our listening ears? Questions that will never be answered.
But today is a totally different world. Internet and mobile phones became an integral part of our daily lives and with it, another revolution in how we listen to music. I’m not talking about format, vinyl vs. CD vs. digital, that’s an old argument. I’m talking the massive availability of any music you could ever choose to hear, from any country, at any time, simply at the touch of your fingers. No longer are listeners captives of radio programmers pushing their corporate agendas or the random findings in an older brother’s record collection. The underground is available to any one. Long obscure bands from the past are as easy to find as Top 40 best-sellers. You’d have to think that this ready access to music would have a huge impact on young bands, finding new sounds and inspiration.

Zach Huskey, the main madman of DALI’S LLAMA describes it like this. “When I was a kid, I used to hang out at the local record store, where a cool guy named Phil turned me on to all sorts of wild music. I learned to play guitar by figuring out the licks from the records. Now, if I want to learn a guitar riff from the ‘70’s, I can find the guitar tab in an instant. If I hear that a certain band from Arizona is really good, I can check out their music on MySpace. If I like a band, I can email them, book a show and have our bands play a club together.”

Welcome to the 21st century. It’s all right there, instantaneous. The question is; how will this instant access to a world of music inspire future generations in their search to create a sound of their own. Will the lost bands of the past resurface as a new and unexpected inspiration for tomorrow’s garage band? Will the underground and the Top 40 merge to point of being indistinguishable? Woody, the main bong-toker from scuzz-punk stoners MIGHTY HIGH, sums up the effects of the internet on his writing like this; “Over the past few years I've discovered a lot of great bands from the past that I had heard of, but never actually heard the music. The first album by LUCIFER”S FRIEND is a good example. I'd seen expensive copies of the LP for years in collectors shops but never heard the band until someone posted some songs on Youtube. Same with BUFFALO and other proto-metal bands. A friend of mine found an illegal download of the DEEP PURPLE album "Come Taste the Band" earlier this year. I'm a huge DP fan but never bothered with this album. It turns out to be a great album and I've been stealing riffs from it ever since.”

Michael Daboll-Maracas, guitarist for retro-garage rockers THE OMENS sees things the same way. “It's definitely expanded my horizons. It's cool to be able to check out a body of music that’s broader than typically available at=2 0the local record store or that’s played on the airwaves of the local radio station. I've been able to check stuff out that I'd might not ran across or been clued into, plus I no longer have to listen to a crap local radio station. Instead, I can listen to my favorite college station in another part of the country or check out a podcast of a very specific type of music I feel like listening to.” Barry Donegan of LOOK WHAT I DID agrees, taking advantage of the new technology to find inspiration. “I’ve discovered a lot of great bands by immediately researching other bands I like, the bands who inspired them, shared tours, etc. A lot of music I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford to buy. That definite ly expands your palate quite a bit.”

Joshua Macero, guitar/vocalist for THE THOMAS FUNCTION take this ready-made universe of available music one step further, finding reams of inspiration at the tips of their fingers. “Honestly, the ability to download old bubblegum comps with the Mark Chapman demos, the Back From the Grave comps, 50’s doo-wop, all the revisionist ideas of yesterday, just sort of keeps me going. FLYING NUN, BOMP, the first FEELIES albums. I’ve been and will continue aping it for years.”
Now, while this seems like it could be an open and shut argument-- after all, how can immediate access to an entire wor ld’s worth of music, past and present—not be a good thing? It turns out not everyone agrees with the sudden rush of inspiration provided by the technological revolution. And there are just as many reasons to demonize the internet as there are to praise it.

Some find the ready accessibility of music to be a distraction. Aaron Zimmer, on the eve of releasing his melodic indy rock CD, “Live Wires”, says, “For me, to be inspired, I have to stay away from all of that. Internet, TV, text messages, Twitter, Youtube, Myspace....all of it. For me personally, that kind of connectivity works against being creative. I need real-life experiences or heartfelt introspection to get songs out.” Like the rest of us, Aaron leaves the digital music treasure trove for his personal pleasure. “I DO love finding obscure Pink Floyd videos, or old Layne Staley interviews or whatever. But to be inspired, I have to weed out the distractions and get really simple.”

That view point isn’t the minority. It seems that for every rocker who feels the internet is a boon to his writing, there’s another who’ll be quick to disagree. Kenneth Wilson (bassist) from ABIGAIL’S GHOST argues, “The download culture is a double-edged sword. On one hand everything is eas ier to get and you can quickly find new music. On the other hand, as quickly as you find new music you can dismiss it and move on to something else without giving it a second thought. I think it does affect my writing as I'm constantly listening to new music and getting new inspiration at a much higher rate than normal, but I still spend time listening to music to really absorb it and the listening process ends up being about as slow as it always has been for me. I tend to be very insular with my vision for how I think my music should sound, but still try to be open-minded. It's a strange dichotomy, but I think a singular vision is important for making a good cohesive album's worth of music.”

Kerry Merkle of scuzz rockers JOHN WILKES BOOTH thinks that rather than inspiration, the internet can kill creativity. “I think the younger generations have a great tool in the internet. The networking is just amazing. But on the down side I think many new bands kind of copy sounds instead of drawing inspiration and forging ahead with their own sound.” He even takes his thoughts one step further. “Another down side is that I don't listen to albums as much. I just play my tunes on shuffle all the time. I actually find it sad, but the album as a art form is kind of dead. Most people don't put an album on and listen beginning to end anymore and that kind of sucks.”

So where does t his leave us? Inspiration has never been easier to find than it is today. You want to learn the blues, google B.B. KING. You want to see how to lay down some monster old school riffs, search YouTube for JUDAS PRIEST and you’ll get 28,500 video references. You missed the old school punk movement, THE DEAD KENNEDY’S are now available on itunes, “Holiday in Cambodia,” “Kill the Poor,” or “Too Drunk to Fuck,” you choose. But creating music is still an intensely personal affair. Serious musicians of the past who really searched to find inspiration in new sounds or the underground were able to find it, no matter how random, haphazard or hard the search may have been. Today’s musicians have an easier job of hearing the music, but more work in filtering out the mountainous volumes of crap that the internet makes just as readily accessible as the good stuff.

So who has it better; yesterday’s musician or today’s? Will Broadbent, the drum-beating maniac from doom metallers OGRE sees both sides, “I can't really say that the availability of music on the 'web ha s had any direct influence on our songwriting. We're not a band that is really concerned with "new sounds," although there are many new-ish underground bands that we like. Youtube is an amazing thing. You can look up pretty much any band on there and get some cool results. But the ease and accessibility of finding/posting stuff on the internet=2 0has created a large influx of, shall we say, less than professional material. In other words, there's a lot of crap to sift through out there.”
In the end, past or present, honest musicians who really care about their craft have always managed to find inspiration. Whether listening to hours to the babbling of a long-haired record store hippy or flashing a YouTube video on your iphone. In the end, all that matters is that the music gets into the hands of those who listen, learn, and get inspired.

Racer
The Ripple Effect
ripplemusic.blogspot.com