Ok, here’s the deal:
Whenever I tell people that the only concert I have been to is Yanni, it is treated like it’s the funniest joke they’ve ever heard. When I asked my girlfriend (who responded similarly) why people react like this her response was something along the lines of: it’s new age…i don’t know…
So teeming millions, kindly educate me: what is it that everyone thinks is hilarious about new age music?
Obviously, it’s extremely bland. But this alone doesn’t make it funny; what’s really, really hilarious about it is that it’s so pompous; Yanni takes himself so seriously, you’d think he was curing cancer instead of writing non-threatening elevator music.
It’s like Chris Farley doing his Chippendales dance routine; it was hilarious not because it was a fat guy jumping around in tights, but because he convinced us that he just knew he was one sexy mofo up there. You could hear his internal monologue going, “Slow down, ladies, one at a time; OK, maybe two at a time…”
Hm, I just tend to laugh at new age anything. 
Just kidding around. I think jack hit it on the head. Sometimes people take themselves a little too seriously and it makes things funny.
Because it’s so much masturbatory noodling?
because…what jackalope said?
because new age is full of so much crap…which may or may not have to do with the music at hand, but it does provide an association for most people…?
The really important point here, thought, is…you’ve only ever been to a Yanni concert???
You need to get out more. Listen to some real music. Then maybe you’ll see what the joke it.
I like New Age. I also like old-school punk, REM, most good rock, grunge, and blues. It’s just one flavor out of many. Some people just don’t like it, though, and that’s cool. It’s not their cup of tea. And some of it is, IMHO, really boring. And some of it’s pretty decent.
Though I’m more Enigma New-Age than Yanni New-Age (never actually listened much at all to Yanni, actually).
Oh
Well that does explain it.
Just to clear my name, I’m not really even much of a new-age person. My parents had gotten tickets for the concert and asked me if I wanted to go. Didn’t have anything better to do. Went.
He didn’t seem that much more full of it than your average musician.
betenoir, thanks for the friendly concern, but so you can rest easy, I do listen to “real” music too
Yanni…bleh. I don’t know, most New Age just seems boring to me.
Loreena McKennitt doesn’t count as New Age, does she?
Some New Age music just doesn’t have enough structure to be musically sound. (I have no idea how to say what I’m trying to say.) Just as there are standards for art, there are standards for music. You have to know the rules to break them. Too many New Age musicians don’t seem to know the rules. Yanni is probably one of the more famous NA musicians, but his music will give you a sugar high or diabetes or something.
There is other New Age music that I like.
New Age thought as a whole often makes people roll their eyes for several reasons. Generally, some people are quick to latch onto the latest fad or gimmick or buzz word. Meanwhile, people exploit the gullibility of the masses for megabucks. It’s hard to know when you are being taken.
The worse forum that I have ever participated in was a New Age forum. Some of the people were mean to the bone. Their excuse for not doing anything to help their fellow human beings was that it would “interfere with the other person’s dharma.” In other words, don’t feed a starving child. It is starving for a reason.
I eventually learned to take what is good from New Age thought and leave the rest behind.
I think its basically because the majority of New Age seems so dull and boring.
Having said that, I do like a fair bit of new age music. I’m a huge fan of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis.
When I was still doing my radio shows, I did “the new age hour” in the middle of the night, basically I would play 4 (or 5 or 6) NA records simultaneously and sometimes the results were quite pleasant sometimes I would be spinning a record with my fingers until the tempo fit into the mix (or just spin it backwards, some NA records are better that way).
The odd thing was that my listeners almost never caught on and I regularly got calls because “that last thing you played was cool!, what was that”.
Radio was a blast!
unclviny
Guin- indeed she is G
[quote]
Trigonal: I’m a huge fan of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis.
Directly after seeing both Risky Business and Chariots of Fire, I went in search of soundtracks just because of TD and Vangelis. They are standouts and have the “structure” missing in so much other music on the genre. Paul Winter’s Canyon Suite is one of my favorite albums and I recommend a listen if you haven’t heard it.
There is a recording of Paul Horn playing a flute inside the Taj Mahal that appeals to me. I think it is the echoing rather than any composition itself.
Davidbw1, try some of those that have been mentioned and compare them with Yanni and see what you think.
I’m not a fan of new age, but I’ve come to a conclusion about the music, in general, after giving it a fair shot: Yanni is to the rest of New Age what McDonalds is to real food.
New Age is such a broad category, though. It includes piano and guitar solo artists (George Winston, Jim Brickman, Will Ackerman…), electronic and “space” music (Evangelos Odyssey Papathanassiou [aka Vangelis], Manheim Steamroller, Øystein Sevåg, Hearts of Space artists…), non-‘traditional’ performances of classical music (Turtle Island String Quartet, Modern Mandolin Quartet…), Celtic and other ‘world’ music (Eithne Ni Bhraonain [Enya], Loreena McKennitt, Nightnoise…), and jazz (Tuck Andress…). Can you tell I like Windham Hill artists?
With such an all-encompassing category it’s no wonder that people can find things they don’t like in it, but it is probably fair to say that there are many works that they do like. They just might not think of it as “new age”. Back in the days of LPs Vangelis was usually put in the Rock section instead of New Age, I guess people couldn’t accept something they liked as being New Age.
Michael Hedges was considered New Age…
Really? That sucks.
Especially when you consider that McKennitt is really OLD age-most of her music is comprised of old European ballads and poems.
Old Celtic music, and the like.
Oh well. McKennitt still kicks ass.
John Tesh writes better music than Yanni.
That part is scary.
Everything sounds better with sea gulls in the background.
Honest.
I’m not going to derail this thread with a long rant, but I have to say I hate what ‘new age’ has done to Celtic music. Blech.
That’s my problem with New Age. Most of it just seems so… uninspired.
Frankly, I wonder how much of the decline in CD sales is due not to piracy but to people who don’t want to spend their money on Yanni’s Elevator Music, vol. 15