So soon after Johnny Cash passed on, we learned that Australian godfather of lonely-truckdriver country and western music, Slim Dusty, has died at age 76. Here are some thoughts I posted just now in response to a message on aus_emusic about “stars” (and their deaths) in popular music:

While the passing of Slim Dusty, Johnny Cash, or any human being, is sad, we should all cheer and try to hasten the death of the monolithic solo artist as a construction. The multinational megastar just seems to me to be a wasteful concentration of economic resources and audience attention – I’d rather have many more artists who are less famous, able to create music that means something to them, and to find modest-sized audiences who can get something out of it too.

Plus, the song forms that go with the whole Singer-Songwriter or Popstar thing [no matter how “alternative” the band or artist appears to be] reflect the same pyramid of power, with The Voice at the top and all the other sounds arranged as a supportive structure. It feels controlling and all one-way to me. That’s why I love electronic music – it’s about rhythm, it flows horizontally rather than being ordered vertically, it is about sound and space, and environments and time, rather than about power – paradoxically, all the techno-cleverness involved humbles us all as humans – i even sometimes think that listening to dnb brings me closer to nature!

Meanwhile, Wired sees the situation differently, arguing that one kind of star is giving way to another:

Producers used to live on the B-side of the music business: behind the scenes. They were masters of the mixes that pushed pop songs up the charts, but still slaves to the rhythms of record labels and fickle divas. Yet, while file-sharing hogs the headlines in music’s digital evolution, there’s been a quiet revolution in the studio, where the music gets made.

The tools of professional sound production keep getting faster, cheaper, and smaller. The time-honored, king-sized mixing station is now a luxury item reserved for sonic chauvinists, and even the industry-standard Pro Tools is getting squeezed from below by pure desktop systems. As youngblood and old-school producers alike are finding out, the new technology means creative freedom, a chance to dance to the beat of a different drum machine, to sample sounds from around the world and back through time.

Now the production wizards themselves are rising up from the digital underground, armed with unlimited content and unprecedented control. Their trademark styles attract a growing parade of pop singers eager for a piece of the new sound. And so a generation is stepping out of the shadows to rule the record industry: They’re hitmakers and powerbrokers, and their names have moved from the liner notes to the front of their own albums. They’re the new rock stars. Meet the Superproducers.

Trust Wired to find a way to turn what could be seen as the potential for social change into nothing more than a tech-driven reconfiguration of the same old system. blah.