Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

letter to the editor:

Where has sound of big bands gone?

How well we remember the happy days and musical pleasures of yesterday when this country’s every TV was tuned to the weekly Boston Pops Orchestra, Mormon Tabernacle Choir and “The Lawrence Welk Show,” along with frequent big band sounds of combined strings, reeds, horns and percussions. All were advertising moneymakers.

Today, many performances such as those at hotel theaters and the Smith Center for the Performing Arts are well attended and profitably supported. Why aren’t they broadcast on local TV? Is something interfering with our musical pleasures known only by the legal eagles and skirted by PBS with its weekly refurbishing of Lawrence Welk shows?

Even Cox Communications has replaced all music channels’ big band sounds with children’s music or the twang or plunk of strings, some individual instrumentals, and agonized voices drowned out by heavy percussions and foreground screaming. Cox still has a couple of channels featuring voices singing over music backing, but where is the real balanced music sound?

What happened to the big money and our pleasures?

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