The day the music died

3moons

Member
On our Yahoo discussion group, there is a line of arguments going of how *bad* the music of today is. At 57 years old, I've seen this topic argued through several generations. Don McLean sang it in the early '70's. Parents of other generations said it after Elvis and then quickly again after the Beatles, I'm sure in the '40 and '30s also. There are arguments going on on my newsgroup blaming the Music Industry, greed, Capitalism, Communism. I'm sure religion, CD sound, alignment of the stars, etc will soon follow politics. Maybe those of us from the '60s and '70s only remember the really good music and have forgotten the also rans. Probably is 10 or 20 years, this generation will remember their best and look down on their kid's music as garbage. Why am I posting here? Possibly to steer off topic (though audio) away from Yahoo's FM Tuners group to a more suitable place. jim...
 
My dad use to say the music I listen to sounded like a cat in a cream seperator. Now I wouldn't discribe some of today's music that way. I'd use terms like brainwashing. Just the same neither of us can relate to the next generation's music.:(
 
Music has a short shelf life

I'm speaking of the cutting edge angle, the "new thingness" of it. I don't mean that one can't or shouldn't listen to music from bygone generations. If it's still meaningful that makes it a classic. But old music loses that hippness rather quickly as other people assimlate and "borrow" from one another.

I'm a child of the 60-70's. I thought the later sucked. I now realize some [most] of my favorite music is from that decade. The 80's were a real fall from grace, and the 90's? Don't ask. The more I listen to rap and hip hop the more it sounds like muzak to my ears. I mean the edge is gone and it sounds as the brothers would say, "vanilla". Like milk, what was new quickly becomes old.

MikE
 
A lot has to do with one generation not accepting the next.Our parents didn't like our music,long hair,and fashion.
Today we don't like our kids music,body piercing and fashion.
The same pattern will be handed down by them to their kids.
There is nothing wrong with this pattern,it is just human nature

A.
 
I hate todays music, I tell my teenage kids that their favorites of today won't even be listened to in 3 months. I also agree that there's alot of brain washing in that rap crap. The music of the 60's and 70's is still selling well, now I notice that my kids are listening to the timeless classics from Pink Floyd and Zeppelin. They even go as far as to look up the lyrics at sites like http://www.leoslyrics.com/ so they can sing along. That's my $.02!! Todays music=:puke: Timeless classics=:bigok:
 
I'll agree with most here, but really think those of use who grew up in the 50's, 60's and early 70's were treated to something special. Just think of the truly classic cars, stereos, and music, from those years and then try to find comparable, mass marketed items from today to compare?

Last summer, I was driving up Woodward around 9:30AM going to a few sales and was caught up in the early "Dream Cruisers", a huge vintage car fest here. surrounded by classic Mustangs, Chevys, Firebirds, Buicks, VWs, etc, I wondered what would be there in 30 years??? Neons? Sable/Tauruses? Intrepids?

I'm 51 and wonder really about today's stuff. I'm really sort of embarassed that my generation fought the "Establishment" only to triumph with stuff like Enron, WorldComm, too many lawyers ("rights vs. responsibilities"), crapola infomercials, fast food and a country of fatasses, crappy TV (reality TV??), crappy radio, crappy stereos, etc.
It looks to me like the "Love Generation" really wound up being the "Love of Money Generation"
 
i wouldnt say most of the music today is trash, but a couple of genres that come to mind when i think of music going down hill is RAP and BOY BANDS

rap back when it first became popular wasnt that bad, i used to listen to it alot thanks to the influence of my friends at the time. I can still listen to an old snoop dog or something and enjoy it because its actually a song with thought put into it. Now its always the same cheap azz 10 minute casio boombox beats, with the same guy or girl that cant sing if their life depended on it singing about the same old stuff that they dont even write.

Its such a commercial buisness that the music is put behind profits. And people are buying it!

Recently our radio stations were taken over by a new company and along with firing all the best radio talk people and Dj's they changed the formats and now one of the stations is only rap. its disgusting. one thing i think is funny is that you can hear that they have turned the bass knob to max lol. its just pitifull i hate it
 
Did music die?

At age 54 l of course cut my musical teeth on The Beatles;Rolling Stones; Led Zepplin;The Who;Cream; Jimi Hendrix. What a special time how can other decades compete.

Now l have rediscovered the "Blues" ; we may have to look harder but there is still great music out there.Just my opinion. :)
 
Zappa & The Mothers
Jimi Hendrix
Cream
The Stones
The Who
The Kinks
The Animals
Pink Floyd (to an extent)
The Byrds
Jefferson Airplane
Cap't. Beefheart & The Magic Band
The Yardbirds

I feel that most music recorded after the 60's was an attempt to sound like one of the above bands. There are notable exceptions to the rule (Little Feat, Los Lobos), and probably to the list.

I like a great deal of straight ahead and big band jazz from the 40's-60's, and plenty of classical also. While rock and soul wise I'm mired in the 60's, there's plenty of other non-rock stuff I listen to (some of it going back to the 1600's).

Toasted Almond
 
I always go back to John Hiatt's response to this question:

"…[But] they can’t kill music. God knows, they’ve tried. But music always wins. As long as there’s kids coming up that have a passion. All the bean counters in the world can’t kill that. You know? You just can’t. They can try, of course, to feed you the most puerile, benign horse manure, but some kid’s going to come along and demand something more than that." - John Hiatt
 
I just picked up the Saturday Night Live tv show DVD box set package which has all the bands that appeared on the show as musical guests over the years. I started watching the first DVD last night. I'm not a huge Billy Joel fan but seeing him perform "Only the Good Die Young", or say, Carly Simom performing "Youre So Vain", or the outrageous rendition of Elvis Costello doing "Radio Radio" - I was truly struck by how...... REAL (for lack of a better word) these clips were from 1978. The musical acts that they have on the show nowadays, seems so.... I dunno, "artificial-sounding" somehow. Ya know, Britney Spears or rap stuff which is about all that would be offered as well if you were to watch the Grammy Awards on tv, in other words- Boring!

I'm not saying ALL new music is bad, I do pick up some new cd's such as The Jayhawks 'Rainy Day Music' which is a fine cd ('Save it for a Rainy Day' is an impossibly catchy tune on that disc) but alot of new cd's basically just have one or two good tracks and the rest just dont do much.

I read music mags like Mojo and Q every month and they always have very interesting articles in there though I wonder if some of these new bands are a bit overrated- ex: The Strokes, The White Stripes etc.. Are they really doing anything original or are they just recycling songs that they write which are basically derived from the older bands that influnced them? (and in which case, I'd rather hear the older bands and their songs). The Strokes? - I think that even the supply of good, immortal band names has been exhausted :)

B/F
 
There's good music and bad music made every year, what's good and bad is the decision of the individual person and has been since music was first recorded and sold to the public. And like the first poster says if it's from "your" generation it's special and everyone else's is crap. Let me tell you fellas from the 50's 60's and 70's there was a lot of crap made then too ;)

Is there a lot of crap in the 80's 90's and today? Absofuckilutely. But was/is there also a lot of good music made during that time too? Absofuckinlutely :D
 
The way I see it, there are several problems with recent music-

My biggest problem is rap. Rap is not music..you can call it art, you can call it poetry, but don't call it music. I have a degree in music so i think I can speak with some authority on the subject.
Now, don't get me wrong-I'm not a musical snob. I don't particularly care for Britney Spears or Backstreet Boys, but they ARE music.

People that complain about the "bubble-gum pop" and boy bands of today have to realize that this stuff has been going on for decades. Four Tops, Spinners, and countless other Motown wonders were the "boy bands" of their time. The problem is that ITS ALL BEEN DONE BEFORE...it's nothing new, nothing original.

The quality of music has deteriorated because the quality of musicians have deteriorated. I remember reading in "Guitar Player" magazine back in the 80's that the joker that played for Bow Wow Wow didn't even know how to tune his instruments, he had to have a roadie do it for him. Most pop writers today seem to think that there are only two types of chords...major and minor. Having spent years in recording studios and seeing what engineers do with pitch-shifters, eq's, and assorted processing effects, it has come evident that you don't have to have any musical talent whatsoever anymore to make a hit record.

And don't even get me started on sampling.....

THere are still talented musicians and great songwriters out there...you just have to dig a lot deeper through all of the shit to find them.
 
If your looking for music by folks old and new that are long on real talent, then look no further than the independent musician [In•de•pen•dent: (adj.) Not having sold one's life, career, and creative works over to a corporation.]. In the past couple of years 75 to 80% of my CD purchases have been to independant musicians. The music hasn't died, you just have to know where to look. Just my humble opinion.

http://www.cdbaby.com
 
Music to me is an art expresion, just like visual arts or poetry, some is good some is shit. It has been like that since the dawn of time - how many musicians that sucked existed in beethoven's time? or how many tacky 50's 60's .... or present day bands exist? A whole bunch of them. There's a lot of shit groups out there liek the bling bling rappahs, but there's some great music out there being made, such as Perfect Circle, or Massive Attack, or Air. You just have to dig a bit and it comes out.

Chris
 
Music changes but the time stand still, frozen in our memory

Someone mentioned that good and bad music is a byproduct of all generations. And to get a true perspective we need distance to measure the times we live. In other words, the music of today is too fresh to judge accurately. This is where earlier samples have an advantage. Having listened to those songs for 40 odd years we can better interpret they're value, least to ourselves.

Whereas artists and music styles change or morp, the times in which those people and their songs reflect are unique and can not never faithfully be remixed. Where most of my favorite music is from the '70's, the '60's is by far the most memorable period of time I've lived and the creative expression preserved is a treasure to revisit.

MikE
 
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