Am I the only one that prefers older music?

[QRanc]

Back throughout the 70's and early 80's you had real music instead of all this mass produced crap. I've just watched this interview with Buster Blood vessel from Bad Manners (they had quite a few no.1 hits in early 80's UK and deservedly so).
I whole heartedly agree with everything he says about the state of the music industry today in the last few minutes of the interview. Very sad,but perfectly true and he should know!

Believe it or not not all of today's music it mass produced. There is just as much "real" music out there now as there was then. The only difference is now, it doesn't get played on the radio. If "music fans" spent half as much time actually seeking out good music as they did complaining about tje lack of it, they might start to see things differently.

Where's the likes of The Clash,The Specials,The Beat,or even The Selecter in today's music. where. Today,you just don't need any (just a pretty teeny popper face on Pop Idol). That's the bottom line in my opinion... sad but true!

I would count three of your examples as being fairly obscure. They would have gotten little to no airplay where I am.
And I guess Arcade Fire, Radiohead, The National etc. wouldn't count as being quality? The former two pushing popular music into new territory? I guess not.

 

[Route 66]

I’m guess I’m the same way:

I like jazz mainly from the 20’s up until the 60’s with a few exceptions

I like blues from about the same era

I like swing from the 30’s and 40’s

I prefer classical composers from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries

I’ll listen to classic rock sometimes, but mostly just in the car

 

[Daunia 70]

Talent worked, no talent worked; I would submit that in the 60s or 70s you got exposure by being different and creative. Sometimes that made you popular, and sometimes it didn't, but you got a fair shot at some press and some airplay just by putting something out there that nobody had ever heard before. There was still some top 40 pablum, but you didn't HAVE to put out pablum to be heard.

From the mid-80s on, conformity became the name of the game in popular music. If you didn't sound like the last hit, you weren't given a shot to be the next hit, and artists who wanted to make money conformed to the pop music standard of the time. Creative bands were largely driven underground, or became "alternative"--which once actually meant something. Now there's kind of a production standard for "alternative" too, which has turned it into just another branch of pop, but that only strengthens the point I'm making.

Anyway, it's not so much vapidity or lack of talent that has ruined "pop" music--those things always have existed and always will exist in pop music--but it is the restriction on creativity, individuality and new forms of expression that has stagnated the genre. I value those ideals in just about any type of music.

Excellently expressed. I'd most certainly agree.

 

[Farmhand]

I was the only kid in high school who owned any Miles Davis or Flatt and Scruggs or Ella Fitzgerald. Now at 43 I'm into Detroit and Philly R&B from the early 70s. And Western swing.

 

[grillebilly]

Excellently expressed. I'd most certainly agree.

+1
It now takes some effort to hear new music that isn't pre-fab.

 

[SAFETYDAWG]

I remember being home with the flu one afternoon back in 1978 or so. We had just been hooked up to HBO, which at the time was "cable". Surfed into MTV, which had just gone on the air. As I watched a couple of videos, I realized that this could (and did) change everything about music. All of a sudden, music became visual, and the trend just continued to grow.

The great musicians of my era (1968-1980) achieved success based on their music, talent and recording ability. How many of us out here remember buying albums from groups we had never seen, except maybe on an album liner. Music today is totally created, marketed and sold on the basis of an "American Idol" formula. Single hit "superstars" fade into oblivion in three months. Albums have been replaced by single song downloads and even the modern megastars seem to have little to no lasting power. It has all become so packaged, and I wonder what the musical heritage 30 years from now will be.

 

[steelglam]

I think the most frustrating thing is that too many people in this thread equate popular music with music. A lot of the arguments being made about why music sucks today relate solely to popular music.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of bands and artists making music that has little to nothing to do with what you hear on the radio or TV.

 

[c.coyle]

Believe it or not not all of today's music it mass produced. There is just as much "real" music out there now as there was then. The only difference is now, it doesn't get played on the radio. If "music fans" spent half as much time actually seeking out good music as they did complaining about tje lack of it, they might start to see things differently.

Here Here!

 

[Axe Elf]

I remember being home with the flu one afternoon back in 1978 or so. We had just been hooked up to HBO, which at the time was "cable". Surfed into MTV, which had just gone on the air.

MTV went on the air 8/1/81... and the first video ever broadcast on MTV was...

The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star

Albums have been replaced by single song downloads and even the modern megastars seem to have little to no lasting power. It has all become so packaged...

Thirty years later, The Limousines took the next step, illustrating the point you made here...

The Limousines - Internet Killed the Video Star

 

[Joseph Jove]

I like it all to some degree or another. Except for mariachi. I want to rip my hair off in a frenzy when I hear mariachi.

 

[Daunia 70]

I could argue that nothing is worse than Muskrat Love. But hey, if it's from the 70's, it must be good.

cubdog

I used to luv Blondie in the late 70's,early 80's,and still do to this very day. Have you got any modern tips... I'd really appreciate it :thmbsp:

 

[eljr]

I used to luv Blondie in the late 70's,early 80's,and still do to this very day. Have you got any modern tips... I'd really appreciate it :thmbsp:

start here

 

[Daunia 70]

start here

Cheers,I'll go thru some... hopefully something will tickle my fancy :thmbsp:

 

[Kando]

I remember being home with the flu one afternoon back in 1978 or so. We had just been hooked up to HBO, which at the time was "cable". Surfed into MTV, which had just gone on the air. As I watched a couple of videos, I realized that this could (and did) change everything about music. All of a sudden, music became visual, and the trend just continued to grow.

The great musicians of my era (1968-1980) achieved success based on their music, talent and recording ability. How many of us out here remember buying albums from groups we had never seen, except maybe on an album liner. Music today is totally created, marketed and sold on the basis of an "American Idol" formula. Single hit "superstars" fade into oblivion in three months. Albums have been replaced by single song downloads and even the modern megastars seem to have little to no lasting power. It has all become so packaged, and I wonder what the musical heritage 30 years from now will be.

Pretty much says it all for me. As the song says, "video killed the radio star".

 

[1973BuickGS]

My face when I saw this thread got revived:

Better than another separate thread about the same subject like usual, I guess. I'm sure we'll see one in a couple months, though.

I know there are people on here that would make the same face if I told them that I play 21st century music about 90% of the time, even though about half of my collection is older.

I'm still quite happy with how many wouldn't. Keep on exploring.

 

[specialidiot]

My face when I saw this thread got revived:


Better than another separate thread about the same subject like usual, I guess. I'm sure we'll see one in a couple months, though.

Shatner did it better.

 

[1973BuickGS]

Shatner did it better.

With how many times I've seen these threads since I joined in 2010, it's really more like this:

 

[Montycat]

I like it all to some degree or another. Except for mariachi. I want to rip my hair off in a frenzy when I hear mariachi.

Isn't that what you are supposed to when listening to mariachi? Geez, I've been doing it wrong?!

 

[1973BuickGS]

Isn't that what you are supposed to when listening to mariachi? Geez, I've been doing it wrong?!

While on the subject of new music and mariachi, there is a punk bank called The Bronx that had a side project called Mariachi El Bronx.

 

[KevinCorr]

I listen to a lot of new music by old artists.