Older Music

[Waterknight]

I was just thinking about how music from previous decades seems to be infinitely better than what comes out today when i realized something about it. Im sure that the 60s, 70s, 80s, and I know the 90s (though they seem great how I remember them sometimes) all must have had just as much CRAP released as today does. I can remember a TON of horrible music from the 90s but when i think of 90s music I think of it as good. The bad music gets weeded out over time and the 90s is just still in that process. I know that even though the majority of music released today sucks but a lot of good music does still come out. it gives me hope that in 20 years todays music will only have the good stuff left.

[Darkmatters]

I lived through the 70s, and let me tell you, if you liked what's now known as classic rock, all you had to do was keep your radio on and amazing new songs were coming out all the time!! It was a very rare moment for popular music... FM had just been developed and for the first time programmers didn't have to only play "hits", they could play what's known as 'deep cuts' or album tracks... for the first time (on the radio) they were playing longer songs than 3 minutes (at least since the heyday of jazz, I assume they played long songs on the radio then?). And the producers and record companies really cared about talent and excellent musicianship (as well as showmanship). Something started to change at the end of the 70s, across the entire mass media spectrum (movies, music, tv shows). Things started to shift away from talent and excellence toward making money and toward demographics and statistics. I've heard a big part of the reason is that all those big record companies and movie studios etc that had grown into multi-billion dollar industries were helmed by tycoons from an earlier age, who made decisions from the gut and trusted their instinct, but they all started dying off around the 70's or so, and the corporations they had developed were now so huge and lucrative that the boards didn't trust anyone to run them that way, and started creating 'focus groups' and having demographic studies done on "what the public likes". This resulted in the blockbuster mega-hit mentality of the 80's onward. What used to be done by a person or a few people who really loved what they produced was now done by committee and entirely for massive profit. These days when some really excellent artist gets produced I think of it more as they managed to somehow slip through the cracks than they got 'discovered' and helped by any producer or manager. A bit cynical, and I'm sure some artists are still chosen because of their talent, but we also have the music video stations to blame for killing talent to some degree. As the Buggles said so eloquently in the absolute 1st music video ever played on the fledgling MTV in 1980 (or 81?) - "Video Killed the Radio Star". And it's true to a large extent. In the 70's we didn't know what our favorite bands looked like unless they were on their album covers or until we went to their concerts, but with MTV suddenly the way a band looked became more important than their sound or talent. Serious... we'd see them and be all like "Wait what!!? THAT'S what Meatloaf looks like?!! Oh well, it'd doesn't matter - he still kicks major ass." Today I suspect Meatloaf would not have ever become famous, at least as a front man. Since then media has evolved to cater more and more to narcissism. I still clearly remember a day when I for whatever reason was watching some crap MTV show in the 90's, long after they had changed from playing music videos all day to a bunch of shit shows and 'reality' series, and it was some in-studio thing where the crowd of teenagers were featured just as much on camera as the star who spoke there, and I noticed they all dressed and acted like they thought the show was all about them, as if they were all stars too. The host (Carson Daly, just remembered) asked a question. He said "What's more important, image or what a person has inside?" The audience members overwhelmingly chose image. I was astounded!! Seriously??!!?? Were they for real? Well, they were. I finally accepted that we now live in an age of media-enabled narcissism where everybody carries a camera-phone and you never know when you might be on video and end up on YouTube that night... so everybody has become extremely image-conscious. This goes hand in hand with the sarcasm and cynicism (gotta look cool all the time) that seems rife in the last couple of generations of youth. Everybody seems to want in on it... to get their 15 minutes. And the people who think like this aren't in the least concerned with their inner world or its development... with concepts like integrity or the golden rule. Narcissists are concerned only with what makes them look good. Narcissism has always been with us, but today it seems to be catered to by the media to an unprecedented degree, with reality shows that are obviously fake (the only one I feel is truly reality is Cops and its spinoffs). Since the 80's action movies have featured increasingly narcissistic heroes... what matters seems to be mainly how muscular they are or how well they can deliver a cutting one-liner. Substance in heroes is unheard of now. And those pithy one-liners are crafted so budding little narcissists can imitate them and feel just as cool as their onscreen heroes. Empowerment. And just a week or two ago I suddenly noticed another alarming trend in the mass increase of narcissistic empowerment by the media - it seems to be the new trend among advertisers to make commercials built around narcissistic empowerment fantasies. I've seen so many commercials with some weird guy who seems to have strange powers and exhibits a troubling level of narcissism. The Nationwide commercials with "The World's Greatest Spokesperson in the World", that weird Dairy Queen guy, the singing weirdo in the Arby's Good Mood Food commercials... there are many more, but these are the only ones I can think of that I know the company name offhand. A lot of these guys have crazy mustaches - oh, The World's Most Interesting Man. A bunch more... I'm sure if you keep this in mind and watch a little TV you'll notice them all over the place. This tells me that media corporations are well aware that their fanbase consists largely of narcissists and they want to cater to their empowerment fantasies. Oh sorry - um - what was the topic again?

[Waterknight]

well I posted this because I am a big fan of 60s music in general and classic rock despite being born in 94. That is just sad about the image means more thing..... but even crafted bands can be good. I also enjoy grunge, that was about the music more than the image (this is debatable with some of the bands I admit). so do you think I am wrong about the good music making it through some kind of filter while the bad music gets trapped behind and forgotten? oh and to add to your commercials, the old spice guy is a prime example

[Darkmatters]

Oh no, I completely agree with you about that!! I saw it happen in the 90's... I remember a time for a few months where I couldn't stand anything that was coming out, and it made me feel like crap! But every so often a great song or band would come out... little oases in the desert. And now of course there's a huge trove of great 90's music just because there was so damn MUCH music being made at the time. Grunge was about the last time I felt that REAL musicianship and meaning were being fully supported by music studios. At least in any widespread way. Even now you can find powerful musicians, but they're pretty few and far between and don't seem to be getting much support compared to the superstars the studios groom for success, the Britneys and such. Today you have to also look fantastic in order to be backed by a studio. The great musicians of the 70's were a bunch of ugly motherfuckers!! Well, some of them anyway. Old Spice, yeah!! Totally. The original one and now Fabio... Lord of the Narcissists!!

[Waterknight]

Well I guess all I really can do is enjoy the good songs as they come and forget about the others. If I get sick of todays music, which happens often, all I have to do is take a trip back to another decade and listen to whatever is good from then.

[Darkmatters]

I feel ya. I told you there was a time on the 90's when I couldn't stand the music that was being played? I remember just about the only thing I could stand that was new at the time was Nine Inch Nails, but they were going downhill as far as I was concerned. They had just released The Perfect Drug, and after that I don't remember hearing anything else by them (never bought anything by them, just liked when they came on the radio). It seemed like everything had turned to crap... it was all either some kind of speed metal, death metal, or any of its derivatives, or mellow crap I couldn't stand. It all felt like it wasn't REAL music, but like it was people trying to be faster or louder than anything before them, with no regard for talent or sounding good. It hit me like a sledgehammer to the side of the head that the radio would no longer provide a steady stream of great music like it always had for me. So I had to start listening to a lot of CDs and tapes like you said. Which is cool, but there's something I felt was lost at that point... a connectedness to the music world. Somehow it feels fresher when a song comes on the radio than if you put on a CD and know exactly what songs are on it in what order... it's feels canned. iTunes or an MP3 player are better because you can have a shitload of music on it and shuffle it, you get surprised a lot. But I miss having a dj talk and then a new song I've never heard come on that sounds incredible... you know?

[DeletePlease]

As far as rap's concerned, it's dead in the mainstream and I don't think it'll ever come back. It's become a joke of a genre and you hardly see any rappers on tv who are genuinely in it to make good music, there just in it for their 15 seconds of fame. There's been shitty rap music since the genre's conception, the only thing that changed is that it became legitimized in the music industry and it became a source of quick income. 90's rap was great; sure you had your wannabe "musicians" who paraded around in their flannel and doo-rags back then too but for the most part, MC's went in the studio for the sake of adding more depth to the genre. People used to dismiss hip hop as a passing fad so artists of that era tried to prove the critics wrong, that's how we ended up with exceptionally talented and creative artists like the Wu Tang Clan and Bone Thugs N Harmony. Nowadays? It's just a bunch of retards trying to leech off the success of their predecessors. They're not trying to impress the critics or prove them wrong, that was all handled in the 90's. These goobags just go in bragging about there bitches, how much money they wasted on car tire rims, and try to scream "nigga" as many times as they can during their 3 minute "song." And swag, these shit-baskets love their swag. They all sound the same too. In the 90's, imitating another artist (or "biting") was the worst thing you could possibly do. Hell, people were killed over it. That's an incredibly stupid reason to die but it did force artists to be more creative and innovative. You used to be able to hear and artist and figure out where they (and their producers) were from based on their lyrical content, their delivery, the type of instrumental, clothes, etc. You can't do that now, nearly everyone sounds the exact same. Compare this: Or this: To this: Just listen to the difference. Even if you don't listen to rap, you have to admit the first two display a hell of a lot more talent than the second. The 90's was flooded with rap that was on par with the first two songs. Nowadays, it's infested with "songs" that are of the same level of "quality" as the third one. /ramble /rant about a genre no one cares about any more