The Best Era Ever for New Music is... Right Now.

I'm by no means opposed to someone owning a wide variety of music, and as an LP re-seller trust me when I say that people from the 60s and 70s had a TON of vinyl, meaning I don't really think people listen to a lot more now than they did before. What I was trying to say is that the experience of saving up for your favorite artist's next LP, or waiting for that artist to come to your town to perform, or trying to track down some obscure, impossible-to-find item, potentially increases the appreciation you have for the object once you own it. Plus, the fact that your choices are limited might compel you to listen to something more than you would had you unlimited albums to choose from, which in turn might prompt the music to grow on you or have more significance. It's all just theorizing and as you said, the same scenario can have the retroactive effect of actually driving the listener to grow tired or sick of a given album.

Generally speaking, however, what I'm trying to say is more about the role music plays in the culture at large. Bearing in mind I was born in 1980, I still feel like in the 60s and 70s (and even in a way, the 80s and 90s), music itself was more culturally relevant to listeners in that certain artists and songs felt like revolutions in the making. Very wide, very broad audiences uniformly gushed over the greatness of certain albums and dropped their jaws at how new everything sounded and sort of universally heaped praises upon living legends who continued to produce concise, consistent albums. The fact that these very same albums have held up so well really lends to me the impression that they signify a tremendous time to be alive and listening to music. I simply don't get that same impression nowadays from the music itself, which isn't so much a reflection of its quality, but more a reflection of its significance. People will always have and love their bands, but there just doesn't seem to be that same mind-awakening sentiment in the air when it comes to the actual music. The possibilities and discussions seem just as frequently based on things like streaming services, distribution models, and how much fun certain festivals are (regardless of who's playing). The vitality and freshness of the actual music seems to be taking a backseat (or at least a passenger seat) to a slew of other factors and that alone, in my opinion, dilutes the profound, singular effect certain music can have on certain listeners. Therefore, in my opinion, I think there's a previous era that would've been the "best" for music because it had all the fun, plus that sort of shared sense of reward.

 

I'm pretty sure he's talking about the no talent people who blame the equipment for their crappy stuff, not the no talent people who think their crap is the best music ever recorded. At least that was my take.

Dawn of Midi is an example of a very serious band that really took advantage of cheap recording. The album is culled from 150 rehearsal recordings.

 

I was born in 60. I might just be contrairian, but a lot of what was gushed over in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, I thought was pretty awful. Some of the bands that were gushed over in the 70s that I couldn't stand then, still can stand, and are gushed over here, although to a less extent than 60s stuff: Journey, Kansas, Styx, Foreigner, Foghat, Frampton, AC/DC, Kiss. Actually, Frampton Comes Alive wasn't to bad the first time I heard it, by the 200th, it wasn't too good anymore. In the last 5 years, I've bought one album each of Kansas, Styx and AC/DC at thrift stores for $1. After seeing people gush over them here, I thought, maybe they aren't as bad as I remember. They are.

There are bands I liked in high school that I still like: Tull, Little Feat, mid to late Beatles, etc, but I just played them so much back then, I don't really listen to them any more.

 

Having worked building and operating recording studios in the 80s, I can assure you that plenty of terrible music was recorded to 2" 16 and 24 track tape. The need to spend days on end recording people who had money but no talent is why I'm no longer in that field. We had to pay the rent, and we couldn't afford to refuse people just because their music was crap.

Yes, the easy accessibility of cheap and easy recording means that the untalented can record bad music. But unlike back when the untalented had to come up with $150 an hour, the talented but poor can use that same cheap and abundant equipment to record their wonderful music. The recording studio owner is no longer the gatekeeper.

 

Exactly! Equipment forums are filled with all these people who believe that if only they had a Neumann microphone plugged into an Avalon preamp their vocals would be better. The reality is that nearly every live vocal they've ever heard was recorded with the same Shure SM-58 that they could buy for $99. I wish these people could go to Musicians Friend and shop for microphones blindfolded, singing into each with no idea what each cost. That way they could buy a decent large diaphragm, side-address condenser microphone for $200 and spend the savings on singing lessons!

 

Under this theory, the people who don't like modern music really haven't given it a chance because they 1) didn't pay for it, and 2) haven't played it enough. A cursory play on Youtube does not do the trick. Perhaps if they give modern music as much of a try as they did their '60's and '70's favorites, they may very well like the new stuff as much. Food for thought.

 

I think that to a degree this notion definitely applies to a lot of naysayers who dismiss modern music after giving is a cursory listen or two on Youtube.

 

You're naming a lot of artists who I don't really think do much for the argument that their era was so great. I say this as someone who closely follows what people are buying on vinyl and attributes the "staying" power of a popular album to its value in the marketplace. I can say with a degree of confidence that groups like Kansas and Styx or artists like Peter Frampton, while once very popular, have not aged well as far retaining new audiences. Meanwhile, artists like Zeppelin, Floyd, Bowie, Neil Young, Hendrix, Zappa, and The Doors are still finding (and impressing) tons and tons of new listeners, as are groups like The Clash and Ramones and even Talking Heads and The Smiths and The Cure. And while the value of some albums by these artists is often related to its scarcity, in some cases (like Dark Side of the Moon or Ziggy Stardust) it doesn't matter how many were pressed--young people are still willing to pay decent money for old copies.

 

The point I was trying to make is that those artist I listed, who are talked up in this forum, are the equivalent of some of the current bands that are criticized. Of the first list of bands in your post, Zeppelin and Neil Young were ubiquitous. I've never liked Neil Young as a solo artist. The Doors and Hendrix were both earlier and by the time I was in high school, they weren't on the radio except for one or two of their biggest hits. The others all had one song on the radio: Floyd, just Money, Bowie Space Oddity, Zappa Dancing Fool. I knew a couple of people who liked Floyd, but none of my friends did so I never heard them. Bowie and Zappa were more notorious, Bowie for being gay and Zappa for taking a crap on stage. I became very familiar with all of them in college in the late 70s. Zappa became far and away my favorite artist. I own his entire discography and over 200 concert recordings.

Of the second list, The Clash and Ramones were never on the radio. I never even heard of them in high school. I'm sure there were some people who had heard of them, but I never heard any talk of them. Even in college, I rarely heard of them and never heard any of their music until the early 80s. Punk was not something that was well known in my high school. I had a lot of friends into hardcore in the early 80s. Boy I hated it, but since the hardcore shows were cheap, and my friends all loved it, I ended up seeing a lot of shows.

The Smiths and The Cure are two of the bands I mean when I talk about bands that were on the radio in the 80s and loved by my friends, and that I really didn't like, and I heard them a lot. There were a few bands like these that I cherry picked sort of like I do with indie/alt bands of today.

The Talking Heads is an interesting case. Their first album came out in the fall of 77. When I just looked that up, it surprised me because I never heard it until the fall of 78 when I went away to college. In Upstate NY, Psycho Killer was all over the radio a year after the album came out. I'm pretty sure it hadn't been playing like that for the full year because a month or two later, the parody Psycho Chicken came out. When I went home to Baltimore for Thanksgiving, Psycho Chicken was all over the radio, but none of my friends from high school had ever heard Psycho Killer. They never really got much airplay in Baltimore until they became more poppy.

 

My last post got me looking at my library and I realize I've probably bought as much music from the 80s and 90s in the past 5 years as I did in the 80s and 90s. An streaming services deserve most of the credit.

 

While all that you say is true, I think threads like this are interesting for the insight they give into people's listening habits. We a ll like different stuff of course, and sometimes the same stuff, but we vary in the ways we discover and identify the music we like.

 

Post of the month, a rare positive shout out for new music on here from an obvious music lover. An antidote to all the negativity on here.

 

Sure, there's a lot of great, new talent, but the art form is in a rut. You mention "entirely new and viable genres popping up all of the time." I don't see it. We haven't haven't have a game-changing genre since the era of punk and new wave and hip hop. Think about it, between 1935-1975, we had swing & modern jazz, crooners, classic country, contemporary folk, doo-wop, rock and all it's variations, soul/funk, reggae...some REAL diversity. Whatever their roots were, these styles of music were truly unique and had a wide appeal. And there were terrific sub-genres like be-bop, Philly soul, psychedelia, etc. What have we had since? (OK, grunge perhaps, but that was basically garage-band music reinvented and just a beep on the radar in comparison to the others...and it was 20 years ago.)

 

There is a critical mass when it comes to audience, under which the artist can't afford to live on their music, and they need a day job to pay the bills.
Most of the new musicians, even the big ones, last much less than they used to.
When a musician could sell some records worldwide, it was easier to live on it. After all, selling 50.000 copies across the whole world wasn't so difficult.
And with that and some touring, they could focus and develop.
Now, they need touring because they sell almost nothing.
Selling 500 copies in Madrid, 1.000 in London, 1.000 in Tokyo, 4.000 in NYC... it could reach that minimum that could allow them to pay bills and compose without the burdens of a day job.
And that made better musicians.
But try to tour and visit cities where you sell almost nothing and therefore promoters really don't know if they will sell tickets.
I think there are some upsides to the new scene, but we've also lost a lot.

 

Not really the exact topic but these threads get me checking out all the artists mentioned so what the heck..

I think the description of this artist( That1Guy - Poseiden's Deep Water Adventure Friends) is exactly what kind of turns me off about most new music :

"Poseidon's deep water adventure friends, a lush, beautiful, and sonically dense deep water journey of discovery."

Adventure?- check

lush?- check, I like lush sometimes

beauty?- sure i like beautiful sounding music

Dense?- ok sure, dense can be cool

But, to ME, all these characteristics are simply characteristics if there is no real song there. I think what is missing is an actual song with something that draws you in to a melody. A human reflection/lesson perhaps? Something relatible that is universal in substance? Any sort of hook?

Im not sure that a lot of new music is really meant to be song centered perhaps. But more a mishmash of soundscapes that flow ones mood rather than concretely reach certain emotions. Thing is, with so much technology, this is pretty easily done endlessly. So you get all these artists experimenting with putting sounds together with a fair amount of ease. And gobs of them doing this. Kraftwerk were cool. But 75,000 groupd trying to mishmash everything that can possibly be done? You get an oversaturated market that is very hard to wade through to find those two or three groups that have hit upon at least something that is not only different but strong material wise.

Hopefully that last bit got back on topic some.

 

Not really the exact topic but these threads get me checking out all the artists mentioned so what the heck..

I think the description of this artist( That1Guy - Poseiden's Deep Water Adventure Friends) is exactly what kind of turns me off about most new music :

"Poseidon's deep water adventure friends, a lush, beautiful, and sonically dense deep water journey of discovery."

Adventure?- check

lush?- check, I like lush sometimes

beauty?- sure i like beautiful sounding music

Dense?- ok sure, dense can be cool

But, to ME, all these characteristics are simply characteristics if there is no real song there. I think what is missing is an actual song with something that draws you in to a melody. A human reflection/lesson perhaps? Something relatible that is universal in substance? Any sort of hook?

Im not sure that a lot of new music is really meant to be song centered perhaps. But more a mishmash of soundscapes that flow ones mood rather than concretely reach certain emotions. Thing is, with so much technology, this is pretty easily done endlessly. So you get all these artists experimenting with putting sounds together with a fair amount of ease. And gobs of them doing this. Kraftwerk were cool. But 75,000 groupd trying to mishmash everything that can possibly be done? You get an oversaturated market that is very hard to wade through to find those two or three groups that have hit upon at least something that is not only different but strong material wise.

Hopefully that last bit got back on topic some.

 

Not really the exact topic but these threads get me checking out all the artists mentioned so what the heck..

I think the description of this artist( That1Guy - Poseiden's Deep Water Adventure Friends) is exactly what kind of turns me off about most new music :

"Poseidon's deep water adventure friends, a lush, beautiful, and sonically dense deep water journey of discovery."

Adventure?- check

lush?- check, I like lush sometimes

beauty?- sure i like beautiful sounding music

Dense?- ok sure, dense can be cool

But, to ME, all these characteristics are simply characteristics if there is no real song there. I think what is missing is an actual song with something that draws you in to a melody. A human reflection/lesson perhaps? Something relatible that is universal in substance? Any sort of hook?

Im not sure that a lot of new music is really meant to be song centered perhaps. But more a mishmash of soundscapes that flow ones mood rather than concretely reach certain emotions. Thing is, with so much technology, this is pretty easily done endlessly. So you get all these artists experimenting with putting sounds together with a fair amount of ease. And gobs of them doing this. Kraftwerk were cool. But 75,000 groups trying to mishmash everything that can possibly be done? You get an oversaturated market that is very hard to wade through to find those two or three groups that have hit upon at least something that is not only different but strong material wise.

An my apologies for a bit OT. I realize this thread really isnt about whether one likes new artists or not. But I do think the two topics are related. Hopefully that last bit got back on topic some.

 

First of all, I use Verdana font because I can't stand Times Roman because I'm a computer guy and have had to look at it for 30 years or so and Calibri is even worse! Sometimes I choose Tahoma, but not on this website. Secondly, non sequitur is Latin and does not require a dash. The standard definition is "a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement." Interestingly, you did not go back and add Abbey Road's original statements to which I replied.

Any real money being made in the music industry is still going through labels. I'm not here to discuss the video industry. And my argument certainly followed Abbey Road's statement that "record labels no longer yielding the power," which I think he meant to say wielding the power of what reaches our ears. While it's true there are new avenues, the one that pays the bills is still record labels. This quote is from a Rolling Stone article about how much money YouTube pays artists.

Many in the record business are bullish about YouTube revenue, although some artist reps say they have yet to see significant money. "For most artists, it is not a lot yet," says Jamie Cheek, a business manager who represents prominent rock artists. "It is still a bit complicated to claim, and the dollars are often not worth all that effort to claim." Artists hoping to claim revenue off covers of their songs often must go through the cumbersome process of tracking down each video individually and seeing if YouTube owes them money from ads. (By Steve Knopper | February 5, 2014 http://www.rollingstone.com/music/n...ut-provide-new-revenue-for-musicians-20140205)​

I went on to reply to the second portion of his statement, that diversity is a misnomer, that YouTube is actually diluting the pool of talented artists with people wanting to be famous so they make a cheap video and post it on YouTube. Again, my argument follows his statements. Finally, he states that "new and viable genres [are] popping up all the time." I like to use genres to describe music, but every music critic wants to make their mark on society so they invent new genres in hopes that theirs stick and they in turn become famous. So we end up with silly genres like "post grunge alternative rock". Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up. But once again my argument followed his statement, so all three segments were not non sequitur.

Au contraire mon frère, snarky--maybe, but Abbey Road's supposition is that all you need in today's world is talent and you can make a living wage in the music industry. This is simply not true. I offered Justin Bieber and Bon Iver as evidence, thereby once again following his argument with refutations. It's no secret that I think Bon Iver is way overrated. I'm really really tired of hearing how genius his lyrics are. Check out Bruce Cockburn if you want to read genius lyrics. And his band is a joke. Have you seen his Austin City Limits show? I've tried to watch it multiple times and I can't get through it. Every time they bring out the saxophone that's 12' tall I lose it. It's a freak show and nothing better. Bieber has the second most all time hits on YouTube--do you really think he got there using his talent? Again your accusation of non sequitur is refuted. BTW, since San Serif is not among the choices on this website, I changed all of your quotes to Book Antiqua for easy identification.

I know exactly what he's saying even if he's not illegally downloading music so he can listen to it 5 times before he decides if he wants to buy it or not. Streaming is not free. Nobody gives away free anything without getting something in return. You install their software and they begin tracking you. If you are not aware of this, then you should quit using computers before the Russian mafia starts posting videos of you! I also understood perfectly what Abbey Road was stating, about recording a video is no longer cost prohibitive, to which I disagree. I'm not saying that the technology doesn't exist, I'm saying that PCs don't support high fidelity. I don't own a Mac so I cannot make any statements about their capabilities, but I seriously doubt that an ipad can record multiple channels and that is what he's implying that anyone with some kind of computer can video themselves and post it on YouTube. Again it goes back to a diluted music pool. And when was the last time that Todd produced anything viable? Granted I loved him in the 70's, but that was 40 years ago. Once again, I replied to his statements with refutations although I embellished on illegally downloading music. My arguments were completely viable so once again your assertions have been refuted. Oh, and please explain what it has to do with Democracy?

Once again, this is not a technical discussion about camcorders. We are here to discuss music. But his statement about "bloated Baby Boomers" I take as offensive. It was the reason I decided to reply in the first place. Not even high end computers can produce high fidelity, let alone modest laptops or desktop PCs. Virtually every musician is a ludicrous statement. While more of the millennials are somewhat computer savvy it takes expertise to produce a finished video worth watching, wouldn't you agree?

Once again, I find it curious that you choose to leave out my closing statements, but it appears that you were only focused on the video details. Every argument I made was a direct response to Abbey Road's assertions. Every argument followed his assertions and therefore none of them can be considered non sequitur. Did I make a couple of embellishments? Sure, it's called free speech and it's allowed in America and on the Internet. I think it's cool you video concerts, but that's not what we're discussing in this thread. His four points were all in support of "the best era ever for new recorded music is right now." He prefaced it with the bands he digs suggesting that it was about the quality of music, not the accessibility of music. I once drove from the Ozarks to Montreal and back to try to find some Bruce Cockburn albums that I did not own. Instead, I found the Cowboy Junkies playing a live radio show from Toronto. Upon arriving in Boston, I purchased their first LP at Newbury Comics just off of Harvard Square. Now I can search Amazon... But he didn't go there either, which seems like an obvious choice given his assertions. The implications were about new music and the act of searching for new music placed him in some kind of holier than thou musical religious plateau which many people took exception to. Because us bloated boomers need to be spoon fed the music we listen to because none of us on the SHMF ever search for new music... And that is why I suggested that maybe he needed to adjust his attitude, wouldn't you agree?

 

If you're ever quoting me can you please do it in Arial?

 

I do like Arial especially for spreadsheets!

 

What's the point in spurring constant negativity and confrontation? Why not focus on the positive? As you say, there's a musical "renaissance" going on, after all - we're sitting on a goldmine of amazing new music, so let's go ahead and enjoy it instead of picking on folks who we don't understand simply because they are different than us.
It's like, whatever good intentions you may have had in trying to bring people's attention to all this great new music that we're "missing out on", sadly they have been somewhat undermined by that last statement which sounded a wee bit patronizing to me. Could have done without that one, really.

 

...and yet, at the end of the day, you're just another dude on the internets with an opinion.

 

But those artists you listed (like Kansas and Styx) don't really prove anything because they haven't really stayed relevant. As far as the artists I listed, these are a handful of bands I threw out as being indicative of music's staying power from a certain era(s). I can throw out plenty more. Whether or not you like them personally or whether or not they fit into your backstory somehow is completely besides the point. This isn't about you. Had the OP stated how much he loves all this new music that's coming out, and he loves all the different ways he can listen to it, then it would be a very different discussion that's all about personal taste. But he didn't do that. He made a very objective statement that this is the best time for music and here's why and he feels sorry for those who don't see it. This to me opens the door for a genuine discussion on what constitutes the best era of music and why--not a discussion about who loves what bands and why. But you and some other forum members are so completely fixated on whether certain bands/albums reach you personally that it becomes impossible to address the objective nature of the thread topic. This is a discussion about the "best" era in music and why, not a discussion of whether you personally like music from the other eras being put forth as the best. So good for you that you and your friends never got into Pink Floyd, but I think it's safe to say that there were literally millions (and millions, and millions) of others who did and still do, and that John Zorn's PR team is gonna have to work really, really hard to compete with that kind of legacy. I'm also not really sure I understood your point in that last post--maybe try rephrasing it without breaking anything down according to artist.

 

I guess it's out of nostalgia people say these kind of things. My dad also assured me that he never ever had heard any music of Velvet Underground, Cream, Traffic, Zappa, Joplin, Joni Mitchell, CSNY,... on the radio.

From bands like The Doors, Bowie, CCR, Marvin Gaye, The Band, Young,.. and even The Beatles they were only playing the accesible songs.

Led Zep and Deep Purple, max. 2 songs, cut off after 3 minutes. Pink Floyd, only Another Brick in the Wall.

The majority of songs were "variété" (over here in Belgium that means music in Dutch/Flemmish, French, German and Italian) and teenybopper-bands.
+ some accesible songs from Linda Ronstadt, Eagles, Hollies, Mamas & the Papas,....

The biggest difference in comparing then and now, is the quality of variété and "teenybopper" were of higher quality back then, great songwriting-teams and producers you can't really compare with current mainstream producers and songwriters. Those songs had wonderful arrangements, especially in the variété songs and some of them even were covered by UK/US artists. Something that doesn't happen these days, which is a real shame. UK & US market is very narrow minded, and even alternative-blogs is mainly a Beyoncé/Jay-Z promomachine + some "we hate Nickelback"-rubbish.

"Alternative" music was for the art-students in the big cities or the pot-smoking hippies in Holland.

The 80's had some great pop-moments and the new wave movement. But electronic music came just in time to let us forget hairmetal and aged/addicted neurotic classicrockers making horrible records.

 

I've never been a song centered listener. I much prefer instrumental music. I used to strongly feel that when the singing starts, the music dies. My opinion has evolved somewhat. I think of the voice as just another instrument but I still pay almost no attention to lyrics. I own over 10,000 albums and there are only a couple dozen songs that the lyrics mean anything to me.

For That1Guy, most of his music is instrumental and I like the sound of his bass singing with his music. The few tracks on his album I don't like are the ones where the lush music does die when he starts singing. I also like that he's a one man band and most of the sound is coming from a home made instrument. It fascinating to watch him play. This is the video that turn me on to him. Immediately after watching it, I bought both of his albums tat were out then.