Were bands of yesteryear more or less lazy/productive than today's musicians?

Let me guess. You're over 50 and have between 0-5 albums past 1980.

There's so much good music out there, but as you sarcastically put it, you do have to dig for it, because the radio has been destroyed by people who grew up on all the music you claim is better.

There was just as much crap back then as there is now, the difference is the crap now is more accessible.

And to answer the question, I wouldn't say they are lazier, I think they may tour more and try to get more bang for their buck out of an album. The album every year or so generally seems to have died off in the early 90s.

An example of someone who puts out a lot of quality music is Joseph Arthur. Guy releases albums once a year, collaborations all the time, singles on SoundCloud... And funny enough every time I start a post about him, it gets buried underneath threads like " what if Ringo had a nose ring" and "if John Lennon was still around what would his twitter handle be and why?"

 

I think if you judge by quality of musical output and the ability to perform said music, the answer is pretty obvious.

 

Way more productive in the past. And it probably takes more work to write and record 14 2.5 minutes songs than to record 11 5 minute songs, as it doesn't take all that much effort to repeat things mote and play a longer guitar solo.

 

Obviously.

I never stop looking and I don't need you to preach to me that I'm not looking in the right place, oh enlightened one.

Sorry, I didn't see the invisible ink line - I thought it was his signature. In that case, I bid this thread farewell.

 

If only bands hustled it together enough to release two or three albums a year and three of four singles amidst world tours, feature films and TV spots. Amphetamines are no longer in style, however.

 

Not this time. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

The more important part of that post is to check out Joe Arthur.

 

Probably should be noted that there's less money to be made from albums these days, too, so artists focus more on touring.

 

Yeah I guess you're right. Probably most of the music I buy still effectively fits into that 80s-90s frame even if it is more recent.

The reality is that there isn't any trend any more.

 

Didn't say it's anyone's "fault". It's simply cause and effect.

 

I think older bands worked harder, and produced much more in a much shorter time frame.
Yup, as Exhibit A I mention: The Beatles.

 

I think someone needs to update Godwin's law, for this forum. I think it should be called "Jeatleboe's Law".

 

Hmm...
Since all these modern acts are really busy touring nowadays
and therefore playing their instruments so frequently,
you'd think there'd be many more notable virtuosos among them.

 

Bands are going to be as prolific as they're going to be; Every individual band is different, regardless of era. The perceived trends are more due to the changing promotion cycles of record companies than anything else. Another related factor is that bands inarguably have to spend more time touring now, rather than spending regular studio time to produce the recordings that the labels were demanding a few decades ago. This has a lot to do with the deterioration of album revenue as well.

Examples: Bands like Pavement and Radiohead were writing easily enough good material in their prime to put out more than one 45-minute record per year, but because the promotion cycle at the time was one record every few years or so, they ended up putting out longer albums and having just as much material left as B-sides (highly sought-after by their fans, of course). Other bands just don't have as much material for whatever reason, so if they existed in the 70's they've been more like The Band: Putting out a bunch of releases, but with not as much original material making them up, because their labels wanted product on the shelves.

I'd say this is true, largely because labels don't have the power they once did. Again, because revenues for recordings have bottomed out so a lot of artists are more free to do whatever they want.

 

I had to think of that too. Maybe Prince could have released his great 80s albums with all these amazing unedited versions of many of his songs. How cool would that have been?

 

Modern and Equivalents are at odds with each other.
Totally makes no sense.

Why would there be a"Modern Equivalent" of a band from ages ago?
Ages ago, was a totally different world, in so many ways, that alone is a book.

But looks like I took the troll bait, difference is, I will not argue the tired old "Old is good, new is not good" thing you are trying to do.

 

Of course, then there's artists like Buckethead, who has released 65 albums thus far this year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckethead_discography

 

If you're talking songwriting and musicianship, today's band's aren't lazy, they're not even alive.
Of course there are exceptions but, "lazy" is actually the term I have used to describe much of (todays) music. So many artists stuck in formulaic genres that are unbelievably boring.

 

Higher quality output in the 60s and 70s. It's very obvious as all you need to do is look at the top albums then and then look at the top albums now. They worked harder and were also much higher creatively. It was simply a golden age that we will never see again, but at least I lived through some of those years in real-time.

-Richard

 

My grandfather said the 40's and 50's were real music.
The 60's and 70's were mostly crap.

What does that mean?
Its just an opinion, same as yours.
The same argument, that old is good new is bad, gets tiring.

Ever consider that maybe you lived through the olden day stuff and it means more to you simply cause of that?
Or maybe you gave up on understading newer things, or being open to them?
Either way, it is offensive to those of us, that find joy and greatness in all types and eras of music.

 

Agreed. The Beatles are absolutely an example of how recent musicians have failed to meet the standards set by Bach and Mozart. I mean, The Beatles had a whole team of people who worked together to fail to produce a single virtuoso instrumentalist and fail to produce output that came close to the aforementioned composers in terms of quantity, sophistication, innovation, or historical importance. What's even more embarrassing for The Beatles is that they had near-total financial and artistic freedom.

 

Ooh Humor! I like it...made me smile, and I have only had one drink...Wooohoooo

 

Wanted to zone in on that particular sentence. I don't know if it's trolling or complete seriousness on the part of some posters here, but I agree that is it borderline offensive when this comes up as an absolute. At the very least it shows a complete disrespect for some of us who actually get some enjoyment from music made past 1982 or whatever the cutoff is supposed to be here.

Honestly, I just don't know what bug crawled up their ass that they are so curmudgeony. Enjoy your Beatles, enjoy your Beach Boys and Monkees. I'm very excited for you, in all seriousness. But I shouldn't have to explain why I listened to Atlas Genius' Inanimate Objects after I put on Beatles' Second Album. But if you cannot grasp this, it's because I can get just as much musical enjoyment out of one as versus the other.

It really sucks that some people can't. That's just too bad.

 

Yea, that's the main thing that makes this seemingly continuous stream of negative posts lately so tiresome. It's not just the members here at Steve Hoffmann's site that they are trivializing, but it's also whole generations of artists that are being disparaged as lazy, talentless, lacking creativity, not the Beatles, etc, etc. I grew up in that "golden era of rock music", and love it just like most of us, and agree it will likely not be repeated, but certainly not because of any lack of artistic creativity and talent. I just made a post about Mark Lanegan's great record from 2004 earlier today, no lack of talent there, one that I would stack against many of my favorites from the "golden era", and the modern era is full of gems like that.