Bland on Blonde: why the old rock music canon is finished

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by MarkTWIC, Aug 29, 2018.

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  1. Greenalishi

    Greenalishi Birds Aren’t Real

    Location:
    San Francisco
    It's really cool that You Tube has democratized music so much. All is new now. And exposure of some singer from the 30s is just as easy as the newest single. This is such a cool thing i think.
     
  2. Joy-of-radio

    Joy-of-radio Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central ME
    Good article! To hell with lists and canons as they're all woefully biased and subjective.

    A bit off topic, but I love bubblegum music! In the '60s and '70s, I got mocked and laughed at for buying 45s by the likes of Jackson 5, Archies, Pargridge Family, Bobby Sherman, Sugar Bears, and the like. Lists and canons do very little other than to pigeonhole people. I'm not a big fan of that quaint little pop band from Liverpool and you couldn't give me a Dylan record. Lists and canons are meaningless. Oh, and I'm an old white guy!
     
    Grant likes this.
  3. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    The lists are helpful for the newbies who want to get a collection going and prefer it to be great and don't want to waste too much time on duds.

    The canon is a great starter kit for those newbies. There are quite a few newbies on this forum who just got their very first Stones album, "Hot Rocks" and ask where do I got from here with the Stones. I suggest that they get the Mojo Top 500 Albums of all time book.

    You know really go over the "canon" of rock classics.

    Those lists are very helpful and the essays are so often entertaining and somewhat educational.

    The biggest problem for some readers is that they get caught up with the number ranking. Like why is T Rex so low in the order, and som other group way up higher. Once you ignore the numerical ranking, those lists are much more fun.

    I think I'm going to post a list!! Maybe The 100 favorite R&B albums of a Classic Rock fan.
     
  4. the pope ondine

    the pope ondine Forum Resident

    Location:
    Virginia

    usually I had heard something on the radio or something but a few I read about in the old rolling stone book (the red one?) and would just go for it (usually I hit the used bins tho, I was poor)
     
    Last edited: Oct 25, 2018
  5. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    I've bought so much great music without hearing it first - generally in sales or rummaging through bargain bins - possibly the majority of my collection. Obviously you might occasionally end up with some garbage.
     
    the pope ondine likes this.
  6. I often bought albums without hearing them first. Thats how i became a YES fan. My first Dylan album was given to me by my gran when i was 8. I then became a Dylan fan. I still buy loads of new stuff without hearing it first. My kids buy me stuff i have never heard. Love it. Its fun.
     
    Chris Schoen likes this.
  7. Leepal

    Leepal Forum Resident

    Location:
    Swindon, UK

    Totally agree. I remember years ago travelling back from holiday in Ireland, I missed the ferry and had hours to wait for the next one. Bought a copy of Mojo which had one of it's Top 100 albums lists, it was all quite new and interesting to me back then so the time fled by reading through it.

    Of course now I'm a bit bored of seeing the same albums in these lists all the time, but it's probably still interesting to some.
     
    Zeki likes this.
  8. Crimson Witch

    Crimson Witch Roll across the floor thru the hole & out the door

    Location:
    Lower Michigan

    you nailed it.
    .. much ado about nothing new.

    I gleaned it straight from the title:
    " .. why the old ... is finished."
    Just as the music of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Gershwin, Porter, Ellington, Basie, Brubeck, Davis, Hendrix, and Prince is finished ...
    ... they're all dead.
     
  9. Tim Lookingbill

    Tim Lookingbill Alfalfa Male

    Location:
    New Braunfels, TX
    And then there's the issue of content overload. It's not that current canons of rock and roll will be passe, it's that future generations decades from now will have a tough time finding all the good music, meaning baby boomer's music.

    Just to balance off the perceived male dominance in rock and roll I still have a hankering for the female rock group "Heart". I still haven't bought any of their albums. I know, typical male.

    Anyone recommend the best mastered CD version of their canon of albums?
     
  10. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I only mentioned the Mojo book because I own it, and am about to give it to a friend to have and read.

    But I would bet that the Mojo list you read had some tidbits not previously known. And they pick a few albums out of left field for "coolness" factor. Perfect way to spend an hour waiting for the ferry in Ireland.

    We all had to hear about Gram's Grevious Angel and J.J."s Troubadour somewhere.

    Not only did Mojo get the essay right, but often would come up with a photo not commonly printed.
     
    Zeki likes this.
  11. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    “It is not enough to deface the Mona Lisa because that does not kill the Mona Lisa. All the art of the past must be destroyed.”
     
  12. Mister President

    Mister President Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Best album lists are fine if you like that kinda thing but there are many albums from 1966-1980 (guess when rock was at its most popular) that I think have been forgotten...Working Together by Ike & Tina Turner springs to mind. The same old albums will go on these lists...but many more will be lost in the mists of time to most people. Shame.
     
  13. Hardy Melville

    Hardy Melville Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    To suggest I am babbling, when it is quite clear what I am saying, is a personal attack.

    Have a nice day.
     
  14. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    I'm not sure why a canon in popular music should be thought of as everlasting and immutable when it isn't in any other art form - there are 'great' authors who aren't read anymore, 'great' composers whose works are rarely performed now, 'great' film directors whose films are largely forgotten. Who would have thought, in 1968, that the Velvet Underground would be considered 'canonical' ahead of, I don't know, Blood Sweat & Tears or whoever?
     
    Andrew J, Tristero, phillyal1 and 2 others like this.
  15. Brian Lux

    Brian Lux One in the Crowd

    Location:
    Placerville, CA
    Some young kid 200 years from now is going to put on Are You Experienced or Rust Never Sleeps, or Sticky Fingers, or Revolver or Who's Next or maybe even Never Mind the Bollocks and have his little mind blown forever the way mine was the first time I heard the recording my folks gave me of Leonard Bernstein's version of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Those other records are not going to go away either.
     
    Turmatic likes this.
  16. Joy-of-radio

    Joy-of-radio Forum Resident

    Location:
    Central ME
    I respectfully disagree. The records you mentioned are already irrelevant for the most part. Sure, a scant few might dig them up if they're still available. Can you even name a dozen popular acts from just 100 years ago? It's time for boomers to get over themselves.
     
    Black Magic Woman likes this.
  17. Greenalishi

    Greenalishi Birds Aren’t Real

    Location:
    San Francisco
    It's funny for a short period of time in ballrooms around the USA there were these real diverse bills. With crowds that appreciated and gave it up and understood all the styles together. Jazz, R&B, blues and rock all on the same bills. Where the MC5 and Sun Ra shared bills to crowds who rocked out to both. BB King and Aretha both had personal landmark experiences with mostly white crowds who loved 'em.

    This was gone real quick. Then it became much more polarized with the bills and marketing. Now you have whatever you want from any time and any style on you phone and can dig it all. Seems very democratic and open with music now. Very much like the ballrooms years ago. Young people seem to know so much of the past. The way past too. Not just what was on the radio a few years ago but the 30s and Sinatra. It's super cool i think.
     
    Joy-of-radio likes this.
  18. dubious title

    dubious title Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ontario
    Nicely said. I often think that the very many technological innovators/instrument makers never get the credit they so justly deserve for shaping and propelling popular music. It's pretty safe to say that the invention of the piano, electric guitar, fuzz pedal, synthesizer, sampler and computer have had a massive impact on the development of many genres of music.
     
    zphage likes this.
  19. seed_drill

    seed_drill Senior Member

    Location:
    Tryon, NC, USA
    Records from 100 years ago mostly didn't even list the performer and were so badly recorded as to really only remain popular with obsessives. Since the 1930s, and particularly since the advent of magnetic tape, we have been able to document our artists in reasonable fidelity, and the cream of the crop continues to attract the musically curious to this day. So while John Phillip Sousa may the only person the average Joe can name from 100+ years ago, almost anyone on this forum can name a dozen artists from the 1930s or 1940s.
     
  20. Sear

    Sear Dad rocker

    Location:
    Tarragona (Spain)
    In my world, Hendrix and specially Love are miles ahead of Jefferson Airplane.

    And I like Jefferson Airplane
     
  21. MarkTWIC

    MarkTWIC Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Bradford
    Now you can investigate music to your hearts content. For the most part if you see an artist mentioned you can investigate them. We have at least 60 years of well recorded music out there. You're not stuck with the few records you can afford or the radio anymore. It's bound to make a difference.

    And surely here of all places we know that there is high quality music that didn't sell well at the time for whatever reason and that the established lists of "best" albums have a lot of hoary old chestnuts on them. Heck even hard core Beatles fans can't agree on the merits of Sgt Pepper.

    I've investigated all sorts of interesting music that's new to me in the last year. JJ Cale, Gene Clark, Alain Toussaint for instance. I am also listening (and going to see) a couple of new bands. It's nice to see a band that's "happening" now it's somehow more immediate and exciting, even if they're not objectively as good as some older music. You can never hear it all.

    If everything is new to you you're bound to have a different view to those who "grew up" with the music. Some classics of the past may just not resonate anymore and that's surely just fine. Also some stuff that was perhaps unjustly neglected is "discovered". It's nice to discover things.
     
    Grant likes this.
  22. Stencil

    Stencil Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lockport, IL
    Its finished because that list was compiled almost 50 years ago. Its like someone talking in 1970 about how those wax cylinders are getting obsolete these days.
     
  23. "canon"...words like those are for professional critics and academics. Popular music is arguably not much of a field of concentration for academics- particularly since the people teaching those courses are quite often musically illiterate, so they make the songs all about the lyrics, performance trappings, ephemera, and subjective speculations-pontifications on "cultural impact." Reducing music to the features most friendly to verbality. But music is more than a matter of talk. And treating it as though it is smacks of cluelessness, if not a power move to enclose the achievement and elevate the status of arts criticism to that of the creation of art.

    At any rate, neither professional critics or academics have any business imagining that they should be serving as arbiters of public taste on the topic of recorded music, which is both vast and relatively new. What really deserves to be finished is the pretension that they fulfill that function.

    Criticism has its place. But critics ought to acknowledge the limits of the form. Anyone imagining that they're playing some vital role in compiling a "canon of contemporary popular music" has had too much to think. To the extent that it happens, it's a much more inchoate process. Musical professionals have- or at least deserve- more of a voice in the evaluation of music than audience members, and most critics are just audience members who can turn a phrase. Above all, time is the ultimate test. Measured in decades, not years. It remains to be seen how many pieces of music from the past ten years will still be considered worth listening to in another ten years. It's also worth noting that the "industries" involved in purveying pop music product do not care about that consideration at all; it arguably gets in the way of their business model, which is entirely about maximizing numbers in the shortest time frame possible. Disposability and dispensability serve that goal much more effectively.
     
    Last edited: Oct 25, 2018
  24. Ron2112

    Ron2112 Forum Resident

    The RYM "Best Ever List" is exactly what I'm talking about. The algorithm you cited put Radiohead's entire catalog in the Top 20, before anything from Led Zeppelin. Insofar as the article the OP cites appears to be based on this list in refuting "canon", it seems to me that the entire premise of the article is hosed.
     
    Hermes likes this.
  25. MarkTWIC

    MarkTWIC Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Bradford
    The kind of writers you're talking should be the guy (or gal) who suggests music you wouldn't otherwise listen to. I judge them on how well they manage that job for me.
     
    Panama Hotel and troggy like this.
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