Hopefully this is appropriate. Ah...I can report our local music scene is doing great! I saw 3 bands last Friday (punk, ska) and 2 on Saturday (jazz and oldies). The younger bands take it as a point of pride to play almost exclusively original music. I'm in South Bend, Indiana. One of the bands on Friday was from Michigan City, one county over. I bought their CD and later another of their albums from Bandcamp. I had a seriously amazing night on Friday and the oldsters on Saturday were good, too. I suspect that this sort of thing is happening in every medium to large size city. If you want good new music, look locally. From my diary for Friday: "After dinner we all went to watch Vince record his fills [radio announcements]. While he was still finishing up we went to the show at Storeroom East. Kazidelicious and Marlo were the hosts and they did a few songs to open the show and did a song in between the bands. One of their songs was about liking meatballs, and another was about ‘lady time’. Hilarious. Tiger Shark Don’t Quit was pretty great. They had two guitarists working with feedback and power chords. Their bass player sang. Their drummer was a powerhouse, beating the **** out of his kit. Their songs included tricky time and key changes, generally unarticulated lyrics, and swelling guitars. I liked them! SHAM came on dressed in jammies and/or hippy wear. They completely revised their set with new songs. They soundchecked with “Sunny” [not a cover]. They opened with a new “SHAM” opener, and followed with a new song and then a version of “Large Marge” with a different ending. An acoustic set included a slower, clearly enunciated version of “Black Chamomile”. They did “I Made Out With Jim” and “You Suck”. They did a few more new songs and “Blair Hills”, ending with a different “SHAM” closer. A few songs in they invited the crowd to come closer, and we all did. Greatness! [their album from 2020 is on Bandcamp] The Dad Jokes totally killed it with a winning combination of Ska and Punk Rock. Their two brass players hammed it up and totally brought the party. They danced in the crowd, synchronized their moves, bounced all over the stage. Their guitar player and singer is the guy from Make South Bend, and he also was in good form. The dancing started with some energetic skankers, and then most of SHAM started dancing, then much of the crowd, including Vince and Lilly [my kids]. Everybody roared approval between songs. [Dad Jokes have several albums on Bandcamp] I got a chance to talk to most of the musicians, who were great fun to chat with. I told the horn players the joke about the guy who liked to leave them wanting more, but unfortunately he was an anesthetist. I bought a CD from the singer from Tiger Shark Don’t Quit and he also gave me a cassette version of the album, which I gave to Vince who likes obsolete tech. After, Vince had to go home, but Jeff and Lilly and I went to the Hammer and Quill for a beverage. There we saw Cecil and Dee at a table in the open air. We joined them and had some great conversations. SHAM came in to drink, and we all took turns going over to talk with them. Mel said she considered coming to my birthday party. I told them that I loved their new songs and arrangements. They were at a table in the bar. Jeff went over to talk with them, and later Cecil did, as well. It was past 12:30 when we called it a night. I told Cecil that nights like this one with friends and music are what is best about summer." By the way, I still buy archival and new music from all my favorite artists. I'm 62 years old and got my first album when I was not quite 12 years old: American Pie by Don McLean, for the record, which I still have. My most recent purchase was Grateful Dead, Dave's Picks #43. I subscribe.
Obsessed with music yes. Not obsessed at all with cemetery whisperings of the musically departed though, just very interested as a musician who has been making "new music" most of my life, in this phenomenon of people focusing on music they dislke. There are plenty of fantastic musicians out there. As many as ever, a whole planet of amazing music. Just because someone cannot or will not hear excellent music does not mean it is not happening. I pay a lot of attention to these threads because I am trying to figure out what causes musical bigotry. There seems to a kind of shut off point in creative interest for most people.
This would be great! Unfortunately topics like this keep popping up at least once a week. It's like groundhog day. "I Got You Babe", indeed!
You don't hear the "air" around the instruments. Dammit, I knew there was a perfectly good reason why music sucks now.
There is a difference between a “new music sucks” thread, and a thread discussing an article which points out that people are choosing to listen to more older music and less new music.
I think we can all agree that old music doesn't suck. If by "old music" you mean nothing older than 1955 and preferably not really later than 1992, anyway. Technically 2000s is old now but I'm sorry to say that music still sucks.
The amount of "old music" will keep growing, because that's how time works. I also think the idea that younger listeners no longer care about when a song comes from is going to continue to grow, whether we're talking about Kate Bush or Fleetwood Mac or whatever. I think this will lead more to individual songs becoming popular rather than full-scale cultural renaissances for certain artists, because that's just how pop culture works now. And I certainly don't think any music will be relevant or popular forever, not even the precious Beatles. But I remember hearing something like The 1975's "Love Me" and thinking "wait, this sounds like Duran Duran" (intended as a compliment! The 1975 is great) and I feel like more and more kids may stumble on something, in whatever way they do, and it won't matter if it's from last month or 1986 as long as they like it. (And that 1975 song qualifies as "old music" now, according to the stats in these articles, so there's that)
Ha ha ha! Would have sucked back then too, but I keep on hackin away. Actually, to riff on your riff, there are lesser known players running around now who would have blown me away when I was a kid. Sarah Jarosz would have opened for Joni Mitchell, Tinariwen eould have killed the Fillmore in 69, it goes on and on. I guess that is what bugs me. There has always been tons of crap music, but we find what we like. When I go hear someone like say, Sarah Jarosz I think of all the folks who love that style of music but won't give her a chance because they don't like anything after 1979. When she is every bit as good as any eclectic folk rock of yore. Far better than many. Good new musicians need support, they need active interest to survive. It kills genres when big names from the past go supernova and collapse into black holes not allowing anyone else to to make a living at that style of music anymore. You want rock? Support new rock!
I think if some people stepped outside of this forum occasionally they might see that The Beatles actually aren't all that important any more ... full stop. I think that's what's worrying them tbh. The Beatles didn't rap. They can't claim the Beatles invented modern music before modern music did it. They didn't use autotune, traps, drops or sing R&B. They got .... nothing.
This is a bit of a ridiculous statement. Define "we" and "suck". Because I'm sorry but I love post-2000 music as much a I love pre-2000 music. So, nope, we can't agree. There's been crap music then and there's crap music now.
Again, that's how time works. It's silly to pretend like whatever you grew up with is going to be super important and relevant in the mainstream culture forever and get all offended when it doesn't. My wife and I are both in our 40's and have 20-something coworkers now who don't really know who Kurt Cobain was. It's a bit shocking at first, but then it's like, well yeah, why would someone born after, say, 1993 automatically know who he was?
Quality... There's so many ways to access music now (radio, internet, streaming, etc) there's no excuse for it being this bad.
Sounds like a headline from some cheep rag. And certainly not something to gloat about, one big factor is a lot of young people are not interested in music, full stop.
There is plenty of old music that sucks. People tend not to remember the old music that sucks because they don't listen to it because it sucks.
No. Just a simple observation mate. The musical 'big bang' was in the mid 60s - late 70s, and has slowly declined ever since. I'm not suggesting for one second that there is no good music coming from current artists, I'm simply saying that it's much rarer than ever nowadays and there's a tonne of very mediocre music being made simply for the sake of it.
