Stop saying there's no good new music!

WOW.

I've heard of her before, but am ridiculously ashamed to say this is the first time I've heard her playing. You're totally right. She's awesome and it's a damn shame she wasn't even inducted into the RnR HoF until 2007.

I'm gonna go buy all her records now!

 

She appeared on English television late in her career, and she was doubtlessly influential on players like Pete Townshend and Keith Richards. Townsend even swiped his windmill arm thing from her!

Here's a British documentary about her 1964 appearance:

Part 1:


Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

 

I've been on-air at a listener-supported station for 16 years. And I get to play whatever I want (as long as the FCC doesn't have a problem with it). And I absolutely try to clue my listeners in to what's new (I've given lots of attention to folks like Ezra Furman and Durand Jones of late, for example). Alas, we're a drop in the bucket, but we try.

I think, though, there's one aspect that it's easy to miss: Music geeks like us are content with music discovery and listening being a purely solitary kind of thing. But for many listeners who grew up in the era of platimum albums and arena shows, a lot of the experience is communal. Going to see, say, AC/DC in a stadium or knowing that there's a pretty good chance a person you meet will at least know who AC/DC is (thus giving you some common ground) is very different from being literally the only person you know who is clued into a new band, or going to see that band with the 50 other people in your town who know them.

Part of the fun of liking a hit TV show or big movie is the ability to share it with others and talk about it at parties and such. Modern music is so siloed and micro-niched that the communal aspect is gone. That may not be a problem to folks who are inclined to hang out here, but it does play a role in how many pother people view music discovery.

 

The other way music gets discovered these days is via placement on TV shows. Furman, for instance, is featured on the show Sex Education. According to one estimate, there are currently more than 500 scripted television show available to the US viewer, all of which have an insatiable need for music.

It's become such a vital part of shows that "Music Supervisor" is now actually an Emmy category.

We're probably at the other extreme, taking an inordinate amount of pride in the fact that we know about these very cool artists that the great unwashed masses have missed.

I'm 59, old enough to remember when young people would do things like hang out at a party spot, all the car radios tuned to the same station. I can't say I'm sure that that doesn't still happen, but it's not the primary method of music discovery anymore.

 

I'll stop saying... but i won't stop thinking...

 

You know we won't actually send you to Mao-style re-education camps, don't you?

 

A vast overstatement. She, however, was around doing it, along with many others, before those that get the accolades.

 

Right. I think there's a certain amount of myopia here because we're in a closed loop with other really motivated music fans who cherish the hunt of finding new music. But, because I have contact with a lot of listeners who are not that way, I have a bigger picture of how people "out there" relate to music.

We're outliers here. And if we are at times daunted by the effort to find new music that's exciting - and culturally relevant - imagine how everyone else feels.

 

I think the music industry is very much a victim of its' own success. Which sounds antithetical. Their obsession with producing more of what sells, keeps it from using the very skills and intuition that got them the results they wanted.

Along the same lines, audiences keep blaming the industry for their own support of the product they keep responding to.

And both have become too big to satisfy their own needs.

I'm with the OP, of course, there is ALWAYS enough good, new music to satisfy; we just don't know how to find it anymore, with the Powers That Be falling all over themselves trying to bring us "The Next _____".

 

I'm on a bus now, but I'll respond fully when I get back to my apartment.

 

I doubt the great majority care one way or the other. At some point in our lives a lot of us folk here on the forum became so deeply involved in music that it's become far more than just entertainment for us. We devote a fair amount of our time and cash to the pursuit of the next fabulous tune or album, be it old or new. It's so woven into the fabric of our lives that we really can't imagine day to day life without it. Most music listeners don't experience it that way.

 

To be fair, your listeners are radio listeners, a subset of music listeners. I'm a very active music fan and I haven't deliberately listened to the radio in decades.

For some of us the last - cultural relevancy - is a non sequitur, like asking whether or not a particular song is viscous.

 

Maybe I'm missing the point but it seems like those people that listen to non-mainstream radio are making an effort to hear different music. I mean it kind of seems like those are people that are that way. At least a little.

 

That was definitely the case when my wife Vickie had her radio show on KKFI-FM in Kansas City. Her listeners were people seeking music that did not get played on mainstream radio stations.

Well, that and prisoners serving time at the various state and federal institutions in Lawrence and Leavenworth Kansas. Her show featured female vocals, and those were missing in the lives of men doing time.

 

Yeah, that's the common refrain here that I've simply never understood. If I like a song, or album, or artist, it's enough for me that I like it. It's not important to me in the least if an artist whose work I like is "culturally relevant." In fact... If I'm being fully honest, I'm not sure I even understand what exactly cultural relevance is in this context.

Part of that is that even at 50, I do still have a circle of friends who I get into animated musical discussions and debates and arguments with. Rarely am I ever the only person I know into a particular artist. (If nothing else, my wife and I agree on like 90% of our musical choices, and we're willing to go along with the points of disagreement. I won't say anything when she plays Big Black or the Mothers if she won't say anything when I play Sandie Shaw or Harpers Bizarre.)

 

Same here with Vickie and myself. The only band that she likes that I can't stand is Camper van Beethoven.

As for cultural relevance, I suppose it's like when Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen were declared "the voices of their generation."

 

I'm talking about that communal aspect I referred to in an earlier post. It's about the difference in going to a party and finding a big group of folks who also saw, let's say, The Irishman vs. trying to find anyone there who's also seen the Swedish art house click you just watched on Netflix.

Having the ability to share and discuss music you discover with others (in real life, not online) may or may not be meaningful to you, but I know I find great satisfaction in that.

That's what I meant by cultural relevance.

 

Kinda, sorta. More typically, I have plenty of listeners who want to expose their favorite old songs with everyone else. Most of my requests are more along the line of "play this Rory Gallagher song because it will blow everyone's mind" tham "play something I've never heard before."

That speaks to radio's age demographic, too.

 

I'm going to be honest - 99% of the discussion about music I engage in happens here, on this forum. The rest of the time when I'm talking about things with my real-life friends, they're also giant music fanatics.

Like when my friend Michael recommended that I listen to Anna von Hausswolff - and I already had. Or I mentioned to my friend Mardi that Christopher Cross doesn't get half the respect he deserves as a guitarist, and she was already familiar with his history of jamming with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Billy Gibbons.

 

Agreed

 

Check this track out! I’m really impressed!
Superb filmclip too

 

My posts on other thread (though not really sure if members on this thread are actually looking for new music or just discussing whether or not there is any - ? - but, I'm all for music sharing & this is only partial list; if you are actually looking, check S.H. favorite albums of (insert year, 2010 + up/individual years...there are threads for each year & there's lots of entries! ):

When you find music you like, see if there's a band website & sign up for notifications. Also sign up for new music subscription services: indiemusicbus, stereogum, bandcamp, paste...the list goes on....Allmusic provides "similar artists" as well as music influences; youtube automatically gives you thumbnails based on what you've been watching/listening to. Amazon will give you a scroll of similar music to whatever you've been viewing.

Indie/Alternative R:
*Divine Fits (Britt Daniel/Spoon & Dan Boekner/Wolf Parade one-off, to date).
Miles Kane (solo career)
Johnny Marr (solo career)
Catfish And The Bottlemen
Metric
The Strypes (not to be confused w/The White Stripes)
Band of Skulls
The Struts
Royal Blood
The Blue Stones
^The Sherlocks
The Shelters (Tom Petty proteges)

Adding:
*Wolf Parade - 5th CD/LP released 1/24/20 "Thin Mind"
Post-Punk Revival

Dual singer-songwriter & guitarist of *Wolf Parade & *Divine Fits, Dan Boeckner, has 2 other side-projects, Handsome Furs; also punk-punk revival & Operators, which is more electro-synth.

Anna Calvi
Indie r./Art/Experimental
Sort of like P.J. Harvey crossed w/Siouxsie Sue & Nick Cave.
Dark/atmospheric.




Under Glass - Wolf Parade
YouTube - Handsome Furs
"Blue Wave" by Operators (Official Audio)

^Particularly recommend The Sherlocks, esp. to @blind_melon1 b/c I'd place their sound in between Sam Fender & Noel Gallagher's HFB.

The Sherlocks - I Want It All (Official Audio)

 

It’s not that there’s “no good music”, there most assuredly still is. For me, I think the issue really comes down to the absence of FM radio stations that are free to play what they want like they did back in the days of freeform formats. The artistic creativity that music programmers used to enjoy is no longer there. It’s all about commercial appeal, the lowest common musical denominator, corporate ownership/suits, etc., which makes it SEEM like there’s no more good new music. To find the good stuff anymore, a lot of great discovery can be done with streaming services these days. That’s my opinion, FWIW.

 

Beck's awesome but somebody who's been around for over 26 years, and went big during the last century, is hardly "a fairly new musician"

 

My dad literally says that. He's wrong