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really cool read...
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| ~*Stereohead*~ |
Okay, it doesn't ALL suck.
In fact, there is really great stuff out there. But you have to dig for it. And frankly, as much as I love a lot of discs/songs I've bought over the last decade or two, I'm not sure how much of it I'll be listening to, let alone, remembering, in another decade or so.
This is not an uncommon opinion. I've seen a bunch of articles on the web, in mags, dealing with this same question. And you hear a lot of people express the point of view - young and old - that there has been a serious decline in quality of tunes. When you look at the charts, the issue becomes starkly clear.
For instance, take a look at the he top sellers of 2006:
1. High School Musical, A Disney TV show soundtrack
2. Me and My Gang, Rascal Flatts,
3. Some Hearts, Carrie Underwood,
4. All the Right Reasons, Nickelback,
5. Futuresex/Love, Justin Timberlake,
6. Back to Bedlam, James Blunt
7. B'day, Beyoncé,
8. Hannah Montana, Soundtrack ,
9. Taking the Long Way, Dixie Chicks
10. Extreme Behavior, Hinder.
Now lets look at the top sellers in 1968:
1. Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced?
2. The Graduate, Simon & Garfunkel
3. Disraeli Gears, the Cream
4. Magical Mystery Tour, the Beatles
5. Waiting for the Sun, The Doors
6. The Who Sell Out, The Who
7. Bayou Country, Credence Clearwater Revival
8. Music from Big Pink, The Band,
9. Beggars Banquet, The Rolling Stones
10. Cheap Thrills, Big Brother & Holding Company (w/Janis Joplin)
I mean how real does that make it? Rascal Flatts? Will you even know in a decade if they were a band or town in Arkansas? Do you now?
When you look at the chart for 1968 its pretty obvious that Justin Timberhead needs to head back to the Disney Channel.
The current top 5 disks in the Summer of 2007 are:
1. T-Pain - Epiphany
2. Fabulous - From Nothin’ to Somethin’
3. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
4. RiHanna featuring Jay Z - Umbrella
5. DJ Khaled - We The Best
Flash back to 1969 and its like a completely different universe.
1. Abbey Road -Beatles
2. Three Dog Night
3. Led Zeppelin
4. Tommy - The Who
5. Blind Faith
6. Let it Bleed Rolling Stones
7. Nashville Skyline - Bob Dylan
8. Johnny Cash at San Quentin
9. Crosby, Stills & Nash
10. Blood Sweat & Tears
11. In the Court Of the Crimson King - King Crimson
12. Kick Out The Jams - MC-5
13. The Allman Brothers Band (Debut)
The 2007 list you might as well be reading out of a phone book. I get pain just thinking of T. Is Fabulous really fabulous? And if he is, wouldn't he just show it rather then feel the need to advertise it? The only amazing thing in that current list is that Paul McCartney, after almost 40 years in the charts. is holding his own against kids. That's great but it tells you something when a 65 year old vet is holding down the #3 spot.
The 1969 list is so abundant in riches its embarrassing to think it could all have come at the same time. Abbey Road has been the template for pop music for almost 40 years. The first Zep signaled a shift in how hard hard really is, and still rocks as well as anything created since. Tommy created a whole new genre - the rock opera - and still dazzles. Blind Faith was arguably the first super group.
The MC5 helped create punk, it just took the most of the rest of the US four decades to catch up. In four decades lets hope DJ Khaled learns that a sentence requires a verb. And somehow I don't think we'll remember that He Best.
Even into the 70s the wealth of original, provocative music or even merely excellent craftsmanship, was abundant. How did the overflowing well dry up so quick?
The top 5 albums of 2005 were:
- Mariah Carey - The Emancipation of Mimi
- 50 Cent - The Massacre
- Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway
- Green Day - American Idiot
- The Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business
A list of some of the top albums of 1975 is astounding in its quality, diversity, and sheer imagination.
-Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
- Still Crazy After All These Years - Paul Simon
- Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
- Physical Graffiti - Led Zeppelin
- Katy Lied - Steely Dan
- Siren- Roxy Music
- A Night At The Opera - Queen
- Another Green World - Brian Eno
- Young Americans - David Bowie
- Mothership Connection - Parliament
- Live! - Bob Marley and the Wailers
- 10 cc - The Original Soundtrack
- Captain Fantastic - Elton John
- One of these Nights - The Eagles
- Slow Dazzle - John Cale
- Blow By Blow - Jeff Beck
- That’s the Way of the World - Earth Wind And Fire
- Radioaktivität - Kraftwerk
You could easily argue that Parliament is the foundation for urban black music of new millennium (you would be wrong - if you neglected to mention James Brown and Sly Stone - but you COULD argue it). The bass player of Pink Floyd, without any other members, can sell out arenas doing Wish You Were Here 30 years after its release. Bob Marley is likely the most influential artist of the modern era on a global scale.
50 cent? You can't even buy anything at the dollar store with him. And why do I need to listen to a disk called Massacre when I can watch a new one daily on the news? Green Day are a nice little band but lets face it - they're basically duplicating bands that came three decades earlier (Ramones, Buzzcocks). Without Kraftwerk, what is electronica?
Don't get me wrong, there are Green Day songs I love, and they blew me away at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame (doing a Ramones medley). And like I said, there are certainly plenty of artists doing great stuff that just doesn't make it to the charts. But really, you'd have to be severely medicated to miss the point just by looking at these lists. So what happened?
Part of it is certainly the complete take over of the culture by mass marketing to sub teens. Their sophistication level is well below the average listeners of earlier decades who were older. It brings everything to pre -adolescent grinding halt.
And in my opinion, subject matter is less interesting, and dealt with less depth or finesse. Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me? No, not if she was as stupid and moronically boring as you.
Another part of the problem is that with the proliferation of home recording equipment, and the onset of the free music all the time era, there is just way too much stuff out there.
There are not enough creative people to create art that is worthy of repeated listening, that speaks to something deeper inside of you. If there were, everyone would be an artist instead of just thinking they are.
So as the marketplace is flooded with overwhelmingly bad product, our ears get used to it and we start to think its good. We lose sense of quality. And before long we lose people able to remind us of what that lost quality actually was to begin with.
Nowadays being a rock star is a career choice, like policeman, engineer, porn star. Everyone can and does do it. But practically none of them do it well.
But probably the base reason for the quality crash may be simple: people just don't know how to do it right anymore.
Craftsmanship is a lost art in this country. In all things, but in terms of this article, a lost art in music making.
The craft of writing a well structured song, with meaningful lyrics, doesn't come from watching MTV or listening to Green Day and 50 Cent. The guys who did it well, who filled the charts 30-40 years ago, did it by digging into the history of popular music and discovering its roots. They became one with those roots and followed them to the next generation of artists and on to the next. And by stripping each song down to both its emotional and technical craft essence they got to the heart of the matter. And as with all things, when you truly understand the heart, all things are knowable.
Most music today is made by people who don't care about the craft, or the history of the art, or even about creating something lasting.
Artists of the last era chose to validate their experience by expressing their pain and longing in song and through that medium finding catharsis and redemption.
Music makers of today also seek to be validated. Most seek to validate shallow empty lives by being famous, making lots of cash, and having a stripper as a girlfriend. And rather then seeking catharsis and redemption they largely choose to wallow in adolescent angst and depression as if sitting in a poop filled diaper was the high point of potty training.
And we're all to blame. We don't stand up and say "Dude, you, and your pants, are full of s**t." So why should we be surprised when most of what we hear has a distinct sound and odor of brown excrement?
Maybe cause we're full of it, too.
-Unknown...but if someone knows, please tell me who this is! |
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| corjay9 |
| quote: | Originally posted by ~*Stereohead*~
huh? |
too long; didn't read
I started reading this on your fb, it kept on saying 'read more' and 'read more' and 'read more' lol.. I'm gonna finish it eventually. |
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| Dj Nacht |
| I'm proud to say that I never willingly listened to the radio or the tv to learn about music. I'm constantly frowned upon for my view on music but reading this makes me feel less like an outcast. Our standards of music have gone pathetically low. |
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| ~*Stereohead*~ |
| quote: | Originally posted by corjay9
too long; didn't read
I started reading this on your fb, it kept on saying 'read more' and 'read more' and 'read more' lol.. I'm gonna finish it eventually. |
hehe it is long...worth finishing :) |
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