General Music Chat

I don't see a cultural revolution like what happened in the 60s happening for quite a long time. The citizens of Rome are far too happy with their bread and circuses.

I agree with that analogy. We've just substituted football stadiums for the spectacles put on in the Roman Colosseum. And there is certainly a great deal of apathy in today's youth, whether from video games desensitizing them or whatever else it may be. But the 20's were a time of freewheeling nature, and then prohibition and the stock market crash tamed that, then the 60's "love the one you're with" anthem, then the corporate takeovers of the 80's. I don't know. The 60's were a unique time, but whenever society begins to destroy itself, it seems it pulls the reins back only to repeat the cycle at some later time.

It seems though that good and bad often go hand in hand. You will hear one generation talk about how much better things were in the 50's and I tell them "Not for blacks it wasn't" and they often reply "Even they could leave their doors unlocked back then!" and I reply "Yeah, and they could walk outside their unlocked doors and maybe find cousin Charles hanging in a tree, because he had a tryst with some white woman, who when caught, claimed rape"

Wasn't a better time for women either. They lived a life of servitude in silence, in many ways, and were looked down upon for pursuing personal goals, like careers.

So maybe "revolution" is really an ever continuing process called "evolution"?

The 60's were not some glorious time never to be repeated. It was full of ideas and ideals but also of chaos and uncertainty. Every decade has it's pros and cons. The goal of peace perhaps promoted hopeful music, and perhaps the apathy you spoke of promotes the generally dark and cynical nature of the airwaves today. People get tired of it after awhile, and you will hear something different take hold.

Apathy? Yeah I don't care..LOL

Chaos means, "You never have to say you are sorry".

The 60's was driven by the new thinking that came with drugs, MJ, LSD, MDA etc, coming out of the closet and becoming main stream recreation drugs for the new generation of teens and 20 somethings.

This broke all the rules as far as how us kids thought. Gone was the "Leave it to Beaver" thinking and attitudes that had persisted from before the turn of the century. With this new thinking, new attitudes on sex, music, race, having fun, how we lived, etc change ... and with that came the attitude of free ... free love free music, concerts, free drugs or really cheap. The music had broke out of our parents Big Band swing in 50's to Rock & Roll and set the stage for the Acid Rock era of the mid 60's to early 70's, this is the period that things really took off.

In the mid to late 60's I play in 4 different bands and we played about 4 to 5 outdoor festivals for free, each year, just because it was such a kick being involved in this movement, there was a real buzz ... probably had allot to do with the amount of drugs we were doing at the time ..... and playing on

We played clubs to make money to live and there were allot of clubs, at that time that paid well. Bar's in Canada at this time couldn't have live music, so the clubs had to have something to attract people so it was bands and we had to be in the union too, so we had a pay scale.

As we all know this all blewup around 73 and we all had to get real and get a job ... the free era was all but gone.

After 73 bar's were allowed to have live music ... clubs and cabaret started to decrease in numbers, because they couldn't compete with the bars and the clubs left stand brought in Disco .... and live music and making a desent living off it declined until by the early 80's when it was all but impossible to get a live gig. Drugs also went from recreation, LSD, peyote, psychedelic to hard core, Coke, PCP, bad MDA, Heroin as main stream ...

I feel that because of the restrictive attitudes in the 40's and 50's (R&R is devil music) place on us kids, that when the drug culture hit in the 60's the whole generation was ready to go with it.... it one of those times that you had to be there to really appreciate the changes that were going on ... I'm glad that I was there to participate.

Today it's all about the "money" in this industry and I don't mean money for US, I mean money that the industry can make off your hard work and talent ...but talent ...they can buy talent to help you get to the top if you are marketable the more marketable you are the higher you will go.

Ron

Today it's all about the "money" in this industry and I don't mean money for US, I mean money that the industry can make off your hard work and talent ...but talent ...they can buy talent to help you get to the top if you are marketable the more marketable you are the higher you will go.

Ron

That's the main point - when they make a "star" they have a pool of true talent to draw upon from songwriters to producers to session and concert musicians. The trick is that when people see the Madonna like figure and hear the catchy tunes, the slick studio production, the flashy pyrotechnics and the rest, they assume its all "The Star"'s doing. The same sort of dynamic happens when you have a president have a team of speech writers. Most of the time the words that so eloquently (well not in Bush's case) flow from their podium pounding speeches aren't even theirs.

A star is born. Er, MADE.