General Music Chat

When I was young, I remember my father saying bad hings about the "new" music. Actually, it was in the `80`s so I can`t say that I disagreed. The thing is, I don`t want to be some old fart saying the same negative things about new music but COME ON! Is there something wrong with being honest?? What is going on? Rapping country singers, whining pop stars, terrible vocalists in country who are there simply due to their looks???

I love music of all types. I am a fan of at least a few artists within each genre and many of the types within each genre but I gotta say,...todays music is crap!..with a capital C. The best music is never played on the radio. Bands such as Gov`t Mule, The Derek Trucks Band, Joe Bonamaso, along with many others have music that is far superior to the BS heard on the radio daily so how can we fix it? American Idol is the newest attack on our music. I believe that teenie bopper girls are controlling the market with their cell phones. I was thinking of starting some kind of thing to push what I and many others consider to be the best music out to the public. There has to be a way.

Has anyone got any ideas/? Any ideas will be useful.[/b]

" I believe that teenie bopper girls are controlling the market with their cell phones. "

Look up what happened to country music as it was. To be brief, one company owned most of the radio stations playing country music. Crest, if I remember correctly, was their main sponsor. When they found that they were not selling enough "White strips" to teenage girls, they demanded that the stations begin playing music that would attract them, as they was the white strips market target. Thus the death of country music.

If you do a Google search, you will find that information. I believe that the NY Times had a big article about it when it happened. So it was the suits that changed what we hear called "Country Music" which is now mainly bad early rock with cheesy lyrics. Here are a couple of articles that touch on the death of traditional country music.

http://www.whatzup.com/index.php?f=musi ... lue_032708

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/24/movie ... all&src=pm

If you want to hear real country artists.... go to the Indian casinos to to Branson Mo. They still book country artists.

The early days of internet radio didn't provide much of an audience so I didn't take it seriously. However, nowadays there are a glut of stations where one can make their own playlist. It is still small compared to the huge broadcast conglomerates but those days will end soon.

Broadcast radio has always been geared to teeny-bopper girls. Nothing has changed in that regard. My genre is christian and it's even cheesier and more predictable than the rock or country stations.

I live outside of their paradigm, not even a blip on their radar. They have no idea who I am but so what?

Artists can still be successful selling music and making a living and fans can still find the music they really want to hear, it's just a little more work now than turning on your car radio. It only takes one person out of every 600 to buy a CD and make it a Gold Record in the USA.

So let them ignore us....we'll ignore them and the world is a happy place.

Eugen Weber had an interesting take on music in the 18th century;

(I am paraphrasing here to the best of my memory)

people in the 18th century really had no mass communication and outside of the church no real enjoyable common experiences, and with that situation, no expression of their common view of life.
except music,
but this music could not be stored, shared or in any real way experienced except that it was performed for the largest number of people possible at any one time, so if you were not part of the collective experience, you missed it.
and the people pressed into it as way of participating in their social aspirations or misgivings as the case may be.
therefore it was honed fine, to a degree never before or after.

such i think is the case today.
we older people see music in may of the same ways as they did in the 18th century.
things were done, you had to be there or you missed it and it would never be again.
it's not as if the musicians today are not talented, in so many cases they are better, technically.

but as whole I really don't think it means to them, or especially to their audience, what it meant to us.
they have an iphone, music is just another app, just another twitter in cyberspace.

Wow, I'm liking all these posts. But, we're talking about pop music. It's 100% driven by advertising which is driven by consumption. Most of the people who participate in this forum are a little more musically knowledgable than the average consumer. I don't believe there's much we can do about it unfortunately. Just be thankful that we can choose not to listen to crap when it presents itself. It's really a shame that "music" is too often associated with "image" which has nothing to do with music.

Related to this topic I happened to pick up a copy of Spin magazine at the library the other day. It's 100% devoted to teenagers, 100% "image", nearly 100% advertising. IMO 100% bulls*it. What sells in "music" today is predominantly rank amateurs making megabucks purely by dumbass luck, better than winning the lottery.

Eugen Weber had an interesting take on music in the 18th century;

(I am paraphrasing here to the best of my memory)

people in the 18th century really had no mass communication and outside of the church no real enjoyable common experiences, and with that situation, no expression of their common view of life.
except music,
but this music could not be stored, shared or in any real way experienced except that it was performed for the largest number of people possible at any one time, so if you were not part of the collective experience, you missed it.
and the people pressed into it as way of participating in their social aspirations or misgivings as the case may be.
therefore it was honed fine, to a degree never before or after.

such i think is the case today.
we older people see music in may of the same ways as they did in the 18th century.
things were done, you had to be there or you missed it and it would never be again.
it's not as if the musicians today are not talented, in so many cases they are better, technically.

but as whole I really don't think it means to them, or especially to their audience, what it meant to us.
they have an iphone, music is just another app, just another twitter in cyberspace.

Yep Totally agree with this... Well stated... The parallel of collective experience today has been reduced to twittering. Its a shame:

...Your finger...presses in your cell-phone,
while your cell-phone presses in your ear.
Did you notice....me, sitting here...?

- Bench For Two

Play your own music.
If you don't have your own, pray and work to develop it.

Pray there is something good about it.
Pray there is something different about it.
Pray that someone likes it besides you.
Pray that someone else notices the music that can do something about it.

And after all that just enjoy yourself as you play or you'll surely go mad.

It's a pressure cooker and you're what's for dinner.

"Luck always trumps skill but skill is what breeds consistency".
"If you are going to play with the big boys, you need to be consistent".
The ideal situation is a little of both.

Real life has less rules in R/T and fortune favors the bold..
Always be able to adjust on the fly to come off smelling like a rose.
Diplomacy is not over-rated either, just extremely useful and widely underutilized.

Eugen Weber had an interesting take on music in the 18th century;

(I am paraphrasing here to the best of my memory)

people in the 18th century really had no mass communication and outside of the church no real enjoyable common experiences, and with that situation, no expression of their common view of life.
except music,
but this music could not be stored, shared or in any real way experienced except that it was performed for the largest number of people possible at any one time, so if you were not part of the collective experience, you missed it.
and the people pressed into it as way of participating in their social aspirations or misgivings as the case may be.
therefore it was honed fine, to a degree never before or after.

such i think is the case today.
we older people see music in may of the same ways as they did in the 18th century.
things were done, you had to be there or you missed it and it would never be again.
it's not as if the musicians today are not talented, in so many cases they are better, technically.

but as whole I really don't think it means to them, or especially to their audience, what it meant to us.
they have an iphone, music is just another app, just another twitter in cyberspace.

Yep Totally agree with this... Well stated... The parallel of collective experience today has been reduced to twittering. Its a shame:

...Your finger...presses in your cell-phone,
while your cell-phone presses in your ear.
Did you notice....me, sitting here...?

- Bench For Two

well count yourself lucky to be able to condense these things to verse.
if I could, my songs might have words as well.

JERICHO MARCH

Your the only one who can make it happen.

I disagree I like some of today's music,
the sh#t my kids listen to, is some good
rocking music. I never thought I'd say this
I like System of a Down, Serj can sing. I
like Avenged Sevenfold, and the new one my
boy's band has been playing Coheed and Cambria,
I think is who they said they'd been playing.

Great music is out there if you look for it.