The B12 (XII) Forum, home of the 'Front Porch, y'all' at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

the 50s were better than the 60s in my mind

I'd rather have been born in 52 than 62

Whats neat is when your children discover the music you grew up with

In my case late 50s and most of 60s

My daughter would say dad I love this song have you ever heard it

and its Pipeline by the Chantays

yes dear Im familiar with it

this sums that up:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK6ThO8HT0E

great tune... cliff notes:  he is suggesting music is dead except for those seeking commercial success with 'songs that sell'.  he'd be wrong, of course, as the 'red dirt' or 'Americana' is gaining steam!!!

here are a couple of good ones: 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOeSwMKYQH4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYdvxBxHX2U

makin' those tunes because that's what they want to do- the commercial success seemingly secondary.  

I guess if we're talking about music, I hate a lot of that now too.  

I was never big into Taylor Swift, but I was familiar enough to know she wrote harmless pop-country songs and made music that I did not hate.  

The other day someone asked me if I'd heard her new(ish) single "Look What You Made Me Do."  I had not.  They asked me to youtube it so I could see how much I'd hate it.  In addition to the video being kinda disturbing, they were right....it's not just that the song sucks, it's that it's hard to call it a song.  

Every generation has claimed to not understand the next generation's music, and that it all sounds like a bunch of wailing cats.  I'm well aware I may be the newest member in a long tradition.  On the other hand, I feel that this time it IS different, because previously what parents and grandparents were really saying was "I'm not familiar with the chord progressions from the bass, guitar, and piano in your music, and the drums are louder and more spastic than I've previously heard.  Also the sound effects applied to each instrument are unfamiliar and unpleasant to me."  And that pretty well applied from jazz to blues, from blues to rock, from rock to pop, the whole country lineage, etc. ad nauseum.  

But this?  There's nothing but a drum machine and no melody to speak of.  She might as well be rapping, except I have liked quite a bit of rap music, which involves some lyrical agility and usually some nice wordsmithing, all notably absent here.  There are no guitars to confuse me.  No musicianship to fail to understand.  This is but one example.  Every time I turn on the radio it's littered with "music" like this.  I already experienced one paradigm shift in music wherein I could play the codger, which was when Grunge killed the 80's.  I happened to like a lot of what I grew up with in the 80's and I never much cared for Grunge.  But I recognized it as music, certainly, and as an evolution of what had come before it.  That was my turn to be the old fart and say "This isn't music" with a condescending smirk, but knowing full well what I really meant was "I don't like this."  This stuff I'm talking about is like a weed that just sprang up.  It's an entirely different category, and because it's so unpleasant to my ears, I have a hard time calling it music.  

I feel you, and I've approached most of my music life the same way.

But yeesh, quite a bit of what I've been hearing just hurts my brain to count it as music.  If you haven't heard that T. Swift song, go check it out to see what I mean.  I wouldn't even fault anybody for liking it, but I strongly want to fault people who hear that and draw any comparison to or find any evolution from music that had.....you know.....music in it.  

Apparently I draw the line at drum machines and flatly spoken words.  

I would even keep quiet if just a real drummer had done the same thing.  At least there's some kind of instrument being played.  

I'm glad for recommendations like this to look into.  I have a hard time finding new music to enjoy these days.  For one, less of it is being made, and two, the avenues of discovery aren't what they used to be.  The latter is ironic to me considering the technology for delivery is wider and allows for more than ever.

About 10 years ago utee94 and myself were talking about record companies and the future of music.  One of his opinions were that record companies could go to hell for being the soulless bastards they are.  He wasn't wrong, and I didn't disagree with him.  And they were in the process of doing just that.  They trapped good people in horrible contracts for decades so it's hard to have sympathy for what's happened to those companies.  

The side of that coin is I was worried about several things that would result from the death of the old model, and unfortunately for me, much of it has come to fruition.  It has killed an entire industry, one I once aspired to work in, and it's undone a lot of music I enjoyed.  

There's still a ton to like, but certain types that I really, really liked are hardly done anymore and I may never hear about them when they do come out.  I always loved production, the right sort of it, anyway.  What some people call inauthentic, I called a group effort as opposed to a single artistic effort.  Somebody writes a great song, an arranger figures out how to pimp it out, musicians are hired to do more with the parts, and a producer keeps all the visions from getting too far away from each other so it stands as a coherent piece of work.  It creates something very different than the more stripped-down song you'd get with just an artist putting their music out there.  And there was room for both, and I loved both.  

But a well-produced album cost money, and money came from the record companies.  Now that they're not around, the $ for those kind of projects isn't available, and it's hard to find music that like anymore (though it is out there, in small doses).  Additionally, I used to aspire to be a session drummer--and did pick up work here and there in Austin in my former life--and of course the major hubs were the main destinations there.  Nashville is the only one left standing, and even it is not a hotbed like it used to be.  The L.A. and NYC studio scenes are dead.  Finito.  Most of my heroes I grew up wanting to be like are either stuck on the road touring or retired.  There is no living to be made as a session/studio musician anymore.  

Which means the work of guys like that appears on very few albums compared to yesteryear.  And I really miss that.  And for the music that still out there....the internet is vast, but maybe that's more of a problem than a help as far as me ever finding out about stuff.  So recommendations and scouring youtube for gems in the rubble are how I stumble on things these days.  

Mildly related--if anybody has Netflix, watch Wrecking Crew sometime.  Great stories and interviews with a core group of musicians who played on everything back in the 60's.  That crowd invented the studio musician profession, and even though people didn't know who they were, their playing inspired a ton of musicians after them.  

I’m not sure why it seems to be human nature to be critical.  Maybe I’m not wired right or something but I see no point in lamenting not having been born in an earlier time when certain things like music may have, arguably, been better.

The collection is bigger now and gets bigger as we go.  Carl Perkins is still available.  As is Glenn Miller, Jimmy Rodgers, Chopin, Strauss, Mozart, etc...

And unlike our fathers and grandfathers who had to a 600 lb record collection, we can digitally download anything on our phone.  And store thousands of songs.

Centuries of music is at our fingertips to pick and choose.  Who cares if you don’t like Taylor Swift or country music or show tunes or ragtime.  They are drops in the bucket and there’s still plenty to drink.

I listen to the stuff my dad listened to, my older brother listened to, that I listened to when I was 10, 20 and 30 and that my kids listen to.

It’s all good.  And there’s nothing like an eclectic mix.

Sometimes at my house you might hear George Strait, Public Enemy, Marroon Five, Vicente Fernandez, Tom Petty, Slim Thug, Perry Ribeiro, the Steve Miller Band, Roberta Flack and Burt Bacharach, back to back to back.

I pity da foo don’t try new stuff.