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Discussion Starter · #1 ·
OK, I noticed lately that modern music is falling out of favour of young people. I'd probably be a great judge of this, since I'm a young person aged 18, who has many young friends.

Amongst my friends, very few of them listen to music which was made within the last 5 years. Almost all of my friends now listen to led zeppelin, and i find myself compelled not to listen to the modern music that there is on offer, and going for classics like guns n roses and dire straits. And in the UK, alternative music channel MTV2 has steeped up a bit on playing oldies. It used to be that you'd get a token AC/DC video every once in a while, but a couple of days ago, my litte bro was watching and they had led zeppelin and jimi hendrix on.

I was listening to a bbc radio 1 show about music and the way it is today, and one of the guys said that music goes around in cycles, and we're in teh dark ages right now. He stated that if modern music were food, it would probably be fast food, and that the older stuff would be more substantial, and it dealt with the whole issue of today's kids turning to old music rather than new music.

We need to face a few simple facts when we look at music pre 1995 and post 1995:

Metallica: These are the yardstick used to measure heavy music, as some people say. St. Anger is trash. You wouldn't believe this was from the same people who brought us the astounding master of puppets.

Music with a message: In the politically charged times of today, most music always has a message to it. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, since some great songs have arisen from politics. the truth is though, that audioslave will never be as good as rage against the machine or soundgarden. And when you have people like madonna trying to put politics into music, it's cringeworthy.

Conformity: Too many bands produce the same old crap these days, and don't want to deviate and find new ways of making music

Deviation: The bands that do deviate end up going too far. No doubt has gone from bein ga great ska band to a crappy hip hop act. And radiohead's kid A and amnesiac albums are the kid that you'd use as coasters.

Rap-metal: New rock music has turntables and rapping. Where were the good ol' days when rock was all about getting "guitars" and turning the amps up to 11. Now it's about having some turntable guy and the guitars are just there.

Guitars: Paul Reed Smith guitars and warwick basses. used by everyone nowadays. They sound good, but the point is that all music today has the same tonal qualities because they use the same instruments. It's a tiny thing, but I like to think that the best times are when half of the musicians opt for single coil pickup guitars (i.e. Ritchie Sambora) and the other half go for twin coil humbuckers. (Slash-style!) You get a real difference.

MTV: There was a time when MTV used to play "videos" i forget how long ago this was

Money: Music is no longer about expression. its about money. Radios and MTV get paid a lot to play music that the record execs want you to hear.

Hip hop/rap: I can remember when hip hop was great. De la soul, and sugar hill gang. Great hip hop. None of this gangsta crap. Now every rap group there is has to mention drive bys and bling bling. The only positive movement in rap music as of lately is eminem ditching dr dre as his producer, so he can produce the music he wants to. Bring back all the old hip hop. It was so much better.

Pop music: The rise of manufactured music has ruined music for everyone. It's pretty much the only thing you get on most commercial radio these days.

All my friends seem to have ditched modern music in favour of old music. Instead of listening to commercial stuff, we all listen to century FM (It's a northern english radio station where you're only one song away from the eighties) Instead of watching MTV when i can't sleep, i'm watching VH1 classic. And instead of seeking the latest band du jour, I'm looking through my dad's CD collection. I know i'm not the only one.
 

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Quote:
Originally posted by Loki



Hip hop/rap: I can remember when hip hop was great. De la soul, and sugar hill gang. Great hip hop. None of this gangsta crap. Now every rap group there is has to mention drive bys and bling bling. The only positive movement in rap music as of lately is eminem ditching dr dre as his producer, so he can produce the music he wants to. Bring back all the old hip hop. It was so much better.

Actually, hip hop is a lot more diverse currently than you believe. Yes, a lot of bling bling, little lighter on the drive-bys now. Fact is , hip hop is a lot about the view of life in urban environments. Even the "gangsta" rappers have lighter stuff about everyday life in the 'hood.

Did Eminem ditch Dre? I didn't think so. Seems they still work together some, and the plan always was for Em to do some of his own producing. Dre is still one of the top producers in the game. Cna't think of anyone I would put over him. Oh, and Em has plenty of "gangsta" flava - check out what he produced with D12. Don't front as if Dre made Em doing anything he didn't want to do - he got cred in the business from Dre, but the nutty **** is his.
 

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Discussion Starter · #6 ·
I consider classic music to be anything over 5 years old. Most people would define it as anything before 1990. I think that up until the mid-nineties, it was a golden age in music, and what I'm saying is that most peopel i know of are abandoning the crap that gets spoon fed by MTV in favour of music Pre-1995

Guns N roses may be quite modern. They're still going, but alas, they don't have Slash. I'm talking baout the guns N roses who made appetite for destruction. It may only be 15 years ago, but it's old enough in my books. I was only 3 years old then!

You gotta remember that I'm a real young guy, so what's old to me might be new to you!

Thanks for clarifying Tame. I'm not a big fan of hip hop, but the aggressive perception of much of the music is what puts me off all the gangsta rap. And hip hop, rap and r&b isn't really my scene anyway.

Mind you, not all new music is bad. The new chili peppers material is slightly deviant in regards to their past work, and the new jane's addiction song is pretty cool. And there are great bands around like coldplay, so I guess there is some great new music, but it seems to get overshadowed by crap, in my opinion.
 

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Heh, I consider "classic rock" to be that of the 70's


Interesting to me is that what was considered as light rock in the 70's (Fleetwood Mac, Steve Miller Band, Linda Rondstadt, etc) is basically "new country" today and played on Country Music stations.
 

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Robert I've noticed that as well. Mrs. Bank sometimes has that country tv station on while she cleans house and stuff and there was a band on there a couple of weeks ago playing live that did a Boston/Edgar Winter medley. Go figure . . . .
 

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Originally posted by Robert

Heh, I consider "classic rock" to be that of the 70's


Yeah, talk about lack of perspective! Heck, I remember when I was a teenager and everyone complained about Metallica as popified metal, the demise of the good protest song, the problems of selling out, why Madonna sucks and how everything always sounds the same.

My musical tastes must be positively antideluvian. After all, I prefer the original 1929 "When the Levee Breaks" (performed by one of the best guitar players in history) to the Zepplin cover.
 

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A good protest song... hehe... that'd make a good thread on its own. I'd give the nod to Arlo Gurthrie's Alice's Restaurant as the best one ever... though admittedly I also thought Neil Young's This Note's For You was a great sarcastic jab at all the pop stars doing corporate commercials:

Ain't Singing for Pepsi, Ain't Singing for Coke

I don't sing for nobody, Makes me look like a joke
 

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#1) classic rock is NOT from 5 years ago - it is from the 60' (Starting with The Beatles and the Stones, Greatful Dead, Little Feat, etc), up until about the beginning of the 80's. Once the war between rock and disco died and New Wave came along, everything changed (remember Tina Turner before Thunder Dome, and Ziggy Stardust vs. David Bowie?).

#2) I remember long before there WAS MTV. The big deal was to sit around and puff on a joint (optional) and listen to Yes and The Who. Looking at lava lights, and neon posters under black lights was the entertainment. We got into the music inside of our heads because there was nothing on the TV telling you the story.

You COULD say that classic rock started with Elvis, but, truthfully, it was the hippies and the Woodstock years that brough about true classic rock. The 70's were when the first metal bands started coming around.

It's very strange for us that are products of those generations to hear you refer to "classic rock" as the 80's.

Also, don't forget that "classic pop" came out of those years, too. Stevie Wonder's, "Songs in the Key of Life", as well as music by Rufus, The Bee Gees, Change, Fleetwood Mac, Barry Manilow and Barbara Streisand, to name just a few, put "pop" music out there on the AM radio, long before Madonna and all FM hit the scene.

If you are really interested in learning about true classic rock, then you need to listen to some Yes, some Who, some Boston, some Aerosmith, etc. You need to bone up on some true soul music, like Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner (with or without Ike), Chaka Khan (with or without Rufus), etc.

If you do that, you will find the basic flavors that were the foundation of all that you now call, "classic".
 

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Quote:
Originally posted by Robert

A good protest song... hehe... that'd make a good thread on its own. I'd give the nod to Arlo Gurthrie's Alice's Restaurant as the best one ever... though admittedly I also thought Neil Young's This Note's For You was a great sarcastic jab at all the pop stars doing corporate commercials:

Ain't Singing for Pepsi, Ain't Singing for Coke

Ain't singing for no one, Makes you look like a joke
Good one. Ronnie Reagan inspired a nice number of them on both sides of the Atlantic some good (Sting's "Russians" and Kate Bush's "Breathe") and some quite miserable ("99 Red Baloons" anybody?)

I guess when was MTV or commercial radio ever the cutting edge of good music? Zappa was lamenting the incompatibility of good music and good radio 20 years ago. Most of the better bands of the 70s and 80s built their audience on word of mouth and only later got radio play when they became classic or commercial. (I never heard Genesis with Peter Gabriel until he went solo.) If you want to hear the good stuff about the only syndicated show that will play it is Little Steven's Underground Garage (http://www.littlesteven.com). If that dosn't work you are best off finding a college or listner supported station with an audio stream such as kexp (http://www.kexp.org).
 

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Discussion Starter · #13 ·
Classic rock in terms of the 80's is pretty much the way the MTV generation (i.e. me) views it. The stuff from the 60's and 70's is obviously what classic rock really is, but I'd say that rock kinda cam back momentarily suring the 80's, (Edit: Albeit in adifferent form) possibly due to the rise of MTV, and this is pretty much what defines my generation as being classic, I dunno.

Mind you, I can't really turn back nad remember a time when music was promoted by word of mouth rather than radio or MTV. MTV has been around longer than I have.
 

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Loki - I think what is being pointed out to you is that each generation in the last few decades has the tendency to look at the music befor it as "classic", gripe about the current pop scene, and think things were oh, so much better before.

They weren't. A large number of us in the 80s thought they sucked, along with a bug chunk of the 70s. Those in the 70s were nostalgic for the 60s, etc.
 

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Quote:
Originally posted by kirkjobsluder

If you want to hear the good stuff about the only syndicated show that will play it is Little Steven's Underground Garage (http://www.littlesteven.com). If that dosn't work you are best off finding a college or listner supported station with an audio stream such as kexp (http://www.kexp.org).
Little Steven!!! My hero!!
 

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Discussion Starter · #16 ·
oh crap, I guess i'm just growing old then.

So what you're syaing is that in ten years, all the teenagers will seek solstice in music like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park?

I pray that this day will never come!
 

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I agree and disagree.

I do think that as you get older you like what you liked when you were a teenager etc and think it's the best era along with a few years gone by but I do think the music today is pretty bad overall. There are some good bands around but I think the music industry/radio stations etc have killed off "real music" That's no secret though of course.
 

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Originally posted by Tofu

I agree and disagree.

I do think that as you get older you like what you liked when you were a teenager etc and think it's the best era along with a few years gone by but I do think the music today is pretty bad overall. There are some good bands around but I think the music industry/radio stations etc have killed off "real music" That's no secret though of course.
I also think that time and the market weeds out the worst songs and performers from our memory. Duran Duran stopped being "cool" and became "novelty". Anybody really listen to Debbie Gibson, Whitesnake, or Bon Jovi anymore except for the nostalgia value?

But I really don't see this as anything new. Radio and television has always been very conservative in its musical tastes relying on commercial exploitation of other styles. Take a look at the history of Rock and Roll some time. Elvis was brought forward as a rock icon because he was white enough to be acceptable and scandalous enough to pull ratings while doing very little that had not been done by ballsier blues performers in the 1930s. (Compare Elvis Presley's "Mystery Train" http://www.lyricsdepot.com/elvis-pre...ery-train.html to Memphis Minnies 1934 "Chicksaw Train Blues" http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStre...nni.htm#New343 . But I have a particular fondness for Minnie as not only one of the best lyricists of the genre but one of the best guitar players in history as well.) Jazz was repackaged into the big band sounds.

Yeah the 60s had psychedelic rock, Hendirx, Clapton, Joplin, and the Beatles, but it was also the age of melodramatic manufactured girl bands, bubblegum surf music and tons of novelty songs.
 

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Old music rox! I am in love with the 80's! One of my fav bands is REM and the "newest" album I have from them is Automatic for the People. I would rather listen to their stuff from 15 years ago. Like old school Mode or Bauhaus or Cure......
 

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Well yes! Plenty people still listen to Bon Jovi! They have an enormous fan base. They are not a nostalgic band that say the Durans are.

It was not really just my point of view about todays media and the way it operates. It was much more factual than that. Sad but true. Anyone here remember BBC Radio 1 a few years back? They played all eras of rock music. The younger people of today do not have that opportunity on main stream national radio that was meant for young people to listen to. Radio 2 does a pretty good job these days and I do know that a lot of younger people do listen to that so I'm with Loki with what he said on that score. Point being that Radio 2 is not "meant" for young people but yet they are listening.

As for Elvis, he was born to rock and roll!
He had so much talent that he did not need manufacturing. It is not what he sung but how he sang it, big difference. He showed white people the blues because he loved the blues. Elvis was the bridge.

Elvis lives people!
 
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