The best music was from the mid 60s through the early 90s.

but you have to go offshore, WAY offshore, to find it, and you have to be unpicky about language.

Stuff in the US is timid as hell because it's being run by a bunch of guys in suits with degrees in business, not fine arts. Not taking chances is how they generate the biggest profit.

Are we talking top 40? Top 40 has always been the same pap and filler. Also I have to assume that we're just talking about English music, in the United States?

Also I'm not sure if you can make a subjective call "better or worse," based om the objective data - The White Stripes are amazingly basic... but you can't tell me that they're bad.

Obviously there's a lot of subjectivity in this. If Mozart came back from the grave it would be hard to say whether he would like Sinatra or the Stones more. But you might what to check out the video that's referenced in the text. Legitimate or not, it's an interesting concept.

That media outlets suck and has absolutley nothing to do with music.

There was nothing like these guys back in the 60's

so I listened to oldies then. I like a fair amount of pop music now it now.

Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and over 37 others.

Oh. And rap and hip hop is just noise.

.... is when this group broke up.

http:

Rah rah Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen!

Same goes for Dschingis Khan. German disco just has a thing, i dunno

And Sally Shapiro is a pretty decent newer-age take on the style.

I think you might be right.

And he was completely fake, like Millie Vanillie. (sp)

Number 24 sounds like 25, which sounded like number 26.
My favs are late 60s, 70s, early 80s, some Bluegrass, some light jazz, etc.

It seems to me that "I hate rap" is much more of a reflexive opinion than it is an informed one. I thought I hated the stuff too, until I listened to it.

Thought the same about disco for that matter. Funk, dubstep, even some amount of modern pop (I love gaga, and like I said, i think beiber has talent he just doesn't use), all these reviled forms of music... are actually pretty damn good once you sit down for a listen.

In fact only two varieties of music are consistenly bad - "New age" stuff, which all sounds liek the aural version of those Lisa Frank bookcovers all the girls in elementary school had back in the day...

And modern country. I've tried on country. I've tried so hard. I discovered I love bluegrass. I love folk, and folk fusion like Robert Mirabal and the Duhks. Even old country is good - nobody hates johnny Cash, and Hank Williams, Sr. is worth a listen.

Modern country universally sounds like Nickelback, stripped of any hint of blues influence, and put in a cowboy hat. It's always the same gormless motherfucker in a button-down, using the same southern accent you only hear in country music (grew up in the south, never hard anything that sounds like that), singing the same pablum about Amurka, his dad, the girl in the shorts, and Amurka a little more. They should prescribe country music to those people with the condition that causes spontaneous orgasms, it'll cure them right up.

... though you didn't really ask me directly ... there is good rap and bad rap and rap that might be either but I can't figure it out. But it's personal taste. I don't like everything at the grocery store, but some things I love that other people hate and some things I hate that other people love.

As an art form -- and I define art as any means of communication -- it certainly seems valid.

PS, old country music is awesome.

General rule, if you're haring it on the radio, it's not the good stuff. Even that has exceptions - Tupac is Rap's Johnny Cash, literally everything he made is good. Even the stuff he made after he was killed. yeah, figure that one out, there's a trick Tolkien and Frank Herbert could have learned Speaking of Tupac's death, Biggy's stuff isn't too bad. NWA is classic, and I haven't had much to complain about from Snoop or Busta Rhymes (though I think Busta mighta been eaten by George Clinton. it would explain some things if so). Hell, DMX and eminem are both kind of jokes - they both try way, way, way too hard to be "hard" for their niche market... but there's still raw talent there (if you can't appreciate DMX's storytelling, or Eminem's ability to convey rage through lyrics, i dunno man)

But usually, you have to actually look for it. There's a huge underground hip-hop scene specifically becuase the radio stuff is autotuned party music, written to be the soundtrack of a shitty music video. A lot of independent artists like Jasiri X, Nikki Lynette, Lowkey, immortal Technique... to say nothing of foreign artists (French hip-hop is simply amazing stuff).

AUTO-TUNE MUST DIE!!

DIE!!!!!!!!!!

I rahter enjoyed cher's "Love After love" when it came out... couldn't get that vocal effect without autotune, or a similar program. However, cher used it as a tool, one enhancement in an entire bag of tricks that, in her case, happens to contain actual talent and skill.

Keep autotune. Ditch the "artists" who cling to it like Issa clings to Benghazi

I assume this is auto tune as well? Either way i love this.

And I've been exposed to basically all the greats - Rakim, EPMD, Organized Konfusion, Wu-Tang, (early) Nas, Boot Camp Clik etc.

Notice the aforementioned are all East Coast artists. I'm a lifelong Bay Area native, but honestly I don't think most West Coast rappers really compare as pure lyricists, with a few exceptions - Ice Cube, Aceyalone, Busdriver.

I guess it's that I am used to listening to actual music, not some person yelling at me with what seems to be explosions punctuating the yelling. To me music has dynamics, melody, harmony, not merely ear melting bass lines.

I stopped listening to popular music decades ago as soon as I realized that there was a substantial part of the populace that actually thinks that music means loud electric guitars, bass and drums, and next to no other. And singers with less than one octave ranges were good. And a music industry whose sole purpose is to sell people that this is all there is to music. And that louder means better, a concept I utterly reject. It just got old.

And you are right. Newage is sewage -- the two words even rhyme.

There are more than a few popular songs I can stomach and they span nearly all genres, but almost nothing from the past couple of decades when I decided that I just don't like 99% of it.

But when I want to just listen, it'll be classical music, an occasional opera (which I adore), and sometimes, jazz. I have several centuries of music to choose from, and certainly not from a commercial and ear damagingly loud monoculture. But the latter is apparently all anybody cares about. I guess that I just do not get it.

Of course, I like Bach. A lot! And Mozart. But also so many other composers, too many to name them all. I will occasionally listen to old pop stuff, but those times are kind of rare these days. I have not yet plunged into the depths of what music can do. When one limits oneself to popular music one misses out on an entire universe of what music can be.

And I really despise loud music with no dynamics, pretty much the popular music meme.

Folks like that piss me off, frankly. Especially those who dismiss the great art form of jazz.

I occasional have a night with Patsy Cline. And occasionally one with Benny Goodman.

As Duke Ellington said: If the music sounds good, it is good.

Then, there's Samuel Clemens interviewed by a reporter upon leaving a symphony concert in New York, asked how he liked the concert he responded Wagner's music isn't as bad as it sounds. (BTW, I like Wagner.)

stuck in my head! Fuck you Alan Jackson!

Oh my GOD I hate that song. Maybe more than any other song ever. It takes me back to my dad's wife loving that song while serving the most disappointing spaghetti in the world. her and her teased-up bouffant. Oh lord. WHY?!

Right, let's fix this.

Whee doggies, you nailed that one.

I have a neighbor who likes Nickelback and modern country and I hadn't consciously noticed how much they resemble each other, but yeah, they do.

Although I had noticed how bland modern country is, pop with a twang. My neighbor was saying something about a new song he liked the other day and told him it probably had a pickup truck in it and he said why yes it did.

of this.

Gets funny around 3:14.

...expand their horizons.

Just discovered MergingMoon last night, courtesy of Anthony Bourdain. Fell in love, then fell apart because I found out they broke up.

I'm notoriously slow to try new music as it is, and half the time its like years old when I 'discover' it, with so many already broken up. It's like a twisted Sisyphean nightmare!

But I do love these threads for the new things I find in them. I had heard of MergingMoon, but...not Anthony Bourdain. So now I'll have to queue up some clips just to see why he's so popular (as I saw a ton of MM clips mention him too, so he must be popular!).

Which is an awesome series overall.

Greg Milner called it the Loudness Wars of the 90's:

http://www.amazon.com/Perfecting-Sound-Forever-History-Recorded/dp/0865479380

"Autumn is a second Spring where every leaf's a flower."

access to music is easier. Music production is easier.
Much more music is produced and we all have access to so much.
And so much (to me) is bad.
I suspect there is as much if not more "good" music being made, but that there is a higher proportion of "bad" music being made, so the "good" is diluted and it seems like it isn't there.

There are no "editorial" controls on music. In some ways that's great. Like blogs, where people can say whatever they want. But then, sometimes, you miss the editorial voice and decision making of great newspaper. Or record label. Imagine trying to find Elvis in the 50s if every person with a guitar was able to make a record.

to the top, based on what you said before.
Some good music does take some time to be accepted and in the "old" days, record labels, stations, etc., as you said could push something. Now something good and new may get lost in the mess on the way up and get "stalled". I could imagine something like this happening to Elvis. He would have been so diluted that he may not have attained that threshold of screaming admirers.

You just won't find it on your Clear Channel or Entercomm channels...

When elevators actually had music.

Case in point, I still enjoy a lot of grunge/alt-rock from the early to mid-90's, since that was the music of my childhood (I was born in '84). Though I would argue that bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden made genuinely good music that still holds up.

On the other hand, I haven't really enjoyed anything Top 40-level popular in a long time, with a very few exceptions like Arcade Fire - and even then only certain songs of theirs have caught my ear, e.g. "Keep the Car Running."

But I can't really judge anyone's taste in music, except perhaps for being extremely narrow, e.g. someone who only listens to nu-country and has never even heard of Merle Haggard. I listen to plenty of stuff - death metal, black metal, hardcore, grindcore - that a lot of folks would consider more noise than music, though in the case of the more "extreme" metal genres, the level of musicianship actually tends to be quite high.

Douglas Adams would have agreed.

It is simple. The industry has come to rely on dubious technology that can make anyone a star. Between the loudness wars and the rise of auto-tune, I can barely stand to listen to the radio.

Now that does not mean there is not some great music being done. I applaud indies who refuse to use auto-tune. Electronic musicians continue to push the envelope with genres like Trap & Dubstep. There is a growing group of small producers, project studio engineers, & independents like myself who are pushing back against the 'industry' standards.

There is good music out there but you won't normally find it through the media conglomerate channels.

to a cover a Mamas and Papas song by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. I think that proves your argument.

No one can tell me that this isn't brilliant.