Reply #209: As a music fan, it's the cultural ignorance that really frustrates me. [View All]

There's a persistent idea that the '60s created the best music ever. I have no complaint about that opinion on its own, but it's often accompanied by the implication that the younger generations are somehow to blame for the state of our music due to deficiencies in our priorities, talents, or motivation. It's the idea that we're all too busy playing videogames to create the next Hendrix or Woodstock.

The problem with this sentiment is that it ignores the enormous systemic forces that are working against contemporary music, much of them driven in part by the boomers in the '70s and '80s.

#1. The corporatization of the music industry in the '70s and '80s left us with a system where there is no artist development, no chances taken on unique, different artists, and no money invested in anything but attempting to get the next #1 hit. Many of the great artists of the '60s simply would not have had a chance within this system either.

#2. The death of radio, thanks in large part to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the subsequent monopolization of the industry by Clear Channel. Today's equivalent of Hendrix or Joplin would not get the airplay that those artists did in the '60s. The downward slide began in the '70s and '80s with payola, "indie pr" scams, and mob involvement, but the deregulation under the Clinton administration put the final nail in the coffin of radio.

#3. There has been a huge continuing decline in the live show, thanks on one side to the corporatization of the industry and the rise of expensive stadium shows. And on the other side, the small club scene has been under attack from many fronts. The increase in the drinking age in the '80s, thanks to groups like MADD and restrictive drinking laws that make all ages shows difficult to impossible in some towns have largely killed the live music scene among high school and college age kids. And when scenes like the punk or rave scenes did emerge they were under constant attack under law enforcement. The war on drugs is a huge factor here too.

#4. As discussed on another thread, the commodification of cool has created an environment where any new, unique expression is almost immediately co-opted by the advertising industry. Underground scenes are not often allowed to flourish and develop in obscurity for very long before being commercially exploited.

#5. Perhaps the biggest factor is simple demographics. It always drives me crazy when people ignore this element. Generation X is about a third the size of the baby boomer generation. So think of Jimi, Janis and Dylan: now pick only one and imagine that the other two were never born. Then randomly eliminate a couple members of the Beatles. That crowd at Woodstock would have only been 166,000 which is almost exactly the attendance of Coachella this year! And all across the board think of similar reductions: 1/3rd of the album sales, 1/3rd of the concert attendance, 1/3rd of the artists, and 1/3rd of the radio listeners.

And after all of that is the important, subjective point that there IS in fact contemporary music that is every bit as good as the music of the '60s.