Reply #263: Excellent post and you are 100% right - I wish I could rec it. [View All]

The unique thing about the 60s is that it's probably the only time in our lifetimes when the BEST music being made was also the stuff that was on the charts and got played on the radio. Popularity and quality actually came close to matching up. They certainly did nothing of the sort in the 80s, 90s, and 00s.

So you have a lot of people who don't bother to keep up with the underground--which is, actually, a hell of a job since it's so incredibly prolific now since digital technology has made recording and music-sharing accessible to millions more people than had it in the 60s -- it's an even bigger revolution than the indie-label movement of the 70s and 80s was, and that was huge at the time. Frankly, there are so many undergrounds producing so much great stuff in so many scenes and subgenres of course no one can keep up with it all. It's not a dearth, it's an embarrassment of riches.

But don't turn on the radio, listen for a few minutes, and think you can make pronouncements about "music today" being crap compared to the Top 40 hits of the 60s....well, you don't really know anything about "music today." All you know is what the huge entertainment corporations--which grew to their offensive level of useless bloat on the Boomers' watch--are hawking. That's not "the music of today", anymore than Kraft Mac'n'Cheese in a box is "the food of today."