How can 40 year old music sound BETTER than today's music?

Compare the Dave Clark Five "5 O'Clock World" to any of today's hits and tell me who's got more soul! :P (okay, some of today's music is good, you just have to dig through the mindless pop...)

So, back then, musicians could write songs and play them on their instruments without having them homogenized and processed like cheese food by the marketing department.

Nothing the young whipper-snappers do is good enough...

Of course, nothing tastes as good... smells as good... etc. etc.

Too bad ya gotta get old.

I should know, I was there. *sigh*

... every generation just "knows" their music was better than ANYTHING new.

In the 50s:

Who is this freak Elvis? Now Sinatra, THAT's music!

In the 60s:

Who are these losers the Beatles? Whatever happenned to Elvis? HE was good!

on and on and on....

"Elvis died when he went in the Army".

Now whether being in the Army was actually directly responsible for ruining his music is anybody's guess. But there's no denying the fact that between his return from Germany and the 68 comeback special, Elvis did very little worth remembering.

But I'll still take a cheesy Presley soundtrack album over N'Suck any day of the week. :scared:

...but to my notion, Lennon did very little worth remembering after the Beatles broke up.

n/t

There was some really good stuff then and some really bad stuff.

but when I talk about music in the past being better - it's usually pre-80s stuff.

:D

Add to that fact that I shouldn't even know about music made before 1972, let alone like it...

I'll grow more cynical as I age, but what's soulful or is timeless has more validity than today's throwaway "talent". All eras have a measure of both.

But with today's corporate marketing, there's far less of value. Even "The Monkees", the original corporate manufactured image from 1966, became its own entity (thank you Mike Nesmith!) and transcended itself and produced some really good stuff of substance than any of today's marketed jokes...

.. you've obviously been influenced by "the oldies."

I went through a phase like this when I worked for an oldies station.

Thank GOD I got over it.

Music is a generation's soundtrack. Today's TOP40 isn't supposed to appeal to you.

And again, I've worked in the industry for years. This "evil corporate marketing" routine parroted by so many people has always existed.

It's all about OPINION.

corporations have a lot of power, the people still can make anyone famous.

...we'll never know how much (or little) they would have accomplished after their big break.

Thomas Erlewine (sp?) has a great essay on allmusic.com about how alternative splintered post-Nirvana.

That scene was clipping along very well; when Nevermind came out, alternative was an incredibly varied genre that covered everything from dub to reggae to Brit-pop to nerd-rock to rap to roots-rock to folk to hardcore and grunge to industrial. After that album came out and got its initial success in the alternative scene, mainstream jumped on it and what had been just one small part of a growing movement became the movement in its entirety, thanks to marketing and instant commercial viability.

Now, it's finally coming back around. That Flaming Lips and the Eels are having hits is a good sign.

White Stripes, Ben folds, and some of the Rap Artists kick ass. There's great stuff coming out, but you don't hear it on clear channel stations. You have to go to public radio, or college stations to hear the fine indie music.

There's some fine, fine, super fine world music out there. You cut through the made for western ears music, which is good in its own right, to hear the raw rock music of today. It may have its roots in Fado, or Uzbecki folk music, but it rocks.

Rock is an attitude. It doesn't have to be guitars and drums, it could be an Oud, or a strummed Lyre. You can rock on a Dulcimer if you desire. It is all in how you do it.


for you people who don't like rap, you got to hear the good stuff. It is all about the beat, everything is in service to the beat. It is poetry to the beat. You can never tell, maybe a few years down the road, the rap fan may be browsing the poetry section down at Barnes and Noble.

There are some brilliant young musicians out there. We just don't get to hear it because it's not "radio-friendly." ie, it doesn't conform to what the Boomers-in-charge think of as great music.

Hmmm, I don't remember that but I blame the memory loss on the 60s and 70s! :evilgrin:

But, you're right, music was better then. IMHO

corporate marketing machine called the music industry that doesn't allow for soulful individuality. it's all a money making effort, not about talent.

The music industry has always, especially since the 50s, been a corporate marketing machine.

This "doesn't allow for soulful individuality. it's all a money making effort, not about talent.. blah blah blah" rhetoric has been spouted decade after decade by music snobs.

I've worked in the industry off and on since 1968. NOTHING has changed.

If you listen to anything that has been recorded and purchased, you're feeding the "machine" you seem the loathe so much.

"If you listen to anything that has been recorded and purchased, you're feeding the "machine" you seem the loathe so much."


I dunno about that my good man. There's plenty of good recorded music out there, you just gotta go beyond what Clearchannel/RIAA spoonfeeds you. Hell there are good bands on major labels, or signed to indie labels but distributed by majors.


And music from 40 years ago like Pat Boone? No thanks.

...my entire point is, all this "today's music sux" posturing is silly because

a. It hasn't really changed in 50 years, only the older people's tolerance has changed.
b. EVERY generation THINKS their music is better than the current stuff.

Yes. You THINK it is. You do not KNOW it is. It is all subjective.

I missed your point. I'll blame it on the :beer: ....



However, I second this point "It's all subjective". Right on the money.

I'm not affiliated with this label, but check out the music at www.strokeland.com

There were bands that bucked the industry...certainly the Dead (whether you like their music or hate it) were definitely not into having creative control of their music in the hands of the corporate marketing machine.

The marketers own it all with an iron fist. Even those with lasting talent and innovation are owned.

Anyone daring enough to be on their own will eventually get bought out if not stomped on.

I admit, the industry has always been there - and I'm doubly amazed the industry allowed the rebel hippie music of the 60s to take place (but it made them rich, so did they care in the end?) But these days it seems much more forced, maybe I'm just being cynical... :shrug:

... the labels, as they have since record labels were created, have always promoted the trendy thing.

Labels wanted the next Bing Crosby! BAM! Sinatra!

Sam Phillips wanted a white guy who could sing like a black guy because R&B was REAL popular with white kids in the 50s.

Then, the trend was to find others like Elvis...

others like the Beatles...Madonna... Nirvana... Britney, etc.

While I was and am a huge fan of the psychedelic music of the 60's, 70's and beyond (Dead, Airplane, Yes, King Crimson, Hendrix, Velvet Underground, Brian Eno, etc), to think that this stuff was allowed is to be a little naive. As you said, they got rich off of it. The history of recent music is one of generational rebellion. By the 60's a formula was starting to emerge.

The record companies were part and parcel of the 60's Hippie/psychedelic movements. Do you think RCA tried to stop the remainder of the Jefferson Airplane forming the Jefferson Starship? Did Woodstock hurt album sales? Now I also believe there was some good in all of this. While there was cynical manipulation of us young folk, there was also a lot more wrong with our society than there is today. So the fat cat producers had their cake and could also feel good about themselves too.

Zappa saw through most of this, as did Robert Frip of King Crimson. They set themselves up outside of the system and were quietly successful just making very high quality music. While the industry is always there, there are also always those with the incredible combined skills of composing, producing, and deal making. These are the people who actually get their art out to the rest of us. And this is what is being suppressed now by the incredibly moronic RIAA file sharing suits.

The music industry has been corrupted since the 30s. Whenever money is involved, art is in 2nd place.

As one who was there and listening to radio, 90% of the mass produced music in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's was crap. I remember when I was in H.S., I had to flip through the channels on my car radio every 2nd song trying to find something worth listening to (this was in the late 50's early 60's). Most of the crap isn't played any more on the oldies stations so one can be forgiven for thinking that those were the golden years.

One major difference now is that each format is pretty much owned by the same company, payola (paid for by the artists now, instead of the labels) rules the playlists so that one can't even change the channel on the radio to get a different take on what's worth listening to.

There is good news though. With computers and inexpensive, high quality recording gear, many fine artists and musicians are self-producing wonderful music. How do I find it? (you may ask). Get OUT OF THE HOUSE! In the S.F. Bay Area there are at least 200 venues where really good musicians and bands are playing and selling their CDs every night! Pick a style, do a net search (or local free paper search or local public radio station search) and go out to listen the the music of your choice.

I've been a performing, professional musician since 1960 and I haven't ever seen a time when there was more talent and great music than there is right now (and I was here in S.F. in the 60's -- I was lead guitarist in an S.F. acid rock band).

You ain't gonna hear it on (yuch) clearchannel, but it's all there. If you want it, you can have it, just go get it!

Chet

regardless of era.

I am...but the number of tunes that have stuck in my head over the last few decades are far fewer than the amount of music which was actually produced. There are some songs from my youth that I'm appalled I thought were good. And some were tunes I always loathed. But I'll bet the majority of music that was played back then doesn't even register on my memory. It was just that forgettable.

As my tastes have refined, (or my mind's narrowed if you prefer), there are fewer tunes that inspire me to explore them further than the first listening. And in the pop vein, there are so many "formula" songs that one boring "hit" is just like the next 20 that a mass-producing artist will try to sell.

So I get lost in a Mahler symphony...

...who wrote songs (most of them) and performed them live on stage. As opposed to former Disney child stars lip syncing to pre-programmed disco tracks by Swedish pedophiles, or rappers recycling the same exact rhymes endlessly to music recorded by others 20, 30, or 40 years ago.

...their own stuff than there was 40 years ago.

40 years ago, the musical expertise was "primitive," many songs used the same chord progressions over and over, the next "fabian" style pretty boy was (snicker) very anticipated, and lip synching was, in fact, much more wide spread.

Herman's Hermits?, Archies?,1910 Fruitgum Company?, Paul Revere and the Raiders?

But then we had some mighty great bands/musicians, too....Airplane, Dead, Joplin, Byrds, Dylan, Hendrix, Traffic, Stones, Beatles, Cream.

Sadly, too much music today is "produced" by marketers using teen focus groups or just plain derivitive.

Kirshner scored big in the early 60's when his songwriters supplied a huge portion of the chart hits. Then people like Dylan, Brian Wilson, and Lennon/McCartney ruined his dominance by having the nerve to write their own songs. The Monkees - a "made for TV band" who looked sorta like the Beatles- provided Kirshner a way to market his songwriters to the teen audiences buying all the Beatles & Stones records of the era.

It was a brilliant plan, until the Monkees did the unthinkable and wanted to become an actual band, even (gasp) writing their own songs.

What was Don Kirshner to do??

He resorted to the only thing he could do. If even a prefabricated band like the Monkees would cease to do his bidding, he had to create one that couldn't possibly rise up against him. A band that didn't really exist at all.

Cartoon characters.

And so a comic book series originating in the 1940's became a late 60's "psychedelic" pop band.

Of course, by then even his songwriters, including Neil Diamond and Carole King, among others, had grown tired of the bubblegum marketing and had begun to record their own material.

Just as well.... could you picture Betty & Veronica singing "I feel the earth move under my feet......"

Paul Revere and the Raiders may have been a bit gimmicky in terms of their style of dress and whatnot, but, at least in their early years, were a pretty kickass garage-ish sort of band. Songs like "Steppin' Out" and "Just Like Me", in addition to the weird pop-psychedelic stuff they put out in the late sixties should give Paul Revere and the Raiders much more credit than they are given, but are essentially ignored because the Raiders are mostly remembered for being the seventies pop band that covered Don Fardon's "Indian Reservation"!

And while the 1910 Fruitgum Co. WERE a gimmick, and were essentially a faceless studio band, some of their music is better than the "pop trash" you'd expect. "Reflections from the Looking-Glass", the b-side of their first single "Simon Says" is one of the greatest pop-psychedelic songs I've ever heard- in all seriousness! "Indian Giver" and "1-2-3 Red Light" are also just great pure pop songs. (Didn't the Talking Heads used to cover "1-2-3 Red Light" at some point in their career?)

Herman's Hermits WERE essentially a pop band, and not the most talented guys on the face of the Earth, at that, but as long as you approach their music with that in mind, they're a really good pop band in my opinion. I think the production techniques of sixties' pop music vs. today's are what, to me, makes the sixties' stuff more timeless. Even a heavily-marketed group like Herman's Hermits seems very organic, very honest and fresh in terms of their music. Some of my favorites are "A Must to Avoid", "No Milk Today", and "This Door Swings Both Ways"...

I'm pretty young and like a lot of today's music in addition to the old stuff, but I do tend to think that even the "trash" music of the sixties tended to transcend the level. Today's "trash" rarely does that, at least from what I have heard of it.

I was a Paul Revere and the Raiders fan...I got my "Kicks" watching them.

I'm 24 years old and I LOVE Herman's Hermits.

Try to figure that one out.

:)

I'm twenty and on here defending the "honor" of those freakin' musical luminaries: the 1910 Fruitgum Co. :-)

with Herman's Hermits, the Archies, and the 1910 Fruigtum Company? The Raiders were a kick-ass garage band who played their own instruments and who recorded slamming rock 'n' roll tunes. Those other acts were just bullshit bubble-gummers.

There seems to be a lack of creativity when so many recording artists are releasing pathetic, lousy remakes that trash and insult great classic recordings just to make a buck.

And yes, that is simply my opinion.

is the industry's attempt to recapture the "Boomer" audience...

It usually doesn't work.

Music today, when it comes to finding good music in today's landscape is like being in an archaeological dig, looking for some old pottery or arrowheads. You gotta sift thru all the sand, the Limp Biskit, Nelly, Linkin Park, Christina Aguilera, etc. to get to the stuff that's worth something.

Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky survived the centuries because of their uniqueness. Countless others were barely recognized in their own century because they were Beethoven-wannabes, or just weren't very interesting.

The same is happening with contemporary classical and pop music.

The good stuff will survive...or maybe lie low for a few years and be rediscovered.

This is the first time in history (past 20 years or so) where popular music and marketing have been intertwined. Instead of a popular group or artist being so because he/she decided to break the boundaries of the musical mores (Elvis, Beatles), or that he/she had strong popular feelings embodied in their songs (Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan), You've got popular groups (or who are SUPPOSED to be popular) obtaining their popularity due to reasons other than their music. Their looks, for example (Nelly, N'sync, Limp Biskit, Britney, Christina). It's all marketing now. It's all focus groups and test studies to see what the lowest common denominator is with the best looks, and try to appeal that to the widest demographic of people you can find. It's all about wanting to reach a more massive audience nowadays. And the more massive the crowd the corporations try to appeal to past a certain point (say 90 percent of young people), the more dilluted the music is going to be. Because the corporations for the first time are having a say in how these artists music should be written and performed. The artists don't have 100 percent say in it anymore. And of course, the corporations (MTV, ClearChannel) are all behind this dillution of music, and it's really wounding the spirit of American and Western music, IMO. And in that proccess, the factors of musical talent that are supposed to embody popular music and why it bacame popular has been co-opted.

"This is the first time in history (past 20 years or so) where popular music and marketing have been intertwined."

Popular music and marketing have ALWAYS been intertwined

"Instead of a popular group or artist being so because he/she decided to break the boundaries of the musical mores (Elvis, Beatles),"

Elvis was tutored by Sam Phillips of Sun records then marketed as a white man who could sing like a black man.

The Beatles were one among many English bands trying to imitate American rock. Then, they were told how to dress, how to cut their hair, etc. Pure image marketing.

No matter how many threads I post this in. No matter how many times I tell of my experiences and credentials in the industry and of those I know in the industry, some people still very freeperishly spread the bit of wishful thinking that today's music industry is different than that of yesterday's.

It just ain't so.

Money plays a HUGE role in the landscape of today. In the 20th Century, with The Beatles or Elvis, would you think that these artists were massively marketed by companies like Crap Channel and Empty V for the sole purpose of gaining profits from record sales and could also tell Elvis or John lennon "Don't write that, Don't play that, etc. etc."??

Or could it be that maybe they had a raw musical and artistic talent that was discovered in the early stages by some people in the record business (this is before they started to corrupt the work of the musicians) who wanted to enhance their raw talents and magnify their charisma/guitar playing/lyric writing in order to create something potentially special???

... and money always played a huge role. More so now, but then, a gallon of milk costs more now, too.

Just as there were people at the time who thought Elvis and the Beatles were fodder, so it is now with today's music. And my children will grow up to deride the music my grandchildren listen to as inferior to the music of the 90s and early 21st century.

I believe we all work on the assumption that our opinions are factual when they are not.

Elvis and the Beatles - before they got huge - were told how to breathe by the record companies and promoters.

There a many who think Elvis and the Beatles suck royally.

But look back in the last 40 years and you can probably count the artists with staying power on one hand.

So it has been in the past 20 years.

Given time and "permission" - most artists can grow and enhance their talent.

When you're talking about mainstream pop, it's always been about money.

As far as boundary-breaking artists are concerned, they're still out there...look at artists like Ani DiFranco. She's got a unique style ala Dylan and a growing audience. The question is, will she sell out, or will she continue to appeal to those who shun mainstream?

Elvis' early stuff was radical, but the later albums were clearly just another part of the biz.

Of course, there are also artists who seem manufactured to appeal to non-mainstream...like Eminem.

~donning my flame-proof gear~

For anyone to claim the average pop band or singer today is any less talented or more promoted than their counterparts of the 50s/60s is quite silly.

The industry's marketing machine has changed very little.

Eaxample: The beloved Motown. Save for a few, their artists were completely manufactured, told how to dance and dress, and the songs were written for them. Much like the boy bands of today.

There have always been break-out artists and there always will be.

Some - like the Beatles - progess because they are allowed the freedom to grow.

Madonna is another example. Love her or hate her, "Ray of Light" was far more sphisticated musically than "Like A Virgin."

the music business was the music business then.

Now it's a Murkan sausage factory.

Seventy! Benny Goodman -- the Duke -- and before you say "everyone thinks their music is better," I wasn't born when that music was recorded. It's just better. (Although the Cherry Poppin Daddies are fair to middln).

Ah, the Duke. Does anyone here remember "Creole Love Call" or maybe it was "Creole Love Song?" I have it in my head now. It was terrific. I have looked for it over the years and cannot find it.

I've been discovering this era in music, too. Jack Teagarden, Satchmo, and Benny Goodman did some pretty excellent stuff.

Of course, if you'd have asked me in 1970, I'd have laughed and told you that was my Dad's music...and what did he know about music, anyway?

*

And it doesn't matter to me when a song was recorded. To me, a great song is a great song, whether it came out in 1955 or just last week. Granted, most of my favorite music predates the disco era, but that's just a matter of personal taste.

... kind of shows how much the poster really is "in" to 60s music.

at least a song by the same title...

2002
How You Remind Me-- Nickelback
Foolish-- Ashanti
Hot in Herre-- Nelly
Dilemma-- Nelly
Wherever You Will Go-- The Calling
A Thousand Miles-- Vanessa Carlton
In the End-- Linkin Park
What's Luv?-- Fat Joe/Ashanti
U Got It Bad-- Usher
Blurry-- Puddle of Mudd


1964
I Want to Hold Your Hand-- Beatles
Can’t Buy Me Love-- Beatles
There! I’ve Said It Again-- Bobby Vinton
Baby Love-- Supremes
Oh, Pretty Woman-- Roy Orbison
The House of the Rising Sun-- Animals
Chapel of Love-- Dixie Cups
I Feel Fine-- Beatles
She Loves You-- Beatles
I Get Around-- Beach Boys

'nuf said!

Did you look for a year that featured 4 Beatles songs, a Roy Orbison song, and a Beach Boys song?

Plus, the top songs 1964 also featured such "gems" as G.T.O. by Ronny & The Daytons, Popsicles and Icicles by The Murmaids, and Ringo by Lorne Green!

Now, I could fish around for a late 90s or early 2000's chart and assemble a list that includes many chart toppers and well established bands and singers that will be remembered much longer than Bobby Vinton and the Dixie Cups.

'nuf said!

10 of the entire year. Of course it's skewed, any year the Beach Boys or the Beatles were making music would be! So tell me the Beach Boys, the Roy Orbison, the Beatles of 2003 or 2002??? What position are they on the ClearChannel playlist?
I know there is inventive, creative music made today! But I have to hear it on the local college radio station .

"inventive, creative music" is a highly subjective phrase and is your opinion. While I agree with your opinion (that the Beatles were creative when they were allowed to be), the Beach Boys (early Beach Boys, anyway) were just another "beach band" like Jan & Dean and others but had better management and better deal and, like the Beatles, were allowed to grow. Roy Orbison, aside from having a distinctive voice, was no more talented than Elvis, Carl Perkins, or Johnny Cash.

IMO, there was nothing at all distinctive about Bobby Vinton. The Dixie Cups were essentially a one-hit wonder and, I might add, a manufactured group - put together by producer Joe Jones.

The Supremes, like most Motown groups, were Barry Gordy's robots. They were manufactured and told how to dress, speak, and dance.

And besides, comparing 1964 to 2002 or 2003 isn't fair because the acts breaking in those years haven't had the time to flourish. Come back 10 years from now and look in on the classes of 2002 or 2003.

It's easy to look back now to the 60s after all of those careers are over and see their record. "Today's" music cannot be judged until it is no longer "today's music,"

The acts of the 50s and 60s had considerably less competition on the charts.

In today's crowed market, having a lasting career is more difficult.

Better to compare this era's top artists.

Some of that year's worst pop offerings, IMHO:

I'M INTO SOMETHING GOOD, Herman's Hermits
LAST KISS, J. Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers
MR. LONELY, Bobby Vinton
SUSPICION, Terry Stafford

There must be more, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

much like using the Freepers as proof that all Americans are idiots.

I dont think 40 year old music is better But i have to say the music from the 80s was ALOT better then todays mindless music studio produced crap

I gotta' say Eminem has captured lightning in the proverbial bottle. Eminem is our Mozart, he'll be around for hundreds of years. When historians look back at 21st century America, it will be Eminem's voice that has captured the spirit of the ages.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

Eminem is really good but how many like him do we have? I mean just how many good bands or artists do we have today that actually write their own music.

Do you mean the songs out right now? The last 3 years? 5? Ten?

If the "old is better" crowd is using the 50s, 60s,and 70s as their era, I claim the 80s to the present as "today's music."

stay in the top 40. And the 60s had a lot of manufactured one-hit wonders, but many of these hits were good. The 50s and 60s still can't be beaten for rock music. Most all of the big artists from then deserve their reputations.

That said, I do not hate all the top 40 music of today. I dislike the Britneys, Jessica Simpsons, Jennifer Lopezes, Michael Boltons, Mariah Careys (newer stuff mostly,) Hilary Duffs, and 'N Syncs. I also don't care for Celine Dion. But I love the new pop/rock stars like Michelle, Vanessa, and Avril.

I've posted long lists of obscure current artists, so there's a lot to explore if you don't like top 40.

Music is very individual, and I am open-minded. I enjoy quite a bit both in top 40 and indie, and am proud of both the top 40 and indie artists I like.

You have to admit that the reason not as many great acts persistently
stay in the top40 is because the field is much more crowded than it was in the 60s.

There is more competition. More singles released everyday. More artists signed.

Once someone gets big, they want to sign a lot more artists like that person.

... Elvis and Beatles clones were a dime a dozen. In fact, if you remove the true superstars from the mix, no music era looks particularly better or worse than the other.

so I can't say exactly how many, but it seems more obvious today when I look at it. Certainly, I will never agree with some posters who say the mainstream sucks, though.

..Motown clones, Beachboys clones (who were actually clones themselves) and clones of just about every other major act in 50s and 60s that have been lost to musical obscurity.

I don't like any music made before I was born and I probably hate all the stuff you're referring. Mainstream music sucks, not the era.

Doesn't matter the year, 1963 or 2003, if it was mainstream, it sux.

Well, at least we agree that comparing eras is futile.

Lucky for us, we get to pick and choose what pleases our own ears. Our pre-20th century ancestors certainly didn't have that kind of freedom.

Today's hits? In my opinion, Britney Spears' music sucks rocks, but I'm sure there are a million 10-year-old girls who could tell me otherwise. And they could give me reasons to go with their opinions, whereas I'd just have to say that I don't listen to her music cos I don't like it. But, as one of my music profs in college used to tell me, "Sometimes it's what you dislike the most about an artwork that makes it artistic."

Try listening "objectively" to some dub music, or ambient/rave/trance, or even solidly layered hip-hop; you'll be amazed at what the musicians are coming up with in terms of overlapping montage and soundscapes. Expose yourself to a wider variety of music, and see if your opinion doesn't change over time. Back in the '80s, I used to have a grudge against Madonna, but now I can see her as a talented genius performer who expresses a liberated, remorseless, and vibrant sexuality with her dance music. I still don't enjoy it as much as Coltrane albums or the Ravel string quartet, but I don't automatically reject it as an illegitimate market contrivance when I hear it.

The real challenge is to hear the "good" in any music, whatever it may be. Sometimes it is the music or the musician that is immature, to be sure, but sometimes it is our own tendency to rush to judgment that is to blame.

Even orchestral composers get their own urban legends...

So the story goes something like this: ca 1910, Claude Debussy shows up for a Paris performance of Stravinsky's famous Firebird (or was it Petrushka? I don't recall exactly) ballet, and afterwards the eager young composer asks The Master what he thought of it.

"It's okay."

D'oh!

At least it didn't cause a total riot, like the opening of Sacre du Printemps...

Some of it is just noise, but it's easier to find talent in that genre than others. Nor does it date itself as badly; rave from 1990 still sounds fresh today.

...you're looking for rave talent. In other words, R&B, Rap, country, classical, blues, metal, and other types of musicians are probably not real talented rave musicians.

My personal bane is contemporary C&W. I have a very difficult time appreciating much of it, so I try to focus on the sound of the pedal steel (which I like) and find any cleverness I can in the lyrics. I suppose elevator "muzak" and a lot of motown R&B would also be difficult for me to enjoy, but I don't get exposed to any of it, so I can't say for sure. But C&W is more culturally pervasive.

Country. Of any type. Boring to me. I don't judge the talent. Just the way the music makes me feel.

When we hear music, all we can really say for sure is that we feel a certain way with it as opposed to without it. And I can say without hesitation that popular music is popular precisely because a lot of people like how they feel with it. Now that particular like may be constructed by the surrounding culture, but I would oppose the idea that one type of music is inherently "better" because I like how I feel with it more than another type.

I've found my own tastes vary so much from day to day that I can't second guess those of anyone else. I know there is a reason for any type of musical popularity, and even that which I don't understand today I may love more than anything before come next week. And some things I raved over last week I can't stand today.

If only I had been more open-minded in my youth, I could have learned so much more about the world.

..comes from those into one or two particular kinds of music.

Music fans of the more dominant genres tend to just ignore what they don't like and never waste energy bashing other people's music.

I think people that make a habit of bashing other music are maybe a bit insecure in their world.

newer is supposed to somehow be better . . . the logic escapes me . . . music is music is music, and good music is good music whether it was created three days ago or three centuries ago . . . one of my real pleasures is discovering great music from the past that I somehow missed over the years . . . and most of what I'm finding is infinitely superior to anything being recorded today by anyone . . . who you gonna match up against, say, Thelonious Monk? . . . older is better for me, and gets more so every day . . .

most of the music threads on DU are started by someone who thinks OLDER music is somehow better.

Can you match T. Monk against Mingus? Monk against Bird? Monk against Coltrane? Monk against Miles? Monk against Mahavishnu?

How about Monk versus Kurt Cobain?

Monk versus Frank Zappa?

Monk versus Gershwin?

Monk versus Bartok?

Monk versus Schonberg?

Monk versus Poulenc?

It's not really fair to Thelonius, any more than it is to the artist you're contrasting with him. Subjectively, you may like his music more than that of someone else, you may like one genre more than another, but that hardly makes it "superior" in any absolute sense.

*not* the content. Think movies, medicine, politics, cars, music, quartz watches, on and on.

With music, the musicians are technically more proficient, and the recording technology is vastly improved, but there's a kind of basic character lacking today.