CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Music and Recordings => Topic started by: Original_Ken on December 12, 2013, 07:54:17 AM
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... for me started to die in the late 90s/2000s w/ the rest of music in general (w/ a few notable exceptions).
This casual remark resonated with me, and it is also my experience that there was a change in music around 10-12 years ago.
To me, the change is that innovation ceased, and musicians became people who chose some particular musical style of the 20th Century to emulate - punk, 60s psychedelia, 90s hip-hop, 70s rock, 80s electro, 60s jazz, etc. Cover versions are now a vast proportion of music performances (let alone "tribute" groups).
This same phenomenon seems to have occurred in all the other creative arts. It seems likely that my grandchildren will watch Spiderman 239, and their consoles will have Grand Theft Auto 126. People who write "fantasy" novels must have elves, dwarfs, ogres and trolls, despite the fact that the word "fantasy" implies an imagination that comes up with new worlds different from what we already know.
Any thoughts, mateys ?
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I was born in 1988.
I grew up with 90ties TMF MTV an The Box.
There was a change in the 90ties: Techno, House and synthesizers.
In the the late 90 until the early 2Ks another change occurred: more layered progressive productions leading to Trance and sophisticated minimal productions with break-beats and rhythm patterns. Combined with big beats and easy hooks Dance came up.
There is still innovation though. The XX and Florence + The Machine gave me new hope. Thanks to Sachu I found Emancipator. Burial and DeWolff made me sit and listen again. What about Animals As Leaders and the reissued JDilla albums?
It is a matter of perspective and preferences. Nothing beats Clyde Stubblefield's break-beat in "Funky Drummer" for me. At the same time there is plenty of music that still is a rewarding listen. I have two conditions in general: no unbearable loudness and a sense of originality in the actual performance. The second condition is very subjective though...
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I think what happened was excessive corporatization of music and the quest for easy profits. I'd probably use the Sony/Pearl Jam lawsuit as a marker. It just became too easy to take a nobody off the street, add a couple of repetitive beats (or beat) and sell albums. So why bother? It was especially hard on inner city African American genres like Hip-Hop, New Jack swing, RnB, etc. But as DF said, the electrification and laptoperization of music. The most notable for my tastes was the shift from White Zombie to Rob Zombie. Replace the band with a Macbook and keep all the money and remove the interpersonal BS. The good stuff required work, which means excessive time and money (unnecessary waste of profits). So the logistics and support chain shifted more to marketing rather than production and developing talent. I do think there was a long lull, but it is coming back w/ the freedom the internet brings to musical content, production and control. There is definitely more innovation, talent, readily available from independent artists than we've seen during the dark ages of not long ago. I chalk it up to corporations losing their iron grip over control of content and the marketplace. Though they will die trying as they continue to bot Youtube to pump up the likes and get exposure for crap they want to popularize. More often than not, the vids with the tens of millions of views usually suck hard.
I do think there was also a serious decline in music programs at schools, same for driver's ed. That certainly didn't help. Just my take on it.
Hollywood went through the same cycle. If it wasn't for comic books, Hollywood would be largely irrelevant replaced by Netflix and Amazon streaming old and original content.
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I am fairly young and do not have as much experience with music before the 90s, but even then, I'm fairly clueless about the vast majority of music out there (modern included). I am probably more familiar with piano pieces from Bach and Beethoven than I am most modern bands and songs (played piano for 9 years and would like to pick it back up someday), but even my familiarity with piano pieces is rather shallow in the grand scheme of things.
Two of my favorite recent albums, Opeth's "Heritage" and Steven Wilson's "The Raven that Refused to Sing," apparently pull heavily from 60s-70s progressive rock and jazz fusion. One big complaint is that this material is just a "rehash," or "homage," but given my age and lack of familiarity with older bands, it sounds like nothing I've ever really heard before. That said, from what I've heard from bands like King Crimson, I can believe it. I am not sure how much I'd even care then, though, because both Akerfeldt and Wilson have a very distinct style of writing and playing.
I'm also a big fan of Radiohead (post "OK Computer") because they're an extremely progressive band that's all over the place sound-wise. "Kid A" came out in 2000, so you could argue Radiohead is sort of going the opposite direction of other bands.
That said, there's even something to be said about the change in metal around 2000, which is my go-to genre. A lot of American metal bands started to adopt the melodic, Gothenburg style of metal, where as a lot of bands that pioneered this style started to drift more towards nu-metal that had also been growing in popularity (in America, at least). And now it all just sound so homogenized...it's why I'm very picky about the bands I listen to. Most just really aren't that great or worth my time, I find. It's more formulaic than creative.
Opeth continues to twist my brain around like a metal band never has before (seriously, go listen to the funky breakdown towards the end of "The Lotus Eater"). "Heritage," as much as callback to the past as it is, shows that there are some bands out there that still have that true creativity and musicianship at heart. I am wondering if Radiohead will continue to surprise me, as I was not very fond of TKOL ("In Rainbows" is my favorite of theirs, though, mostly due to the variety).
I do get the sense that modern media is all about rehashing, sequels, etc. That said, I'm young and wondering if this has always been the case, and if every person at some point in their life goes through similar thoughts.
This is definitely off topic, but I'm pretty sure I finally got to the roots of why I'm so into bands like Opeth. I grew up listening to Nirvana and other rock with my older brother, and, as such, have loved rock and heavy music since I was very young. I also was introduced to piano at a young age and found I particularly liked Beethoven's work...dripping with that dark, romantic style of music. It's much more about the feel than the technicalities. On the other hand, I also liked Bach's Inventions and Kabalevksy's Sonatina Op 13 No 1 for their fast-paced fun and technicalities.
Combine my love of heavy music, sweeping/dark/romantic pieces, and fun/technical Baroque pieces (a lot of melodic metal borrows from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods), and I think one can see how Opeth wraps a lot of that into one (Opeth is about as "Beethoven" as I've heard a metal band sound, pre "Watershed" and "Heritage"). Anyway, just thought that was interesting.
BTW, that Kabalevsky piece is amazing to play. Unfortunatley, I've yet to find a great recording. Most play it too fast or too slow and without nearly enough conveyed emotion behind it. Sorry for the OT info!
Edit: Anax has a good point about profits, corporations, etc. MMM, money...
Edit 2: I also get the sense that many around my age are more interesting in listening to "fun" or ambient music than anything else. I mean, techno can be good and all, but I really don't care about "the drop" or "the beat" or "the wub wubz." It's not that these people don't have other tastes, but they gravitate towards simple, easily accessible tunes to mindlessly bob their head to where as I find myself more interested in dedicated listening sessions to a wide variety of music, some of which goes beyond the 2-minute ADD-must-switch-my-music mark. I'm not saying one is necessarily better/worse or more enjoyable, but it's probably easier to make money from my friend-type listeners than someone as picky as me...I might buy 2 or 3 albums a year, if that, and I'll wear those into the ground before I pick anything else up usually.
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i'm an 88'ers, and while I'm quite young (compared to..well), sometimes I listen to today's music and I was like... Is that what is supposed to be defined as music nowadays?
To me personally the parity started when rapping became popular. I couldn't comprehend rap as a music at first (nor have I completely understands it), but looking back at it, rapping became some sort of old school now over my place. Now even the older pop songs (80's, 90's) sound much like classics compared to the pop songs today. Names like Cyrus, PSY, Keisha, and a few others which i rather not listen are becoming household names. What to do? They're the ones who got the records sold, I guess. And that's why they'll be defining music today.
And now that those "audiophile" songs started to sprout like they define what proper music is (at least to my perception of what people around me think). But then, I think I'm neither strictly preferring these "audiophile" recordings nor pop songs. It's just that what I personally like is something in between. Not too boring not too flashy.
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I think this kind of statement is made in every generation.
The good music is still there. You just need to know where to look.
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While I agree with the sentiment I am skeptical of its validity. There has been just as much shit music and rehashing in the last 10 years as in the last 50. We just tend to forget all the terrible bands producing plastic garbage music. I don't see how the monkees are different from any other overly commercial music from the last 10 years.
True musical innovation never exists in a vacuum. The current musicians are influenced by past musician's. They tweak the existing genre's and put their own spin on it. Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Stones, Clapton/Yardbirds/Cream did it in the sixties with the Blues and the White Stripes did it 10 years ago. Same influences...different times...differemt sounds. I don't want to discount what the White Stripes did because it is so completely different from the others, even though it came from the same source. Commercial shit will always exist, look back in 40 years and you will see the musicians who had a real impact from the last 10 years as we forget all te garbage.
Edit: One more thing...all those jazz standards from the 50s and 60s...most of them are covers ;)
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That's true, there's much to be said about what music stands the test of time.
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I stopped intently listening to the radio a long time ago.
1979-1984 and 1988-1993 and 1997-2002 were good times.
It goes in 9 year cycles between good and bad.
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I think Anax hit the nail on the head.
The deregulations that came with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed big corporations to own all of the radio stations in America. As a result, radio programming across the nation became more homogenized. As a record label, why spend money organically growing a band with a development contract hoping for a return on investment half a decade down the road when you can hire Lou Pearlman to find 5 pretty singing faces and shove them down America's throat.
It's funny that this thread was spawned out of a request for hip-hop recommendations, because you can see the seismic shift beginning in the mid-90's in hip-hop. During the golden age, every single region had very developed yet distinct stylistic identity partially because locally-owned radio stations tended to play local artists. While there was a bit of cross-breeding (ie Ice Cube + Bomb Squad), you could listen to anything pre-95 and tell exactly where the group or rapper was from. Nowadays, that's not the case. Sure, part of it can be attributed to the internet and the globalization of cultural exchange in general, but much of it is because of radio airwaves of the entire country being controlled by very few people. That's when hip-hop began its declined, culminating in Puff Daddy shiny suits and jiggy Hype Williams videos of the late 90's. There was a nice backlash movement in the late-90's/early 00's when Rawkus, Def Jux, Rhymesayers became notable anti-populist movements, but popular music hasn't been the same since the early 00's.
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I think this kind of statement is made in every generation.
The good music is still there. You just need to know where to look.
It's not "good music" that seems to be lacking, it is innovation.
On a 1970s FM Radio station, a disc jockey might play a Bob Dylan folk song followed by Bad Company hard rock followed by Jethro Tull prog rock. So, when they then played Mahavishnu Orchestra jazz-rock fusion, people said "wow what is that?".
In 2013, you could not have jazz-rock fusion start as a new genre (assuming hyptothetically it had not happened before), because Sirius XM has separate "jazz" and "rock" channels. If you are starting out as a musician, you want to have a personal identity based on your preferences, so you choose one of those Sirius XM sub-genres. If you are country, you have to choose between Classic Country, Outlaw Country, Country Rock or Bluegrass. Which means that the difference between your music and those who established those genres is going to be exceedingly small.
One of the biggest factors enforcing this situation is Pandora (and other recommendation software). If your playlist is Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash, Pandora is never going to play Mahavishnu Orchestra. So, by "getting exactly what you want" - nothing new is ever going to happen - because "exactly what you want" can only be based on what you have done in the past.
In theory, there is nothing preventing a new group like Mahavishnu Orchestra from forming, but if it did - how would we know ? 7 Billion people can have 7 Billion web sites, each with their own personal music made on weekends. Or 7 Billion people can have their own "New Music Recommendation Blog". The only thing that makes any one rise above the rest is salesmanship...
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I think there is definitely a derth of quality output per capita as a general trend on the timeline of this discussion. I recall many hits as a kids being on albums that were either fantastic or completely listenable. Now you get one hit wonder albums pretty much all the time. The number of quality albums I think is very indicative.
There also seems to be mass targeting of children who are less experienced or critical of music quality, and easily influenced by the graphic aspect of of the music biz (videos). Same for movies. It's a huge cash cow now that wasn't exploited in past generations to the same extent.
There are exceptions and I still maintain the internet is making things better. For now...
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I think this kind of statement is made in every generation.
The good music is still there. You just need to know where to look.
It's not "good music" that seems to be lacking, it is innovation.
On a 1970s FM Radio station, a disc jockey might play a Bob Dylan folk song followed by Bad Company hard rock followed by Jethro Tull prog rock. So, when they then played Mahavishnu Orchestra jazz-rock fusion, people said "wow what is that?".
In 2013, you could not have jazz-rock fusion start as a new genre (assuming hyptothetically it had not happened before), because Sirius XM has separate "jazz" and "rock" channels. If you are starting out as a musician, you want to have a personal identity based on your preferences, so you choose one of those Sirius XM sub-genres. If you are country, you have to choose between Classic Country, Outlaw Country, Country Rock or Bluegrass. Which means that the difference between your music and those who established those genres is going to be exceedingly small.
One of the biggest factors enforcing this situation is Pandora (and other recommendation software). If your playlist is Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Johnny Cash, Pandora is never going to play Mahavishnu Orchestra. So, by "getting exactly what you want" - nothing new is ever going to happen - because "exactly what you want" can only be based on what you have done in the past.
In theory, there is nothing preventing a new group like Mahavishnu Orchestra from forming, but if it did - how would we know ? 7 Billion people can have 7 Billion web sites, each with their own personal music made on weekends. Or 7 Billion people can have their own "New Music Recommendation Blog". The only thing that makes any one rise above the rest is salesmanship...
I don't factor radio in as part of the discussion. I can't control what other people broadcast and how they classify the stuff that they play. None of that really interests me. I stopped listening to the radio as soon as large portable music collections became easy to carry around.
There are still plenty of artists breaking new ground and bending genres. Go listen to Dirty Projectors and tell me what genre they fit into. I dare you. Sure, you could listen to a group like this and start throwing out their influences, but that's always been true. Dylan's influences are obvious...he was a downright thief as he openly admits. That never caused anyone to accuse him of a lack of innovation (actually several people have accused him of just this, but they're all full of hot air). All music is derivative to some extent unless, but there are still plenty of groups out there that take their influences in completely new and unexplored directions.
We may be running out of sub-genres classify the music we're hearing, but that doesn't mean there aren't new sounds out there. There are. We just do our best to force them into categories that already exist, even when this isn't appropriate.
As I said in my original post, if you're looking to the radio to find them, then you're looking in the wrong places.
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I dunno -- I kinda assumed popular music was the actual discussion here. Obviously you can find great music anywhere.
But as Anax pointed out, the corporate control over avenues of music consumption are weakening as people find other ways to discovery new music. That's why you find blog bands all over alternative radio nowadays.
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Dirty Projectors is Indie. Could also be played on any of the SiriusXM "alternative" genre channels. No big surprise that they worked with David Byrne.
Whenever anyone says "these guys are bending genres", it is always Indie/Alternative. :)
Why is a 20-something musician playing a guitar in 2013 ? In the 1950s and 60s, "rock and roll" was a disposable dance music, the instrumentation was chosen to be loud and to break with the established popular music of soothing jazzy singers.
I cringe when I see official ribbon cutting events accompanied by a local band of 65-year olds playing "Johnny B. Goode".
One of the most disappointing turn of events IMHO was "The White Stripes". When Cobain died, there was a general consensus that rock had died with him - and that was a good thing, but unfortunately none of us anticipated the appeal of an endless chain of musicians who want to do exactly the same thing as the musical artists they grew up with.
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Dirty Projectors is Indie. Could also be played on any of the SiriusXM "alternative" genre channels. No big surprise that they worked with David Byrne.
Whenever anyone says "these guys are bending genres", it is always Indie/Alternative. :)
Why is a 20-something musician playing a guitar in 2013 ? In the 1950s and 60s, "rock and roll" was a disposable dance music, the instrumentation was chosen to be loud and to break with the established popular music of soothing jazzy singers.
I cringe when I see official ribbon cutting events accompanied by a local band of 65-year olds playing "Johnny B. Goode".
One of the most disappointing turn of events IMHO was "The White Stripes". When Cobain died, there was a general consensus that rock had died with him - and that was a good thing, but unfortunately none of us anticipated the appeal of an endless chain of musicians who want to do exactly the same thing as the musical artists they grew up with.
Okay, Dirty Projectors are "Indie". Have you heard anything like it before? Would it qualify as innovative by your standards? If not, then I guess we just see things differently.
Besides, "Indie" isn't a real genre. This is why people have started putting sub-labels on it. Oh, this is Indie Rock. No, this is Indie Folk. Or in the case of Dirty Projectors, this is Indie...???
I'm one of the biggest Nirvana fans you'll find. But no, rock did not die with Cobain. And no, Nirvana was not entirely groundbreaking or original. They simply took a form of music that already existed (Seattle grunge scene)and pushed it to the mainstream. Yes, it changed popular music as we know it, but it wasn't necessarily inventive or new. They just made people aware of what was already out there and they were able to do so because Cobain was so incredibly gifted. Of course, there's a whole other crowd out there that will dismiss Cobain outright and point to Eddie Vedder instead.
Not really sure what the beef is with The White Stripes. They are mimicking Nirvana because they're loud and unpolished? Jack White is far more influenced by the blues masters of the past than by anything Nirvana did.
Now if you want to be a baby like Jack White and complain about The Black Keys ripping off the White Stripes, THEN you would have a valid point. Some of their early stuff is practically indistinguishable.
As a side not, Ken, I hope you know that I'm enjoying this conversation and am not trying to put down your perspective. I know a lot of people that would agree with you. Just wanted to make sure that was clear since I'm pretty new here as a poster.
Now, I await your response. :)p3
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The beef with The White Stripes is that they revived a dead and archaic art form.
As I mentioned above "Why is a 20-something musician playing a guitar in 2013 (or 1999 for that matter) ? In the 1950s and 60s, "rock and roll" was a disposable dance music, the instrumentation was chosen to be loud and to break with the established popular music of soothing jazzy singers."
To me "classic rock" is contradictory. Tutti Fruiti and Johnny B. Goode are not brilliant compositions, they were vehicles for expressing something about the 1950s (as clarified in the film Pleasantville). Doing guitar music now is just a "historical re-enactment" - like those guys who dress up as Union and Confederacy soldiers and re-enact Gettysburg.
I think this is a down side of "recording". In the past, only the best art survived for decades, because it took many hours of work to learn and perform one Beethoven symphony. So, no one listens to all the crap music of 1800. Same with Shakespeare versus the crap authors of 500 years ago.
Nowadays, everything of the past 50 years is available and hdtracks even has high res versions of music that no one should ever listen to again, like Foreigner.
Apparently, we are now in a weird sci-fi movie where all future generations are doomed to re-enact the last half of the 20th Century over and over....
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That is silly. How can you dismiss all music because they use instruments that are not "new"? Is Chopin's contribution to music any less than Bach's because he wrote it 100+ years later? I either completely disagree with what you are saying or I don't quite grasp your argument.
As much as I hate to use the word evolve in this context, music is about evolution not revolution. There is nothing that comes out and blasts away everything that was done before. Maybe in the mainstream that happens, but nobody has ever come along and smashed the mould. It is a gradual process of innovation that leads to the genre's we now have. Trying to place everything into a category limits your perception of what music is. I despise the grunge movement, it does not appeal to me musically in any way, however I respect it as a movement. I would be more upset at them for killing glam rock and paving the way for nu metal than I am at the White Stripes for playing innovative music inspired by the blues. I don't see the White Stripes as a catalyst for shitty music
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I'm not sure we have to be locked or frozen into a particular era once it's over. Swing came back which was fine by me. Should the FCC have imprisoned and executed Amy Winehouse before she could 'pollute' the airways? I assume 'guitar music' is fine as long as it's Latin? Is it okay that Tori Amos uses a Harpsicord? I personally don't mind the White Stripes (or Foreigner) and find them more melodic than most of the popular music that grinds my gears over the past decade.
Some feel Cobain essentially tried to kill Rock. I'm more of a STP/Smashing Pumpkins guy myself anyway.
As for the 1800s, that was the industrialization of the western world and major wars across the globe were devouring human populations like candy. Art tends to suffer in such periods.
But on a serious not Ken, I need you to help me understand something. I just want to know what love is!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNOPyUdLZPk
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Should the FCC have imprisoned and executed Amy Winehouse before she could 'pollute' the airways?
Well almost yes. The FCC should have imprisoned the the producers who went to such extents to copy that motown sound of yesteryear, including the low-fidelity effect. Unrestricted from the confines of her studio recordings, she was even more awesome, even while drugged-up, slurring her words, and forgetting the lyrics.
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Adele got mo' Motowned than Amy I'd say.
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I agree with Stapsy on the evolutionary part.
Even those who are said to be musical revolutionaries often borrow from past musicians. Cobain & Grunge were ultimately an evolution of punk music. Repurposed (in a positive manner) for a new era.
One of my favorite bands of all time is Led Zeppelin. Some of my more musically inclined friends would always give me shit about that because they weren't "original" enough to be considered a great band. They obviously just stole from older blues musicians and blah blah blah...well who cares? None of those older blues musicians could kick-ass quite like LZ so why should I care that who originally jotted down the music? Does the fact that any band borrows from artists/genres of yesteryear really matter when you sit down and listen? I'm someone who values the performance more than the composition I guess. If the product is dope, you just listen.
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That is silly. How can you dismiss all music because they use instruments that are not "new"? Is Chopin's contribution to music any less than Bach's because he wrote it 100+ years later? I either completely disagree with what you are saying or I don't quite grasp your argument.
Actually your example is a good example of my point.
Chopin DID use new instruments - now called the Piano. In fact, 30 years earlier, towards the end of his life, Mozart was very enthusiastic about that new instrument, and wrote encouraging letters to the technical guy who was coming up with new improvements. (And the letters prove that you don't need to use 18th Century pianofortes to play Mozart, since he was much happier with the new pianos that were being developed.)
As much as I hate to use the word evolve in this context, music is about evolution not revolution. There is nothing that comes out and blasts away everything that was done before.
No, new music never nullifies what was done before. Miles does not blast away Louis Armstrong. Rather, it is more a case of blasting away everything that is being done now - with something that had not been done before. Diz and Bird in 1947, Little Richard and co in 1955, The Beatles and Stones in 1964, James Brown and Herbie Hancock in the early 70s, both the Sex Pistols and the Bee Gees at the same time in 1977, Visage in 1980, Michael Jackson in 1982, RunDMC and Beastie Boys in 1986, Oakenfold & friends in 1988, Cobain and co in 1991, Tiesto, Van Dyk & friends in 2001. (Yes, the above names are just the most famous ones in each trend.)
Instead of creating their own new genre, nowadays everyone does the same genres created by those guys I just listed.
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Stapsy, recognition for a good song should still be mentioned though.
A good song, original or not is a good song. I became a serious listener though Hip Hop. I started collecting albums based on production and samples. Even if it is the Amen or Think break, when a cover becomes a hit and the original artist and/or author is not credited my appreciation for the producers and the performing artist decreases.
Do know I do not like the way royalties regarding samples are handled. For instance when The Verve was stripped of its royalties because of a Rolling Stones sample in "Bitter Sweet Symphony" it went too far. It was not as if Jagger had written their lyrics. But hey, lawyers beat the artists in that case.
These days I tend to pick up albums based on the known live performances. When the artist is good in an acoustic setting with his or her own sound I know enough. Think of Lykke Li or the Soul Divas from the sixties and seventies. The John Butler Trio's live performances were enough for me to buy their first three albums in a snap.
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Yea you are right, I forgot about that facepalm. Still, they are part of the same genre that spans a much larger gap than the Beatles to the White Stripes.
My point is that music is a series of slow progressions not large jumps. Diz and Bird didn't just wake up one day and create Bebop. Bebop is a natural progression from their roots as musician's in various big bands. Besides, grunge isn't really all that different from the Beatles anyway...guitar, vocals, drums, bass...and that was almost 30 years later!
I think what you would really like is my experimental music trio. We feature the Didgeridoo, electric pennywhistle, and upside down 5 gallon buckets (Home Depot buckets, Lowe's buckets sound like shit).
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The beef with The White Stripes is that they revived a dead and archaic art form.
As I mentioned above "Why is a 20-something musician playing a guitar in 2013 (or 1999 for that matter) ? In the 1950s and 60s, "rock and roll" was a disposable dance music, the instrumentation was chosen to be loud and to break with the established popular music of soothing jazzy singers."
To me "classic rock" is contradictory. Tutti Fruiti and Johnny B. Goode are not brilliant compositions, they were vehicles for expressing something about the 1950s (as clarified in the film Pleasantville). Doing guitar music now is just a "historical re-enactment" - like those guys who dress up as Union and Confederacy soldiers and re-enact Gettysburg.
I think this is a down side of "recording". In the past, only the best art survived for decades, because it took many hours of work to learn and perform one Beethoven symphony. So, no one listens to all the crap music of 1800. Same with Shakespeare versus the crap authors of 500 years ago.
Nowadays, everything of the past 50 years is available and hdtracks even has high res versions of music that no one should ever listen to again, like Foreigner.
Apparently, we are now in a weird sci-fi movie where all future generations are doomed to re-enact the last half of the 20th Century over and over....
Ohhhhhhhh, now I get it! You're old and grumpy and don't care for all that blasted noise.
Why didn't you just say so?
Dead and archaic art form. I got a good laugh out of that one. :)p13
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Stapsy, Pink Floyd's "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" is strangely enough one of my favourite albums. I appreciate albums that put music in a new perspective. Look up the live performances of the Instant Composer Pool. They record their own live performances and their music makes me sit and listen. Willem Breuker and BV Haast recorded their music themselves, no big record label to compromise their sound p;)
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Instant Composer Pool is awesome! Thanks for the recommendation. It is weird yet strangely engaging.
Piper is also one of my favorite's. That album pushed me to explore new and strange music that was outside of my comfort zone. If you have a chance find Charles Mingus "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady", it really blew me away.
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More Mingus for December it is p;)
About the ICP. I accidentally walked into their live performance on an lazy Saturday years ago. That was a good Saturday...
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I think this kind of statement is made in every generation. The good music is still there. You just need to know where to look.
^This. 99% of music lasts forever- the 1% is OOP or lost masters. That leaves a whole lot of music behind. Did the people listening back in 1960 run out of stuff to listen to before they died? We have everything they had, plus everything that has been made since. Even if we just gain 2-3 albums a year that we like, it just means our library gets that much bigger. I don't know- it sounds a lot like "get off of my lawn" and "I remember when bread was a nickel". I'd consider myself lucky if I run out of music, places to visit, books to read... you get the idea. Also remember that music has never been so easy to acquire, whether it's downloads at 3am or buying used vinyl off of ebay or Amazon.
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I think this kind of statement is made in every generation. The good music is still there. You just need to know where to look.
^This. 99% of music lasts forever- the 1% is OOP or lost masters. That leaves a whole lot of music behind. Did the people listening back in 1960 run out of stuff to listen to before they died? We have everything they had, plus everything that has been made since. Even if we just gain 2-3 albums a year that we like, it just means our library gets that much bigger. I don't know- it sounds a lot like "get off of my lawn" and "I remember when bread was a nickel". I'd consider myself lucky if I run out of music, places to visit, books to read... you get the idea. Also remember that music has never been so easy to acquire, whether it's downloads at 3am or buying used vinyl off of ebay or Amazon.
So I guess Salieri is a one percenter! :)) I dunno about that, I'd say the majority of music made in history will never be listened to again or by very few. Even during the golden ages, great bands and music were the exception and not the rule. I think we are talking about diminishing returns here. From seas in oceans, to pools and cups.
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From a technical standpoint, dynamic mics started to get used less on vocals and replaced a bit more by condenser mics which pick up a lot more nuance in a compressed sort of way... but it captivates the listener. Sure, both kinds have been used for a long time, but...
I posit that the problem is that the music rendering took a backseat to the vocal layerings in a tangible way... and neither one properly supports the other in the track mastering anymore. Also, recording artists aren't engineers to the degree they once were so they don't know what a compressor for brickwall limiter is actually doing to the waveform. They know what it sounds like, but they don't know that they're toasting their tracks. It drives me nuts how many albums I have with limiting problems and distortion. Somebody doesn't babysit the transfer to CD or the recording artist is deaf because I have a hard time believing that it actually sounded that bad in the studio and still made it to press that way.
Anyway, I'm going to record some organ music this weekend and I just did a test in the environment I'll be recording in, and I had a very hard time getting the choir, organ and piano all to balance. The masters of old with their limited gear and limited use of backing tracks really had to work hard to get it right and I have a lot of respect for what they pulled off.
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I think this kind of statement is made in every generation. The good music is still there. You just need to know where to look.
^This. 99% of music lasts forever- the 1% is OOP or lost masters. That leaves a whole lot of music behind. Did the people listening back in 1960 run out of stuff to listen to before they died? We have everything they had, plus everything that has been made since. Even if we just gain 2-3 albums a year that we like, it just means our library gets that much bigger. I don't know- it sounds a lot like "get off of my lawn" and "I remember when bread was a nickel". I'd consider myself lucky if I run out of music, places to visit, books to read... you get the idea. Also remember that music has never been so easy to acquire, whether it's downloads at 3am or buying used vinyl off of ebay or Amazon.
So I guess Salieri is a one percenter! :)) I dunno about that, I'd say the majority of music made in history will never be listened to again or by very few. Even during the golden ages, great bands and music were the exception and not the rule. I think we are talking about diminishing returns here. From seas in oceans, to pools and cups.
Great post Anax. :money:
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hello,
as i posted in another thread started by Original_Ken, i listened exclusively to The Complete Riverside Recordings of Thelonius Monk while in graduate school. so i pretty much missed everything from the 80's. :-[
this is not a good thing as the GYTW is totally into Sting. (and i am not, really. :( )
the comment about a 70's dj following things up with something out of sync is spot on. there was, once upon a time, the leave to actually choose and play tunes that at first blush would seem out of context.
radio, however, is dead and its totally impossible to know why.
(as an example of the loss of freedom for a dj i offer this: one afternoon i was listening to the commercial "progressive" rock station in my market <sigh> when i heard a killer cover of "Casey Jones". the voice sounded familiar and the tune kicked ass! at the end of the set the dj came on to apologize for playing the cut as it was Dwight Yokum and not on his approved playlist.)
one could argue that there was a consensus of what was good music back in the day and that "album oriented FM stations" allowed their jocks to play it.
when the Beatles broke up, that ended.
the problem with this analysis is that at the same time there was a soul station to listen to (and groove on) and a low powered (commercial !!!) jazz station to tune into as well. both of which were playing sh*t i'd never heard before and started to really get into.
nowadays, i rely on my teenaged kids to point me towards stuff that isn't 50 years old. and i like some of it very much. but my son is into Black Sabbath so i guess it is a lost cause.
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hello,
actually it was "Trucking". godz, i hate gettin' old, the memory slips. :-Z
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As a metal fan, I'll say this. Heavy metal is FAR better in 2013 than it was in 2003, and it's on a different planet than it was in 1998. Twenty or so years ago some of the best metal in American history was being produced by the Bay Area thrashers and Floridian death bands. Metallica and Megadeth were debuting at #1 and #2, and you had albums like Seasons In The Abyss and Unquestionable Presence.
Then something happened, and metal kind of died for awhile. It became uncool to know how to play the guitar or have long hair. Once great bands released albums like Load and Risk, and rap metal became a thing that people did. That was the last time that metal would have broad mainstream appeal, and things got much better because of it. The metal that's remotely popular today is garbage like pretty much all other forms of music targeted towards mainstream audiences, but it doesn't matter. An Agalloch album will never reach anything like the kind of sales that the Black Album or Countdown To Extinction managed, but thanks to the way people discover music today, they don't have to worry about where their CD is going to be on the shelf at Tower Records or the Virgin Megastore, and they certainly don't need any radio play or MTV videos.
I would have no way of knowing through magazines back then about metal from countries like Jordan and Chile and Greece. From what I recall of '80s and early '90s metal it was the US and UK and to a much lesser extent Canada and Germany, with a select few like Vader from Poland and Mercyful Fate from Denmark getting any attention at all. Now the fact that American metal is largely not that good is irrelevant. It's global. And while admittedly there are a ton of bands right now trying to sound like Black Sabbath and Pentagram did in the '70s, there's still a lot of innovation happening as well.
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As a metal fan, I'll say this. Heavy metal is FAR better in 2013 than it was in 2003, and it's on a different planet than it was in 1998.
[...]
That is great to hear.
The problem - as I see it - is that since, as you state, it is the music that is not popular that is worthwhile, then almost be definition, it is music that is hard to know exists. For example, I have never seen "Agalloch" mentioned before.
One is then left with the task of listening to all metal bands in existence (since the good ones are not popular).
So, a reliable method of "separating the wheat from the chaff" is important.
And, having said that, I would be interested in what you think are the best current metal bands (presumably Agalloch is one).
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Gothenburg melodic metal was best in the 90s. :( It's amazing how much influence it had on metal around the world starting around the late 90s, early 2000s, but it was never quite up to par with the pioneers of that sound.
In Flames pre-"Reroute to Remain"...wow.
I do not like the growing trend of Djent. I think it is boring. It can and has been done and implemented well at times.
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As a metal fan, I'll say this. Heavy metal is FAR better in 2013 than it was in 2003, and it's on a different planet than it was in 1998.
[...]
One is then left with the task of listening to all metal bands in existence (since the good ones are not popular).
So, a reliable method of "separating the wheat from the chaff" is important.
Podcasts are helpful. NPR has a bevy of them. I listen to All Songs Considered every week. They don't often do metal, but every once in a while they have a special guest on to talk about the world of metal and what's new and good.
It's a pretty well-rounded show as far as the genre's they cover. Several are less emphasized (hip-hop, metal, etc.), but they do get their time to shine. Those are usually the episodes that I skip. :)p8
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I think this kind of statement is made in every generation.
The good music is still there. You just need to know where to look.
Bingo.
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People change, music preferences can change too.
'New' music it seems will always be in demand.
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The problem - as I see it - is that since, as you state, it is the music that is not popular that is worthwhile, then almost be definition, it is music that is hard to know exists. For example, I have never seen "Agalloch" mentioned before.
One is then left with the task of listening to all metal bands in existence (since the good ones are not popular).
So, a reliable method of "separating the wheat from the chaff" is important.
And, having said that, I would be interested in what you think are the best current metal bands (presumably Agalloch is one).
Agreed. That's where metal review sites and blogs come in, and I just happen to help run one: http://www.metal-fi.com/ (http://www.metal-fi.com/) There are certainly loads of metal focused review sites out there, as well as nearly exhaustive encyclopedias like Metal Archives. What I felt was lacking was no one was really commenting on current production standards, or if they were, everything was "10/10 sounds great!" Bullshit. Nobody was regularly reviewing metal on vinyl either, and if you want something done right...
Agalloch is definitely up there with the cream of the American crop. We've also got Cynic, Skeletonwitch, Baroness, Absu, and more than a few others making great albums. As I said, the fact that garbage like Five Finger Death Punch or Whitechapel are the only "metal" bands that are remotely popular in the mainstream is basically irrelevant... that is unless you want to make a lot of money selling albums. That's just not going to happen anymore, not unless you're Avenged Sevenfold. The days of a brilliant album like Rust In Peace also selling a gazillion copies are long over.
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Agreed. That's where metal review sites and blogs come in, and I just happen to help run one: http://www.metal-fi.com/ (http://www.metal-fi.com/) There are certainly loads of metal focused review sites out there, as well as nearly exhaustive encyclopedias like Metal Archives. What I felt was lacking was no one was really commenting on current production standards, or if they were, everything was "10/10 sounds great!" Bullshit. Nobody was regularly reviewing metal on vinyl either, and if you want something done right...
There is also the aspect that nowadays, most reviews of music/movies/books are 5 out of 5 stars. If someone does not like something, they ignore it, rather than writing about it.
Actually that ties into the reason for this site, except in terms of music rather than headphones...
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There is also the aspect that nowadays, most reviews of music/movies/books are 5 out of 5 stars. If someone does not like something, they ignore it, rather than writing about it.
Actually that ties into the reason for this site, except in terms of music rather than headphones...
I'm not so sure that's true. A $5,000 power amp is not something that anyone can just get. Unless you're a professional and you've got a working relationship with the manufacturer, if you want one to test you're probably going to have to cut a check for $5,000. Anyone can listen to a new album on Youtube for free, and if you don't like it, it's more than easy enough to make a blog (or your own YT channel) and slam the hell out of it. Loads of people do just that. I can say for example that very few of the metal blogs ignored Lulu or Super Collider. We didn't review Lulu but we ripped SC to shreds, and we were far from alone in that.
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Hey, Dave...got any personal recommendations for an Opeth fanboy? Also a big fan of In Flames pre-RtR (some of their newer stuff is OK).
I'm generally pretty content with melodic, progressive metal, but Opeth is one of the few bands that takes me from chub to...well, the next level. Also found I like Steven Wilson's work as well.
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Hey, Dave...got any personal recommendations for an Opeth fanboy? Also a big fan of In Flames pre-RtR (some of their newer stuff is OK).
I'm generally pretty content with melodic, progressive metal, but Opeth is one of the few bands that takes me from chub to...well, the next level. Also found I like Steven Wilson's work as well.
Sure! I'm a big progressive fan as well, and this year was a great year for it. Check out Liminal, the new album Exivious (provided you don't mind instrumentals). Fantastic release. A new band called Cascus recently released their debut, which has quite a bit of Morningrise in it along with some melodic death metal cues. Definitely check out The Inheritance from Dan Swano's new band Witherscape. The CD includes a special bonus - the vinyl mix packed on as MP3 data files. As far as I know it's the first time anyone has ever done that, and the vinyl version has double the amount of DR as the standard mix and sounds awesome.
If you're in to more "modern" progressive with a bit of technical overtones, I flat out loved what is sadly probably the last release from Last Chance To Reason - Level 3. Just incredible writing and playing on that album, easily one of my favorites of the year. Poland's big progressive bands were all on fire this year. Votum, Blindead, and Riverside are all worth checking out.
You also MUST check out Xanthochroid's Blessed He With Boils, which is progressive mixed with atmospheric black metal. I'm sure you'll dig the Barren Earth albums as well.
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To address the question raised by the OP...
I tend to think that mainstream music is not the place to look for when searching for high quality or innovative music.
Most mainstream music has always been the resort of the majority of the public and the majority is not very critical with music (for any number of reasons, but most probably simply because most people have other things to do instead of giving some considerable time to grow a true apprecciation of music) so pretty much any crap can sell as long as it's acessible or easy or makes people feel happy.
With time the discographic industry starts to see a pattern in the consumer listening habits and will try to export as much products based on the best formula to satisfy those habits, competition in this aspect is intense and as result the mainstream music landscape tend to be saturated with a lot of copycats and very few trully original artists.
In this circle the imperatives are to sell and profit, musical ambition or merit is not among the main concerns because the public does not demand such.
Musicians are either victims or accomplices of this industry.
There's a lot of quality music nowadays but there's a much higher probability of finding it by looking at a diferent circles instead of mainstream. As someone said before, it's a matter of looking in the right places.
Innovative music, though, is something relatively rare and much harder to find.
True innovation (either technical or linguistic) by nature never thrives from the mainstream, it's something that comes from the outer circles.
It comes from the "outside".
And it's something that generally is more frequent in the earlier stages of development of a discipline or art form and also tends to follow a shift or breakthrough in philosophycal, technological or social paradigma within a society or on a global scale.
It can also thrive from the pure "genius" of an artist, in which case, and just like with any other art form, it tends to be rejected or neglected by the mainstream audiences when it first makes an appearance, it takes time to fully be understood and accepted.
Music, just like any other art form, is very much an expression of the world the artist lives in.
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Gothenburg melodic metal was best in the 90s. :( It's amazing how much influence it had on metal around the world starting around the late 90s, early 2000s, but it was never quite up to par with the pioneers of that sound.
Yeah, Swedish metal in general I think has declined in recent years, and Swedish MDM in particular. Khaos Legions, yech. All metal genres ebb and flow in terms of quality, but in the case of Gothenburg, I think the torch has been passed to the Finns. Omnium Gatherum's last two albums are right up there with the classics from Dark Tranquillity or In Flames. Austrialia's Be'lakor has also been just spectacular as of late, and the new Carcass is absolutely phenomenal.