Posted on 01/01/2014 7:18:16 PM PST by hecht
Last night we watched ABC's Dick Clarks New Years Eve Show. When they began to show music performers, the first I saw was Billy Joel. You could tell that it was one of his bona fide live performance as he sounded different from the studio versions, some minor errors etc. In my genervation ( I'm in my 50s) the best albums were often live , where the performers would jam, experiment and ad lib. The Allmans Live at Fillmore East is an example , or the Live version of Led Zepellin's "Dazed and Confused" -filmed in San Francisco - where Robert Plant ad libbed" going to San Francisco" in the middle of the song. After Joel the show went to a series of Millenial performers who all had auto-tuned lip synched performances, where they basically just aerobic danced to songs written by someone else, don't play instruments and have a few clones dancing in synch behind them. I joked to my guests" imagine if the Beatles were part of the Millenial generation. John Lennon would be lip synching an aerobic dance with George , Ringo and Paul would dance in unison behind him. What gives Millenials? have you no sense ? don't you realize that these "performers" are manufactured pretty boys/girls ? they are live action "Archies" If your taste in music is so vacuous , is there any hope for them? Is there any hope to wan them from Obama?
Even the non song writing performers of our generation i.e..e Elvis could at least perform.
I’m not sure. The 50’s and 60’s still get a lot of play and I notice the young kids around 16-24 know all of the songs. Same with 70’s.
I work part time at a small pizza joint and all the kids there, mostly 16-17, prefer the 70’s to the late 80’s or 90’s. Maybe it’s they were raised right! lol
I know persons who were born after 1980 who listen to music from the 60s and 70s but avoid the “nostalgia” for an age they never lived in by eschewing the Billboard charts altogether.
The DJs (Northern Soul, for example) have created a new “hierarchy of hits” that have identified “dancefloor monsters” that will bring people on the floor even if they’ve never heard the song before. Some of these songs have a universal response but they aren’t “hits” in the strict industry definition of the term (and don’t always earn the publisher royalties, old vinyl pays the originator nothing), aren’t available in most big box stores (even as a boxed set), etc.
People who grew up in the 60s and 70s largely rejected/neglected these recordings for the hyped hits.
A coincidence...today some rap guy I don’t know was playing something recent the kids liked.
It was “Drift Away” and Dobie Gray was on the track. These kids were loving it and, to prove the point again, I had to tell them Gray recorded this in 1972.
I’m a boomer, mid-50’s, and there’s some bands today who are pretty good.
Adelle, Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers, Allison Krauss.
My favorites, though, are the Dead, Cream, CSN&Y, Donovan, John Mayall and Bob Dylan.
Ed
please add me to that list too.
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