Posted on 03/25/2017 10:13:00 AM PDT by Mariner
For music fans, the recent flood of celebrity deaths has been overwhelming: David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael and Chuck Berry seem like a disproportionate number of superstars to lose in a short time span.
But with many of rock’s founding fathers and mothers reaching their 70s, the end of the age of rock ’n’ roll is just beginning. While every generation bemoans the passing of its great artists, the outsize influence of rock promises to have a profound impact on popular culture and overall music-industry sales.
Of the 25 artists with the highest record sales in the U.S. since 1991, when reliable data first became available, just one—Britney Spears—is under 40, Nielsen data show. Nineteen of the 25 are over 50 years old.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Yup. And Leonard Cohen. It’s a great interview by the man who calls himself “Bob Dylan”. I consider him the world expert on American music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpBWRJlbBCA
The above his Hitler’s rant on Rush retiring. (Great comments about “if Neil hadn’t been riding bumpity-f&*% around the country...”
With regard to new music, Alex Lifeson has helped out with some local bands and plays guitar for them on a few songs.
The website http://www.rushisaband.com/ comes out with those news items and clips of songs, etc. Some of the music is okay. But I think it is hard to make a buck in the music industry today, so the level of effort to create great music maybe isn’t there (they aren’t going to spent 3 months in a recording studio anymore); and I don’t think their are the record labels searching the country for the next great band that they can highlight - there’s no money in it.
Even Rush was saying how they didn’t make much money off of their last few albums - it was the concert tours where they profited.
For those who are interested—and everyone interested in music should be—here is the full interview:
www.bobdylan.com/news/qa-with-bill-flanagan
Bob sounds like he takes the interview seriously, which is something he certainly hasn’t done during much of his career. He gives great insights not only into his own career but also into the music of America over the past century.
And most of those guys would probably be alive if they hadn’t snorted enough cocaine to float a battleship. I’m sure the R&R lifestyle was a lot of fun, but this is the flip side of it. I would think this is going to accelerate rapidly.
Didn’t they hope they would die before they got old or something like that?
Yup. Carl Palmer is still going strong. Keith Emerson and Greg Lake are worm food now.
They made great music. What a weird era. I wish I was around at the time, but grew up on 80's crap instead.
Doubtful. The best, maybe is as good as the best was then, and today may not look so bad compared to the late 70s, say, but you don't have the heaps of talent in popular music than you had at other times (mid to late 60s, early 70s, early 80s).
You've got some unmemorable and interchangeable rock acts, and a lot of rappers, and neither group is aren't producing stuff with as much wide appeal as what the more melodic 60s, 70s, or 80s artists did.
I'd even say that today's rappers are less interesting and distinctive than 90s rappers were. Some may actually be more talented, but they don't make a splash the way the old school did.
I guess if you mean big acts, well, their day came and went. There will be fewer of them and that is a very very good thing.
Once again, I have to disagree. You have "big acts" now like Taylor Swift or Adele, but you don't have the hosts of second and third level artists scrambling to get to the top.
If you're talking about "rock" narrowly defined. Sure, the big acts are gone or are old men and new ones aren't coming up and making as big a sensation. But once again, it's those second and third tier artists that aren't making much of an impression on a wider public. The energy just isn't there anymore. Songs back in the 60s and in the 80s were a lot more memorable.
All the great rock songs have already been made.
Modern bands have to still compete with the old guys, because inevitable what they do will be compared to them.
Just listen to the difference between music in 1965, 1966, and 1967, each year was a quantum leap.
That's one way of putting it. But, it wasn't just the music. It was TV shows, too. I've long thought they all started doing LSD in 1966.
One of the fascinating things about the TV series “Mad Men” is that you got to see how things changed from year to year. Madison Avenue pretty much did dictate the trends.
Useful if you know how to sublimate.
The Doors put out both of their first two albums within months of each other in 1967. (If I remember correctly). Songs like, “Light My Fire”, “When The Music’s Over”, “The End”. Nothing going on today can touch that. It was a happening, man.
Drug-fueled musical innovation from 1966 on up to, say, 1972 or so really was and still is something to behold. They broke tremendous new ground, but then there was still a lot of new ground to be broken with anything approaching “music” as we understand the term, not so much now. I’m not advocating psychoactives, don’t get me wrong, they’re dangerous, but the music that everyone puts on such a pedestal today was courtesy of LSD and heroin, it really was. That’s one reason why the lionization of the music of that era on this website of all places is sort of amusing, really. They were tripping their butts off and thought they were some sort of revolutionary vanguard. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. I suppose the best revenge was making it a commodity and part of pop culture, just the Top 40 Casey Kasem hits of the day, just kooky fashions that were fun and colorful. To a large percentage of American society, that’s all that it ever was. How anyone could have looked at this on The Smothers Brothers comedy show and not realized what they were looking at is beyond me, but then I wasn’t really part of it, I only see it in hindsight:
Grace Slick was really magnetic, I can certainly see that.
Vintage Trouble gets it.
Thanks for that referral.
Frank Zappa didn’t use drugs, and The Mothers of Invention were way out there compared to those other drug-fueled bands.
“I consider him the world expert on American music.”
Dylan?
No argument from me.
Yes, Dylan. He’s a walking encyclopedia of American Music.
Zappa was a rare intellect, he didn’t need any help in getting out there.
Yes....about 6 months ago.
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