Millenial's Music Taste (vanity). Whats wrong with your generation?

[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.

[zeugma]

The generation that gave us the Bee Gees gives us now the tone deaf ‘millenials’.

You know, it's funny because I pretty much dropped out of listening to any radio back when disco was popular except for the lone 'album rock' oriented station in houston at the time (101 KLOL). These days, I have a few of their tunes. (granted not many). They were actually fairly talented musicians, as far as composition and such went when they wanted to be. I didn't really care much for their style, but have learned over the years, that it wasn't all dreck.

[greene66]

You’re lucky. I missed out on seeing Lionel Hampton one time he was in my home town, as I had to be back up at college. Same darned thing happened with Count Basie and his band. Conversely, Benny Goodman made an appearance at my college, but I had to be back in my hometown that weekend, and missed him too! One of my college profs (a generic jazz appreciation course) tried to get Cab Calloway to drop in when he was in the vicinity, but Calloway had some plans to play the ponies, so it didn’t materialize.

I think the only old-timer I ever saw (and later met, after the show) was Harry James.

[Fire_on_High]

VNV Nation, Rotorsand, SITD, Assemblage 23, Blutengel...

[hecht]

They may have occasionally lip synched, but there was no auto-tune so they had to have the goods

[hecht]

Disc sucked then and now

[a fool in paradise]

Concerts weren’t an hour long back then either (for the pop acts for kids). Even the Beatles in their heyday played shorter shows so they could pack the joint twice.

If you wanted to see a 7 hour Beatles concert, you had to go see them in their Hamburg days. And it probably wasn’t all gold.

[Fiji Hill]

I has hearing what I thought of as the worst song ever produced – Melanie’s “Brand New Key”

I was in Germany in early 1972 and listened to the Armed Forces Network, which played Top 40 tunes. Since, for some reason, "Brand New Key" was close to the top of the charts, it got played a lot. That, and "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing."

[a fool in paradise]

Aw,come on. Each generation thinks it’s music is the best.

I think there was plenty of crappy music that dominated the airwaves (radio and television) as I was growing up in the 70s and 80s and 90s and 21st century onwards.

And that isn't to say that I don't run across plenty of crappy and mediocre music "hits" in the used record bins either.

Winchester Cathedral won a Best Song Grammy.

[LS]

Nah, the argument won’t work because I grew up on Led Zep and Hendrix (one of America’s great poets, by the way, even if stoned). I think just fine. I think just fine. I think just fine. Wait, did I say that?

[a fool in paradise]

Middle-aged Grampa: I used to be with it, but then they changed what *it* was. Now what I’m with isn’t *it*, and what’s *it* seems weird and scary to me. It’ll happen to you...

I didn't like post-Woodstock country-rock, post-Woodstock Nashvegas rock-country or anything "country industry" ever since, disco, corporate stadium rock, fern bar music, rap, hardcore, thrash, speed metal, house music, hip hop, top 40-girly diva disco (Mariah, Madonna, Paula Abdul, etc), grunge (or at least anything that "got through"), boy bands, Disney dance acts, "the return of rock Strokes-Vines-Hives-White Stripes YEAH!", dubstep, mashups, techno, electronica, ambient, cuddlecore, rrriot girrrl, NU country, NU Metal, Mathrock, Icelandic death metal, U2...

I could go on and on and include those artists like Tony Bennett and Ethyl Merman who "had" to record Beatles covers and disco songs to prove they were still "with it".

[a fool in paradise]

That music today generally does suck, but it's lowest common denominator background noise/entertainment.

It's also the "music" that is offerred up by those who are willing to "play the game" and be packaged, co-opted, and into perpetual debt to their label for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

Sign the contract and your music will be pushed on the radio, tv-shows, you'll get to gush about your recollections of the 70s,80s, 90s,00s, etc. on MTV/VH-1 "I remember the" specials, you'll get facetime in documentaries on bands that having nothing to do with you (like those in the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main St. documentary, WillIAm and Sheryl Crowe I'm calling you out).

You may even get invited to the Obama White Hut.

Can't say I've ever agreed with a single Grammy choice.

And since the "star" celebrity status is manufactured, if you try to walk for independence, you'll get backlashed and find that those who rejected you are unlikely to ever like you and those who liked your "hit" aren't so interested in your new material (including the stations that played you in the first place).

[a fool in paradise]

Popular music especially has always prized a degree of conformity—witness the enduring popularity of cover songs and remixes

The music business is about song publishing. It was that way in the era of Tin Pan Alley. It was that way in the era of the Brill Building. It is that way in the boy band racket, Nashvegas recording industry, and on and on.

"cover songs" are often pushed on an artist because someone who owns the publishing wants to get money in his pocket from some new verison. That was the case when Bill Haley recorded "Thirteen Women". "OH, and by the way, you can put that other song you do "Rock Around The Clock" (not actually original either) on the flip IF you can finish the recording in 30 minutes!"

Much of the Elvis catalog is singing other peoples' songs (and that doesn't include those who wrote the "hits" and deliberate "misses" that were put on the back sides).

[a fool in paradise]

A pal of mine, currently a mandolin player, but in the 70s a drummer for a proto-punk band, only listens to recordings from the 1920s no later.

I didn't know that Robert Crumb played drums in a proto-punk band in the 70s.

"Where You Been So Long" East River String Band w/ R. Crumb France 2013

"So Sorry Dear" East River String Band w/ R. Crumb France 2013

[a fool in paradise]

"Rock n Roll's been going downhill ever since Buddy Holly died."

Buddy Holly almost never ever got a shot.

Here is his "label" refusing to release "That'll Be The Day", dropping his contract, AND refusing to let him buy out the song as well.

Phone call between Buddy Holly and Paul Cohen of DECCA from Thursday February 28, 1957.

5 years parking and the "trends" would have changed.

He ended up going around the label (and luckily was on a subsidiary label when he did so).

[a fool in paradise]

There exists an incestuous monopoly of the media (the oversized corporate interests own the magazines that tell you what the trends are, they own the record labels, sometimes they own the tv/radio stations, and on and on).

The small labels are effectively shut out. It was that way when Elvis was on Sun and Nirvana was on Sub-Pop. Those labels that manage to break through to the mainstream are few and far between but when they are permitted to, the changes can be dramatic.

The Beatles were on several small US labels (Swan and Vee Jay among them) before Capital Records big blitz to bring them over. Leslie Gore and Tommy Roe BOTH saw the Beatles early on in Europe and tried to get the attention of booking agents and labels with no success. “Aw, the guitar group sound is OUT, baby!”

[a fool in paradise]

There is indeed great music made and you are right, finding it is the problem. The record companies, for all their faults, acted as a filter before profit completely overwhelmed every other consideration. Today everyone has to be the modern equivilant of an old DJ rifling through crates at a used record store via you tube/Soundcloud searching or accept the poop that’s currently provided. Not a day goes by that this isn’t discussed on the music production boards.

The tower belonging to the whores of Media Babylon has collapsed (people don't listen to radio in the numbers they once did, they find no relevancy in the music, and if they are buying music, it is from untracked artists who never "chart" or even used album sales that are likewise untracked by the industry press).

We are all wandering around speaking in babbling tones unable to communicate with one another these days. Balkanization. No longer any shared experiences in the culture. You're on your own.

[a fool in paradise]

That Big Chuck and Little John clip is great. Back in the days when there was local television (everyone today is harping about the end of local newspapers and local radio but local television programming fell off first).

BC&LJ would create such gags to insert in the old movie they hosted every week (often by American International or Arthur Rank but other studios’ films could find their way into the stack as well).

I don’t think Jimmy Castor took himself very seriously (as Madonna and Lady Gaga DO, entering themselves into discussions of world politics and public policy as they do).

[a fool in paradise]

Dick Clark was a corrupt sham.

He kept artists like Hank Ballard from being on his show (he even created “Chubby Checker” to record a sound-alike cover version to keep Hank from having the hit with The Twist).

[a fool in paradise]

I don’t like most electronic music. It is often sequenced “audio drugs”. It is HEAVILY used in television and even radio advertising these days. I’m glad I’ve been tv-free for over 5 years now.

There are people who use actual electronics to make the sounds or even still play the keyboards though.

There is a bit in the Pink Floyd Live At Pompeii film where a younger Roger Waters (working with a sequencer for On The Run on Dark Side of the Moon) says that there is a danger in such technology replacing music knowledge with cobbled elements. Something like “any monkey can do it”.

[a fool in paradise]

Many radio stations today are not even interested in playing new songs at all. Even from new releases from artists they aleady play. Or even adding in other “deeper” cuts from albums they play or even adding in other “hits” from the eras they play.

500 songs. Nothing ever changes. EVER.

Houston just lost one of those stations for a rap station.