When we were growing up here’s what we did. We turned on the car radio, flipped between 3 stations and heard the best classically based music coming from live or studio recordings from people who developed their talent. If they sucked, they didn’t get sold nor played. Then we’d get an album at one of three record stores in town and we’d play it. Put it on the turntable and place the needle where you wanted to hear the song from the ffwd and rev are still the quickest. The sound quality from a pioneer receiver and a technical turntable with a diamond or sapphire stylus coming out of Bose or JVC speakers is nothing like what you hear at this point.
Even when my father drove us for a trip into Manhattan or to the Bronx, he’d put on 1130 AM and we’d hear jazz tunes you hear now in a Starbucks. Later, he’d play Credence with a tape deck in his Lincoln. And it was good. What? You don’t like Credence?
And then we would play those songs with our bands in our garage or in a downtown bar or a crosstown bar :)
And now if we former kids are together for any reason, a funeral, an award, business, we go to someone’s house preferably on the north shore of Long Island where all of this took place and on the back porch in the evening we play and sing harmony. Everyone knows all the parts to ‘Friend if the Devil”, “Dead Flowers”, “Please be With Me”. The girls alone - James Taylor, CSNY- Helplessly Hoping in particular.
New music Is fine. Hans Zimmer on a score is brilliant. Korean pop dancer singers are talented. But we don’t go looking for it. What it takes to hear a song in my car is dangerous.
Forget it.
Skynyrd practiced all day long for years in 100 degree heat in a shack in FL. They didn’t press some buttons on a mixer or a keyboard to sell their records.
Glen Campbell picked cotton as a kid and left home w/ his $5 Sears guitar when he realized he wanted something more.
Today’s “artists” don’t know hardship, or hard work - so they don’t play good music. Sorry. I’m sure there are exceptions, but they are rare.