MickyDolenz said:

PeteSilas said:

the great music transcends all of that. Sure, there is some great music that never gets heard sure, I'll believe that. But the great music is great because it has touched a lot of people in some way.

"Great" is an opinion of the listener. There's college courses on Tupac Shakur. So that means he is great to his fans or to people taking the class. But to a person who only likes bluegrass, Tupac's music would not mean much, but Roni Stoneman's or Flatt & Scruggs might. To hard rock fans, Black Sabbath might be great to them, but Poison maybe not.

after a certain amount of time a consensus is reached and music/composers are considered great. Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and on our side of the pond, Ellington, Gershwin would be considered "great" and are known at least by name by many people who've never bothered to listen to their music. My point is, I think the "great" stuff will endure, not everything that sells will.

MickyDolenz said:

herb4 said:

Yeah, you make good arguments and a tight case and I can definitely see where you're coming from. I confess to being old, caring less and incredibly detached from almost all modern music but I still go to shows and take an interest when something catches my ear. I'm the grumpy old man now talking about the kids these days just don't get it, it all sounds the same and get off my lawn. Music, I think is tied VERY CLOSELY to sex and is primarily for the young(er). At a casual glance, it seems to me that racial divides are smaller, if only due to the continual demise of terrestial radio and my previous point of a ton of white kids diggin hip hop. Then again, that's sort of history repeating itself with white kids tuning into "black music" only this time the cast majority of the artists they dig are, in fact, BLACK

That could be said about popular mainstream music since rock n roll began. You think all of those girls were screaming at Elvis & The Beatles and going to watch Frankie Avalon movies were just listening to them. When The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show there was even a caption saying "Sorry girls he's married" when John Lennon was on the screen. The crooner pop singers that were really popular before rock n roll weren't usually considered selling sex (Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Andrews Sisters).

I really think audience reactions back then were.. um, fake news. Hype 'O' The Times. *Holds sign up saying SCREAM* etc. And they did, madly, unrealistically. I see those white kids looking like "I hope my Dad wasn't watching or doesn't kill me for dancing to The Supremes. Did i smile at Diana Ross? Oh shit!. I did!" #MilkCarton. It happened.

[Edited 4/25/19 18:32pm]

Elvis hit paydirt with the whole "white guy that sings black" and it opened the floodgates for decades after for other white people to do the same, it's nothing special anymore. Amy Whinehouse, I'm not a huge fan of but I've heard she stole her whole style from Lauryn Hill. Boy George, Simply Red, Michael Bolton, The Righteous Brothers, Rod Stewart, etc.., etc.., they all had some good songs and their singing ability varied from ok to great. I happen to think it's all good as long as you bring something to the table other than mimicry, that's probably why michael bolton became a laughingstock, he was using his natural ability (great singer) and black culture to get over, he had nothing of real artistic value to add. You can't say that for Elvis or Rod or Led Zeppelin or the Stones, all of those guys brought plenty to the table. Also, there is one great thing about the brits, as annoying as their ripping off our music can be, they appreciated it probably more than we did. I was just watching 20 feet from stardom and the singers praised the brits for giving them free reign and not stifling them like the americans always did in the studio. Of course there is going to be some resentment such what bill cosby once said, "ray charles can't make a living because joe cocker is doing it". But those guys gave back when they could, of course, not nearly what they made themselves but they tried.

herb4 said:

Intersting derail.

Out of curiosity, by the standards of the people posting about the race subject, is AMy WInehouse considered "black music" or "white music?" Pretty sure the majority of her fans were white but the rotos of here music weren't. And when I mention bands like Led Zep or the Stones, I guess I wasn't framing it in terms of their audience as much as the blueprint for their sound and the song structures themselves - or at least attempting to point out how I learned the difference beyond what the radio stations and cassette category labels were attempting to communicate. Those bands will flat out TELL YOU their influences, what they listen to and where they got thier sound. Keith Richards' favorite musical genre is reggae.

The vast majority of Hendrix fans were white (and still are) but I wouldn't slot him in the category of "white guy rock" when the basis of his entire sound was heavily rooted in blues. Beastie Boys had a largely white audience despite being hip hop (with some punk thrown in). Red Hot Chilli Peppers whole thing was bass/beat driven funk/punk and George Clinton even produced their 3rd album. I mean, I'm not certain it's as simple as scanning the demographics of a concert audience to determine the basic elements of an artist's sound which I suppose is where the break in the conversation and the terms of the debate are being discerned. A lot of that shit is just marketing, what radio stations will play what and, for a while, was HUGELY determined by what the band looked like, especially during the heyday of MTV.

Elvis' whole thing (and the famous marketing approach of his manager) was built on finding a good looking white guy who could "sing black".

Dudes like 80's Lionel were about as milquetoast as it got around that time and honestly don't remember ANYONE in my circle liking that shit. Or Huey Lewis. Deeply inoffensive, generic and risk free music with ZERO edge at all and not a damned thing challenging or deep about it. Totally forgettable shit that my parents liked or what I like to call "Music for People who Don't Really Like Music" and just listen to top 40 radio; a demographic that still exists. But you still had bands like Talking Heads with a predominantly white following doing what arguably amounted to funk and African rythm based songs a large majority of the time. Look at the make up of the band in the "Stop Making Sense" film and there are more black people on stage than white, while the audience is the other way around.

Thankfully, I think these barriers are smaller than they used to be, especially as so many white kids have gotten into hip hop, even though IMO the musical ;andscape is fucking DIRE right now. Could be I've just turned the page and gotten old like all those before me. It's an interesting conversation though and one I think is thread worthy. Maybe I'll start one but I want to figure out a way to frame it around Prince so it doesn't get moved to a deserted sub forum.

Any ideas on how I can tactfully and topically do that without making a race baiting thread?

PeteSilas said:

after a certain amount of time a consensus is reached and music/composers are considered great. Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and on our side of the pond, Ellington, Gershwin would be considered "great" and are known at least by name by many people who've never bothered to listen to their music. My point is, I think the "great" stuff will endure, not everything that sells will.

A consensus by who? White people probably, since the mainstream media is mostly white. That's still an opinion of the voters. If you ask the average black person or Puerto Rican of any generation, do you think they will automatically name some old European music like Bach as being great? If Rolling Stone magazine says Sgt Pepper is the best album in history or induct somebody in their museum, does that makes it so?

Marrk said:

I really think audience reactions back then were.. um, fake news. Hype 'O' The Times. *Holds sign up saying SCREAM* etc. And they did, madly, unrealistically. I see those white kids looking like "I hope my Dad wasn't watching or doesn't kill me for dancing to The Supremes. Did i smile at Diana Ross? Oh shit!. I did!" #MilkCarton. It happened.

If it was fake I doubt Hollywood would have made those Beatle & Elvis movies as there would have been no profit in them. Elvis made over 30 movies and the majority of them were targeted at young women. Those teen magazines like Tiger Beat & Bop were created in the 1960s for teen idol singers & actors. Why would they do interviews and ask stuff like what is the persons favorite food or color if they didn't have a young audience. It's doubtful the average older person was interested in that or tearing the photos out of the magazines to hang them on their walls.

maybe not but they willl most likely have heard the names and the more popular works.

MickyDolenz said:

PeteSilas said:

after a certain amount of time a consensus is reached and music/composers are considered great. Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and on our side of the pond, Ellington, Gershwin would be considered "great" and are known at least by name by many people who've never bothered to listen to their music. My point is, I think the "great" stuff will endure, not everything that sells will.

A consensus by who? White people probably, since the mainstream media is mostly white. That's still an opinion of the voters. If you ask the average black person or Puerto Rican of any generation, do you think they will automatically name some old European music like Bach as being great? If Rolling Stone magazine says Sgt Pepper is the best album in history or induct somebody in their museum, does that makes it so?

MickyDolenz said:

Marrk said:

I really think audience reactions back then were.. um, fake news. Hype 'O' The Times. *Holds sign up saying SCREAM* etc. And they did, madly, unrealistically. I see those white kids looking like "I hope my Dad wasn't watching or doesn't kill me for dancing to The Supremes. Did i smile at Diana Ross? Oh shit!. I did!" #MilkCarton. It happened.

If it was fake I doubt Hollywood would have made those Beatle & Elvis movies as there would have been no profit in them. Elvis made over 30 movies and the majority of them were targeted at young women. Those teen magazines like Tiger Beat & Bop were created in the 1960s for teen idol singers & actors. Why would they do interviews and ask stuff like what is the persons favorite food or color if they didn't have a young audience. It's doubtful the average older person was interested in that or tearing the photos out of the magazines to hang them on their walls.

i'm srure that happened but there are also stories where girls screamed "fuck me" at james brown during the tami, and stories of women collapsing en masse in orgasm as sam cooke sang for them, women are funny like that.

PeteSilas said:

maybe not but they willl most likely have heard the names and the more popular works.

If they heard the names, it is because those artists are still promoted. It isn't necessarily because many of them actually listened to classical music. People know The Nutcracker because it's brought out every year at Christmas, just like the movie It's A Wonderful Life & Charlie Brown specials. People have heard of King James' name because his name is on probably the most well known version of the bible. But how many people know who King James is? It's like a couple of the Kardashians put out t-shirts with Pink Floyd, Notorious B.I.G., Ozzy Osbourne, and other music artists but with their faces on top of them. It's probably not that likely that many Kardashian fans listen to Ozzy or Black Sabbath music. It's just marketing an image like with Marilyn Monroe & James Dean. You can buy a Charles Manson shirt too. A lot of people today also know Bonnie & Clyde, Al Capone, Billy the Kid, Jack the ripper and other crime figures. Because they are still talked about in the media or movies are made about them. Queen just got a lot of new fans because of their recent biopic being a big success at the box office. Same with the New Edition 3 night miniseries that was on BET. After the biopic aired, the views on several of New Edition's videos increased by millions on Youtube. People posted videos of little kids singing Candy Girl & Mr Telephone Man. Kids & teens who weren't even born when NE was popular.

Do we seriously have to do a GOAT thread yet again...

wish i could do that.

purplethunder3121 said:

Do we seriously have to do a GOAT thread yet again...

Damn. Wrote a long reply to this thread and it got swallowed and erased by the internet.

I started a new thread for this (cool) discussion since it's one of the more thoughtful and intelligent things I've read here in a while.

http://prince.org/msg/7/459224

darlingnikkkki said:

GOAT or not, my biggest regret is not having gone to see him more (seen him only ten times live in the 25 years I’ve followed his career) thinking he would be around forever.

Glad I didn't think that...but I defintely thought he would be around making music as long as I was alive

(note to self: the next time you accidentally click on this thread, don't even start reading, but if you already have, try to remain calm and just swipe back to the previous page.)

herb4 said:

PeteSilas said:

of course it is, but coming from white guys it's gonna be different. It was "white boy music" when I was a kid, but it was great. That's not all Zep did either, they were one of the more versatile groups in rock history, which is what P alluded to in that article. Same for the beatles, they played rock and roll but they had their own british heritage too which came through in a lot of their music.

No, I get you.

I was born in 1967 and lived through the early desegration of schools. One really cool thing that came out of it was, around 6th grade or so, at lunch we used to have a thing where they'd play records and had a little dance area. Kids took turn picking records. It was the first time I'd heard stuff like Pairlament Funkadelic, Ohio PLayers, Chic and the Spinners. Then the white kids would play "You Light Up My Life" and the couples would slow dance. lol.

There was always a "divide" (still is) but as I got older and learned more about music, largely due to this student led "lunch dance" thing, I started to realize how much it all had more in common than it was different. Even through high school there were dumb Led Heads who hated "black music", completley missing the point/roots of it all and the radio stations drove the split a lot as well. Then Prince showed me the true light right when I hit puberty and I was like "categorize that, motherfuckers". When I went to his show for the first time it looked like...well..."America". It all spoke to me.

We're veering way off topic here and this might actually make an interesting thread of its own (if I can figure out a way to word it in an OP) but, looking back, I was always grateful for busing and desegration for opening my eyes culturally as well as a socially. I remember the adults and a lot of kids were terrified of it.

how cool does your school sound!..wish I went there!

some great replies on here, thank you.

I go to a LOT of gigs, probably 3 or 4 a month [mostly smaller venues] + have seen countless big stars across the years inc Bowie, James Brown etc. P for me is still the stand out...what amazes me is that he heavily borrowed from many [no need to name who as we already know] BUT he still made it his own unique style BUT then added more purple magic to it.

He made live performance an art form & put so much in to every performance. Each tour had a sound, a look, a vibe. Loved how he would always reinvent many older tracks into something new..probably to make it intersting for us AND him!

It was an absolute honour & priveledge to see him so many times,

purplethunder3121 said:

Do we seriously have to do a GOAT thread yet again...

PURPLEIZED3121 said:

some great replies on here, thank you.

I go to a LOT of gigs, probably 3 or 4 a month [mostly smaller venues] + have seen countless big stars across the years inc Bowie, James Brown etc. P for me is still the stand out...what amazes me is that he heavily borrowed from many [no need to name who as we already know] BUT he still made it his own unique style BUT then added more purple magic to it.

He made live performance an art form & put so much in to every performance. Each tour had a sound, a look, a vibe. Loved how he would always reinvent many older tracks into something new..probably to make it intersting for us AND him!

It was an absolute honour & priveledge to see him so many times,

That was really his singular genius, IMO

He evoked and reminded you of so many but ultimately came off as a true original. To the point that, after a while, newer stuff would come out and folks would be all "that sounds just like Prince". He was a brilliant "thief" (or "borrower") like most great artists. There's not much original under the sun anymore, only so many chords and a finite number of instruments.

All artists wear their infuences on thier sleeves and a ton of great ones flat out stole shit. I never really got that sense from Prince and usually got the feeling that he would keep polishing something if he felt it was too derivative or unoriginal. You had your occasional tracks that were straight up homages (The Work, Dreamer)...some say he flat out stole "Colonized Mind"...and a few that clearly reminded you of someone elses song ("Cream" = "Get it On; Bang a Gong" and the riff from "Guitar" is straight up U2's "I Will Follow") but I honestly think these were inevitable "mistakes" from somone who wrote a new song every damned day of his life.

I'm an illustrator and graphic designer. I've designed logos and done page layouts that wound up looking almost exactly like someone else's work through no intentional fault of my own. the internet has made it easier to compare and identify these sorts of things. Visual artists use photo references all the time that were originally the work of photographers. How do you make it your own? Is there anything orginal left? Not much.

It's kind of like cooking when you think about it; also an art. 50 different people can make lasagna, all using the same ingredients, yet maybe 2 or 3 really stand out.

Prince made an intoxicating stew out of the ingredients and recipes he lifted and as a live performer I've never seen anyone so good at so many different things. Ever. Dude would play the guitar, bass, piano, synth and drums. He'd dance. He'd change his vocal register and song styles like I change pants (see Livesexy). He'd switch up the tempo/mood. Improvise.

I think he got better live over time in large part to the ever increasing talent of his backing band. I don't think The Revolution were all that great a band and believe they were mostly there to play his parts from the albums he recorded. By the time he started working in Michael Bland, Blackwell, Maceo, Renato, Rhonda Smith (Say what you want about Larry but the dude could play) and the people in the NPG he started to bring in during the 90's, his live sound improved a lot and became more organic (mainly due to drums IMO). I hated the synthetic drum sound Bobby used during the 80's. The best musicians he had in his band during the height of his 80's popularity were Sheila, Fink and maybe Levi.

Rambling again. May bad.

herb4 said:
All artists wear their infuences on thier sleeves and a ton of great ones flat out stole shit.

What about genres that have a generic sound where many songs sound alike? Such as Tejano, house, techno/rave, reggaeton, drums n bass, New Jack Swing, Latin Freestyle, salsa, bossa nova, trap, ringtone rap, southern soul, etc. I have a lot of remix maxi singles and some of them have house remixes that all sound similar and they're not all by the same remixer either. I've heard a lot of reggaeton and most of it sounds like the exact same beat/music with just a different singer/rapper on the songs. I'd say that about "Bro country" songs too.

MickyDolenz said:

herb4 said:
All artists wear their infuences on thier sleeves and a ton of great ones flat out stole shit.

What about genres that have a generic sound where many songs sound alike? Such as Tejano, house, techno/rave, reggaeton, drums n bass, New Jack Swing, Latin Freestyle, salsa, bossa nova, trap, ringtone rap, southern soul, etc. I have a lot of remix maxi singles and some of them have house remixes that all sound similar and they're not all by the same remixer either. I've heard a lot of reggaeton and most of it sounds like the exact same beat/music with just a different singer/rapper on the songs. I'd say that about "Bro country" songs too.

That's sort of what I mean and you're totally right.

A lot of reggae sounds alike, new jack, country...the 2/4 time of a TON of funk. I don't know where the line gets drawn between stealing, borrowing and just playing a certain "style", and I'm also not a musician. Only thing I can speak to personally and a comparison I can draw that I really know what I'm talking about is visual art and graphic design.

I've come up with shit on my own that turned out to be near dead ringers for similar work, ESPECIALLY logos, but I never MEANT to do that and consciously tried to avoid it. I think it's inevetable in any creative endeavor to find yourself winding up with a creation that strongly evokes something else - only so many notes, chords, colors, fonts, etc. combined with so many people doing it.

Like, I don't think the Red Hot Chilli Peppers intentionally cribbed Petty's "LAst Dance WIth Mary Jane" or that Prince flat out stole "Colonized Mind"or meant to evoke U2 in "Guitar".

Funny for all the genres you covered, we haven't evened mentioned sampling and hip hop.

herb4 said:

That's sort of what I mean and you're totally right.

A lot of reggae sounds alike, new jack, country...the 2/4 time of a TON of funk. I don't know where the line gets drawn between stealing, borrowing and just playing a certain "style", and I'm also not a musician. Only thing I can speak to personally and a comparison I can draw that I really know what I'm talking about is visual art and graphic design.

I've come up with shit on my own that turned out to be near dead ringers for similar work, ESPECIALLY logos, but I never MEANT to do that and consciously tried to avoid it. I think it's inevetable in any creative endeavor to find yourself winding up with a creation that strongly evokes something else - only so many notes, chords, colors, fonts, etc. combined with so many people doing it.

Like, I don't think the Red Hot Chilli Peppers intentionally cribbed Petty's "LAst Dance WIth Mary Jane" or that Prince flat out stole "Colonized Mind"or meant to evoke U2 in "Guitar".

Funny for all the genres you covered, we haven't evened mentioned sampling and hip hop.

With sampling, there's lot of songs that used the same records, and sampling is not just in hip hop. There's a chance you might have heard different songs with Ashley's Roachclip, Amen Brother, Funky Drummer, or Impeach The President. There's the dance song Pump Up The Volume by M.A.R.R.S where it's sampling other songs that contain samples. Another dance music track by Jive Bunny called Swing The Mood sample old big band & early rock n roll songs. Robert Plant sampled Led Zeppelin in Tall Cool One. So he sampled himself. George Michael sampled Funky Drummer, but slowed it down in Waiting For That Day. George even released a home video at the time showing how he did this. Technically, early rap songs did not contain samples, because samplers hadn't came out yet. They were either the music from other songs replayed by session musicians like on Sugarhill Records or it was turntable mixing and scratching by the DJ. When samplers came about, the hip hop DJ in groups began to slowly fade out. The DJ was really the main star in early rap, that's why their name was usually part of the group name. Many MCs made songs about their DJs. On Herbie Hancock's Rockit, he had a DJ (Grand Mixer D.ST), but not any MCs. One of the first hit songs that used an actual sampler was the remix for The Reflex by Duran Duran (Simon's why-yi-yi-yi)

I think most entertainment is a copy or similar to something else. How many different ways can a romance novel or a TV cop show be written? There's thousands of them out there in many countries. Probably the main difference in Dragnet and a modern police show is the slang and fashion, and TV was more censored during Dragnet's day. A lot of current popular entertainment is based on old TV shows and comic books. Superman & Shazam! were created in the 1930s. Spider-Man & Black Panther are from the 1960s. Alvin And The Chipmunks are from the 1950s. Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible movies is from the 1960s TV show and they still make movies/TV on old books/stories like James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Aladdin, etc. Tyler Perry's Madea is kinda like what others like Flip Wilson & Milton Berle were doing decades ago mixed with Aunt Esther from Sanford & Son.

herb4 said:
Funny for all the genres you covered, we haven't evened mentioned sampling and hip hop.

Here'a a recent article about Logic complaining about clearing samples. Uproxx

skywalker said:

homesquid said:

Absolutely not.

Better than Prince:

1. Freddie Mercury

2. Michael Jackson

3. Bruce Springsteen

1. Freddie: Not a good dancer. Not as athletic as Prince. Dabbled in guitar, but left the heavy lifting to Brian May.

-

2. MJ: Couldn't play instruments live. STuck to the same dance routines for decades. Lip Synced WAAAAAY to much.

-

3. Bruce: He's got the stamina, the crowd control, and is a marathon man. That said. He didn't move/dance for shit. His voice has got two gears. You've seen one Springsteen show, you've seen them all.

^^Bruce Springsteen doesn't really make dance music, so why would he be dancing? That isn't even his image, he's more like Americana like Bob Seger or something. Although I've noticed that many acts who do make dance music don't/can't dance (Kraftwerk, Pet Shop Boys, Donna Summer, Duran Duran, Whitney Houston, etc).