The title of this thread is wrong. Dylan is talking about recording quality not "modern music". I remember that in his autobiography he talk about how he used to listen to artist like Public Enemy and others...

Lammastide said:

That's what I'm thinkin...

CinisterCee said:

I think it's less about digital & more about production--reverb, compression, chorus, distortion, pitch correction, auto-harmonizing, and other processing that covers up the actual sound made by the musicians.

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Come on, Bob. Most modern music pales in comparison to yours, but there are several cats from'86 on who've been making meaningful, even legendary music.

If you believe albums like Sign O' The Times, Nation of Millions, Passion, Bitter, OK Computer, etc. are worthless I don't care who you are. Every orger on here can name a different album, but if you say something silly like that you have zero credibility when talking about modern music.

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[Edited 8/23/06 9:08am]

To be fair, I think he's talking about the quality of the recording rather than the music itself. Of course that doesn't make him right. Some stuff sounds 1000 times better than Dylan's 60's recordings in terms of production.

Moreover, he could just be hearing the ringing in his ears, who knows?

Howard Stern talked about this and said it was an asshole thing to say considering that also includes his son's albums, too.

Pump Up the Volume

Labels keep making music louder - and the sound worse



What's better than loud music? Louder music. And it's not just the headbangers who think so. An analysis of pop recordings proves that for the past decade, record labels have quietly been producing the most earsplitting CDs possible.

The labels' assumption is that what you hear, you buy - and deafening tunes are hard to ignore. So how do you make a CD louder when it holds only 16 bits of audio? Engineers use compressors and limiters to reduce the distance between a song's peaks and valleys and then raise the average signal level. Done well, this can boost the volume without sacrificing punch, definition, or clarity.

Thing is, it's usually done poorly. A look at waveforms over time shows unintended distortion and squashed dynamics. In 1980, AC/DC's "Back in Black" was good and loud; the signal had plenty of room to breathe. During the '90s, producers began gradually (and artificially) inflating the volume. By 2000, Fuel's "Last Time" filled nearly every one of the CD's bits with a constant din. Now fast-forward to Celine Dion's 2003 hit. The audio signal seems to show that her music is as aggressive as Fuel's. Hardly. "I Drove All Night" is just louder than the reference work from those bands.


The sound level for AC/DC's 1980 "Back in Black" is what the mixdown engineer created. If you want it louder, turn up the volume.


Moderate peak limiting adds some distortion to Beck's 1996 track "The New Pollution," but the sound is relatively uncompromised.


The peaks on Celine Dion's 2003 track "I Drove All Night" are squashed. Excessive limiting causes extreme distortion. Music loses punch and clarity.

The irony is that this effort to wring every last drop of volume out of a CD creates discs that don't sound as loud on the radio. Radio stations already compress their signal's dynamic range to make their broadcasts stand out when you're scanning the dial. When they transmit an overamped song, they clamp down on the overall volume. So much for being heard.

- Rip Rowan

Dylan is just making the kind of blanket statement that gets him back in the papers because no one is probably talking about his music. Then again, his upcoming album might be good....but this is what gets press, not great music now of days. As for that 20 year statement, I guess he includes his recent albums in the mix, huh? Howard Stern talked about this and said it was an asshole thing to say considering that also includes his son's albums, too.

Story on www.aol.com


Come on, Bob. Most modern music pales in comparison to yours, but there are several cats from'86 on who've been making meaningful, even legendary music.

If you believe albums like Sign O' The Times, Nation of Millions, Passion, Bitter, OK Computer, etc. are worthless I don't care who you are. Every orger on here can name a different album, but if you say something silly like that you have zero credibility when talking about modern music.

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[Edited 8/22/06 13:45pm]
[Edited 8/23/06 9:08am]

Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

I agree with the man. The sound quality of recordings in the past 15 or so years HAS gone downhill. Check out this article..
http://www.wired.com/wire....html?pg=2

guitarslinger44 said:

This is quite interesting, thanks!

guitarslinger44 said:

This is quite interesting, thanks!

namepeace said:

Seems to me he's talking about the music itself, too.

calldapplwondery83 said:

That's what I thought, too.

namepeace said:

Seems to me he's talking about the music itself, too.

calldapplwondery83 said:

Maybe, but the quote continues "You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

he should be on the org.

True, but wouldn't that have just as much to do with the composition and performance of the music as it would the technical aspects of how it is recorded?

NDRU said:

True, but wouldn't that have just as much to do with the composition and performance of the music as it would the technical aspects of how it is recorded?

i dont think he would have said the "even my album...." part if it was. i mean to simplify what he's saying, he's not going to say "i really dont like modern music. the sound is all wrong and the music itself isnt any good either. even my album sounded better in the studio than on record." the syntax of what he's saying would be a bit off.

i think his downloading comment tied in with that in that downloaded stuff is just a ripped cd. after all, the question about downloading obviously referred to his feelings as an artist himself, how does he feel about downloading as someone who has his music downloaded. he's not going to say his own music "isnt worth anything", and conversely the interviewer's question isnt going to be "how do you feel about other modern artists music being downloaded, not including your feelings on your own music being downloaded now, just other artists"

wow what an incoherent post. appropriate for a thread about bob dylan, huh

But he has said some nice things about a couple of people (and I paraphrase):

Cobain: the kid had heart

Eminem: he must be doing something right to make so many people angry.

Wilco & Billy Bragg: they gave life to the [previously unpublished] lyrics of Woodie Guthrie

there was also his very cool cameo in wyclef's "gone til november" video

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Come on, Bob. Most modern music pales in comparison to yours, but there are several cats from'86 on who've been making meaningful, even legendary music.

If you believe albums like Sign O' The Times, Nation of Millions, Passion, Bitter, OK Computer, etc. are worthless I don't care who you are. Every orger on here can name a different album, but if you say something silly like that you have zero credibility when talking about modern music.

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[Edited 8/23/06 9:08am]

dylan has talked contradictory shit all his life

Bob Dylan's music bores the living hell out of me but I agree with him about the 20 year part. His timing is absolutely correct because 1985 is when I first started bitching about music going downhill.

The only difference is, he said he couldn't think of anyone (meaning not one person) who has made anything decent in the last 20 years. Good music was getting much thinner and thinner during the late 1980s but at least there were still a lot of artists I liked.....just not near as many as before. By the time the 1990s came around, with the exception of house music and Prince, I could list on one hand the artists I liked. Now I can list on two fingers.....Prince and Jamiroquai. The rest of them can go to hell.
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