I beleive they should because the music business right now is dead there is no diversity now we see the same old people there is a lot of talent who i beleive should be given good exposure but since the music scene is so limited there is no way they can get much needed success.

Everything now is so music video driven and music videos are expensive to make and their are not much music artists who are willing to pay that much money for a five minute music video.

I think that by bringing these shows back the music scene will be revitalized

Yes and remember Party Machine with Nia Peoples who's now on The Young And The Restless?

No.

They would be exactly the kind of pay for play crap we get everywhere else.

I don't think people would watch it today.

Those shows were big at a time when there was very little music on TV. Anybody remember the days before cable? If you were lucky you could see bands exactly twice a week, on Midnight Special or Don Kirshner's Rock Concert (sneakin down to the tv rooom after mom went to bed at 11.)

ST & AB were on Saturday afternoons and were just about the only place you could hear music & check out people doing the latest dances, especially if you lived in the suburbs like me.

You had to watch a 90 minute show and it was a good day if you saw even one exciting clip. But damn if I wasn't WIDE OPEN to hearing some good music for that whole 90 minutes. I'd watch the stuff that wasn't even that good with full attention.

I don't think today's short attention span youth would get into it. People have limitless choice what they might want to watch every second of the day. They get to see and hear more different stuff than we ever did, but I don't think they get that deeply into any of it.

No it wouldn't. "Soul Train" continued showing new episodes all the way up until December of 2006 and it didn't do a thing for the music scene. A show like that can only play the music that is out there available for them to play. The show itself doesn't make the music. If shit hop rules the radio airwaves, it also rules the "Soul Train" airwaves, and it did.

I think it's a great idea! Music videos are not doing any work for any artist and everyone criticizes people for having no talent and lipsynching. These type of shows could only have live singing and live bands or whatever.

I know there is top of the pops in the uk, but it's lipsynched, but it's still a success there. People like shows like these anyway, why do you think American Idol is so successful?

vainandy said:

The problem with soul train was that they were on poor time slots. Soul train came on at 2:00 in the morning and who watches television at 2 in the morning

alphastreet said:

Agree but they didn't they end top of the pops a couple of years ago.

I think it will do good for the business and Dick Clark is still around so he can have a lot of overseer of the production.

Music videos are good but they are too overxposed the only way for us to look at fresh new music talent is to watch David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel

No, the problem with "Soul Train" is because it was a dance show and today's music is not dance oriented because it's too damn slow to dance to.

In December of 2006, they started airing old episodes of the show from the 1970s and 1980s. They aired these old episodes from December of 2006 until mid 2008. That's a year and a half of old episodes in the same time slot that the new episodes were. If the old episodes weren't doing better in ratings than their new episodes, they wouldn't have showed them for an entire year and a half. The reason their ratings for the old episodes dropped off is because they started showing re-runs of the re-runs. I know we used to do a weekly thread on each episode right here on the org.

Lip Synchers should be shot.

I remember Solid Gold LOL!

^ I loved that show as a kid, but I thought for years it was for all the current artists of the time cause I saw the countdown 84 special, we had it on tape and i watched it for years as a kid

No. Music as we knew it then is DEAD.

vainandy said:

You know, I was surprised to hear that lots of new artists were still fighting to get on Soul Train unitl they stopped taping new shows.

If you think about it, there is no television show on now for new artists to break through. The internet has taken over. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but we don't have an outlet for new artists to perform material anymore (even if they are lipsyncing).

There are rarely any music videos shown on TV either because of the reality shows. As much as I hate reality shows, I see it as progress that music videos are becoming one less avenue to promote shit hop. Now if we could just find a way to make the radio another lost avenue for shit hop.

vainandy said:

More shock talk shows?

That "train" has already left the station. Plus, the music the kids would be dancing to would be hell on earth to listen to and the "dancing" the kids would be doing would probably be as horrendous as the music, if it can be considered dancing. Nah, we don't need another version of Soul Train or American Bandstand on the airwaves anytime soon.

NO NO NO NO NO! There is no way to recreate the magic of the shows with the shitty state of music these days.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

What I would like to see wouldn't require recreating the old shows, it would be a fresh new take. I would take another incarnation of Showtime at the Apollo again. At least you got to see new talent and raw talent.

purplecam said:

That's why we need to bring back the vintage episodes of both shows PRONTO!

Timmy84 said:

I would love that. I loved watching the old Soul Train shows, I really did. I would also love to not have to stay up till 2am just to watch the damn thing too.

A show for amateurs already exists. It's called "American Idol" and it's not doing any good either. Yeah, these are new faces and yeah, some of them have good voices, but look at the type of shit they record once they get that record deal after their exposure on the show. They continue on with SOS.....same ole shit.

purplecam said:

You too? God that used to kill me and I had to go to school at 9 am the next day. I don't know how I remembered to wake up at a certain time, maybe it was because I only slept one hour and stayed awake for the other two.

vainandy said:

You know, as much as I love American Idol, you're absolutely right about that. Sad but true.

Timmy84 said:

I hear ya! I could've put the shows on my DVR and sometimes I did but I like watching them as they were on. I'd be in my bed till 11 thanks to staying up that late but it was well worth it.

purplecam said:

Definitely worth it.

But you still stayed up because they were worth it. That's the point I was making earlier that the downfall of "Soul Train" didn't come from it's time slot. It's been on WGN cable for decades during the daytime on Saturdays but if you didn't have cable, in lots of local cities, it has always aired late and night and has been successful even before there was such a thing as cable. "Soul Train"s downfall was because there is no such thing as dance oriented music anymore and it was a dance oriented show. And like I said earlier, look how long they played the old episodes recently and people still stayed up to watch it but they had stopped watching it when they were airing new episodes. It's because new music ain't shit.

vainandy said:

So true.

Idol is one of those shows that is bent on finding a "pop" idol. I find it interesting that most of the people that have gotten big from the show either didn't win or turned out to be country singers. Sure, Kelly Clarkson won, but her last album flopped harder than ever.

What I am thinking about is a show that focuses on r&b and dance music (like ST and Solid Gold did).

daPrettyman said:

What would be interesting is to throw today's kids on the dancefloor with all the old music and watch them stumbling around as their bodies experience the first instinct to dance to real music

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

And if these people from MY generation don't wanna dance, have the older guys force them to do it by whips!