bobzilla77 said:

While I like Nirvana a lot, I would admit their influence on commercial rock was not totally positive. It was interesting to have someone in that world that was concerned with integrity, that could actually have a conversation about why over-commercialism is a bad thing. But when you get anybody talking about these issues on that high a scale of stardom, it becomes kind of cartoonish. Vedder became cartoonish when he tried to take up the mantle of rock do-gooder. Lately he's toned that down & it seems to suit everybody fine.

But anyway, I think you would have to admit that most of the bands who rose on the tail of their accomplishment, that are not called Pearl Jam, were pretty much finished by 1996. That's fourteen years ago. You can't blame the crimes of 1980 on bands that made their last record in 1966.

I think the real reason grunge gets such a bad rap is, it's the last time you have rock as part of the mass music culture doing something that really feels new and different. Everything that has come up since has been a pale reflection of something that already happenned. It's the last development so if you don't like the music that's happenned since, blame it on grunge.

I remember my friend Jon and I talking about this - you had a revival of boop-beep-boop synthesizer bands followed by a rash of bands that had the look & sound of early punk followed by a bunch of people trying to sound like the Cure, and I realized "we are witnessing rock history repeat itself in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER." I haven't listened to the radio lately, last time I did it seemed we'd worked our way almost up to the point where hair metal was getting real big. Look for that stuff to make a serious revival in the next 12 months.

And God help us when the grunge revival hits about five years from now.

[Edited 8/16/10 12:46pm]

I personally thought that Nirvana and the titans of the grunge movement (Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Smashing Pumpkins) along with the hieght of both U2 and R.E.M. and the freshness of Rage Against The Machine were the best thing about rock in the 1990's. But like everything that becomes instantly successful and popular, someone finds a way to copy it or water it down for mass consumption. Once the record companies found that grunge and alternative angst music could make big money, they rushed out anyone they could find that could play power chords and act disaffected. That's when we got the likes of Stone Temple Pilots, Gavin Rossdale/Bush, and Alanis Morissette and once they blew up you got a bunch of crappy wannabes. To me the 1990's musically really only lasted about five years, because the first two years of the decade were really a continuation of the 80's, and it seemed that rock, R&B, and hip-hop went through some abrupt changes around 1996-1997, because by then Kurt Cobain was dead, Layne Staley went on his death spiral, Soundgarden was breaking up, both 2pac and Biggie Smalls were murdered, and the Spice Girls were coming across the pond to introduce a whole new generation to teen pop. It was also around this time after the deaths of 2Pac and Biggie that hip-hop went from being totally hardcore gangsta rap to being almost exclusively about money, hoes and bling.

To me popular music has been pretty stagnant since 1997, though we've had variations like emo, crunk, and electropop, but it seems like everything has been done before. Even at its height, crunk was just a pale anemic imitation of early 80's electrofunk, and the music that Katy Perry, Lady GaGa, and Ke$ha are doing now is just a variation of what Madonna, Paula Abdul, and Tayor Dayne were doing in the late 1980's.

And when did metal singers suddenly stop trying to scream like Robert Plant during his Led Zeppelin days and all tried to sing like Cookie Monster?

I think it's more a image thing now then talent .. you look at the billboard charts and i'm o_0 at some of the songs in the top 10. People just putting out anything and I do like some of the catchy stuff but music like for a example a soulja boy is really WTF. Crank Dat was cute at the time but smh he sucks . I was raised on old school music so I can always go back to that

vi0letblues said:

RodeoSchro said:

That may be a great point, and a good question might be - How come what is good music today is OUT of the mainstream, while back in the '70's, it WAS the mainstream?

But what is keeping them out of the forefront? It surely isn't the industry and the internet will find you

Cream rises to the top, where is it? Lets have a public service announcement and throw up some names.

That's what I find interesting, a lot of people say "There's good music out there you just got to find it"..Well why isn't that music getting recognition? If these indie artists are so talented why are they not shown to the World? They may be good but I thought the whole purpose of mainstream meant you actually had good music. Like I said before, there's more Style and Image over Quality and Talent, maybe that's the reason?

In all honestly I think there just aren't GREAT artists being born anymore (or maybe they are too young, I don't know)..Simple as that...Because of that we get a whole bunch of mediocrity running around.

[Edited 8/16/10 16:52pm]

728huey said:

bobzilla77 said:

While I like Nirvana a lot, I would admit their influence on commercial rock was not totally positive. It was interesting to have someone in that world that was concerned with integrity, that could actually have a conversation about why over-commercialism is a bad thing. But when you get anybody talking about these issues on that high a scale of stardom, it becomes kind of cartoonish. Vedder became cartoonish when he tried to take up the mantle of rock do-gooder. Lately he's toned that down & it seems to suit everybody fine.

But anyway, I think you would have to admit that most of the bands who rose on the tail of their accomplishment, that are not called Pearl Jam, were pretty much finished by 1996. That's fourteen years ago. You can't blame the crimes of 1980 on bands that made their last record in 1966.

I think the real reason grunge gets such a bad rap is, it's the last time you have rock as part of the mass music culture doing something that really feels new and different. Everything that has come up since has been a pale reflection of something that already happenned. It's the last development so if you don't like the music that's happenned since, blame it on grunge.

I remember my friend Jon and I talking about this - you had a revival of boop-beep-boop synthesizer bands followed by a rash of bands that had the look & sound of early punk followed by a bunch of people trying to sound like the Cure, and I realized "we are witnessing rock history repeat itself in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER." I haven't listened to the radio lately, last time I did it seemed we'd worked our way almost up to the point where hair metal was getting real big. Look for that stuff to make a serious revival in the next 12 months.

And God help us when the grunge revival hits about five years from now.

[Edited 8/16/10 12:46pm]

I personally thought that Nirvana and the titans of the grunge movement (Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Smashing Pumpkins) along with the hieght of both U2 and R.E.M. and the freshness of Rage Against The Machine were the best thing about rock in the 1990's. But like everything that becomes instantly successful and popular, someone finds a way to copy it or water it down for mass consumption. Once the record companies found that grunge and alternative angst music could make big money, they rushed out anyone they could find that could play power chords and act disaffected. That's when we got the likes of Stone Temple Pilots, Gavin Rossdale/Bush, and Alanis Morissette and once they blew up you got a bunch of crappy wannabes. To me the 1990's musically really only lasted about five years, because the first two years of the decade were really a continuation of the 80's, and it seemed that rock, R&B, and hip-hop went through some abrupt changes around 1996-1997, because by then Kurt Cobain was dead, Layne Staley went on his death spiral, Soundgarden was breaking up, both 2pac and Biggie Smalls were murdered, and the Spice Girls were coming across the pond to introduce a whole new generation to teen pop. It was also around this time after the deaths of 2Pac and Biggie that hip-hop went from being totally hardcore gangsta rap to being almost exclusively about money, hoes and bling.

To me popular music has been pretty stagnant since 1997, though we've had variations like emo, crunk, and electropop, but it seems like everything has been done before. Even at its height, crunk was just a pale anemic imitation of early 80's electrofunk, and the music that Katy Perry, Lady GaGa, and Ke$ha are doing now is just a variation of what Madonna, Paula Abdul, and Tayor Dayne were doing in the late 1980's.

And when did metal singers suddenly stop trying to scream like Robert Plant during his Led Zeppelin days and all tried to sing like Cookie Monster?

PurpleColossus said:

vi0letblues said:

But what is keeping them out of the forefront? It surely isn't the industry and the internet will find you

Cream rises to the top, where is it? Lets have a public service announcement and throw up some names.

That's what I find interesting, a lot of people say "There's good music out there you just got to find it"..Well why isn't that music getting recognition? If these indie artists are so talented why are they not shown to the World? They may be good but I thought the whole purpose of mainstream meant you actually had good music. Like I said before, there's more Style and Image over Quality and Talent, maybe that's the reason?

In all honestly I think there just aren't GREAT artists being born anymore (or maybe they are too young, I don't know)..Simple as that...Because of that we get a whole bunch of mediocrity running around.

[Edited 8/16/10 16:52pm]

Well like I said above it's a image thing the ones that are decent most likely struggling because they don't have that thing I guess that's catching people's eye. Alot of artists are not really that driven now or just trying to make a quick buck maybe that's why they aren't great. Sadly we have to make due with what we got lol. You have to look now instead of decent artists being push in your face

babybugz said:

Well like I said above it's a image thing the ones that are decent most likely struggling because they don't have that thing I guess that's catching people's eye. Alot of artists are not really that driven now or just trying to make a quick buck maybe that's why they aren't great. Sadly we have to make due with what we got lol. You have to look now instead of decent artists being push in your face

Guess that's true..like from the 60's to the 90's great music was thrown at you...But now to find truly great music being made today it's like a treasure hunt

PurpleColossus said:

babybugz said:

Well like I said above it's a image thing the ones that are decent most likely struggling because they don't have that thing I guess that's catching people's eye. Alot of artists are not really that driven now or just trying to make a quick buck maybe that's why they aren't great. Sadly we have to make due with what we got lol. You have to look now instead of decent artists being push in your face

Guess that's true..like from the 60's to the 90's great music was thrown at you...But now to find truly great music being made today it's like a treasure hunt

it really is and you rarely finding any treasure in that chest too

PurpleColossus said:

vi0letblues said:

But what is keeping them out of the forefront? It surely isn't the industry and the internet will find you

Cream rises to the top, where is it? Lets have a public service announcement and throw up some names.

That's what I find interesting, a lot of people say "There's good music out there you just got to find it"..Well why isn't that music getting recognition? If these indie artists are so talented why are they not shown to the World? They may be good but I thought the whole purpose of mainstream meant you actually had good music. Like I said before, there's more Style and Image over Quality and Talent, maybe that's the reason?

In all honestly I think there just aren't GREAT artists being born anymore (or maybe they are too young, I don't know)..Simple as that...Because of that we get a whole bunch of mediocrity running around.

[Edited 8/16/10 16:52pm]

Yikes! That would be depressing.

Maybe it just skipped a generation because they couldn't make a decent living out it music now and this generation is making iphone apps instead.

Or more likely have less time to create music as we are stuck between level 3 of a video game and updating our faceboook status.

[Edited 8/16/10 17:15pm]

Timmy84 said:

If you're looking for radio to play great music, you'd be better finding a needle in the haystack.

You ain't never lied.

vi0letblues said:

Yikes! That would be depressing.

Maybe it just skipped a generation because they couldn't make a decent living out it music now and this generation is making iphone apps instead.

[Edited 8/16/10 17:09pm]

I hope I'm wrong, I really hope we see some great talents showing up soon and blows us all away.. Because music has become Stagnant as you said

Sadly I don't see it happening any time for some reason..There's something about how music is today that I don't see getting better...

PurpleColossus said:

In all honestly I think there just aren't GREAT artists being born anymore

I'd disagree with that, however the ratio of shit you see vs stuff you have to dig for is greatly out of proportion. I've dug up some great people on my radio show, that I've just ran across somehow. Also, go cruise Daptone Records or Concord/Stax Records sites, and find their artists. Everyone from James Taylor, Carole King, Macy Gray, N'Dambi, Leela James, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Sugarman Three, Naomi Davis - TONS of great artists. Just cruise a genre and check things out. The really good people, whether on those indie labels or elsewhere, are worth the search.

vi0letblues said:

RodeoSchro said:

That may be a great point, and a good question might be - How come what is good music today is OUT of the mainstream, while back in the '70's, it WAS the mainstream?

But what is keeping them out of the forefront? It surely isn't the industry and the internet will find you and your secret wife/life

In college we hooked up each other with the latest greatest. Being out of the loop i turned to college radio but while I do hear a good song here and there, there is nothing new that has remotely flipped my wig as some of the older stuff I am digging up.

I KNOW it's around, and I agree it just seems harder to find.

Cream rises to the top, where is it? Lets have a public service announcement and throw up some names.

[Edited 8/16/10 16:47pm]

That is the pertinent question.

For sure, music distribution has changed. At least to the extent that album sales - where rock flourished - has declined, while the sale of singles has increased. Very few rock songs were big hits as singles. That's always been the arena of pop and country.

So for one thing, the way music is distributed has changed to the detriment of rock. But that's only part of the equation.

Rock flourished in the '70's despite not having a lot of Top 40 success. This was because every major market had two or three rock radio stations. They still do, but now they're classic rock stations, which don't play new songs. For instance, in Houston we have two classic rock stations. We also have one current rock station, which plays the latest atrocity from Fallout Boy or Green Day.

But we have NO station that plays new, GOOD rock and roll. (Although, we DO have the best rock station in America - KACC 89.7, which is broadcast out of Alvin Community College. However, it's not available all over the city, and it does not advertise at all. But on Tuesday afternoons, you can hear the Org's own PeterV spinning the rock!)

So it's not easy for a traditional rock band to get its music played. Bruce Springsteen has not had a new song played on the radio here since "The Rising" in 2002. BRUCE. SPRINGSTEEN.

But the real issue is that the radio programmers and promoters are marketing vile bands such as Fallout Boy and Green Day on the station that does play new music. For whatever reason that I can't figure out, they have decided that kind of tripe is what the young 'uns want to hear.

Like Graycap said, thank God we have the old stuff.

RodeoSchro said:

But we have NO station that plays new, GOOD rock and roll. (Although, we DO have the best rock station in America - KACC 89.7, which is broadcast out of Alvin Community College. However, it's not available all over the city, and it does not advertise at all. But on Tuesday afternoons, you can hear the Org's own PeterV spinning the rock!)

Is the show broadcast on the net?

Personally, I think God has taken away the music because we humans abused it.

I've questioned this myself and this is how I see it.

Music right now isn't bad it is just that the tastes of consumers of western music-pop in particular, appreciate are anachronistic to the music being made now and in the subsequent future.

The 20th Century was from what I gather an anomaly in musical history. Never before had two musical traditions(European harmonies, instruments & melodies + African rhythms, melodies & instruments) synthesized, the standard of living in western was such that millions had more and more leisure time to take up recreational activities for themselves and their offspring(who would capitalize on these outlets and become professionals one day), and technology advanced rapidly, pushing the variety of sounds the human ear could hear to the limits and making music worldwide more accessible, via our advanced information networks.

In America, where these three things were happening, an Ethos sprung up in our music which was probably attached to our societies' mentality as a whole which encouraged adventure and exploration(Manifest Destiny, Space exploration etc.) which fostered and supported expirementation and innovation over dull and monotonous tradition and conformity. This served as a catalyst for musicians to created unprecedented groundbreaking, revolutionary music crunched into mere decades that normally would've been stretched out over centuries.

Couple this with an information age which bridged music made in completely different and sometimes isolated parts of the planet accessible to everyone, thus inspiring more musicians who otherwise wouldn't have had such a chance even a century ago. For example look at a fellow like Mozart, who was extremely well travelled for his time, and yet never ventured outside of Continental Europe, making it arduous to experience any worthwhile music outside of his own social circle, while a man like Miles davis was privy to influences from as far flung as India, to Brazil to Spain and it shows in his work. Only stressing the fact of how hard it was for even the most prestigious musicians of the past to hear music even the common musician in America would've had access to.

As a result, audiences of this new kind've music gushed over these new songs/pieces/suites/etc. and critics littered these new works with praise, no doubt(as critics tend to do) fawning over the high points of this original music, which would usually be on the innovational side of music, and in the process subconsciously impressing upon their readers that good music=unconventional music, thus favoring original, different, and substantive music over challenging, traditional music.

And with such an intense flowering of musical progress came a all too sudden and abrupt stagnation our society wasn't and isn't ready to accept. A stagnation that I consider to infer this: the innovations buoyed by the fusion of these two traditions is nearing it's logical conclusion, with more and more musicians than ever in the past, withbouyed by technology that grants them access to the most disparate music and sounds never heard before , our brand of music as we know it is beginning to iron itself into its own tradition. The trailblazing legends of the past that were so widespread are going to be uncommon in the future, replaced with musicians ready to make challenging but not revolutionary music. We are now sort of in a post-modern part of a new tradition. A newly solidified American tradition. but the ears of consumers appreciate innovation, and so substantive change is what western music fans pine for(you can see this most in the electronic music where they boast that a new sub-genre is made everyday) rather than stylistic change. But this type of music will become more and more rare in the future and our new forged tradition is cemented, and people will have to realize the jazz tradition, rock tradition, rap tradition etc. is as much a tradition as the classical music we spurned more than a hundred years ago.

[Edited 8/17/10 1:07am]

vi0letblues said:

RodeoSchro said:

But we have NO station that plays new, GOOD rock and roll. (Although, we DO have the best rock station in America - KACC 89.7, which is broadcast out of Alvin Community College. However, it's not available all over the city, and it does not advertise at all. But on Tuesday afternoons, you can hear the Org's own PeterV spinning the rock!)

Is the show broadcast on the net?

It sure is! I think Peter is on today, starting at 4:00 PM Central Daylight Time. You can orgnote him and he'll play requests, although they don't let him play any Prince.

Here's the link. The webstream button is at the bottom of the page:

http://www.kaccradio.com/home.html

therevolutionwillnotbe said:

Personally, I think God has taken away the music because we humans abused it.

God's gifts can never be recalled.

Don't even get me started. I work with someone who listens to Good Charlotte and Fallout Boy and is not a teenage girl.

They think music today is much better and more original than in the 60s, 70s and 80s. They believe Prince is boring and "Hey there Delilah" by the Plain White Ts is not!

Heaven help us all!

[Edited 9/2/10 7:02am]

Music of the last 20 years is great....if you like listening to dog fights.

You know, I hear people say all the time "there's no good music like there was back then..."

This argument has been stated for YEARS. People always long for the music from earlier periods. I find that there is always good music being made, and available. Every year, there are albums I buy that are excellent. Some of them are "mainstream," some not. With the HUGE amount of music being released nowadays, it isn't that hard to find good songs or albums.

=0P

728huey said:

To me popular music has been pretty stagnant since 1997....

The year I stopped listening to radio, I was enjoying one song in every six or seven played.

728huey said:

And when did metal singers suddenly stop trying to scream like Robert Plant during his Led Zeppelin days and all tried to sing like Cookie Monster?

That is the growing influence of death metal there. Every band wants to be harder so it's natural that many are adopting qualities of the more extreme subsets of heavy metal. Bands today that sound like Zeppelin would just be considered hard rock bands.

grunge is the last interesting thing that happened.

Rap is the only thing that continued to innovate throughout all that time, and everyone tried to eat off of its techniques, from todays r&b (shit hop), soul, even indie rock.

We used to have many more independent record stores that employed people who knew something about the music they sold. Now we have Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target with workers just stacking CDs by alphabetical order.

We used to also have many more independent record labels - especially in house music.

I thought the digital age would bring more access to more technology, which would mean more good art and music for more of us - but other people are particularly enthusiastic about their ulterior motives, like making more money for doing much less and minimizing the number of people making money while maximizing the number of people they're making it from.

The music industry as it stands now is one of the consequences of our digital age. It is so much more about industry and less about music - but so was Motown. Was radio ever open source? Not really ... but if you bought one, you could tune in and listen to it for free and listen to it until they played your favorite song - for free. And maybe even go out dancing to happen upon it with other people. Radio is only background music for malls now - if that.

Apple just released iTunes 10 and a slew of new iPods to use with it. iTunes now has a proprietary social networking feature built in to "help you connect to more new music" supposedly, but all Apple really cares about is selling more tracks from major labels and selling more iPods, iPhones, iPads & iMacs - they don't really give a fuck about access to "new music" because independent artists are (once again) not a part of their process. And how much do you wanna bet that those iPods you bought 5 years ago won't work with this new version of iTunes (which definitely won't work on the iBook you bought 7 years ago)?

Being digital makes obsolescence so much easier to plan and implement almost instantly. Our dependence on being digital makes it seem as if we don't have a choice. Imagine not having a phone or a TV or a computer or an iPod? Those are all devices that we use to connect to each other and to listen to our music - and now they're all digital.

Our music reflects that focus. Being digital has its advantages (more access to a wider range of music, the potential for more sources) and disadvantages (the actuality of less sources, less craftsmanship, more crap to suffer through, more people making music who don't care about music). It's like being gay; I'm hoping that once the newness of it wears off once we realize that it's everywhere and not a big deal, we'll just get back to being people, being good to each other and making great music together.

the stagnation is caused by the mainstream, that is what has drastically changed, the "downsizing" of what is pushed and promoted is about 200% smaller than it was 15-20 years ago, music has lost its "air time" with people, even though everyone is walking around with some sort of mp3 player, most of what they have wasnt bought, which right off the bat, affects the mainstream, since there is no money coming in like it was, they have narrowed who gets the PROMO $$, nowadays, u cannot fail, before they could lose a million trying to push a few artists, today that million will be used at a sure thing that will sell at the moment, like Kesha or whomever, the artistic growth is not even in play at this point

I do feel there are less risks taken these days, which is why you are more likely to get more of the same, or throwbacks that may be great but do not feel unique to our current time.

Whoever said 1997 was the beginning of the end is exactly right because that's when I noticed a decrease in the quality of music and I was only 12-13 at the time! Didn't the FCC deregulate radio stations in 1996?

Much of the stuff a lot of people go gaga over was rehashed in some form. This moron from my lab group asks me if I like Cee-Lo, I say "of course" and he says "well he has a new, unique sound especially his new song F U"....Ummmmm am I missing something here because he sounds like a throwback to the 60s and 70s to me. He disagreed that it sounds like a Motown song.

squirrelscientist said:

Whoever said 1997 was the beginning of the end is exactly right because that's when I noticed a decrease in the quality of music and I was only 12-13 at the time! Didn't the FCC deregulate radio stations in 1996?

Much of the stuff a lot of people go gaga over was rehashed in some form. This moron from my lab group asks me if I like Cee-Lo, I say "of course" and he says "well he has a new, unique sound especially his new song F U"....Ummmmm am I missing something here because he sounds like a throwback to the 60s and 70s to me. He disagreed that it sounds like a Motown song.

He's musically illiterate if he don't think that it's a Motown throwback.

You old farts.

New music is just as good and original as it always was, it just a little harder to find. Dig a little.