Was music better years ago than today?

by JH 66 Replies latest jw friends

  • Pleasuredome
    Pleasuredome

    80's RULE!!

    pop music since 1992 is crap.

  • mouthy
    mouthy

    you better believe it was....

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    Abbadon,

    Thank you for your post. As I mentioned such threads as this will *always* be about opinion as no measurement for 'better' exists. Perhaps the closest we can come to measurement is experience.

    And innovation is something that happens ONCE; creativity can happen after a genre has been 'innovated'.

    Exactly. Creativity that builds on but does not mimic. I remember years ago Zappa released an album and one of the pieces contained a section of Holst's 'Planets Suite', jazzed up of course. Many persons who listened to this piece had never heard the original piece ( Zappa of course did not credit Holst on the sleeve ) and extolled Zappa for this masterful lyricism. Of course a person of Zappa's musical stature did not have to plagiarize and it turned out that the album needing pushing out of the door and this was instantaneous ‘fill in’.

    My argument is that the much music today is plagiarized ‘fill in’ that has moved very little distance from the original innovator., in fact it is hard to distinguish much of the music which has fallen into the melting pot of big business, obsessive greed and crass marketing.

    I saw Tori Amos live a couple of years ago and she is a good performer and an excellent pianist and it would be unjust of me not to tip my hat at her obvious talents and I know that I sound unreasonable in my views of most music today, but imho it has been fatally contaminated by big-business and ART has fallen by the wayside. Too much focus on accountants, advertising and the bottom line is burying the all important prime cause. Young performers with very little talent or skill, manufactured to produce the next insulting wave of bleating, droning, wailing cash cows, seems to be the rule rather than the exception.

    A crude illustration: Roger Bannister was the first man alive to break the four-minute mile. His heroic display inspired hundreds of athletes to bigger and better things, of which I am sure he would be very proud. If you were to see people who had never heard of Roger Bannister and who can just about manage to run a 4.35 being hailed as athletes, it is liable to raise some Cain.

    Remember the interview that Rod Steiger had a few years ago with a young pup, now running of Universal Studios. It went like this. "So, Mr Steiger, have you ever done any serious acting?". "Yes, actually I won an Oscar in 1967". "Really…., what was the film"? "In The Heat Of The Night". Pause….."Never heard of it."

    That little cameo, apart from summing up the American Movie industry, also sums up the music industry today. No respect for the ‘old farts’ who broke the four-minute mile and still continue to do so.

    HS

  • thegentleman
    thegentleman

    Music was more original years ago. Many groups these days are influenced by artists of years past. I like music from "punk" to Johnny Cash. I always preferred music that had some meaning to it. Not "Oops , I did it again". Please, Britney and Christina are a dime a dozen.. Not all rap is about violence , hate or money, some of it is positive. Its just the usual money, sex, and violence that "sells"....

  • DanTheMan
    DanTheMan

    I think that musicianship has become a lost art. Many guitarists in bands today would have trouble telling you the difference between a pentatonic and mixolydian scale. That said, I do think that there's a happy medium - 80's groups such as Asia and Toto are proof that great musicianship doesn't necessarily translate to good music. I have a Toto greatest hits CD, and apart from the obvious tunes (Rosanna, Africa), the rest sounds like filler material, and this is supposed to be their greatest hits???

    Heavy Metal is comatose these days. The new metal that I hear on the local heavy metal station is awful. Whatever happened to the galloping bass lines and thought-provoking vocals (vocals that were actually sung, not growled and howled to the point of being self-parody) that were the trademarks of groups such as Iron Maiden, and early Metallica? Nowadays it's just a wall of noise, no purpose, no musicianship.

    Joe Satriani is still putting out great, great stuff. Too bad radio won't touch him anymore.

  • Trotafox
    Trotafox

    Better as in a pleasure to listen or dance to.......Yes, it was better years ago (any year) up until Rap came out. Sorry Rappers but I see nothing worthwhile in that kind of music. I'm with Mulan....hate it, hate it, hate it.

    1960's - Rock and Roll was kool.

    1970's - Disco was great!

    1980's - Was still great.

    1990's - Downhill........

    Trot

  • Satanus
    Satanus

    HS

    No beefheart to offer? Oh well.

    SS

  • Francois
    Francois

    SS - Both Bach and Mozart were mouldering in their graves long before Beethoven wrote his first note, or Saint-Saens, or Brahms, or Rachmaninoff or a host of others. Suggest sir you brush up on your classical music history before you deliver yourself of such inanities. And remember too that "classical" is further divided into its own periods. This music is immortal and will still thrill the heart long after Mick Jagger is forgotten forever.

  • Satanus
    Satanus

    I like beethoven and rachmaninoff, and i've listened to saint-saens. Bach and mozart are just better, IMO.

    SS

  • hillary_step
    hillary_step

    Hello SS,

    Try 'Shiny Beast ( Bat Chain Puller )'. An excellent album. My preference on this album is 'Tropical Hot Dog Night'. It cost Van Vliet a $2,000,000 fine when he released the album as it ruptured a contract, or some such skirmish, with Warner Brothers.

    This music is immortal and will still thrill the heart long after Mick Jagger is forgotten forever.

    lol...Francios, so very true, but be careful Keith Richards may climb out of your toilet tonight and strangle you in your sleep. I understand that once it is verified that he is genuinely dead ( appearances can be deceptive ), he is to be skinned and his pelt used as an Ordnance Survey Map on the first Mars Mission.

    HS

    PS - Just pulled this for you SS,

    Tropical Hot Dog Night

    tropical hot dog night
    like two flamingos in a fruit fight
    every color of day whirling around at night
    i'm playing this music
    so the young girls will come out
    to meet the monster tonight

    tropical hot dog night
    like two flamingos in a fruit fight
    i don't want to know about wrong or right
    yeah, i don't want to know, i'm anywhere tonight

    tropical hot dog night
    like two flamingos in a fruit fight
    like stepping out of a triangle into
    striped light [3x]

    tropical hot dog night
    everything is wrong at the same time it's right
    the truth has no patterns for me tonight
    i'm playing this music
    so the young girls will come out
    to meet the monster tonight
    meet the monster tonight

    what do all you women do
    when the men get tropical hot dog payday?
    what do you do on tropical hot dog day day?
    hey, hey, step out of a triangle into striped light
    turn around and step back into striped light
    tropical hot dog night
    i'm playing this song
    for all the young girls
    to come out to meet the monster tonight
    meet the monster tonight

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