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The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful

Sorry it comes across that way, it is just a subject that really annoys me. There has always been truly amazing music just a few steps from the mainstream in any direction and I’m sure there always will be. I hope I remain sharp and inquisitive enough to keep finding it. It definitely gets harder the older one gets as one becomes increasingly isolated from those actually creating it. One should still always aim to be more John Peel...

I completely agree!

The main thrust of my argument is not about what you may find if you go off the beaten path and search for it, but what you will likely hear if you switch on your kitchen or car radio, or playing on the builders radio, or in the pub on the jukebox with the latest hits on, in your taxi etc etc.

Yes there was "Cherpie cheap cheap" and "Long haired lover from Liverpool" (and Cilla Black:D) but even these had decent studio session men with some chops behind them.. they had a reasonable (if obvious) range of chords, you may even have got a key change!
To be fair, in spite of this, "Billy don't be a hero" by Paper Lace could be truly stomach churning:confused:

At the other extreme of quality though you could have once switched your radio on and heard "now at number 5 it's David Bowie with Star Man!"

I well remember the magic of hearing "Teenage Kicks" played for the very first time by John Peel, on a cassette the Undertones had sent him! I'd have been 13 or 14 I guess.... I can't imagine a kid today hearing anything quite that inspirational on mainstream radio today! Remember we could only pick up maybe 5 stations on the radio, no internet, no mobiles, jumpers for goal posts, it was all fields round here you know.
 
It is one of the defining aspects of 'getting' dance music of practically any kind, you have to love to dance.

Wrong for me anyway.

Dance only if you can do it well, but my observations of honkeys attempting this can at times provide amusement.

Bloss
 
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The main thrust of my argument is not about what you may find if you go off the beaten path and search for it, but what you will likely hear if you switch on your kitchen or car radio, or playing on the builders radio, or in the pub on the jukebox with the latest hits on, in your taxi etc etc.

I’ve always disliked that type of mainstream pop music and I felt I explained very well why the pop charts has become so much more isolated from anything more ‘serious’ due to huge, huge changes in music creation and marketing. To recap: the pop charts now record a far more narrow subset of music than they did in the past now other alternative markets with their own entirely different retail mechanisms, broadcast mechanisms and charts exist. The major labels used to own everything, now they own little more than manufactured chart pop and dad-rock back catalogues. No one makes or buys music in the same way anymore. Even BBC radio has changed; what was initially ‘Light’, then ‘Radio 1’, is now split across R1 (mornic pop), R2 (dad-rock/oldies) and 6Music (anything even remotely interesting). If Hendrix arrived now he’d never be playlisted outside 6Music, never be promoted or sold outside of the indie/alt marketplace.
 
Even BBC radio has changed; what was initially ‘Light’, then ‘Radio 1’, is now split across R1 (mornic pop), R2 (dad-rock/oldies) and 6Music (anything even remotely interesting).

I think that's more to do with the musical interests of the age group each station addresses. When I was a kid Radio 1 played the popular music of the time and Radio 2 played music that was popular with their parents. I think that split has largely stayed in place and Radio 2 continues to play music that's of interest to middle aged people. So the music played just represents what interests a particular age group. In 25 years time Radio 2 will be playing what's on Radio 1 at the moment.

Personally I don't listen to Radio 1/2/6 as the chatter between songs drives me bonkers - and the compression is pretty grim too.
 
I remember being told that, "You can't even tell what they're saying!" and that other old chestnut, "It's not got any melody like the music had in my day." What a load of old boll**ks, every era has good music and bad music.
 
To recap: the pop charts now record a far more narrow subset of music than they did in the past now other alternative markets with their own entirely different retail mechanisms, broadcast mechanisms and charts exist.
I get that point, but I'm not sure you get that the point is that the 'narrower subset' is therefore what one hears out in the world, when the aural environment is not under your control.
 
I get that point, but I'm not sure you get that the point is that the 'narrower subset' is therefore what one hears out in the world, when the aural environment is not under your control.

No, I understand that completely! It is a result of the simply huge shift in the way music is created, marketed, distriuted and consumed these days. There is simply no comparison between how the music market worked 30 or so years ago and now. Every mechanism has changed beyond recognition. It is an entirely different structure.
 
No, I understand that completely! It is a result of the simply huge shift in the way music is created, marketed, distriuted and consumed these days. There is simply no comparison between how the music market worked 30 or so years ago and now. Every mechanism has changed beyond recognition. It is an entirely different structure.
Right. The more-narrow subset, and the I still insist more-impoverished public music environment, are the result of all that. But this understanding somehow does not assure me that all is right with the world.
 
Right. The more-narrow subset, and the I still insist more-impoverished public music environment, are the result of all that. But this understanding somehow does not assure me that all is right with the world.

I was not suggesting all is right with the world, just that truly amazing new music of all conceivable (and many inconceivable) genres exists, though in different places to where it did in the past! This is what democratisation actually looks like!
 
We're at an impasse, Tony. The bottom line is I'm still going to feel the guy in the OP video has some points, that what comes out the greatest number of 'playing-current-music' speakers isn't what it used to be. You are going to continue to think anyone who's says such things is a little or a lot irritating. Thread over?
 
We're at an impasse, Tony. The bottom line is I'm still going to feel the guy in the OP video has some points, that what comes out the greatest number of 'playing-current-music' speakers isn't what it used to be. You are going to continue to think anyone who's says such things is a little or a lot irritating. Thread over?

The thing is I don’t disagree with you if your frame of reference is daytime radio, supermarket muzak or non-specialist (i.e non-live DJ) bar music. I honestly feel I have explained exactly why this is the case, and it is a ‘business model’ thing. If you want to hear the new and exciting you need to move in the right circles and almost certainly access it from places like YouTube, Bandcamp, artists websites etc etc, as that is where it happens now. The major corporations used to meddle and manipulate all popular youth movements, even things like punk (so many small “independents” were actually imprints of majors etc). Now that influence has gone, they have lost all their power, and we live in a world where people make and distribute their own music or the music of their friends. It is a totally different ecosystem.
 
All well and good Tony but it still ignores the argument that the whole of the art form, like Jazz and Classical, is at an end. Like a delta nearing the sea it has divided and slowed to a crawl. There have been no innovations for about thirty years. Grime? Drill? Come on...
The argument about majors meddling is groundless because there were always people at the majors willing to take a punt on the next big thing and all sorts of subsidiaries and independents.
I also think that if there are great undiscovered Artists making new and exciting music in the nether regions of the Net it would very quickly become well known if it was ground breaking.
 
New and exciting?

That happened in the 30's, 40's 50's 60's and 70's.

Everything else beyond that is just a re- hash of everything that went before.

Is that my coat over there?
 
I'd add 80s for Boogie, House and Techno and at a push the likes of Talk Talk for post-rock and the Seattle bands of Grunge.
 
Boogie? What you talking 'bout Willis?

You talking about Keith Richards dog? (he had a dog called Boogie)

Boogie is a genre from the 80's?

That's a new one.

House and Techno just derived from the 70's Rapping Dicso /Hiphop scene
 
New and exciting?

That happened in the 30's, 40's 50's 60's and 70's.

Everything else beyond that is just a re- hash of everything that went before.

Not quite. Everything that happened from the 30s to the 70s was mainly just a rehash of stuff that went before. It's a series of evolution. The music of the 50s, 60s and 70s were primarily tin pan alley push some country music mixed up with the blues. Later techno came along which gave new sounds but didn't drastically change the structure of pop songs. Rap music merged disco and techno and sometimes threw in some jazz.

You may wish to look at the origins of say the blues, but its not easy to pin down. In fact the origins of anything in music is often hard to pin down where it came from, but I would hesitate to say anything revolutionary has happened since the 1930s, it's just a mash-up of what was already in place. I might say that IMO a lot more evolution happened in the 60s than in previous decades, but a lot of people would disagree.
 


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