Is Old Music Killing New Music?

@pesky_wabbit 

If you were around at the time just before the punk explosion you would have heard that mantra a million times

That was understandable considering just how much had happened in the previous 2 decades - rock and roll, skiffle, folk, protest, beat bands, psychedelia, heavy rock/blues etc.

By the mid 70s popular music seemed to be in a lull and no seemed to no longer have its finger on the teenage pulse.

Prog rock was not for everyone.

Then along came punk, a rehash of early rock and roll and underground US garage bands of the late 60s.

New wave and rap followed as the teenage rebellion continued.

Then all of sudden it seemed to implode once more as musicians seemed to either lose interest in current world affairs or were driven underground once more. 

We now find ourselves in a strange retro zeitgeist, where everything seems a rehash/reinterpretation of something familiar, whilst waiting for the next big thing.

So for fans of popular music, what better thing is there to do than to endlessly explore the rich musical history of the past 60 years or so?

@tgilb 

For producer Rick Rubin, The Beatles' recorded achievements are akin to a miracle.

He's not the only one who thinks that way today.

However back in the mid 60s Lennon said, as he sat at his home in Weybridge, staring (stoned?) into the distance for hours and hours doing nothing (much like like later on in the Dakota) that he must be the laziest man in Britain.

Just goes to show how times and sensibilities have changed.

From Please Please Me to Abbey Road in 7 years is one hell of a journey.

You could argue that they were lucky in that a lot of things fell for them - Epstein, Martin, EMI, the emergence of the LP as a serious art form, the kaleidoscopic background of the 1960s, but nevertheless it still looks rather miraculous.

@jjsmith

@limomangus

I dont believe the statement that buy age 30 your set in your musical choice

I do. I’ll go so far as to say by age 22 or so. I think you and I are outliers. I don’t know of or have heard of anyone middle age or older in my local sphere, at work, at the gym, or really anywhere except the Web who listens to new artists.

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By 22 I was already into the Beatles, Elvis, Dylan and was happy checking out the LPs featured in Paul Gambaccini’s book Critics Choice Top 200 albums (first ed 1978) as well as The NME Rock Encyclopedia (1978) as well as listening to the regular Top 40 charts.

All the bands I enjoyed listening to that came later eg Joy Division, The Pogues, The Smiths, U2, R.E.M. etc were basically a continuation of what had gone before.

I have never made any effort to check out any different music unless there was something catchy in the music. For example I only got into classical after hearing an old tape of Murray Perahia playing Mozart’s PC 21.

I did get into jazz for a while but it seemed a little claustrophobic after a while.

As far as patience goes, I never had much back then, Sinatra seemed so so slow. Somehow he seemed to have improved by the time I got into my 30s.

In one sense, all of the music I listen to can be put under the same umbrella of being called popular.

There is an untold amount of music that I will never get to listen to, nor do I want to.

It’s that hook, buzz, kick, heartmelt that I look for in music, and most of the current stuff I hear on the car radio just doesn’t do it for me. These kids of today just seem too knowing, just too professional in their career aspirations.

They don’t sound for real.

At least that’s my take.

I would never blame the young.

If we’re going to blame anyone, then let’s blame our unseen publicity shy puppet masters who feverishly operate behind a curtain of anonymity.

We’ve had almost 70 years of continuous peace since WW2 and all the while our world has been shaped into larger and larger market place. The quest for ever new markets, ever new oil fields, resources, farmlands and economic slaves masquerading as human beings has led to great global tensions and uncertainties.

What for?

Just so that a few indescribably wealthy people, no not the billionaires ones you often read about, but the rather publicity averse trillionaires that you don’t, can get even more obscenely wealthy?

Well, la di da!

What are the young to do?

What choice do they have?

Force fed through tightly regulated education systems that increasingly resemble merciless indoctrination centres, what else are they supposed to do.

Most of us spend the first 40 odd years of our lives running around the same hamster wheels forever chasing our tails totally unaware of the high stake money games being played out somewhere in a land far outside the eye of the both the media and all economic textbooks.

It’s hardly a surprise is it, that many young people only later in life realise that they most of what they were so carefully taught was a load of old deflective nonsense?