Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: GUEST,dinky dau
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 01:41 PM

Something else often occurs to me lately probably due to talking to random twerps in dive-bars over the past few years (after I hit the skids, ha)

When I was a twerp myself, even though I was a hard rocker, concert-attendee, nonstop, lived-eat-slept-breathed rock, I still was never *uninformed* about a lot of other kinds of music.

Even as a pre-teen, I had some familiarity with classical composers, I knew the names of famous operas, I knew swing-era bands from the 40s; I knew a little jazz and a little folk and a little blues. I knew 1950s rock and Mo-Town.

But if you talk to a kid in his early 20s today --for instance, you might happen to be ordering a drink and a kid steps up beside your elbow and conversation springs up--he usually doesn't know anything about the history of any other music... other than what he specifically listens to.

It doesn't matter if 20 million songs from around the globe are available, he is usually still just listening to what his friends listen to.

He somehow assumes that the current infrastructure and the current state of affairs has somehow always been prevalent. It boggles the imagination; it doesn't even make sense.

You point out some casual factoid to him, say something about the British Invasion or the Stones at Altamira Speedway. Alan Freed. Elvis Presley. Black vaudeville.

It doesn't even register. Whatever the feat was, whatever the accomplishment was, it doesn't penetrate. Everything was always "just as easy as it is today". Everything was always just as automated and slick and fast. He won't even grasp that there was a period in American history where guitars weren't electrified or portable music players weren't in everyone's pocket.

In other words, accidents never took place; no one ever got electrocuted, no one ever O.D.'d on drugs, police never beat anyone, there was never any unrest, no one ever rioted. Music never changed history; "everyone always got along". If there was ever any hard work that needed to be done, well anyone who let that happen to them 'must have been stupid'. (Just my paraphrase here, but that's the general attitude I see).

Now, when I make this observation, I allow for a certain amount of 'generational mis-perception'. But I don't think its a factor; because there have been massive and rapid changes in this era which dwarf the rate of progress people experienced before.

You follow? I'm not lapsing into cracker-barrel rubrics, claiming a previous generation always had it harder than a current generation. For instance I never grew up with 'milk truck deliveries', or 'iceboxes' rather than fridges; but just because I didn't experience them personally, doesn't mean I never heard of them.

I don't assume milk was always available from a 7-11 three blocks away and I don't assume cars always had moon-roofs and airbags and electronic locks and I don't assume that people in every era had it exactly this way as we do now. And the reason for that is that I recognize that plenty of things around us took a long time to develop and there was a lot of obstacles and delays.

In the same way, I don't enjoy music without also enjoying knowing how we come by it, how it got here. But I just don't see that same perspicacity in the bubblegum crowd today. I find myself explaining really basic stuff to them as if they're only 5 yrs old instead of 25.

It represents a deeper lack of knowledge about the world around us, than it is just a "hey well, i'm into my own thing, see?" If you can;'t even explain how what you hold in your hand came-to-be manufactured, no idea when did it start to appear on the market, that is deeper ignorance than just being 'clueless'.

Why I mention all this? Because debates about music trends often depend on people possessing shared history.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Jun 18 - 05:33 AM

I don't see that much of a problem. For a lot of music, limited variety in some important parameters is exactly what you want. Religious chants have virtually no timbral variety or changes of tempo and dynamics - the idea is you pay attention to the words. Electronic dance music and Moldavian folkdance tunes have very little variation in tempo, rhythm or tonality - the idea is you keep dancing for a very long time with a rather limited repertoire of moves and trance out. So for these genres, evolving to eliminate distracting complexity is progress. It's not like anybody would only listen to those anyway. (Exception: I have met people who said the only music they ever wanted to hear was Orthodox chant. They weren't folks I'd want to spend much time near).

I have absolutely zero nostalgia for the pop music I heard when I was a teen - thought it was either stodgily unvaried (like the Rolling Stones) or created variety only by tweeness (the Beatles) - and it seems just bizarre to hear people my age trying to recreate that stuff in singarounds, with all of what textural interest the music did have flattened out by reducing it to one man and a guitar. You'd hear more textural and rhythmic variation in a five-minute chunk of Mahler's Fourth than in the entire recorded output of Lennon and McCartney.

There was one odd feature of the pop music of the 60s and 70s which might confuse some of these algorithmic metrics. They often had a brief prelude where imagination was allowed to cut loose. I often looked forward to that bit and then tuned out completely once the 4/4 dance beat kicked in. Omit those intros from the analysis and there wouldn't be anywhere near as much difference between then and now.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 04:28 PM

Whether they are better or not, they linger the longest. I often ask (older) folk the year of their (first) marriage. Typically folks’ best-loved songs were at the height of popularity when young and in love. My two cents (with penny-rounding in Canada, that’s zero). I can usually pull up a chart-topper from any year 1930-1950, and often hit the spot with seniors. Thanks for the thread, Saul   
keep on pickin
dennis

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: Raggytash
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 04:22 PM

Some of the best folk music in my humble opinion has been written in the last 50 years, much as Jimmy Miller has caused discussion he did write some fabulous songs, a favourite singer songwriter of mine is Peter Bond, who wrote many sublime songs, more recently Dave Wilson of Winter Wilson has written some great songs. There are many very good song writers about ....... if you can find them.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: meself
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 02:44 PM

Of course, the point of the vid that the OP linked is almost the opposite of: "the music one likes during one's formative years (16-20) will forever be the "best" music to them."

Not saying that I buy everything in the vid, either .......

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 02:17 PM

I was really contesting this statement:

That confirms my long-held belief that the music one likes during one's formative years (16-20) will forever be the "best" music to them.

It's just not something I agree with and, although I can still relate to the music of my youth (but not all of it), I'm still hearing fresh and new sounds in my mid-70s.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: GUEST,dinky dau
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 11:38 AM

not to mention the Autotune controversy either, but..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune

:\

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: GUEST,dinky dau
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 10:26 AM

H'mmm. I didn't know this was a 'battle' I thought this was pretty much 'case closed'. See links below.

On the matter of "one's preferences". To my way of thinking, it's a sign of limited development of one's taste, if for the whole of your life, you only listen to the music you were weaned on.

I grew up with classic rock and so it has the comfort of familiarity, sure. But I also think (objectively) that it had much wider diversity and range than any pop on the market today. It contains a cornucopia of different sounds and moods.

Accordingly, it's no surprise that not just 'one' study but *many* studies and reports support this. The industry itself admits it (albeit, very furtively).


Links:

Pop music engineered too be overly- loud (to cover up blandness)
https://tinyurl.com/gtp7xfp

Why so many modern pop songs sound alike
https://tinyurl.com/j5hwbpa

Scientists finally prove that pop music all sounds the same
https://tinyurl.com/n7wxzwf

Not our imagination: bubblegum pop music really uniform
https://tinyurl.com/kqj7p4q

Bob Dylan Says Mp3 Sound Quality 'sucks'
https://tinyurl.com/mzefzau
https://tinyurl.com/mz3hfmu


All that being acknowledged, classic rock is still not my favourite musical form. I progressed past it. I now have a couple dozen styles I listen to regularly--dixieland jazz probably being my #1. Certainly didn't grow up with it, though.

Like I said, you can't just stay developmentally stagnant. After all, there's plenty of rock music which is specifically geared for the adolescent mind; even the emotionally-distraught adolescent mind. Would anyone want to hover in that limbo forever?

Just sayin'

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: gillymor
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 10:17 AM

When I was 16-20 I was listening to Cream, Led Zeppelin, CSN, Pink Floyd et al and I just can't listen to that stuff any more having been overexposed to "Classic Rock" radio in situations I had no control over (I do make an exceptions for The Band and the Grateful Dead though)'

In recent years there has been so much good music being written and performed by artists like   Blind Pilot, The Shins, Local Natives, Gutcher, Dave Rawlings Machine, Ya Lo Tengo, Fountains of Wayne, Gregory Alan Issakov, Fastball, The Old Crow Medicine Show, Trampled by Turtles, Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys, Earl, I'm With Her, Cass McCombs, Mandolin Orange, Crooked Still, Nora Jane Struthers, The Fleet Foxes, Willie Watson, The Little Willies, Chance McCoy etc. from strictly acoustic to electronic and distorted and points in between.

If you're not digging any deeper than Justin Beiber and Katy Perry of course you're going to find modern music wanting.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: Marje
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 07:20 AM

Will Fly, what you're saying is a bit different - you've moved on to other genres and nationalities of music (and why not?). In each of those genres, you're probably accessing the best 10% of it, because the 90% of it that was rubbish has fallen by the wayside, just as it does with our native folk music and song.

I think the other part of the theory - about our personal attachment to the music of our youth - relates largely to pop music. It certainly explains, in my case, why it doesn't seem to me that anything very worthwhile has developed since the Beatles. I can discuss modern music with my teenage granddaughter (who also likes the Beatles!) but I still find the modern songs and performers that I can relate to are those that have a lot in common with the Beatles' era - performances with an unprocessed, "acoustic" feel about them.

Marje

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: BobL
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 03:39 AM

Further to my post of yesterday, there are various individuals & groups comparable to archaeologists going through a rubbish dump - the West Gallery Music Association for example - who seek out old music and, where possible, revive it. Usually it will be the not-so-mediocre stuff, whose unfashionableness is now irrelevant, and which we can now appreciate on its merits.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: Will Fly
Date: 28 Jun 18 - 03:32 AM

Well, I must disagree. I do indeed love some of the music I heard in my "formative" years, which was a weird mixture of stuff on my grandparents' gramophone records, the radio and, in later years, rock'n roll.

But, much later in life, I discovered different styles of jazz, French caf-conc and musette songs and tunes, Cape Breton fiddling, modern Swedish polskas and other tunes by groups like Vasen, funk, American old-time fiddle tunes, South African township music, stuff from Senegal and the Gambia and - throughout all of this - classical music from De Visee to Messiaen.

It's a never-ending journey, sometimes with dissonance, but always fascinating.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: Joe_F
Date: 27 Jun 18 - 05:51 PM

A curmudgeoneous view"

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: Marje
Date: 27 Jun 18 - 10:37 AM

Your theory, BobL, is borne out by the fact that if you look in books of folk songs, containing mostly old songs but some more modern ones, you'll see that most of those written and published in, say, the later 20th century, have sunk without trace, whereas many of the older traditional songs are still being sung. There are of course some modern gems that have passed into circulation and are cherished as much as the older songs, but most of the modern ones don't last - just as most of the old ones probably didn't either.

Marje

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: BobL
Date: 27 Jun 18 - 03:03 AM

I understand that another study showed people turn away from pop music at an average age of 37. Quite understandable: IMHO there hasn't been a decent band since Queen.

Perhaps more relevant is Sturgeon's Revelation, that in any field of human creative endeavour, 90% of the result is rubbish. My own extension to this states that a further 9% is mediocre, leaving just 1% that is genuinely good. The rubbish is soon forgotten, the mediocre survives long enough to become unfashionable, the good has staying power. Modern music (or art or literature) inevitably seems worse simply because its rubbish is still with us.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: michaelr
Date: 26 Jun 18 - 06:44 PM

"A study carried out by a grad student I knew around 1990 concluded that most people prefer music they first heard before they were 18."

That confirms my long-held belief that the music one likes during one's formative years (16-20) will forever be the "best" music to them. Most of my favorite albums were released between 1972 and 1976. Some don't hold up so well, but most do.

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: GUEST,paperback
Date: 26 Jun 18 - 04:39 PM

The prophet forewarns of the Corporate-Ork music mischief

Lluvvatar, ??

Melkor, ??

Subject: RE: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: Lighter
Date: 26 Jun 18 - 09:46 AM

A study carried out by a grad student I knew around 1990 concluded that most people prefer music they first heard before they were 18.

So, yeah, the old music is always better.

Subject: Older Music Was Better:The War Wages on.
From: GUEST,saulgoldie
Date: 26 Jun 18 - 09:03 AM

Browsing/killing time on Youtube t'other day, stumbled upon this nugget, which confirmed a good bit of my sense of music these days, and "back then." This is sure to light some fires.

Music Sucks

Saul