The Day the Music Died

[christopher3393]

14 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I have always had a theory about the decline in the quality of popular music. I don't think anyone would argue that the "golden age" of popular music was the 1930's through the War years. After that, the music started a slow decline. The reason is the rise of the "youth culture". After WWII, teenagers suddenly became affluent in a way that they had never been before. In the Thirties, it was the adults who set the bar height for the quality of pop music and being a teen was just something you went through waiting to become an adult. After the war, youth became the dominant force molding pop music, movies, TV, etc. The realization that these kids had the money to spend on music came slowly to the record companies, and the first glimmer of things to come was the "Bobby-soxer craze over a young Frank Sinatra in the early '40's. But eventually, the music business caught on to this new marketing reality that the way to make tons of money is to cater to this burgeoning youth market. Record companies soon learned a vital (to the bottom line) truth about this market. It's very generational. Each successive generation of youngsters want their own music. They want to be able to be identified on their own, not by what their parents did, or indeed what their older brothers and sisters did. So, each new generation of teens wanted their own music, the main characteristic of which being that it is different from the music of the previous generation of teens. The music industry realized that these kids are very malleable. The "new" pop music didn't need to be as good as the previous generation's music, it just needed to be different. Thus began the inexorable decline in the quality and form of each new generation's music. 

 

And, each generation tends to stick with their generation's music for their entire life. That's why cable and satellite music sources have separate feeds for the music of each decade. There's a 50's channel, a 60's channel, a70's channel, and so forth. How many audiophiles do you know (and perhaps you are one of them) who have elaborate and expensive stereo systems solely to listen to the pop music that was popular when they were teenagers!  I know several. 

 

It it is a peculiar imbecility of the notion of "change for the sake of change" that it inevitably causes entropy. 

 

George, I'm wondering how the youth culture of the "roaring twenties" fits into your narrative?

[gmgraves]

3 hours ago, christopher3393 said:

 

George, I'm wondering how the youth culture of the "roaring twenties" fits into your narrative?

 

The "youth culture" of the Twenties wasn't comprised of young teens, it was mostly  twenty-somethings; I.e. The "lost generation". But they did set gather standards for the popular taste of their generation. The depression put a quick end to that party, because it took the disposable income out of everybody's hands.

[Peti]

On 7/19/2017 at 3:04 PM, NOMBEDES said:

Kessler offers (in support of his thesis) this list of album releases for the last four months of 1969:

 

"a dear friend and former record shop owner named Fred Jeffery sent me a revealing e-mail.

Fred once owned Rockit Records in Saugus, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Maine with me and Rich Colburn, also of this parish. He was going through some old magazines and came up with this list. It dealt solelywith the four-month period of September-December 1969 – the 1960s’ adieu.

Primarily in order of their release, record buyers (including Fred and myself) were offered for the Christmas season Fleetwood Mac’s Then Play On, Janis Joplin’s I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, the Band’s eponymous second LP, the Beatles’ Abbey Road, Steve Miller Band’s Brave New World, Arthur from the Kinks, Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats, Elvis Presley’s From Memphis To Vegas, Led Zeppelin 2, Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma, Johnny Winter’s Second Winter, Pentangle’s Basket Of Light and Spirit’s Clear."

Black Sabbath's first monster, the self titled Black Sabbath album was recorded in October, 1969, even though it was released in February, 1970. I think that multiple genre defining album should be included in that list.

On 7/19/2017 at 3:04 PM, NOMBEDES said:

 

 

 

 

[AnotherSpin]

3 hours ago, Peti said:

Black Sabbath's first monster, the self titled Black Sabbath album was recorded in October, 1969, even though it was released in February, 1970. I think that multiple genre defining album should be included in that list.

 

 

The same period of time: Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed, Grateful Dead - Live/Dead, David Bowie - Space Oddity, King Crimson - In The Court of the Crimson King

[marce]

Whmmm luckily I still listen to Radio 1 here in the U.K. so I can keep up to date with new music, otherwise my life would become stale and boring, current favourites are "Twenty One Pilots" and "Chase and Status". To say everything's been downhill since the 60's ended is a bit narrow minded... Grow old disgracefully I am.

 

[davide256]

Sheesh... if you think the 60's was the epitome of great music, you must have been living a very sheltered existence. AM radio, 45's and some of the silliest pop lyrics you ever heard for most of what was played. The 70s at least shed all of the 50's crooner influence.

[PhilR]

On 7/18/2017 at 2:20 PM, NOMBEDES said:

Example: "How can it be that television drama – Game of Thrones, Blacklist, Orphan Black, Peaky Blinders, Breaking Bad, Ballers, Better Call Saul, Preacher, Arrow, ad infinitum – has never been better, but popular music is so mindless, samey, and/or unoriginal? Did the Beatles and their progeny and contemporaries simply do it all, leaving nothing for anyone else?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a great point. TV is still able to do what music stopped doing long ago. "Thriller" was a great example of an album that won over the general public. Production issues aside, are musical tastes just too varied nowadays for one CD to make so many people happy?

[Ralf11]

1. good creative artists have moved from music to TV

 

2. art forms go thru periods of stasis (or punctuated equilibrium) and music is in one now -- except for rap ;]