[DavidMahler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrBenway /img/forum/go_quote.gif We'll have to respectfully disagree on that one. The hype that surrounded his career took on a life of its own, to be sure. The "king of rock n roll" title is silly and undeserved. You could just as easily apply that to Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, or a host of others. The point is, none of that was his fault. When you say that his material was never outstanding, I have to disagree. "Jailhouse Rock" is an amazing track, with production and lead guitar by Chet Atkins, surely one of the greatest musicians of the 20th Century. The Sun sessions were revelatory. This was rockabilly, not blues or R&B or country. Deeply informed by all of the above, but something completely different on several levels. Listen with fresh ears to "Mystery Train," or "Good Rockin' Tonight," or "Baby Let's Play House." These are all musical masterpieces to me. And despite his drug addled later life, he occasionally got it together, right up to the end. "Suspicious Minds" is a brilliant record, and that was from the 70s, long after his prime. And when I was in the 5th grade or so, he released "Burnin' Love," which demonstrated that he still had it, in ways that his younger competition simply did not. Elvis is a flash-point, for a variety of reasons. African-Americans quite understandably tend to think of him as a cultural thief. I understand and respect that argument. But I think the best refutation of that argument is in the grooves of his records. Listen to those records again, with an open mind, and you might be surprised by what you hear. I don't mean to suggest that you are not an open-minded person. But Elvis's legacy is so freighted with issues of race, class, and, as you correctly point out, celebrity BS, that it's sometimes hard to judge his work fairly. I nevertheless think the recordings speak for themselves. This ain't Justin Timberlake (rhymes with fake) that we are talking about.

The Sun Sessions and the early RCA work as well as some good later performances like the Memphis album and comeback singles are decent songs, the performances are what make them great, the songs themselves are not masterpieces of writing to me....its the way the song is showcased which makes it exciting. Take a song like Mystery Train or Jailhouse Rock and then pair it up against a song by Gershwin or Porter or Lennon/McCartney or Dylan......it falls a little short, but that's not to say that as a performer Elvis didn't make up for the shortcomings of the repertoire.

 

[TheMarchingMule]

The best music you will never hear at a nightclub.

 

[Deep Funk]

If a bar/café has the guts to play old music, not just 'I feel Good' by James Brown & The JB's or 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction' by the Rolling Stones and dares to dig deeper and sometimes wider, I am sold. It is too bad good Funk is underrated in the average clubs these days, good Funk is better than most contemporary dance music in my opinion.

 

[tru blu]

Yeah, I always feel like folks who dismiss those early Elvis Presley records haven't actually listened to them. Perhaps that's the inevitability of discovering "The King" after he became Conrad Birdie.

For new generations, though, discovering old music has always been a game of catch-up, but in my limited experience I've found that the digital-music generation may be the least inclined to truly engage with music history on a contextual level. Yes, you can now access just about everything and fill up whatever listening device you prefer, but to me that feels more like acquisition than genuine adulation or understanding. I s'pose that's OK (music is for enjoyment, after all), but I think what DMahler's getting at is that there are many things music can tell you about a time period—and the current one seems lacking. I would argue, though, that because society's relationship to music consumption has fundamentally changed, it's probably not a great idea to let pop be your gauge for contemporary times.

 

[fjrabon]

I still think your biggest issue is that you weren't around to know how bad most music was in the decades you are holding up. You've rhapsodized about the 60's. The second best selling album of the 60's was inna-gadda-da-vida. Which is about as terrible as 60's rock can get and during the 60's it actually sold more copies than Sgt. Peppers, with Sgt. Peppers passing it in subsequent decades. Saturday Night Fever was the 4th best selling album of the 70's. And was in fact the best selling of the late 70s at the time (the albums that passed it passed it later, as the eagles greatest hits, bat out of hell and DSOTM continued to sell, while Saturdary night fever sold virtually all of its 40 million copies within two years).

Perry Como was far and away the most popular artist of the 40's and I really don't think his music was anything more than variety show fare. Pat Boone was nothing special musically.

My point is that you just kind of leave out the gigantic chunk of awful music in the past that was enormously popular. I don't really think Perry Como was any better than Rihanna and was actually more popular. The reason why the past always looks so great is that we can pick out the very best of the era and point that out as "the defining artists of the period." Whereas, in reality, at the time, they usually weren't the most popular artists of the period. It shocks people today when they realize that virtually nobody knew who The Velvet Underground was at the time, and that Chicago was enormously popular. In retrospect critics push up VU as banner bearers of that time and kind of sweep Chicago's overly commercialized slog under the rug of time.

If your point is that modern music doesn't really have a defining direction, then yeah, maybe I agree with that. But that's an entirely different point.

I think the quality is more or less the same as its always been, there is just more of everything, more awful, but also more truly great.

 

[fjrabon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DavidMahler /img/forum/go_quote.gif This will be a reference to numerous posts within the thread: EDIT: Last thing.......if you take the 70s for instance.....bands like Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jethro Tull, Yes, Return To Forever, Weather Report.....they may not have been "mainstream" but back in the 70s mainstream was not only the pop singles......bands like that had a chance at getting a top ten album. This is because the mainstream was much more aware. I mean, Miles Davis had several successful records despite not being mainstream.

Just like the Avett Brothers can have a top 20 album and Kings of Leon can have a top 5 album (though it's actually my least favorite of their albums, but you get the point). And you're really pushing Mahavishnu Orchestra as near mainstream? Really? Take a poll of a few hundred people who were teens in the 70's and I'd be willing to bet less than 10% even know who they were, let alone bought an album. Same for Return To Forever. If you're calling those guys mainstream-ish from the 70's, you have to say that today's mainstream includes Radiohead, The Avett Brothers, Animal Collective, Band of Horses, Of Montreal (I mean they're on an Outback Steakhouse commercial for goodness sakes), etc.

 

[fjrabon]

One last point, the magical sixites, where The Beatles were the biggest act in the world, followed by The Rolling Stones, etc. When you actually look at the numbers, it's just as much a manufactured after the fact view. they were of course huge, but there was a lot of awful music that was enormously popular. In retrospect it gets swept under the rug as not really part of the decade, but at the time it dominated more than Usher's new album does today.

Top selling albums for every year in the 60's:
The best-selling album of 1960 was The Sound of Music, Original Cast Recording.[5]
The best-selling album of 1961 was Camelot, Original Cast Recording.[6]
The best-selling album of 1962 was West Side Story Soundtrack.[7]
The best-selling album of 1963 was West Side Story Soundtrack.[8]
The best-selling album of 1964 was Hello, Dolly!, Original Cast Recording.[9]
The best-selling album of 1965 was Mary Poppins Soundtrack.[10]
The best-selling album of 1966 was Whipped Cream & Other Delights, by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass.[11]
The best-selling album of 1967 was More of The Monkees, by The Monkees.[12]
The best-selling album of 1968 was Are You Experienced?, by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.[13]
The best-selling album of 1969 was In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, by Iron Butterfly.[14]

Only one is a legit album. The Beatles, ie the defining artists who were vastly more important than any artists of the decade, yep, didn't have a top selling album for any year of the 60's. This isn't to demean the Beatles or suggest they weren't big at the time, but they weren't as disproportionately big as we all think now. It's a product of revisionist history by journalists who look longingly back on their college days. Then people our age (I'm also 27) take their word for it instead of looking at the hard numbers and the vast bulk of people who actually listened to and bought pop music at the time. If you turned on the radio in the 60's, there as just as good of a chance that you'd hear a chipmunks song or "doe, a deer, a female deer" as a Beatles song.

Muse's the resistance just went number one in 19 countries and number 3 in the US and it is about as ambitious as you can get lyrically and musically and they put on a crazy good live show.

 

[Deep Funk]

In short, what is perceived as change is actually the same situation, more or less. Interesting point...

Personally I don not find such notions to be important, only to a certain degree. I just like digging for the root of my favourite music, album by album. It is slow going, but I would not want it any other way.

 

[TheWuss]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjrabon /img/forum/go_quote.gif Then people our age (I'm also 27) take their word for it instead of looking at the hard numbers and the vast bulk of people who actually listened to and bought pop music at the time.

well, let me say that you offer more insight than any 27 y.o. that i've ever met.

i tend to agree with you - revisionist history.

 

[fjrabon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheWuss /img/forum/go_quote.gif well, let me say that you offer more insight than any 27 y.o. that i've ever met. i tend to agree with you - revisionist history.

I fell under the spell of the revisionist historians of music and the legend of the 60's until I bought a bulk vinyl collection from an estate sale while in college. The collection had basically every record of note from the 60's and 70's. I had to get a two bedroom apt just to have a place to store it (luckily I had a full scholarship made a pretty good amount of money for a college kid bartending). I then realized the vast bulk of it was totally unlistenable. My view of the 60s totally changed. I saw it as a time period when there were a very few legendary artists that achieved moderate to great levels of success at the time, but then were catapulted into being the entirety of the 60s sometime during the 80s out of nostalgia.

And a ****ing lot of musicals. I never realized that musicals were such a huge portion of popular music at the time, because nobody likes to admit that The Sound of Music sold more than Sgt. Peppers in the actual 60s (of course in subsequent years Sgt. Peppers has vaulted past it, but during the 60's The Sound of Music sold a lot more).

 

[DrBenway]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjrabon /img/forum/go_quote.gif Pat Boone was nothing special musically.

That's putting it mildly. He was possibly the worst of the white cover artists who recorded inferior, toothless versions of songs by R&B and rock n roll artists -- making rock n roll "safe" for America's young white people. And his versions invariably sold multiples of the originals. Add to that the fact that most of the original artists didn't own their own publishing, and you have something really, really grim. Black artists being stolen from, basically.

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjrabon /img/forum/go_quote.gif It shocks people today when they realize that virtually nobody knew who The Velvet Underground was at the time, and that Chicago was enormously popular. In retrospect critics push up VU as banner bearers of that time and kind of sweep Chicago's overly commercialized slog under the rug of time.

Absolutely true. There's that old joke: Only a few people actually saw or heard the Velvet Underground, but every single one of them started a band.

You're right about Chicago, too. They actually had credibility early on with some hipsters and critics, who considered them a jazz-rock band. I guess they noticed the horn section and figured it must be a jazz group if it has a trumpet player.

 

[TheWuss]

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrBenway /img/forum/go_quote.gif That's putting it mildly. He was possibly the worst of the white cover artists who recorded inferior, toothless versions of songs by R&B and rock n roll artists <snip>

funny you say toothless. i met pat boone a few years ago, and he had perfect dentures, and a hollywood tan. kind of creepy.
did anybody hear that metal album he did a few years back?

 

[falis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjrabon /img/forum/go_quote.gif ... If you turned on the radio in the 60's, there as just as good of a chance that you'd hear a chipmunks song or "doe, a deer, a female deer" as a Beatles song...

Actually that wasn't the case, even with the overwhelming amount of junk on AM radio at the time. On the more popular stations you'd be hearing rock-pop, lots of soul music, and a certain amount of drivel-pop. You'd also hear Dylan, the Who, Beatles, Stones and a fair sampling of reasonable music.

FM was better, starting to get album oriented in say 69 or so.

But this one observation doesn't cancel your other ones. Your main point is solid regarding nostalgia and its way of rewriting the past. And it's always been commercial.

- Ed

 

[fjrabon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by falis /img/forum/go_quote.gif Actually that wasn't the case, even with the overwhelming amount of junk on AM radio at the time. On the more popular stations you'd be hearing rock-pop, lots of soul music, and a certain amount of drivel-pop. You'd also hear Dylan, the Who, Beatles, Stones and a fair sampling of reasonable music. FM was better, starting to get album oriented in say 69 or so. But this one observation doesn't cancel your other ones. Your main point is solid regarding nostalgia and its way of rewriting the past. And it's always been commercial. - Ed

I wasn't saying it was more common, but just as common to hear bad pop. Part of the issue back then was that radio stations were more diverse, so on the same station you'd hear pat boone, something off the sound of music, a beatles song and a motown song. Whereas now all radio is fully genre-ified. that is, you can hear nothing but pop on one station, nothing but adult alternative, nothing but metal, etc and it's only gotten better/worse with the advent of satellite radio. And I kind of doubt your Bob Dylan point, as he only had 4 top 10 radio hits and went entire years without charting anything. Sure some Bob Dylan came on the radio but I don't think you can put Bob Dylan up there like he was late 60's radio. If you pick a random point from the late 60's, turn on a radio station, the chances are very low that you'd hear any Bob Dylan singles. What do The Times They Are A Changin', Blowin In The Wind, and All Along the Watchtower have in common? All released as singles, all failed to chart. Now he did have some big hits (Rainy Day Women and Like A Rolling Stone both went to #2), but they were more the exception than the rule.

For instance, in 1966 (which was a very good year for music in the 60's, so nobody accuses me of just picking a bad year), if you turned on the radio, it would probably go something like this (this is completely randomly picked from a list of top singles from the billboard charts in 1966):


Snoopy v. The Red Baron - The Royal Guardsmen (yes, this charted to No. 2 in the US in 1966)
No Matter What Shape Your Stomach's In - The T Bones
These Boots Were Made For Walkin - Nancy Sinatra
Red Rubber Ball - The Cyrkle
Hanky Panky - Tommy James and the Shondells
I'm a Believer - The Monkees
Day Tripper - The Beatles
You Can't Hurry Love - The Supremes

Some of it truly transcendent popular music, some of it truly unlistenable relics of the time. My point was that people think if you turned on the radio in 1966 it was like Beatles, the who, frank sinatra, The supremes, otis redding, all back to back to back. While those artists were there, they were at least equal in number, if not outnumbered by the forgotten pop muck.

heck, even if you just isolate motown, everybody has this idea that motown put out nothing but great hits. I have every motown single released from 59 to 71. The vast majority, as in over 75%, are awful. Sure there are som etruly great classics, but in number they're greatly outweighed by pure crap.

 

[GlendaleViper]

I won't belabour the points about pop music being "crap" through the ages - anything good is worth digging for, plain and simple, there is no time barrier.

The real issue is the wider degradation of personal, emotional awareness with respect to philosophy and art appreciation. Without making obtuse claims about current generations being less "aware" as those prior (this takes us down the same road as trying to argue why "classic pop" is better than current pop), as even outside of the mainstream there is a distinct lack of introspection - in quality of thought.

This is not to suggest that creating art of quality demands pretentiousness, or pandering to the intelligentsia. In fact, the most effective art is that which strikes at the most basic of human emotions, that evokes the humanness of humanity.

Nor does this suggest that there are barriers with regard to new forms of art at large. Indeed (and sad to some though it may seem), look to comic books, animation, science-fiction, Heavy Metal and Hip-hop - traditional purveyors of pulp and gratuitous escapism, now more and more becoming hotbeds of intelligent, emotional meditation and social commentary.

Works of art are, necessarily, reflections of the artist's world. It is not a commodity. Without politicizing the thread, media saturation is both cause and effect in a world where commercial interests shift art as a medium for thoughtful expression, to a "product" designed to appeal to the carefully studied behaviours attributable to the CONSUMER. It should be no surprise that an increasingly superficial populace has spawned increasingly superficial artistic expression; mindless entertainment glorifying lifeSTYLE, not LIFE.

Social conditioning, however, does not alter one's humanity. As a species we seem driven to find commonality with one another and the internet is a major driving force toward this end (much as it is concurrently a massive driving force for the "problem" we discuss). Human perspective is increasingly a global perspective and we are exposed to the thoughts and opinions of our peers, regardless of (and perhaps thanks to) cultural differences and borderlines. More and more, people have (largely peer-driven) resources at their fingertips for exploring and sharing the works of others that touch us in some way. This is DIY marketing and it is performed by the individual. Like minds coalesce and share, and it grows in series and deepens with every shared essay, poem, song, image, film, and so on.

Furthermore, there is increasingly a feeling that people are starting to tire of the trite, shallow "art" that the traditional media outlets continue to churn out. To bring things back around to music, assume that "Indie" is not a term used to describe a confined style, but rather a philosophy in music making. "Indie" music at large normally eschews the trends at the charts, both stylistically and often lyrically. And yet, it has always remained just below the surface, neither truly underground nor mainstream. So many people seem bent on defining musical style through "genrefication", but this is irrelevant. "Indie" is as much an ideal as it is a catch-all term, but its enduring relevance is exclusively due to the former. It runs the gamut, from folk, to metal, to rap, to everything-and-the-kitchen-sink collective weirdness; the common string is bravery. Being brave enough to wear your heart on your sleeve, to tackle intensely emotional subject matter or social issues right or wrong. Brave enough to incorporate dated and seemingly archaic style choices (traditional country & western being adopted more and more) while simultaneously challenging established trends. Most importantly, it is the bravery to create from the heart with the HOPE that it will speak to someone else, not BECAUSE of it.

The best art, in all its forms, is pure and without definition. It is passion incarnate. It is tragedy and comedy, domestic and taboo. It is purity of thought mated with passion and skill. It is born of narcissism and attains greatness (and indeed validity) when it finds an audience. It is not a case study. It is not a target demographic. It has never been easy to find.

Dig deep and share.