[Altoids]

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Originally Posted by cerbie /img/forum/go_quote.gif Have to disagree with lack of talent. Rather, where talent is being put. Whole albums have never been the mainstay. Popular for little bits here and there, but not normal, except among music lovers. In the case of CDs with only a small number of good tracks, someone just isn't cutting it, be it the artist, producer, or someone else at the label. If they can't put more than 10-15 minutes of good stuff on there, it's being made too quick, or is sacrificing something.

Maybe I've been lucky, but the artists I stand behind have historically been able to fill ~80 minutes with high quality music. In the CD era especially, I think weak, paltry albums are always a case of greed. Take a look at The Beatles, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Michael Jackson -- a random picking of artists who can regularly fill an album with quality material. I think the reason is clear: when talented musicians are supported by thoughtful production companies, the consumer gets good music. When lackluster musicians are supported by greedy record companies, the consumer suffers. Appreciating good music should be taught in schools.

 

[BrookR1]

I'm a fan of "best of" CDs...an album full of singles. If I like the general sound, I'll explore the band and buy more of their albums.

 

[Steve_C]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Altoids /img/forum/go_quote.gif Maybe I've been lucky, but the artists I stand behind have historically been able to fill ~80 minutes with high quality music. In the CD era especially, I think weak, paltry albums are always a case of greed. Take a look at The Beatles, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Michael Jackson -- a random picking of artists who can regularly fill an album with quality material. I think the reason is clear: when talented musicians are supported by thoughtful production companies, the consumer gets good music. When lackluster musicians are supported by greedy record companies, the consumer suffers. Appreciating good music should be taught in schools.

I agree wholeheartedly. It's a shame most young people nowadays are getting bombarded by soul-less pop music. They never get exposed to real music and assumes what they are seeing on MTV is as good as it gets.

 

[tjohnusa]

What's old is new again. The prices of decent turntables is rising on ebay. 5 years ago you could buy a Thorens TD 125 for around $120 now they go for twice that. I still listen to albums and rip them to mp3 files.

 

[Thelonious Monk]

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Originally Posted by Steve_C /img/forum/go_quote.gif I agree wholeheartedly. It's a shame most young people nowadays are getting bombarded by soul-less pop music. They never get exposed to real music and assumes what they are seeing on MTV is as good as it gets.

yeah, because pop music was so much better in the olden days.

imo, Timbaland is just as good as The Temptations, Led Zeppelin or whatever kind of pop music from years past tickles your fancy.

 

[Altoids]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thelonious Monk /img/forum/go_quote.gif yeah, because pop music was so much better in the olden days. imo, Timbaland is just as good as The Temptations, Led Zeppelin or whatever kind of pop music from years past tickles your fancy.

I'm 22, and that still sounds like blasphemy. However, I do think that if you know where to look, music is as good now as it ever was. I mean, any jazz lover has to appreciate Portishead, period. Open minded classical lovers, try Johann Johannsson. Edith Piaf? Hope Sandoval, Camille, Stereolab....

 

[tru blu]

I would agree that any truly great music from now is as good as great music then, but let's face it, today there's less of it—primarily because there's very little room for the kind of trials by experimentation that previously existed. If you have a whiff of talent nowadays someone with cash swoops in prematurely and tries to buy you out. It's not like, say, Bruce Springsteen at the turn of the '70s, building the E Street Band and their sound in front of audiences years before Columbia came calling.

Also, once upon a time serious regional blues, jazz and rock scenes developed and sustained themselves, which had equally serious implications when the best musicians finally got to hotbeds like New York, Detroit and L.A. and began to blend all those experiences. And paradoxically, even though the regional scenes were self-sustaining, it wasn't like no one was listening to what anybody else was doing. The folks in Nashville were definitely keeping up with what was going on New Orleans or Chicago and, of course, Memphis. Stevie Wonder was listening to Bob Dylan and vice versa. Today it seems like folks are content with music that mirrors our current social fragmentation, to create their own little niche and stay inside it. I understand that it's probably frustrating to constantly hear "those were the days," but one has to take into account the social contexts and factors that made some things possible.

 

[monolith]

Downloadable music (in general) has only improved things as far as I'm concerned. I only ever download whole albums and usually buy what I like pretty quickly (on vinyl if possible). Without downloading, my ability to explore music would be greatly reduced. I mean, as good as artists like Zeppelin and Floyd are, and as influential as they were on me growing up, I hardly want to still be listening to them and only them years from now. I need a way to effortlessly explore the myriad bands and genres that interest me.

That said, things like the iTunes store are hurting it a lot, I think. You shouldn't be able to download one song at a time.

 

[Thelonious Monk]

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Originally Posted by tru blu /img/forum/go_quote.gif I would agree that any truly great music from now is as good as great music then, but let's face it, today there's less of it

i disagree. a lot. perhaps it's just because the more obscure acts of years past are lost to time, but i have found so much more satisfying music from the 90s and the 00s than any other time period. it is somewhat lacking in jazz (although there's stuff like Jaga Jazzist, Amon Tobin, NATSUMEN, Sonny Sharrock, The Bad Plus and SOIL&"PIMP"SESSIONS to hold me over, all excellent) but that's all i can think of.

 

[tru blu]

The most we can do is agree to disagree. The statement about "obscure acts…lost to time" makes me think you might be confusing quantity with quality, and perhaps not factoring in innovation. (That's really just a guess, though.) I'm not sure that the Bad Plus or Amon Tobin—a great DJ/sound collagist whose best stuff quite unabashedly replicates the sound of an earlier era of jazz drumming—are gonna change the world the world the way, say, Art Blakey did, and I think the Bad Plus's pianist Ethan Iverson would probably say the same thing.

Put another way, I think our cultural reality would be much different if quite a few of the earlier, consensus-influential folk hadn't existed. By contrast, sometimes it seems like even when much contemporary music is interesting, it sounds like musicians painting with colors that were stirred some time ago. That's not something you can blame the mp3 for. Of course, it's also possible that listeners will have to get themselves intimately acquainted with nearly a century of recorded music to be able to hear that, and who's got that kind of time?

 

[Thelonious Monk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tru blu /img/forum/go_quote.gif The most we can do is agree to disagree. The statement about "obscure acts…lost to time" makes me think you might be confusing quantity with quality, and perhaps not factoring in innovation. (That's really just a guess, though.) I'm not sure that the Bad Plus or Amon Tobin—a great DJ/sound collagist whose best stuff quite unabashedly replicates the sound of an earlier era of jazz drumming—are gonna change the world the world the way, say, Art Blakey did, and I think the Bad Plus's pianist Ethan Iverson would probably say the same thing.

which is why i said "to hold me over", hence my inclusion of two electronica-esque groups. and i don't even like The Bad Plus too much; it's the two ALL-CAPS EXTREME JAPANESE groups that i am really into and are doing something innovative. i was certainly not implying that jazz is anywhere near it was in its prime.

Quote:

Put another way, I think our cultural reality would be much different if quite a few of the earlier, consensus-influential folk hadn't existed. By contrast, sometimes it seems like even when much contemporary music is interesting, it sounds like musicians painting with colors that were stirred some time ago. That's not something you can blame the mp3 for. Of course, it's also possible that listeners will have to get themselves intimately acquainted with nearly a century of recorded music to be able to hear that, and who's got that kind of time?

can't disagree with you there, since all music borrows from the past in some way or another.

 

[monolith]

I'm also going to have to totally disagree about the amount of good music around now. There's a lot more excellent music around now than I've known from the past. I'm sure if more obscure groups from the past survived it might even things up though. Thing is you have to go exploring for the good music now. There's no more turning on the radio and hearing something as good as Led Zeppelin (for example).

 

[craiglester]

Well source of music aside. I almost always listen to an album from start to finish. I think shuffle is just about the last feature i'd use on any kind of player.

 

[Thelonious Monk]

Quote:

Originally Posted by monolith /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm also going to have to totally disagree about the amount of good music around now. There's a lot more excellent music around now than I've known from the past. I'm sure if more obscure groups from the past survived it might even things up though. Thing is you have to go exploring for the good music now. There's no more turning on the radio and hearing something as good as Led Zeppelin (for example).

you don't really have to look much harder for new music from the 00s than an other decade. it certainly isn't a chore, either. just browsing around last.fm, rateyourmusic and torrent sites is easy enough.

 

[tru blu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by monolith /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm sure if more obscure groups from the past survived it might even things up though. Thing is you have to go exploring for the good music now.

Funny thing is, musicheads had to go exploring then, too. One reason I'm thinking that you must have gotten into music during the digital age (though I can't be 100% sure) is that you don't realize that many of the acts we just accept as geniuses now actually WERE the obscure acts of their age. For jazz and blues artists especially, there was a period before the CD reissue boom of the early '90s when quite a bit of fantastic music was out of print, with masters sitting in record-company vaults, random storage lockers or someone's basement. When rock was new—and it could still claim to be that until the late '70s—it wasn't the thing everybody was doing; that's why Woodstock and everything around it was seen as "the counterculture." You didn't have several generations of teenagers watching a corporate entity like MTV and deciding to get onstage. It's also why to even make a record then you had to have something like an A-game. Less, one might say, was more.