dalethorn
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2011
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Just curious if there is such a thing as a pop music genre today. I assume hip-hop is a genre, anything else?
Here's a short list of where I've been and the way I saw progression in pop music.
In the 50's it was dreadful, until we got DJ's in the late 50's and rock-n-roll started breaking out everywhere. In the early 60's after rock-n-roll we got the West Coast Beach Boy sound, the East Coast Four Seasons sound, Motown, and Bob Dylan/Folk. Things got *much* better after the British invasion with the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Animals, Pretty Things, Faces etc. There was some fluff also - Hermans Hermits, Beatles etc.
Monterey changed things again in '67 with the acid bands, which progressed until Altamont in '69 (the new Day The Music Died). Kent State didn't help. Starting in '71 pop-rock music went off into two major directions - progressive rock and glamrock. Everyone knows the former - ELP, Pink Floyd etc. Glam isn't well known to most people, but there's some great stuff there - Johnny Thunders and the original Heartbreakers... Things were looking up again when the Ramones reintroduced short and fast songs. Few people remember the early Sex Pistols, but they were truly frightening to the middle class, not to mention Her Majesty.
Punk and disco went hand-in-hand for awhile in more ways than one, and when Disco Died (very quickly, and according to historians, because it was mostly populated by "minorities"), punk went with it and the Brits came back with New Wave. New Wave is my next-favorite genre. Some people mourn the loss of Joy Division and gain of New Order, but hey, it doesn't last forever. After New Wave I think we had something called Grunge, which I skipped in favor of something really new - indie bands like Sleater-Kinney who could now record high-quality digital tracks in their garage due to low-cost digital equipment that wasn't available before then.
There was a network in the late 90's when MP3's came on the scene, which was very helpful for locating indie bands, but they disappeared due to copyright pressures. All of the replacements proved useless, because they didn't have good enough software for new-music research. In L.A. a new all-indie record store opened on Santa Monica Blvd. circa 1995, and that was a fabulous resource for material and 'zines. Then they disappeared and I have not seen another useful store since then. Useful means I can go directly to the genres I like and not have to wade through the major-label stuff.
Here's a short list of where I've been and the way I saw progression in pop music.
In the 50's it was dreadful, until we got DJ's in the late 50's and rock-n-roll started breaking out everywhere. In the early 60's after rock-n-roll we got the West Coast Beach Boy sound, the East Coast Four Seasons sound, Motown, and Bob Dylan/Folk. Things got *much* better after the British invasion with the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds, Animals, Pretty Things, Faces etc. There was some fluff also - Hermans Hermits, Beatles etc.
Monterey changed things again in '67 with the acid bands, which progressed until Altamont in '69 (the new Day The Music Died). Kent State didn't help. Starting in '71 pop-rock music went off into two major directions - progressive rock and glamrock. Everyone knows the former - ELP, Pink Floyd etc. Glam isn't well known to most people, but there's some great stuff there - Johnny Thunders and the original Heartbreakers... Things were looking up again when the Ramones reintroduced short and fast songs. Few people remember the early Sex Pistols, but they were truly frightening to the middle class, not to mention Her Majesty.
Punk and disco went hand-in-hand for awhile in more ways than one, and when Disco Died (very quickly, and according to historians, because it was mostly populated by "minorities"), punk went with it and the Brits came back with New Wave. New Wave is my next-favorite genre. Some people mourn the loss of Joy Division and gain of New Order, but hey, it doesn't last forever. After New Wave I think we had something called Grunge, which I skipped in favor of something really new - indie bands like Sleater-Kinney who could now record high-quality digital tracks in their garage due to low-cost digital equipment that wasn't available before then.
There was a network in the late 90's when MP3's came on the scene, which was very helpful for locating indie bands, but they disappeared due to copyright pressures. All of the replacements proved useless, because they didn't have good enough software for new-music research. In L.A. a new all-indie record store opened on Santa Monica Blvd. circa 1995, and that was a fabulous resource for material and 'zines. Then they disappeared and I have not seen another useful store since then. Useful means I can go directly to the genres I like and not have to wade through the major-label stuff.
