bento said:
Steelwind,
I think you're right about history and ideas behind the movement.
Most of my purchasing today, the little I do, is either soundtracks, greatest hits or esoteric stuff from the 1950s (jazz & lounge). The last full "rock" album I bought was Tom Petty's "Damn the Torpedoes" and it left me feeling like I should have bought the GH instead. :\
Damn the Torpedoes was what... 1979? Youch. This isn't about a lack of good music. Dude, you are just an out of touch old fogey.
Just because the vinyl album rock style has pretty much vanished does not mean that those who started in the vinyl tradition don't manage to maintain it.
Sometimes, vinyl means coherency as opposed to Album Rock too. Frankie Goes To Hollywood's
Welcome to the Pleasure Dome had
nothing to do with album rock, but it was still coherent and not a bad song on there. But yeah - it was still very much a vinyl era product.
As recently as last year, Green Day's
American Idiot maintains that old-skool consistency. (GD's
Nimrod in 1997, even more so).
Arguably Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails have always bucked the trend and approached each disc as a coherent whole. Maybe that
is fair to say - but NIN are the exception to the rule in about everything that they do.
The Tragically Hip's
Day for Night managed little more than middle of the road interest in the USA. In Canada though, The Hip they packed stadiums coast to coast on that album. Even moderate sized Canadian cities filled the stadium fields to bursting. Not one damn song on that disc was bad - but the disc was born of another tradtion and not that of album rock. I actually used to be roommates with the Hip''s lead guitarist, but that album was... lucky.
Ditto with Alanis'
Jagged Little Pill - in the post vinyl era, some artists swing for the fences with a collection of songs approach and get lucky.
Last note: as for the "Why can't they just be like the Beatles?" uhmm... they try. They all try sir. As well ask the playwright to "just be like Shakespeare" or "why not that GB Shaw guy, why can't they be more like him?"
400+ years ago, Shakespeare's work graced the stage at the Globe. It's still performed today, whereas Marlowe is mostly ignored (and some of his works were lost too).
400 years from now, I expect they will still be performing the Beatles in some way, shape or form. Little else from the cultural history of the 20th century will be of interest in 2407 I expect, but the Beatles are a true moment in cultural history where the rules changed and artists were so gifted as to become living history that cut across language, culture, taste, fashion and economic status.
And they still do. And I expect - they still will, in some measure.
Music buffs in the 25th century wil visit McCartney's tomb at Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner and
sigh.
You won't see something like the Beatles again in your liftetime. Lightning like that strikes once a few centuries... if you are lucky.
