RIP: Good Music Albums

[Darth Shoju]

1 - The Monkees were the 60s - they broke up in 1970;

2 - They Pre-Fab Four were a joke because they were intended to be a joke.

3- Despite all that, they were also one of the top selling bands of the 60s, and outsold the Beatles in 1967. They had 4, count em FOUR no 1 albums that year.

Serious music? Maybe not - but they were never NKotB.

Yes and one of them could even play the guitar and another one could sing and made David Bowie change his name (to David Bowie). The other two were scenery.

But the point is sound; corporate bands can be very financially successful-just look at Journey, Creed or the Spice Girls. Does that equate to quality music? I'd say no, but they must have some sort of appeal at least. Sometimes even bubblegum pop can be worth listening to, even if for just pure mindless entertaiment. I know I have a hard time not singing along when Journey comes on the radio...

"Just a city boy,
born and raised in south Detroit.
He took a midnight train going an-y-where..."

 

[Nightfall]

Darrin,

Well not sure about "commerical" but it's the one I listen to the most all the way through.

Fru,

See this is where my belief that you are an alternate version of me comes into play. Cause while I like the Police and Chicago fine, I'm not that into 80s music. Some hair metal, but only after Guns and Roses.

 

[Felon]

Serious music? Maybe not - but they were never NKotB.

Sooo...is that you love The Monkees or despise the New Kids?

 

[Felon]

There's a huge independent music scene. Has been for decades. It meets all your criteria and shares your disdain for the mainstream.

OK, I'll bite. Who are our guitar legends of the 21st century? Gimme some songs to look for.

That was how most groups were produced in the 1950s and 1960s. It's not a new phenomenon.

Right, and then came the emergence of hard rock in the seventies, only to die down in the late nineties in favor of prefabricated formula bands all over again. Not sure what music white teenage males were spending their money on then, but way to go, young whippersnappers. Now rock in virtually all its forms is relegated to "independent" or "alternative" music, with rock stations hard to find on the radio and getting little attention on MTV. What I do hear is pretty awful. I know "Panic at the Disco" actually was a garage band that went mainstream, but god I hope they aren't supposed to be the torchbearer of modern rock.

 

[Felon]

But the point is sound; corporate bands can be very financially successful-just look at Journey, Creed or the Spice Girls. Does that equate to quality music? I'd say no, but they must have some sort of appeal at least. Sometimes even bubblegum pop can be worth listening to, even if for just pure mindless entertaiment. I know I have a hard time not singing along when Journey comes on the radio...

"Just a city boy,
born and raised in south Detroit.
He took a midnight train going an-y-where..."

Hmm. Well, by what standard do you put Journey in the "corporate band" category? The members had been around since the early seventies. They transitioned into melodic, radio-friendly rock, but I dont' think pursuing mainstreem success through power ballads and arena rock makes one a corporate band automatically; there's gotta be a noticable compromise in quality (as there was with Creed). Heck, I almost get teary-eyed thinking of when you could turn on the radio and there'd be three or four mainstream rock stations to flip between. If that was still the case, I suppose I'd be quick to join Steel Wind, Vigilance, and Whizbang in tut-tutting other fogeys for their inappreciation and general ignorance of modern rock.

Steve Perry and the gang certainly weren't what you'd call prettyboys. Good lord, remember the video for "Separate Ways"? Those guys weren't cut out for primping. Still, I'd say my favorites would be a couple of their most mainstream: "Only the Young", which was actually recorded for the soundtrack for Vision Quest (a truly awful movie that managed to yield two decent songs, the other being Madonna's "Crazy for You"). and "Girl Can't Help It".

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Fru,

See this is where my belief that you are an alternate version of me comes into play. Cause while I like the Police and Chicago fine, I'm not that into 80s music. Some hair metal, but only after Guns and Roses.

What about Quiet Riot, Metallica, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nirvana, etc.

I'm into all that too.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Sooo...is that you love The Monkees or despise the New Kids?

That would be option #2

 

[LightPhoenix]

I should preface this with it being my experience in the US, and not anywhere else. I know the music scene is different elsewhere... for example, while prog rock declined in the US, it still goes strong in Norway.

I don't think that young kids are really taught to appreciate music, or even really anything about music. I went to one of the best high schools in the US with regards to music, and I found myself shockingly ignorant of most types of music until I went to college. Sure, I learned a bunch about classical music... but almost nothing about rock, country, rap, jazz, or even pop. That's to say nothing of how the music industry works. All of that I had to learn on my own time. That's pretty silly, considering I think you could fit a large part of modern music into a year-long course.

I think this deficiency in teaching is in part because we're just not doing it - there are isolated counter-examples (Paul Green being a big one), but they're few and far between. I think it's in part due to socio-economic pressures - we'd rather have our kids playing piano and violin than guitar and non-classical singing because it "looks better," supposedly. I think a part of it is that kids generally have different tastes - as we grow up, we tend to like things a little subtler and more complex.

Instead of condemning the RIAA for generally being a bane to the existence of music (which they are), I think perhaps we should seek to educate children about music, let them experience everything that it has to offer, and let them be a more informed consumer. That's really the only way that the RIAA will change its practices, especially since they're crapping their pants scared in the face of a rapidly changing music environment, what with mp3 players and iTunes-like stores and rampant piracy.

Oh, and random plugs for my prog rockers' albums:

Scenes From A Memory, by Dream Theater.
Brave and Clutching At Straws by Marillion.

All three are great albums all around. Also, consequently, all concept albums. Go figure.

 

[Darth Shoju]

Hmm. Well, by what standard do you put Journey in the "corporate band" category? The members had been around since the early seventies. They transitioned into melodic, radio-friendly rock, but I dont' think pursuing mainstreem success through power ballads and arena rock makes one a corporate band automatically; there's gotta be a noticable compromise in quality (as there was with Creed). Heck, I almost get teary-eyed thinking of when you could turn on the radio and there'd be three or four mainstream rock stations to flip between. If that was still the case, I suppose I'd be quick to join Steel Wind, Vigilance, and Whizbang in tut-tutting other fogeys for their inappreciation and general ignorance of modern rock.

Steve Perry and the gang certainly weren't what you'd call prettyboys. Good lord, remember the video for "Separate Ways"? Those guys weren't cut out for primping. Still, I'd say my favorites would be a couple of their most mainstream: "Only the Young", which was actually recorded for the soundtrack for Vision Quest (a truly awful movie that managed to yield two decent songs, the other being Madonna's "Crazy for You"). and "Girl Can't Help It".

Well it was probably unfair of me to lump Journey in as "corporate" rock-I was likely parroting an opinion of the band propagated by many music critics. I was mainly referring to the revolving line-up of the band and the transition to a more commercial sound with the arrival of Steve Perry. Anyway, I was mostly saying that more commercial music can still be entertaining, if in a vacuous sort of way. IMO there needs to be that distinction between safe commercial music and innovative indie music. The more innovative you are, the more likely you will mainly appeal to a smaller fanbase (with possible exceptions). In order to be wildly successful, by nature your music must be somewhat more generic (to have that wider appeal, people's tastes being what they are). Still, there has to be some sort of balance between innovation and "selling out" and I think some of the best performers find that balance (though it is a shifting balance at times). It's tricky, as you don't want commercialism to stifle creativity, but it is difficult to get widespread exposure without paying some attention to it. At the same time, the record labels need to keep indie music alive and untainted so it can continue to produce the next "sound" or "scene" for them to latch onto (eg. the Seattle scene of the early 90's and the rise of "grunge"). It's a bit of a nasty symbiotic relationship.

And I understood Steve Perry was fairly popular with the ladies...but I wasn't exactly old enough to really notice at the time.

 

[bento]

The following appeared on Salon.com yesterday, which was quoted from the New York Times:

The end of the album? Ten years ago, record companies had almost ceased putting out singles -- but with the rise of iTunes, as the New York Times writes today, the buying trend has switched so drastically that now it's the album whose days may be numbered. "Last year, digital singles outsold plastic CDs for the first time," reports the paper, and so far this year, "buyers of digital music are purchasing singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1." Some new artists are being given contracts not to record entire records, but a few songs and perhaps a ring tone -- which might lead to an album if there's a hit. "I think the album is going to die," one media consultant tells the Times. "Consumers who have had iPods since they were in the single digits are going to increasingly gravitate toward artists who embrace that." ("The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor," New York Times)

from Bento the trendwatcher!