My husband (who is 24) listens to more classic rock than anyone I know, including his dad, who introduced him to classic rock. I don’t think it’s just the people who grew up with it when it was new, but the people who value it as a real musical form. Music without auto tune, synthesized everything (we’ll give Styx a bye on that), and front women with massive tits. The massive tits always belonged to the groupies…
I’m not even a breast man but you had me at “massive tits.”
I still prefer the music of the 60s and 70s, but not “classic rock.” Most of the best songs from that era never make it to the classic rock stations. Things like Traffic, the Band, Cream, the Animals, the Kinks, Captain Beefheart, Wet Willie, Moody Blues, Procol Harum, Santana, Flash and the Pan, It’s a Beautiful Day, the Kinks, Soft Machine, the original Blood Sweat and Tears, Emitt Rhodes, the Bonzo Dog Band, Frank Zappa, Joni Mitchell, and Warren Zevon are only represented by one or two songs, if at all. Other groups are only partly represented: Pink Floyd has nothing before “Dark Side,” Elton John’s 11/17/70 is ignored, J. Geils Band only has the Centerfold era, etc.
I agree with the filter theory, but in this case, most of the best music never got through the filter. The concentration was on hit singles (with a few album cuts).
The classic rock playlist is much too restrictive.
I also disagree with Exapno about modern music. Current popular music is very hook oriented, probably more so than back in the 60s. I don’t particularly like them – they sound like bad bubblegum music – but that’s clearly what acts like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber are doing.
I should add that there are some current acts that I like a lot – White Stripes, Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band – but not the big, popular ones. But I was that way back in the 70s; I always preferred more obscure music to the popular songs.
I like classic rock. I also like Herb Alpert and Mose Allison and Katy Perry. And then I’ll listen to some Sinatra and then some Bread and then the soundtrack to St. Elmo’s Fire.
I’m always confused about why people want to assign “cool points” based on what kind of music you’ll listen to. Isn’t music supposed to “move your spirit” or whatever? How could anyone know what moves me? And who made you (the general you) the one who gets to decide?
I’ve found that people who make fun of classic rock listeners are usually the ones who use their record collection to impress girls, instead of using music as a way to be moved through art.
What they’re doing is nothing new. The Beatles appealed to 13-year-old girls when they first broke in the U.S. but their music and their audience quickly grew older. The 13-year-old girl audience has always been there - Donny Osmond and David Cassidy were as popular as anyone in the world in the 70s - but that genre of music has never been thought of as rock after the Beatles, and I wasn’t including the current practitioners.
It doesn’t have much lasting power either. People grow out of that music and the musicians either try to change their styles - think of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and Miley Cyrus tarting up their images to break from their pasts - or turn into Menudo and Musical Youth.
Time to break out the link to this thread again - Current-ish songs for old-ish farts. 
I don’t know why you’d want bury that meme - from what I’ve heard from the people I know in their forties, fifties, and sixties, it’s completely accurate (I’m 43 myself). If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard a Boomer say, “New music is all crap. I only listen to the good old stuff,” I’d have a lot of nickels. A lot of new music IS crap; Usher’s new songs are complete and utter dreck. You don’t get good new music delivered straight to your radio any longer; you have to go get it yourself, but there are many ways to go get it, and it’s never been easier to get access to music (two clicks in my iTunes Store and I’ve bought a song or an album). I think a lot of Boomers are just lost; they haven’t figured out how to plug in to finding and getting new music, and it’s easier to just tell yourself that there’s nothing worth listening to made after the eighties.
Oh, I agree. I was disagreeing with your point that the music nowadays doesn’t have catchy hooks and melodies. I think it’s just the opposite.
I’d like indie more if it also wasn’t so regimented. It’s like everyone is expected to sound the same. The idea of a distinctive voice or sound is gone. The ideal seems to be to sound like everyone else. (I recall a Queen Latifah song where she was made to sound like all the other singers; after hearing her in Chicago, this struck me as a crime.)
It comes back to a musician friend of mine, Rebecca Angel. She writes some very strong songs (often with a science fiction geek theme) and plays guitar. She told an audience once that she got onto one of those local “American Idol”-type competitions. The judges couldn’t understand her. She was singing original material and playing her own guitar and had a nice sweet and strong soprano voice, but that meant less talent than someone who did karaoke to Britney Spears.
I have no doubt there’s good music out there. But it’s hard to find, and file sharing has made it even harder.
I want to bury it because I’m sick to death of it (seriously, it ain’t funny any more, it’s a lazy attempt at humor), and also because it ends up being lobbed at anybody who doesn’t happen to care for some band du jour or other (that’s right, the reason we don’t like your favorite band is not, in fact, because they routinely manufacture tuneless, pseudo-hip bilge, but because we’re clueless old farts). Again, I see this old chestnut trotted out most frequently in the comments section of the A.V. Club, which is swiftly devolving into self-congratulatory hipster wankery.
Nice link up top, though.
My husband used to say this all the time, and he’s not a Boomer – he’s 27. The ‘’‘good old stuff’’ was of course late 80s/early 90s.
Lately though, he remarked, ‘‘Music hasn’t been sucking lately.’’ And I would agree. There is some great stuff out there right now. I’m personally loving Muse, Metric, Lady Gaga, and still Weezer.
But that doesn’t mean there weren’t periods of time where music just sucked. For us it was the late 90s - early 2000s - the era from Backstreet Boys to Nickelback. If there were some way to objectively identify musical suckage, I don’t think anything could hold a candle to our recent history. Of course, that was still an era of mostly radio play. While my local radio station was cranking out schlock, somewhere The White Stripes were releasing their first album.
I essentially agree with your point though - it’s sort of silly to dismiss everything after a certain time period as crap, especially since it’s not true and with an entire library at our fingertips we really have no place to talk. But when all is said and done, classic rock is still awesome.
I’d like to put in a plug for pandora.com internet radio. My music collection has grown substantially since I started listening to it about a month ago (you seed your personal “station” with bands/songs you enjoy, and it goes out and finds other artists you might like, and you can thumbs up/down particular songs to make its selections smarter as time goes on). I have about a dozen stations set up now to fit whatever mood I happen to be in. Even on the station that I’ve seeded with my favorite classic rock, they’ve thrown in some surprisingly good newer bands into it.
I don’t believe that there is a dearth of worthwhile music today. It’s just that the medium’s changed dramatically. Listening to radio stations in the car just doesn’t cut it anymore – it just takes a bit more effort, or newer tech (satellite radio, internet radio) to get to the good stuff. My current favorites are mostly European symphonic metal bands, and you won’t hear them very often, if at all, on the FM, at least here in the States.
Wholeheartedly agreed, unfortunately. It’s like in order to be cool or relevant, you’ve got to sound like this guy, and sing like your life’s surrounded by quotation marks. Because, you know, earnestness and real emotion are such jokes. ETA (and off topic): Which is also why I largely loathe the current comedy style as well.
You know, one thing I like about classic rock which seems so different than music today is that the artists would just throw down and jam. It’s like they were just getting high and doing this crazy jam session and they happened to be in a recording studio at the time. It’s just so spontaneous, whereas the vast majority of stuff today seems so slick and rehearsed and intended for mass production. There’s nothing wrong with that, but some of the best music ever made sounds like it came out of some guy’s basement. And that’s one thing classic rock has that newer genres don’t.
Good point. Right now, any band that tries to improvise is derided. Any song longer than five minutes is self-indulgent (like Beethoven or Miles Davis, I suppose). And God forbid you improvise in your stage show.
When I went to see a live act, I expected them to put new twists on their studio material. Maybe not all, but here and there (I still remember how great Pink Floyd’s live version of “Careful With the Axe, Eugene” was). Now, audiences want to here everything sound just like on the CD. It’s why acts can get away with lip syncing.
Disagree very much. I think great music has been made every year, year in and year out.
Unless you mean “music” to mean the popular music industry and radio and so forth. Sometimes those have keyed in to good stuff that was going on (some of it), often not. But the good stuff was still going on. Conversely, even when radio was at its best, it wasn’t finding everything good. Great music has been missed every year, too.
What is it, exactly, about, for lack of any sort of appropriate term, the “listenability” of these old acts which can still make them compelling. The hooks, the chord arrangements, the synergy, the what? They were never my favorite band at all, but I have a definite soft spot for Grand Funk Railroad’s “I’m Your Captain/Closer to Home.” While YMMV of course (probably making this attempted line of analysis futile), it’s just an example of a song which simply hits all the right notes, both real and figurative. I was a big Elton fan tho, and “Love Lies Bleeding” still kicks butt for me in so many ways it isn’t funny. Why can’t a modern band attempt something like that, but not sound hopelessly retro?
I’m 52 and well remember classic rock from when it was new. Listening to it now…it’s just oldies radio. The same stuff that was overplayed way back then is overplayed now.
I could happily live the rest of my life without again hearing:
- Aerosmith
- Def Leppard
- Boston
Sure I still like some of the old bands, Floyd, old Santana, older Heart to name a few but they suffer overexposure too.
When I talk about “the filter” of time, I am using the term far more broadly. I agree that the classic rock radio stations are far too restrictive in their playlist. I am saying if I want to find something new (to me) to listen to, I’ll go to “top 100 albums” lists on the internet, threads like this one etc to find things that are still recommended 30 years after they were released.
I don’t think that’s true at all. The success of websites like Pitchfork and music blogs means that indie music has fragmented spectacularly. Sure, there are some “strands” that a lot of bands follow. All those dudes with beards singing neo-folk, European synth heavy stuff, retro White Stripes-esque blues, etc. but there are some bands that obviously exist just to fuck with us all.
The band that made most top 10 lists last year–Animal Collective–is a good example of this. Or if you want weird, how about another indie kid favorite: Dirty Projectors. Thiswas easily my favorite song of last year–it’s so odd and yet has such a gorgeous hook. Or how about this? (There was a LOT of noodling around when I saw them live.) Or this? (You can argue about whether or not that is indie, but indie kids are into a lot of famous bands these days. Which makes it indie by default, since there is no definition of “indie” except what we point to when we talk about it.) Even Vampire Weekend, who are unfortunately kind of a joke now, are undeniably something different. MGMT also has a distinctive sound. Of course, all those bands are paying homage to some style or other, but who wasn’t? You think the Rolling Stones didn’t rip anyoneoff? And even that bearded folk is pretty awesome, in my opinion–My Morning Jacket, Fleet Foxes, The Antlers etc. all have distinctive sounds.
It’s not a meme, it’s an accurate description of plenty of people. But it’s a nostalgia thing and it’s not the fault of the music. It’s how we look at The Sixties, which is really the classic rock period. There’s nothing hopeless about preferring that style of music or the styles that were prevalent at that time, but once you start buying into the mythology, your tastes can become rather hopeless.