The Chronic - Dr. Dre
Doggystyle - Snoop Dogg
Enter the Wu-Tang Clan: 36 Chambers - Wu Tang Clan
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy
The Marshall Mathers LP - Eminem
Midnight Marauders - A Tribe Called Quest
Paid in Full - Eric B & Rakim
Pauls Boutique - Beastie Boys
Raising Hell - Run DMC
Ready to Die - Notorious B.I.G.
Straight Outta Compton - NWA
My original response had about three quarters of these listed (I also added “Criminal Minded” by Boogie Down Productions, “3 Feet High and Rising” by De La Soul, etc.) but I wasn’t sure what the poster was getting at.
So, is the complaint that there is no “classic rap” station like there is “classic rock”?
See, I think it has. I can barely listen to a Top 40 song these days that I don’t hear a hip-hop influence in. It doesn’t have to be a rap influence, per se, but the backing tracks, the rhythms, the samples point me more towards hip hop than rock.
You don’t listen to much modern Top 40, do you?
Yep. And that comment about a lack of recognition about classic hip hop? :rolleyes: And where’s the Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest?!
This I can buy. I read your original comment as saying that there is no list of classic rap albums, which is a very different claim.
I’ve made the same anectodal observation as the OP-- I’ve noticed that quite a few 20-somethings actively listen to the bands I listened to at their age: Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin. I’ve also had the thought that it’s the equivalent of me having been really into the Glenn Miller Band in my late teens/20s (I’m in my late 40s).
I was aware of big band music at that age and liked it to some extent, but it wasn’t something I chose to listen to on a regular basis. I just didn’t relate to it the way I did the bands mentioned (many of those being even a little before my time, at least their prime output).
Why do I think this is?
[ul]
[li]Big band music was what the kids of the time listened to because that’s what there was. It was music created from the musical sensibilities of an older generation. Rock and Roll was more by and for the same generation. Especially when bands like the Beatles started writing and having a lot of creative control over their own music. I think this is a lot of the reason it perennially appeals to young people-- there’s the sense of rebellion, young people of any generation can tell it’s intended for them.[/li][li]It’s easy to start a rock band. A guitar or two, singer, drums and bass, and you’re a band. Unlike big bands which required a large number of highly trained musicians playing varied instruments well.[/li][li]There’s something about that (typically) I-IV-V chord progression with a lead in a (usually) minor blues key played over it, in (mostly) 4-4 time. It’s just a great, enduring sound that has given musicians a lot of leeway for creativity within those seemingly restrictive boundaries. No matter what different musical styles come around, or how much rock or pop music goes into left field, rock music always seems to return to its roots-- with Punk, as another poster mentioned, or with real back-to-basics bands like the White Stripes or Black Keys.[/li][/ul]
Long live Rock and Roll!! 
You could also say, more towards disco, dance, electro, house or rave.
IMO, and without disparaging the importance of rapping itself, that’s really the most fundamental schism since the country- and blues-based rock revolutions of the '50s and after.
That’s crazy. My point was that the list of classic rap albums was much shorter than the list of classic rock albums for a comparable amount of time. And that they get less play among today’s teenagers than the classic rock albums do.
I’ve noticed the same kind of thing with clothes. The things people wear now look very similar to what people wore in 2002 (at least in my not-very-fashion-conscious eyes). Sure, there are some things from back then that would look out of place now, but these seem to be the exception. Now, compare 1995 fashion vs. 1985 fashion vs. 1975 fashion vs. 1965 fashion. I don’t think most people would have any trouble identifying each of these eras.
Personally, I think the acceptability of melody-less vocal lines represents a much more fundamental shift in popular music (and the art of sampling, too) than anything the other genres have brought. But YMMV.
I have a strong urge to say “you lie!”. But alas…
I’m not sure people really don’t have an interest in Big Band/Swing/Crooner or pre-60s music in general anymore. I mean, it’s not as popular as pop music, obviously, but it’s not some sort of nebulous out there dated thing people have no interest in.
At the very least, I’ve never met anybody who actively dislikes Sinatra (or even other old singers) versions of Mack the Knife. The game Bayonetta used a remixed version of Fly Me To The Moon as the main character’s leitmotif, which was very pop-ish, but the credits had a slow jazz version. Heck there’s even a few moderately successful bands like Royal Crown Revue (The Contender) and Cherry Poppin Daddies (Zoot Suit Riot) that have managed to get some music of similar styles back into view. And I don’t mean “somewhere, some guy is listening to them,” I mean I’ve heard the more upbeat stuff at parties alongside Top 40 stuff, weird electronica, eurobeat, house music etc. I also, for some reason, have met a disproportionate number of people who like Mr Sandman (though you may be able to blame Back to the Future for that one, even if it is a different version). Not quite the same genre, but hell, this song got on the newer cartoon Batman.
I’d also use the argument of the sheer amount of old jazz, crooning, and swing in Christmas music, but given how many Christmas songs radio stations have to churn out for, what is it, two straight months now? I think you could give them a Gregorian Chant recording and tell them it was Christmas Music and they’d play it out of desperation if nothing else.
Again, I don’t think it’s popular, in that it’s the sort of thing the average kid has on their iPod or actively seeks out. However, it’s certainly out there, and I think a lot more people have encountered and enjoyed music from that era in mainstream settings than you’d think.
I think you’re all missing something here. It’s true the 60s started a world-wide cultural revolution influenced the tastes of almost everyone today. But it (certainly in the US, at least) encompassed a conscious rejection of our parent’s cultural values. Their values were so devalued that most kids wouldn’t be caught dead listening to Sinatra in the late 60s. Og forbid – someone would think it was uncool!
So music went in a new direction, and the old direction was cast aside as worthless. And there was no real continuity to keep 40’s and older music alive in people’s minds, except in older folks, who we kids had already cast aside as untrustworthy.
Some of us kids from those days are just starting to re-explore that older music. I’m finding tons worth listening to. I have every song Patsy Cline ever recorded. I’m building collections of Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Les Paul and Mary Ford. What I’m finding refreshing is that their voices are just out there, naked and all alone for us to appreciate, and not buried under tons of orchestration and sound processing. I may not like their musical styles a whole lot, but I respect the enormous talent they had, and can enjoy the music on that basis alone.
Oh yeah, and I’m also exploring classical. But that’s a whole different thread.
Don’t forget the Fallout series, which has introduced an awful lot of younger gamers to older music. Classic cartoons also offer a window into big band and torch songs, and as I said earlier, they’re more accessible now than they’ve ever been.
Well, pop forms with no vocals (as in the bulk of disco, house and rave club sets) are often still pretty radical for people reared on rock and its predecessors.
But I was responding to your comment about the music apart from vocals. Most rap/hip-hop albums, with the vocals entirely stripped out, could be much more readily classed with dance than with rock. Sampling was developed in electronic music before rap existed, and perhaps more importantly the way samples were used, the effect aimed for, was originally based on live-band funk and disco.
And with some types of music, I think it’s even more pronounced. Maybe it’s my age, but I don’t see that much separating Madonna’s music from Lady Gaga’s. But there are just a few less years between Madonna’s debut and Lady Gaga’s than there are between Glenn Miller and Madonna.
Products in general seem to be recycled more today, whereas in the past, something would be popular for a while and then gone. Skateboards were a huge craze in the early-mid 60’s, and then you didn’t see them at all for a decade or more.
Young people who listened to old music were considered weird. I remember going to a record store when I was a kid in the early 1970s and asking for a Chuck Berry record. The clerk looked at me like I was nuts and said, “Do you know how old that is?” Today, not all kids listen to old music, but it’s more accepted, and more available, than it used to be.
That didn’t happen to me: I was born in the 1973 and you’d have to go back beyond 1960 for me to find that everything sounded “old”. If you strip out all the rock ‘n’ roll all the kids on my lawn are so fond of these days, music changed remarkably little to my ears between 1946 and 1962, at least compared to 1962-78. Then you have another era stretching back from 1945 until the first recordings. But beyond 1962, music progressed in the normal 5-year sequences most people categorize music into, only yours started from shortly after your birth instead of shortly before.
It could be just chance that my perception of not-completely-old music coincided with the rise of “rock” music (as opposed to “rock n roll”). But I think there is a valid phenomenon here, perhaps it is musical evolution: once they found something that worked, it has staying power because it works.
I don’t think so - you cover things I have stated in Post #13, and which are touched on by other posters, too…music continues to innovate, but: a) it is not the same “communication gap” focal point it once was; and b) there are fewer common channels that a large enough slice of the public all tap into to develop a common sense of musical direction…
My point, which I apparently didn’t make clear enough, and post 13 doesn’t mention, is that the 60s revolution involved not just a change, but a repudiation and even a contempt for the older values and tastes.
That’s why the next generation was hardly exposed at all to 40s and 50s music. Their parents didn’t have it in the house, it wasn’t on the radio, etc. That’s why it feels so alien to them when they finally do encounter it.