# Real music died in the 1970s **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** music\ **Created:** [June 13, 2021, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199 "2021-06-13T23:41:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2021, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/363 "2021-06-23T03:02:17Z")
I personally have felt exactly the opposite my whole life. In my opinion, absolute nothing matters about music beyond what it sounds like. Who wrote it, how, in what context — all irrelevant. Only thing that matters is if it sounds good. I’ve never cared the least bit about “authenticity” in music. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2021, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/364 "2021-06-23T08:53:50Z")
There are cultural “rules”, for instance, rap covers are not allowed > **[Stop Biting: How Many Rappers Can Ruin A Good Thing By One](https://hiphopdx.com/editorials/id.1621/title.stop-biting-how-many-rappers-can-ruin-a-good-thing-by-one)** > > Veteran Rap journalist Alvin Blanco looks at why "Mr. Me Too's" are messing up great innovations like Kanye West's "G.O.O.D. Friday" and Crooked I's "Hip-Hop Weekly" verses, and why we shouldn't allow it. or, using the wrong notes in a raag is not at all acceptable [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/CBtFt3HUkT0/maxresdefault.jpg "Ep 12: What is a Raag?") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBtFt3HUkT0) ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2021, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/365 "2021-06-23T09:39:35Z")
I know they use a live band more than they used to but has anyone told chis and Neil of the pet shop boys that computers have ruined music? cause after almost 45 years they can still keep a not even standing-room crowd at hyde park in London going … I remember when the last original Ramone died and everyone said rock was dead … the same thing with van Halen ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2021, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/366 "2021-06-23T10:08:55Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > What criteria would you use for “better” if not “most popular”? Literally any other, including “flavor” and “distance hurled by trebuchet.” ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2021, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/367 "2021-06-23T10:10:21Z")
I will point out it is theoretically possible to perform live using nothing _but_ a computer and some software, in which case the computer becomes one’s musical instrument, and virtuosity is still required, but it will involve using the computer as opposed to, e.g., a horn. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2021, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/368 "2021-06-23T17:41:49Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > or, using the wrong notes in a raag is not at all acceptable But if you delete one letter, it’s fine: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/vYXvK8h9yh0/maxresdefault.jpg "The Wrong Note Rag") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYXvK8h9yh0) ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2021, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/369 "2021-06-23T18:28:16Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > In my opinion, absolute nothing matters about music beyond what it sounds like. Who wrote it, how, in what context — all irrelevant. Only thing that matters is if it sounds good. In an important sense, how well it’s performed is also irrelevant. I recognize that musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton have been hugely talented, yet music far more meaningful to me has come from non-virtuosi like the Rascals or Turtles. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2021, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/370 "2021-06-24T01:54:52Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Rick is a Grammy award winning producer. This may be (well, it is) but I got curious and listened to the groups he produced for and I gotta say that none of them sounded like anything significantly different or like anything I really wanted to keep listening to. Also, they were country rock/pop (one is metal but that’s a genre I care even less about) which makes me even less interested in his opinion about how rock/pop in general is all terrible these days. He’s welcome to his opinion and I’m sure he knows a bunch of technical terms but I don’t actually hear him producing anything materially different. And, since he doesn’t produce music I find particularly enjoyable, I guess I’m better off if he doesn’t get his way. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2021, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/371 "2021-06-24T04:07:34Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > There is literally not one band on that list that I would voluntarily listen to. Old white man music, the soundtrack for a generic viagra commercial. > > The white boomer dominance of our culture smothers us all. Being much more enlightened, I would voluntarily listen to a handful of songs by three of the bands in the OP. I actually really like “Everything I Own” by Bread. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2021, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/372 "2021-06-27T01:21:03Z")
ISTM that pop music in the rock n’ roll era has gone through several waves of homogenization and rebelling against homogenization - sometimes at the very same time. I remember the late 1960s as a remarkable period of musical innovation. And I also remember ‘bubblegum music’ which was a thing _at exactly that time_. Being a 1954 kid, I remember that a fair number of my friends gave up listening to music on the radio ca. 1980, and I can’t say I blamed them - there was a period in there where bands like Foreigner, Journey, and REO Speedwagon dominated the airwaves. I had a hard time finding much I liked in that environment. But there’s something in me that goes stale without periodic infusions of good new music, so I’ve always kept looking, and I’ve always been able to find stuff that was good, but wasn’t the same old same old. These days, my personal tastes run towards ‘alternative’ rock. Yours may not, but whatever your tastes are, you can probably find new stuff out there that suits you if you try. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2021, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/373 "2021-06-27T05:18:08Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > or, using the wrong notes in a raag is not at all acceptable Hehehe, but who’s going to come get me because I used all seven notes when I was ascending? The Raag Police? Yes, I know I will be shunned by anyone who is literate in that style and dedicated to it. Thanks for the link, BTW. I’d seen her referenced in Adam Neely’s videos, but hadn’t watched hers directly. Damn informative. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2021, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/374 "2021-06-27T12:48:24Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > There’s this thought out there of “now any schmoe without a lick of talent can produce a decent pop song – they don’t even have to know how to sing or play an instrument” and I can’t help but think … so what? Why is that a bad thing? It still takes some talent and music sense to write a song people want to listen to. Who cares if you played the instruments yourself or if you composed it all within your computer? Also of course some people are blissfully ignorant of the skill it takes to produce some forms of music like rap. Yes I know that people who aren’t into this form of music will say it’s “just talking” and my response is something like this: “If you ‘talk’ in verse, with rhymes happening in, around and counter to a beat, layered on to lines that hit and pair across bars, while at the same time using wordplay and humor and having an overall point…please record your speech because I want to buy it.” ---
**Author:** ![larsvsnapster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecb155/32.png) [@larsvsnapster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/larsvsnapster)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2021, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/375 "2021-06-28T03:51:41Z")
I solved this problem by realising that pop music is about 1% of what’s out there. I was born in 1967 but the change in radio away from free-form in the late 70’s made pop and rock music largely boring, because there was that push to make it all sound similar. Since then I’ve made an effort to hear all sorts of cutting edge music, and find it rewarding. Nowadays I listen to noise (or as I call it, soundscapes or abstract industrial), and all sorts of DIY releases since the advent of the internet – bandcamp, netlabels, [archive.org](http://archive.org) and so on. I also love to hear music outside of my culture, and I have big ears for modern academic music. For me it was a natural progression as a music lover. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2021, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/376 "2021-06-30T08:47:53Z")
> [@scabpicker](#): > > > [@DPRK](#): > > > > or, using the wrong notes in a raag is not at all acceptable > > Hehehe, but who’s going to come get me because I used all seven notes when I was ascending? The Raag Police? Yes, I know I will be shunned by anyone who is literate in that style and dedicated to it. Thanks for the link, BTW. I’d seen her referenced in Adam Neely’s videos, but hadn’t watched hers directly. Damn informative. The raag police will not come and get you (unless I tip them off 🙂 , but it will not sound like a raag. The seven notes may form, e.g., a Lydian mode, but randomly hitting those notes, or a random improvisation, will not work, or at worst you may end up with a bad caricature of something that sort of sounds like an unidentifiable raag. A raag, more or less by definition, has a particular “sound” or “feeling” to it (reinforced by tradition, as well), and several distinct raagaa may (more or less) share the same underlying scale/mode yet not sound identical. Finally, though, we must admit the possibility that a real master who _really_ knows what she or he is doing and has grasped the fundamental nature of the raag has no need for an explicit list of rigid rules because she _knows_ what notes (+ ornaments…) are right. Changing gears a little, someone like Mozart was a Classical composer who wrote classical music, and for a variety of reasons free jazz would not have worked at that time, but not, as far as I know, due to an explicit rule. BTW, I have seen someone described as a “contemporary classical” composer, which has to be one of the stupidest, most misleading terms one can come up with. Let us reserve “classical” to describe actual classical European/Indian/Chinese/… music. Now, one can always create a pastiche of some older music, but that would not necessarily be very interesting, which is exactly what this thread is about. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2021, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/377 "2021-06-30T09:26:25Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I have seen someone described as a “contemporary classical” composer, which has to be one of the stupidest, most misleading terms one can come up with. Let us reserve “classical” to describe actual classical European/Indian/Chinese/… music. Disagree. Language is about communication, and even if the internal breakdown of “contemporary classical” might seem an oxymoron, the phrase overall is pretty clear in its meaning. That’s because “classical” in the context of music, doesn’t just mean from a particular time period but also specific instruments and styles. So we all can parse “contemporary classical” as meaning using those styles and instruments, but written in the last few decades. (I guess in many cases “modern orchestral” or whatever will do, but “classical” is a more encompassing term than “orchestral”.) ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2021, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/378 "2021-06-30T14:45:31Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Disagree. > Language is about communication, and even if the internal breakdown of “contemporary classical” might seem an oxymoron, the phrase overall is pretty clear in its meaning. And I agree with your disagreement. If you refer to someone as a “contemporary classical” composer, I think I know what you mean: someone who writes a particular kind of music, in a tradition that can be traced back to Mozart and Haydn, though it has evolved and changed over the years. What term would you use instead of “contemporary classical,” @DPRK? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2021, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/379 "2021-06-30T14:51:32Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > That’s because “classical” in the context of music, doesn’t just mean from a particular time period but also specific instruments and styles. The irony is that many people will then refer to, say, Bach as “Classical music.” If you want to be pedantic about what “Classical” means, Bach is not classical. Bach is baroque. But when people say “Classical,” come on, we all know what that word is usually used to mean, in which case Bach IS classical - as are Philip Glass, John Williams, or Benjamin Britten. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2021, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/380 "2021-06-30T14:52:20Z")
Well, technically, Bach and Chopin aren’t Classical either\*. One of the upsides of the demise of the record store and its three or four sections, is that we may eventually stop insisting that all music be crammed into mega-genres. ETA: ninja’d ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2021, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/381 "2021-06-30T15:07:16Z")
I’d simply argue there’s small-c _classical_ and large-C _Classical_. Or perhaps Classical-period vs classical. In yonder day when I took music lessons, we referred to it all as classical music with Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary periods (though now the post-Romantic era is divided a bit more finely, and you can go pre-Baroque with Renaissance and Medieval.) ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2021, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199/382 "2021-06-30T15:08:09Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > If you refer to someone as a “contemporary classical” composer, I think I know what you mean: someone who writes a particular kind of music, in a tradition that can be traced back to Mozart and Haydn, though it has evolved and changed over the years. What term would you use instead of “contemporary classical,” @DPRK? I want to give a non-answer akin to the introduction of a book called _Fractal Geometry_ I quoted in another thread which refuses to precisely define the word ‘fractal’. I found this cute video [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/9FeaQiqdMpU/maxresdefault.jpg "The Worst Genre Of Music") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FeaQiqdMpU) called “The Worst Genre of Music”, which does not offer any answer, either, but mentions the possibility of calling it “aristocratic music” to “emphasize the power dynamics that shaped it.” [Wikipedia: ‘The term “classical music” did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to distinctly canonize the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Ludwig van Beethoven as a golden age. The earliest reference to “classical music” recorded by the _Oxford English Dictionary_ is from about 1829.’] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/real-music-died-in-the-1970s/944199.md?page=20)