Masturbating Falcons would make a good 80s Hair Band revival name.
I am, in general, not a fan of a whole lot of classic rock. I would make the argument that there is as much or more good music and as much talent being produced today as there ever has been. That said, I think arguments about how certain genres or certain eras of music suck are generally ridiculous arguments.
One of my favorite musicians, Steven Wilson, once said that in any genre, 99% is forgettable but 1% is essential, and this is a sentiment I happen to agree with. So, for instance, I’m not a fan of hip hop, and I find a huge majority of it to be not worth my time, but to completely disregard the whole genre as sucking would mean I’d have to disregard the artists in it that have serious talent and the few pieces in the genre that I probably could really appreciate. At the same time, I’m a huge fan of metal, but I realize that being a fan of the genre, there’s plenty of stuff that I like that doesn’t translate to non-fans, so I can’t blame people for not appreciating it. However, I do still think there’s those few bands or songs that transcend the genre and ought to be able to be appreciated by anyone who is a fan of music in general and open to hearing things they generally wouldn’t relate to.
Unfortunately, when it comes to classic rock, we’re not necessarily hearing the best bands and the best songs, we’re hearing the most popular ones. Popularity is seldom based on the musicianship or technical talent of the artists and much more likely based on the accessibility and cultural relevance. As such, this tends to mean that popular music vastly underrepresents the general quality of that genre, and this is why it’s difficult for younger generations to really appreciate the music of their parents, because cultural context, fads, and tastes change over time. So, even if I think a lot of the popular music of my parents is vastly overrated, there’s still some damn good classic rock out there; for instance, I’m quite enjoy bands like Kansas, ELP, Camel, etc. and they’re highly influential in a lot of the more modern music I enjoy.
And all of this is why there’s more good music today than ever, because that ratio of essential music doesn’t significantly change, yet there’s more music being created. So, sure, this means there’s a whole lot more garbage to sift through, so you’ll get fans of older genres, again missing some of the current cultural context, seeing only this trash and thinking all the modern music is like that, but it also means there’s a lot more of the essential music. Hell, I’m at the point where I sometimes find it difficult to keep up on all the amazing music today. And I expect this trend will continue, and the children of our generation will look at the popular music today, see it as worthless, and we’ll have a hard time relating to their music. Yet, regardless of what genere you appreciate, there will still be musicians out there creating it at a high level.
I love classic rock, but totally agree that just as much good music is being made today. And probably more.
My parents’ example of generational change of music taste is when a band taking requests, got a request for “the immortal Stardust” and the confused musician wondered if he’d find it under T or I. :smack:
Can I mention here that I don’t like hip-hop, or should I wait for a new thread?
I enjoyed reading this thread. Maybe not all of it - it got a bit repetitive - but punch line loser was pretty good. He started with an OP that’s difficult to defend and did well. But then, most of the arguments against him were pretty poor. Lots of straw men.
Is punch line loser still around?
While I’m at it, Queen sucked, the Eagles sucked, Cream sucked, Led Zeppelin sucked, and by the 70s, the Who sucked too. Also, fuck wah-wah pedals.
Cream sucked? You have no conception of what that band meant at the time. Pre Led Zep by at least three years and pre everything else including Sabbath, ELP, Moody Blues, King Crimson, and anything worth having by Pink Floyd to name a few of any number of bands that had any guts - Cream released Disraeli Gears the same year as Sergeant Peppers.
And blew everyone INCLUDING THE BEATLES away. Maybe it’s dated now - especially the ‘hits’ but I defy any of your favoured bands to break the kind of ground they did.
They were indulgent live sometimes - but to quote Pete Frame - look him up - (who knows the scene a hell of a lot better than a disenfranchised kid of the 80’s like you) - By God They soared…
What a load of uninformed drivel - by the way it’s ‘genre.’ Kansas? Camel? Crap? All about the same for the ear. If you want a real band who actually cut some ground and you can imagine yourself as sixteen in 1967 - yes the year Sgt. Peppers came out -have a listen to Disraeli Gears - pre Led Zep, pre ELP, pre Pink Floyd (anything of note), pre all the prog bands - and my God how they soared…
Utter and complete bullshit. Cream sucked then and they suck now.
“Indulgent live sometimes”? A bit of an understatement. Cream were responsible more than any other band for the notion that it was perfectly OK to solo over top of ONE FREAKING CHORD for 15 minutes or more (or to do a drum solo for approximately the same length of time).
Sorry, but this is NOT a legacy to be proud of. I’ll take my “soaring” in smaller doses, thanks.
I actually liked a great deal of their studio work. They were at their best when Bruce and Clapton were doing that ethereal harmony thing (e.g. “I Feel Free,” “Dreaming,” “Dance the Night Away,” etc.) and they were performing actual songs. But today, most of Bruce’s solo lead vocals sound incredibly grating to me.
Cream had some fine recordings, but “blew The Beatles away”? Uh, no.
You know that the radio has many, many stations, right?
FWIW, I agree with you on a lot of classic rock songs. Sick of them, and I’m tired of everything by the Beatles.
This thread is already 8 pages long, so I feel confident that what I am about to say has probably already been said – I just don’t feel like wading through 8 pages of “Yes, it is!”, “No, it isn’t!” to find out.
If, like mine, your radio has lots of choices, you DO NOT have to listen to anything that you think is lame. Don’t like it? “This sucks! Change it! Change it!”
Hell, you could even turn it off.
(I hope I’m the 50th person to tell you.)
Complaining about radio station formatting? What is this? 1978?
God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
To my fellow boomers–when it comes right down to it, in my opinion at least, the typical CR playlist begins with a few legendary late 1960s performers like the Beatles, the Doors, Stones (up to that point), and a few others, sadly emphasizing their hits rather than the album cuts that give them context. Most, but not all, of the rest consists of pedestrian and bland party rock like Bad Company, Foreigner, and BTO. It was the Other Disco, for all of us who despised and detested actual disco. It worked for parties and dances, but I sure don’t remember many people snapping up the albums. People who were really into music bought things like King Crimson and the Grateful Dead, as well as Genesis, before they went mainstream.
Oh yeah, and Pink Floyd of course.
So I can’t blame the OP for being tired of it.
Stealing it!
You had to be there at the time I guess - and that’s the essence of this argument - For me at the time Sgt Pepper was everything that the critics said - completely innovative - eclectic - everything from fairground music to the brilliance of ‘A Day In The Life’ and there was no better batch of songs in what was ‘pop’ at the time. Full kudos. The Stones were apparently gob-smacked.
BUT fair do’s - stack that ‘every man can like this’ stuff against the brilliance of ‘Strange Brew’ or ‘Swlabr’ or ‘Sunshine’ and you are in a completely different ballpark. I loved Sgt. Pepper at the time - I played it plenty- but it included clever pop like ‘Lovely Rita’ and ‘Fixing A Hole’. This was NOT ROCK.
Disraeli Gears was a huge step up - it blew me away.
So what if they solo’d live to the indulgence point sometimes- I doubt if you were there but the audiences of the time INCLUDING ME cheered them on. By comparison the Beatles had become a studio band. Great stuff - but…
There was absolutely no doubt that this incredible trio created their own space - a space that the only other (later) contender of the period could share and full kudos to Jimi for cutting similarly innovative new ground.
Let’s be clear about something: I WAS there at the time, and paying at least as much, if not more attention than you were.
This is a totally meaningless observation, akin to those who complain when an artist who doesn’t fit a very narrow definition of “rock” gets inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame.
The fact of the matter is no one was making these narrow distinctions when this music was contemporary. I challenge you to find more than a handful of people of that era who filed The Beatles and Cream in somehow differing compartments in terms of their listening habits. It was all of a piece, and we listened to ALL of it.
We recognized that The Beatles didn’t fit into the new “guitar slinger” paradigm of Cream or Hendrix (nor did the Stones), but that mattered not a whit in terms of our estimation of them.
I played the hell out of this album at the time, too. I still can listen to “World of Pain” and “Dance the Night Away” because of my previously mentioned fondness for the Bruce-Clapton two-part harmony thing. I can still see the value of “Strange Brew” and “Tales of Brave Ulysses”…but then what?
I honestly don’t care if I ever hear “Sunshine of Your Love” again in my life. I liked it OK at the time, but in retrospect there’s nothing very special about it, and whatever might have been has been dimmed by horrendous overplaying.
“SWLABR” has one of Bruce’s more annoying vocals, and “We’re Going Wrong” was cool the first few times but hasn’t aged well. That leaves the rather pedestrian “Outside Woman Blues” and three total throwaways: “Take It Back,” “Mother’s Lament” and the execrable “Blue Condition.”
On balance, you have a few great or at least good tracks being brought down by a bunch of mediocre or downright bad ones. This does not a truly great album make.
Again, I very much WAS there, and I’ll grant you that my 15-year-old self probably thought it was really cool to jam on one chord for 16 minutes and 43 seconds. But with hindsight, the initial novelty of doing such a thing has given way to a more rational evaluation of the phenomenon.
As I said, I can cherry-pick several Cream studio tracks that I like quite a lot. But their lasting legacy to rock seems to be the endless jamming. And more than that…the notion that great skill on an individual instrument is an end in itself.
In my personal view, this is a damaging legacy. There are a lot of rock fans who became so enamored by flashy individual musicianship that they completely threw away the concept of the setting it takes place in — that is, the notion that songs matter, and that whatever an individual musician is doing ought to be contributing to the total emotional impact of a song rather than just being an excuse to put his technical skill on display.
Maybe. Maybe not. Does it matter? The line between pop and rock is blurry at best. Is the distinction important even a little?
Again…so what? What’s so wrong about being a “studio band”?
Nothing - but - With great respect to the Beatles - by '67 most of their stuff however good was not reproduceable on stage. With the exception of the hoot of the rooftop concert a year or so later the guys had given up live performance - and by '68 - had had enough of each other… So they weren’t accessible and for an avid fan they were a bit of an ivory tower band. So - Wait for the next album…
But what about seeing a live band… Getting the full experience.
I thought Cream were unique -cutting new ground by comparison with the rest of the live bands around at the time - they certainly blitzed the audience in the couple of shows I saw. THERE WAS NO-ONE IN THE SAME LEAGUE… In early '67
And to give Eric credit - he canned the band before it got too old. Blind Faith might have been sort of Cream#2 but he rightly gave that the flick too and moved on.
You had to have been a young teenager in 1967 to have my perspective on Cream and I don’t expect anyone to have the same feeling for that band that those memories have cemented.
Which doesn’t mean that there aren’t a heap of other bands that I think are or were brilliant at their particular time. But Cream ABSOLUTELY were my groundbreakers whatever their perceived faults - most of which seem to be from people who weren’t there. I fucking loved the soloing… No-one else could do it…
I was a young teenager in 1967. I did see Cream live. They sucked then, they suck now.