Yay for epitonic.com! A friend of mine starting making playlists and sending to me, I guess in the attempt to turn me into a music snob.
It’s working. Also--shoutcast.com has webcasts from a lot of college radio stations.
biggie was dope.
My x cents worth.
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There’s a lot staleness due to the lack of new genres of music being developed. Most of pop music is either pre-rock pop (recent Elton John) with synthesizers, etc., or variations of good old rock and roll re-hashed. The only new genre to make it big in the last 50 years is hip-hop, which has a very limited audience appeal and probably won’t be remembered long (the M.C. Hammer phenomenon).
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A lot of pop music development has been due to dancing of all things. But when disco, part 2, hit in the late 70’s, most other forms of pop music to dance to died. (Exception being hip-hop, which explains its survival despite the lack of originality.) R.E.M didn’t make music to dance to, so its popularity was limited. All the current (non-hip-hop) dancable (sp?) music is rehashed disco. Since most people hate disco, there’s another limit.
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Record company control. The more the record companies control things, the worst the music. The best music always comes from places the record companies don’t control. Look at R&B->Rock&Roll in the '50s, the rebirth of Rock&Roll in the '60s, punk/new wave in the 70’s, alternative/college radio in the 90’s. Once a trend is established and the new form starts selling, the record companies jump in to control it, market it, homogenize it, etc. Then it’s down the tubes. Look at alternative radio in the last 5 years. (Look what happened to MTV after a couple years.) Record companies like Muzak™ and hate innovation. And since record companies control radio and MTV, guess what?
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Dilution of talent. Very few people used to try to be musicians. Only the very best could succeed. The posers tended to get flushed out of the system. The best people in a town would tend to get together in bands. Not anymore. 5 idiots with a bunch of cash declare themselves a band. If one member has actual talent, they get a record contract. The talented guy never ends up in a group with other talented people. John Lennon would never hook up with Paul McCartney today. Forget forming a CSN&Y.
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People buy the crap. Why bother producing great music when it will still go gold anyway? Paul McCartney has no incentive whatsoever to actually write something half as decent as he used to. Not only that, people buy CDs at horribly inflated prices. (They cost me a dime to make. The record companies get a discount from the pressers.)
What can we do: 1. Stop buying CDs for the most part. Go on a CD diet. 2. Explore around for stuff the record company isn’t pushing. I know it’s getting harder but there’s stuff out there. 3. Support the great new bands directly. Buy concert tickets and t-shirts from their web site. 4. Find and support whatever independent radio you might have available. A college station, a low budget station. That’s where change will come from.
Sorry, but your only problem is being lazy. There is a lot of music out there, fresh new music, bands re-inventing old music. A lot of “older” artists still make music but without mainstream exposure you might not even know.
I suggest finding message boards focusing on a specific genre. I don’t suppose you like old-school heavy metal (Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Slayer, Megadeth, etc.), but just in case I have plenty of places for you to check out.
Please give me some artists which you enjoy and I might be able to direct you to a place to start…
Rock on,
Lockfist
Bullshit, hip-hop is hear to stay my close-minded friend. Hip hop has roots in Jazz (see Gill Scott-Heron) and has grown to incorporate and fuse with many new styles including Rock (See Urban Dance Squad and <groan> Limp Bizkit), Punk (see Gorillaz), Latin Musics (see Ozomotli), House (see The Avalanches), Drum and Bass (see Zion I), Funk (see The Coup), Soul (See Brainfreeze: Slurped), and Trip Hop (see DJ Shadow). Not to mention there are new subcategories of pure hip-hop including Southern (see Outkast and Nappy Roots), Abstract (see Common and Mos Def), Gangsta (see Snoop Dog, Dr. Dre, 2pac, and Biggie), Independent (see The Roots, Jurassic 5 and Quannum), Turntablist (see The X-ecutioners, Kid Koala, Mix Master Mike, and Q-Bert), Old School (see Run DMC, Slick Rick, and Grandmaster Flash), and finally yes there is hip-hop Pop (see Nelly and Ja Rule… actually, don’t). As you can see this genre is substantially more extensive than simply “the M.C. Hammer phenomenon.” The worldwide audience for Hip Hop is growing larger and broader in scope every year.
I’ll agree with you on those points. But music works in cycles like many things, nothing stays bad forever. The over produced and over managed pop clowns of the past five years are finally fading and some of the underground is crossing over. Dan the Automtor broke onto the radio with Gorillaz, Mos Def was on HBO Reverb and Def Poetry, Roc Raida, Mista Sinista, and Rob Swift opened for an MTV Aerosmith special, and those are just some of the crossovers in hip-hop. But every genre has talanted artists that were only known in small circles for years, who are becoming part of the mainstream not because of their tight abs and perky tits, but because of the quality and content of their art. It’s a sign of good things to come. There are new artists out there as revolutionary and gifted as anyone to come before them.