Why did the last 4T have so much better music than this 4T?

[disasterzone]

In this 4T, everything sounds like a garbled mess on the radio.

[Eric the Green]

It seems so, although the music of the last 4T was good in places but not overwhelmingly so. But there were some good romantic tunes and some big band classics. I and others picked out favorites on the thread in the entertainment forum called "the best songs ever." There's also a thread about the best songs of today's 4T.

I found the best way to listen today is to fish around on you tube; not the radio, whose stations are controlled by a few media conglomerates and their careful marketing strategy to make the big bucks from the lowest common denominator. That's a big factor about why this 4T sucks; the Republicans gave us Reaganomics, and that has concentrated our economy into a few greedy hands (and now their president has small hands).

2012 was a good year, and that and the surrounding years were better for pop music than the two or three decades preceding it, even though it's superficial stuff (like the music of the previous 4T). That made me "Happy." It was a "Good Time." But now, I'm not sure there's much worthwhile going on.

[Odin]

80 years from now some self-absorbed Civic is going to ask the same exact question.

[disasterzone]

(03-02-2017, 06:50 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It seems so, although the music of the last 4T was good in places but not overwhelmingly so. But there were some good romantic tunes and some big band classics. I and others picked out favorites on the thread in the entertainment forum called "the best songs ever." There's also a thread about the best songs of today's 4T.

I found the best way to listen today is to fish around on you tube; not the radio, whose stations are controlled by a few media conglomerates and their careful marketing strategy to make the big bucks from the lowest common denominator. That's a big factor about why this 4T sucks; the Republicans gave us Reaganomics, and that has concentrated our economy into a few greedy hands (and now their president has small hands).

2012 was a good year, and that and the surrounding years were better for pop music than the two or three decades preceding it, even though it's superficial stuff (like the music of the previous 4T). That made me "Happy." It was a "Good Time." But now, I'm not sure there's much worthwhile going on.

I agree 2012 had a lot better music than now. For some reason the very early 4T had a lot better music. It was happier. Now it's just nothing. I don't know if this will continue throughout this 4T or not.

[David Horn]

(03-02-2017, 10:16 AM)disasterzone Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 06:50 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It seems so, although the music of the last 4T was good in places but not overwhelmingly so. But there were some good romantic tunes and some big band classics. I and others picked out favorites on the thread in the entertainment forum called "the best songs ever." There's also a thread about the best songs of today's 4T.

I found the best way to listen today is to fish around on you tube; not the radio, whose stations are controlled by a few media conglomerates and their careful marketing strategy to make the big bucks from the lowest common denominator. That's a big factor about why this 4T sucks; the Republicans gave us Reaganomics, and that has concentrated our economy into a few greedy hands (and now their president has small hands).

2012 was a good year, and that and the surrounding years were better for pop music than the two or three decades preceding it, even though it's superficial stuff (like the music of the previous 4T). That made me "Happy." It was a "Good Time." But now, I'm not sure there's much worthwhile going on.

I agree 2012 had a lot better music than now. For some reason the very early 4T had a lot better music. It was happier. Now it's just nothing. I don't know if this will continue throughout this 4T or not.

I don't know.  I listen to a lot of adult-alt, and find much of it very good.  It's more minimalist than the other options around at the moment, but it is real music.

[pbrower2a]

In the current 4T almost everyone, even creative people, have been exposed to the addling effects of mass entertainment. In the last 4T many creative people had avoided the culture of mass 'entertainment'. Big entertainment around 1940 in cinema was great, and even popular music (Big Band music) was probably the best popular music except for... Strauss waltzes?

[disasterzone]

(03-02-2017, 07:49 AM)Odin Wrote: 80 years from now some self-absorbed Civic is going to ask the same exact question.

Compare these songs to the songs we hear on the pop charts now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gx5DhKN_zY

Many Civics and younger Adaptives think that the music was much better then
These songs are classics and had a lot of harmony and raw talent
They made you feel better

[David Horn]

(03-02-2017, 02:28 PM)disasterzone Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 07:49 AM)Odin Wrote: 80 years from now some self-absorbed Civic is going to ask the same exact question.

Compare these songs to the songs we hear on the pop charts now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gx5DhKN_zY

Many Civics and younger Adaptives think that the music was much better then
These songs are classics and had a lot of harmony and raw talent
They made you feel better

Most younger music aficionados lean on the music of the 60s and early 70s as "the golden age".  Fair or unfair, the older stuff just doesn't speak to them.  Then again, they never had it around when they were young, so they can't really relate to it.  On the other hand, the Beatles have been in the mix since they first released their stuff.

[disasterzone]

(03-02-2017, 04:01 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 02:28 PM)disasterzone Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 07:49 AM)Odin Wrote: 80 years from now some self-absorbed Civic is going to ask the same exact question.

Compare these songs to the songs we hear on the pop charts now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gx5DhKN_zY

Many Civics and younger Adaptives think that the music was much better then
These songs are classics and had a lot of harmony and raw talent
They made you feel better

Most younger music aficionados lean on the music of the 60s and early 70s as "the golden age".  Fair or unfair, the older stuff just doesn't speak to them.  Then again, they never had it around when they were young, so they can't really relate to it.  On the other hand, the Beatles have been in the mix since they first released their stuff.

I like 60s and 70s music too. My point is nobody's pointing to this time in the 2010s as the best era of music ever.

[Ragnarök_62]

(03-02-2017, 05:02 PM)disasterzone Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 04:01 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 02:28 PM)disasterzone Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 07:49 AM)Odin Wrote: 80 years from now some self-absorbed Civic is going to ask the same exact question.

Compare these songs to the songs we hear on the pop charts now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gx5DhKN_zY

Many Civics and younger Adaptives think that the music was much better then
These songs are classics and had a lot of harmony and raw talent
They made you feel better

Most younger music aficionados lean on the music of the 60s and early 70s as "the golden age".  Fair or unfair, the older stuff just doesn't speak to them.  Then again, they never had it around when they were young, so they can't really relate to it.  On the other hand, the Beatles have been in the mix since they first released their stuff.

I like 60s and 70s music too. My point is nobody's pointing to this time in the 2010s as the best era of music ever.

Except Eric who likes Bieber, which is OK.  I just don't have to play it.   Of course there is awesome stuff to be had on youtube.





I think it's more of who the taking heads decide is the stuff "worth listening to."   So give this a try and see if it sounds sort of like the circa 1970 stuff, which yes, is awesome.


The 1970's in general, is an awesome decade wrt "bad jams".









So, yeah, ah to be 17 again where one's body can absorb the party hearty lifestyle.

Oh, and this ?   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gx5DhKN_zY

    'sville , man.

[Eric the Green]

(03-02-2017, 06:45 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 05:02 PM)disasterzone Wrote: I like 60s and 70s music too. My point is nobody's pointing to this time in the 2010s as the best era of music ever.

Except Eric who likes Bieber, which is OK.  I just don't have to play it.   Of course there is awesome stuff to be had on youtube.

Careful, Ragmuffin, I didn't say the 2010s are the best era of music ever. That's absurd. But yes, I like Bieber, and some of the recent stuff.

[Ragnarök_62]

(03-02-2017, 08:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 06:45 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(03-02-2017, 05:02 PM)disasterzone Wrote: I like 60s and 70s music too. My point is nobody's pointing to this time in the 2010s as the best era of music ever.

Except Eric who likes Bieber, which is OK.  I just don't have to play it.   Of course there is awesome stuff to be had on youtube.

Careful, Ragmuffin, I didn't say the 2010s are the best era of music ever. That's absurd. But yes, I like Bieber, and some of the recent stuff.

OK, fine butterball.

[Skabungus]

Music. Heh. Online chat with a fellow gamer from Germany the other night talking about music. He's 22. Apparently electro swing is really big in Europe. Caravan Palace, Parov Stelar, Swing Republic and The Correspondents were bands his cohorts were listening to. 1920's and 30' American swing music with an electronic twist. Interesting.

[bobc]

The mistake in analysis is comparing the perception of music in the 4th turning, with that of the previous 4th turning much later. Did the Missionary and Lost generation like the music of that time? Maybe the Millennials will listen to the music of the 2010's with great nostalgia in some future decade.

[pbrower2a]

Let's remember that American culture around 1940 was omnibus. Mass culture, as at the movie theater, had to appeal for a whole  typical family -- children old enough to just get it, kids attending high school (and probably the first in the family to do so, as the 1930s were the time in which completing high school became the norm instead of the exception), and adults born as late as the mid-1910s and as early as the 1860s. Shock was not an option in mass culture because the sensibilities of elders were not amenable to such. (Contrast today's 60-something adults to those of 1940; today's 60-something adult, unless born into an ultra-religious household and never got out of the culture, has seen everything). So, yes, I have seen A Clockwork Orange and recognize it as a cinematic masterpiece.  I wouldn't let pre-teen kids watch it.

But you must remember that the 1930s did not have the nuclear family as the norm. Times were hard enough that kids were not striking off on their own until they had well-paying jobs by the standard of the time. Elderly parents often retired to the home of a younger adult, typically that of a son or a daughter because the habit of sending the slightly-batty old people to the nursing home had not begun. Any cultural expression would be for all to experience, and if it offended a part of the family it would not be played on the single radio or phonograph (radios and phonographs were still expensive objects, so the typical household had but one).

Big Band music generally had to fit all sensibilities. As with the music of Haydn and Mozart in their heydays it worked on several levels of interest at once (catchy tunes, formality to fit the intellectual tastes of the time among the sophisticates, but none of the vulgarity or the over-wrought ruminative qualities that intellectuals love but non-intellectuals find off-putting). Today everyone has his own device capable of playing music, offering games, and reading material -- basically a tablet -- if under 70. It may also function as a digital camera, cell phone, or movie player as well. Just because the devices are identical does not mean that everyone is experiencing the same thing. But that trend began with radios and phonographs which got much less expensive in the 1950s, in which time distinct audiences for mass culture emerged. In recent times televisions and reader devices have become so inexpensive that everyone can have one.

So how do we end up with an omnibus culture? One way is through an authoritarian regime that crushes all individual expression and experience, inflicting propaganda as the sole means of getting entertainment. Nazi Germany (official racist nationalism in culture), Stalin's Soviet Union (Marxism-Leninism with a personality cult), and beginning in 1940 Churchill's Britain (a very homogeneous society then and in survival mode) were even more omnibus than FDR's America. The United States had ethnic and religious diversity and recognized it as useful, but after the Pearl Harbor attack any expression of cultural exoticism got subordinated to the message "We're all in this together".

Without question, President Trump is much more authoritarian than any prior US President in peacetime. Whether he can reshape American culture to his hierarchical dream is still much in doubt. The personality cult is forming, but many of us reject it with mockery. Can America unite around a low-brow populism that somehow unites Nashville and Greenwich Village? I doubt it. In theory an authoritarian America could suppress Nashville or Greenwich Village, but it could never merge them.

[bobc]

1930's and 1940's was not one musical culture. Many only listened to classical music, and didn't much like Jazz or Big Band.

As for non-mainstream popular music, see the Zoot Suit movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoot_Suit_Riots

[AarG]

Others have made several good points, but I'd also point out the habit of carrying only a fraction of any particular era's music forward to succeeding generations, losing a bit more over time until the originating era's "songbook" is defined to the point that it can studied and promoted as the only stuff future generations "need" to listen to to "understand the times." As with other art forms - literature, theater, film, "fine" arts like painting and sculpture - the vast bulk bloomed and died in its time, and only the most popular bits were preserved and/or revived. That unavoidably skews the perception of quality in earlier generations, let alone Turnings.

Add to that the classical training many of the mainstream composers, arrangers and performers had, and combining that background with the growing influence of non-Anglo cultures led to a number of pieces that were both easy to recognize and relatively easy to perform/cover - which in turn leads to more folks performing, and thus endorsing given pieces as "good", while the less-approachable (or popular) pieces faded quickly.


From a technology perspective, another contributor was the change in the early '30's from the 78rpm, fragile, shellac 12" single to the 33 1/3rpm (more durable) vinyl, long-playing 12" record album, and its smaller, cheaper sibling, the 45rpm vinyl single. The cost of records fell as a result. This, along with the explosion of radio after the Radio Act of 1927 (establishing the forerunner of the FCC, and setting the standards for what kinds of programming could be aired) and the Communications Act of 1934 gave the music industry something it had never had before: commercial distribution. No longer were musicians and groups constrained to the number of bodies they could draw to a theater or ballroom - there's a scene in the "The Glenn Miller Story" where Glenn (James Stewart) explains to his father in law that he makes three cents on every record sold. Pops isn't too impressed by this, at least until he does the math on how many thousands of records Glenn is talking about.

It would be interesting to see what music from our current market survives or gets revived in 40-50 years time, and which Grammy and AMA winners make that generation's ears bleed.

[David Horn]

(03-07-2017, 09:23 PM)AarG Wrote: ... From a technology perspective, another contributor was the change in the early '30's from the 78rpm, fragile, shellac 12" single to the 33 1/3rpm (more durable) vinyl, long-playing 12" record album, and its smaller, cheaper sibling, the 45rpm vinyl single. The cost of records fell as a result. This, along with the explosion of radio after the Radio Act of 1927 (establishing the forerunner of the FCC, and setting the standards for what kinds of programming could be aired) and the Communications Act of 1934 gave the music industry something it had never had before: commercial distribution. No longer were musicians and groups constrained to the number of bodies they could draw to a theater or ballroom - there's a scene in the "The Glenn Miller Story" where Glenn (James Stewart) explains to his father in law that he makes three cents on every record sold. Pops isn't too impressed by this, at least until he does the math on how many thousands of records Glenn is talking about.

It would be interesting to see what music from our current market survives or gets revived in 40-50 years time, and which Grammy and AMA winners make that generation's ears bleed.

I think today is an embarrassment of riches.  If anything, there are too many access channels available, and the need to fill airtime, or provide online content, means that a lot of less worthy material is out there and being consumed.  Add to that, the market is now so segmented that the idea of broad appeal is much less.  The turnover in who is hot is exceedingly high as well.  I suspect that this era will be remembered for quantity more than quality, and much of the really good material will simply be lost. 

The last big era of music dominance was the 60s through the 80s.  There was a lot of schlock then too, but there was a need to fill time with better music, so the better music survived long enough to gain a audience that spanned, in some cases, generations.   I don't know if that's possible anymore.

[Kinser79]

I would say it depends on what you're listening to. If you're listening to underground rock, underground hip hop/reggaeton there is a lot of good music out there. If you're listening to the Top 40, well it's been garbage for decades---at least since the end of the 2T. There is a reason for that. Underground music is typically done for the sake of the art itself, the Top 40 is to make as much profit out of selling ad time on the radio and therefore caters to the lowest common denominator.

That being said I've been listening to a lot of salsa lately but that's mostly because I hired a lot of Puerto Ricans. At least the Top 40 on the Spanish language stations is significantly better than the English language stations.

[David Horn]

(03-08-2017, 12:45 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I would say it depends on what you're listening to.  If you're listening to underground rock, underground hip hop/reggaeton there is a lot of good music out there.  If you're listening to the Top 40, well it's been garbage for decades---at least since the end of the 2T.  There is a reason for that.  Underground music is typically done for the sake of the art itself, the Top 40 is to make as much profit out of selling ad time on the radio and therefore caters to the lowest common denominator.

That being said I've been listening to a lot of salsa lately but that's mostly because I hired a lot of Puerto Ricans.  At least the Top 40 on the Spanish language stations is significantly better than the English language stations.

In a way, that was my point.  The music scene is a music-mall full of narrowly focused boutiques.  Many have really great music, and a tiny audience.  The old model allowed for the building of a Great Songbook; think Cole Porter or the Beatles.  They had wide and diverse audiences that absorbed the music and made it Great.  That's not to say that all of it really was, but that's the meme we've accepted.

FWIW, I grew up on Jazz, and that's always been great.  The audience has never been large.  That takes nothing away but the fame.