I think I've solved the worlds musical problems. Let's break it down.
Now I'm not saying that because I'm older and I like music from another time. I say this with an open mind. "Today's... music... sucks. "
It's been this way for about 10 years. Cookie cutter bands playing the same 4 chords, lackluster lyrics with no real story or message, mediocre vocal abilities and over production to compensate for under delivering music of substance leading us to this cesspool of songs filled with used riffs from classic songs resamples and reshuffled into a soured sonic salad.
There.
I said it.
I'll say it again.
"Today's music sucks."
Oddly I'm finding that more and more younger generations are rifling into the libraries of the past if not to find some older songs old hook to sample or just for something different from a time when music was better.
More of today's youth list "70's classic rock", "80's music", "new wave" or "old skool" in their profiles on popular sites like myspace, friendster and facebook. Go deeper and you'll see them listing and the influences even heavier at places like Gothopia, Sinisterspace, VampireFreaks Darkstarlings and Findagoth and you'll see the trends are leaning even more to the past in the underground world of music.
Face it, people are sick of today's music. We have been picking our idols from reality shows where basically we're voting from whatever there is available thrown into the mainstream. This is how we get stuck with more mediocre talent.
I've talked to younger age groups and they're all doing the same thing. They're discovering older music. The club DJ's are spinner classics more than the new. There are still people requesting older songs and even some of the newer albeit rare number of bands are being heralded for their throwback sound.
Here's where the problem lies. The older bands no longer have it in them to produce the hits they had before hand. They can't recreate the sound of their heyday. They actually lose it with age. The newer bands haven't got it either because they didn't live in those times so they don't know what it was like to go to a concert and have that "religious experience" at a show.
Then you have the lost generations: MTV Gen/Gen X and Gen Y. These were the generations that lived possibly the coolest era of modern music. Notice that nothing today is any newer than it was. We as an entertainment culture, have stagnated. These generations did exactly what today's generations are doing today only they did it better and with more irreverence than our tamer, more subdued successors.
These older generations are the ones that refuse to grow old and die off. The young at heart. Different from the aging hippie, they are the ones that can still hang out in a mosh pit, understand how to dress with flair without looking ridiculous and can actually afford cooler gear. They could be corporate weekend warriors who still play in grunge bands and bungee jump or they could also can be bartenders like Evel Dick from Big Brother 8.
Personally, I feel the solution is this:
Get a fusion of today's youth and desire for change, then dig up the old fossils of those who probably wrote good music but were told that they were too old to keep the "pipe dream" that is a rock and roll star and put them together. We can blame the industry for this. They set the trends without consulting us. Fortunately those trends are dying. People getting record contracts are getting older and older simply because the youth pool doesn't have enough to carry it. There are no more musical demi-gods and those that were are pushing 40, 50 and 60.
Do you know what the end result is if this fusion were to be successful? Well, whatever music mogul put this into fruition would be heralded as a hero, for you'd gain the largest cross generation demographic since Michael Jackson's Thriller. Imagine, people from 14 to 45 all being buying the same music. Imagine the volume of sales, the buzz, the ticket sales for concerts... Hey you, Mr. V.P. Artist Development, and you to Mr. A&R representative.... WAKE UP AND SEIZE THE REVOLUTION!
Good music doesn't really know an age nor does it need too... It just needs to be good again.
Posted by Darkstar at September 9, 2007 02:43 PM | TrackBack