music these days...

[RPGPundit]

Good Music is Hard to Find
 
I've noticed that as I get older I'm getting more and more picky with my musical choices. I always listened to quality stuff, and have certain genres that appeal to me (folk, folk-rock, twee, orchestral pop, 60s rock), but it feels like there used to be so much more of it around.  Nowadays the occasion when I find something truly unique and excellent are so few and far between.
 
In the 60s there was astounding music to be had, all over the place; but there was also as much or more crap as there is today.  Hell, never mind William Shatner's album, JACK PALANCE had an album! Yea, THAT Jack Palance.   Grizzled cowboy "one handed pushup" Jack Palance. "Curly" from "City Slickers" Jack Palance.
 
But let us not concern ourselves with that. The fact is that for every Jack Palance conceptual album, there was also Love, and Billy Nicholls, and Pentangle, and Simon & Garfunkle, the Doors, and of course the Beatles.
 
In the 70s too, you had Nick Drake, Fotheringay and Jethro Tull, and Led Zeppelin, and the brilliant solo work by John Lennon and George Harrison, and Emitt Rhodes.
 
In the early nineties there was Nirvana, R.E.M. and U2 put out its one and only one good album (Achtung Baby).  And in the late 90s there was Belle & Sebastian in all their magnificent orchestral glory.  If you have not heard their albums, go out and do so right now. Especially their middle three: "If you're feeling sinister" (the red album), "Boy with the Arab Strap" (the green album) and "Fold Your Hands Child you walk Like a Peasant" (the yellow album).  These are sheer masterpieces.  There were other great Twee works in the early part of this , like Young & Sexy (good Canadian band there) and Kings of Convenience, but most Twee bands (the musical style that B&S and these other bands belong to) are hopelessly pretentious and not really talented.
 
The late nineties also had the Elephant 6 collective and their associated musics, many of which were rather bad and cheaply pseudo-artsy (Olivia Tremor Control is basically unlistenable), but the one album "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" by the Neutral Milk Hotel more than makes up for any of their pretentious sins.  What a masterpiece of music, probably the best concept album of all time.
 
But now? what is there now? Where are the new sounds? Are we doomed to the pustulent mediocrity of bad rap music, fake punk for kiddies, and the totally un-brilliant and uninspiring lo-fi nonsense of the likes of the Strokes?
 
Even the new folksies are vastly over-rated. Besides looking like a dead ringer for Charles Manson, Devendra Banhart is totally overblown. He has a singing voice like a syphilitic hillbilly and his songs go nowhere. To compare him to the likes of Nick Drake or Tim Buckley is an insult.  The only passable song I've heard of his after listening to four albums worth is "little yellow spider", and that song is basically retarded.
 
So, where is it? Where's the scene? Have I just turned into another of those old farts who hates all the music the "kids today" listen to, will I never be able to enjoy anything new from this point onwards? Or is it the music's fault, and the kids, listening to prefabricated pablum? Where is the Belle & Sebastian of this year and next?

RPGPundit October 17 2005

[One Horse Town]

You're beginning to sound old there pundit.

You just can't hear the lyrics of the songs these days! It's all noise! Turn it down, i'm trying to play scrabble!

Embrace your inner yoof, get a harley, a ponytail and get down with the kids man. The Beatles? The Doors? I raise you 50 Cent, Eminem and Evanescence.

Actually, you're right, crap innit?

[RPGPundit]

Yup.

RPGPundit

[flyingmice]

Welcome to curmudgeondom! Now go out there and curse those dagnab kids on your lawn!



-clash

[rcsample]

Welcome to curmudgeondom! Now go out there and curse those dagnab kids on your lawn!



-clash

Get off my lawn!
Don't make me come out there and miss Matlock!

[fonkaygarry]

There's more than enough good shit out there, you just have to find it.  Same as ever.

If you can get through the posturing at Pitchfork, they have a pretty good nose for what's new and good.

[Hastur T. Fannon]

But now? what is there now? Where are the new sounds? Are we doomed to the pustulent mediocrity of bad rap music, fake punk for kiddies, and the totally un-brilliant and uninspiring lo-fi nonsense of the likes of the Strokes?

Plan B "Who needs actions when you've got words"

You might like "Arcade Fire"

Franz Ferdinand?

[Dr Rotwang!]

NEW.

WAVE.

When the aliens come to Earth and say, "Give us three reasons to spare your puny world!" we need only show them

• The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show;
  
• Mexican Food; and
• Thomas Dolby's "The Golden Age of Wireless".

At which point they will silence themselves, stare at point somewhere oer our left shoulder, and then utter quietly, "Can we get that on LP?"

[RPGPundit]

Actually, in the time since I wrote that article I've found a few new artists that I actualy enjoyed, still tragically few and far between:  Smog, for example, or the Decemberists.

The Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand did not appeal to me.

I haven't looked at Plan B, but judging by what little I've read about it I doubt I'd enjoy it.

As for this Dolby fellow, does "New Wave" still mean the same thing now that it did back in the 1980s? Is that what we're talking about here? Like fucking Devo???

RPGPundit

[James McMurray]

I always listened to quality stuff, and have certain genres that appeal to me (folk, folk-rock, twee, orchestral pop, 60s rock), but it feels like there used to be so much more of it around.

So what you're saying is that there was more old-ass music a long damn time ago? Wow. Whooda thunk it?

[RPGPundit]

So what you're saying is that there was more old-ass music a long damn time ago? Wow. Whooda thunk it?

Fucker. You won a laugh point.



RPGPundit

[James McMurray]

/dance