How come older music sounds fresher and newer than a lot of today's music?

[Deja Q]

So here I am watching lots of Devo videos and there's a freshness that makes it worthy OF attention.

Today's music seems sterile by comparison... more like muzak, surely?

Whazzup?

[mzteris]

1. all of "today's" music

sounds alike. A bunch of screaming. The same instrumentation. The same angst. The same bs.

Older music's bands each had style of their own.

And they knew more than a I, IV, V, chord progression.

[ghostsofgiants]

2. Because you're listening to the wrong new music.

[Parche]

3. Todays Toads

It is nothing but rap and country

:puke: :puke: :hi:

[Kucinich4America]

4. Because most of today's music is corporate controlled sterile horseshit?

Seems like most of the decent albums released in recent years are from bands & artists who have been around a couple decades or longer.

[Capn Sunshine]

17. I was just about to type this!

my Canadian Mesmerizotic Amphibian friend, MSM used to be better for the same reason; it wasn't top down production keyed to what focus tests best. The authors were allowed to truly express themsleves

Still, every so often you get an Amy Winehouse or Kanye West sneaking through despite the odds.

[VenusRising]

5. Today's music is more manufactured than old music.

Old bands actually had to write their own songs, play their own instruments, and sing their own songs. Now a lot of music uses electronics and technology to garner a sound rather than actual artistic talent. As long as you look good and are marketable, they will bend over backward to get music out today, even if it is crap. It didn't matter how musicians looked before as long as they were talented.

[Oeditpus Rex]

12. About your new avvie...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLlJfGybBcc



(Turn down your volume a tad. Sucker's loud.)

[VenusRising]

14. I don't think I can

do that with my leg, though.

:rofl:

:hi::hug:

How are ya, luv?

[Oeditpus Rex]

15. Meh

Fell asleep around 5:15 and woke up at 8:25. I'm gonna be up all night. x(

[VenusRising]

18. Sorry about that.

That's a long nap for the weekend.

What did you do that made you so tired?

[Oeditpus Rex]

19. Nothin'

Doin' nothin' makes me tireder than doin' somethin'. :shrug:

[VenusRising]

22. I know exactly what you mean.

I call that sleeping away the boredom.

I'm notorious for it.

You should have done somethin'. *shakes finger at you*

[Oeditpus Rex]

23. Seriously, I should've

I'm supposed to be moving soon, so I've certainly got stuff to do.

I need to eat a bottle of ephedra and paint the living room and kitchen.

[VenusRising]

28. Let's not be eating ephedra, k?

thnx.

You could have gone out and scavenged boxes today. That's always helpful for a move.

What a lazy-butt you were today. :spank:

:P

[Aristus]

16. Plus, sometimes it can be too technically advanced.

A mistake in recording now and then can add candor and excitement. Especially if the music has "it". The Doors used to say they would put an imperfect take on a finished album if the spirit of the music was better even with the goof than with a flawless take. If you listen closely to the piano interlude of "The Crystal Ship", you can hear Ray Manzarek strike a sour note by mistake. It probably made the final cut for the reason stated above.

[VenusRising]

20. Since I'm wearing my Jim Morrison "Lizard King" shirt

I would have to completely agree with your addition, which I do anyway. Music is alive when it's played organically. You can hear the musicians' blood flowing through the music and see it emanating from their bodies when they play. Too technical and perfect makes it sound lifeless and dead.

:hi:

[Aristus]

24. That's right.

BTW, do the know the goof I'm talking about? What do you think?

[VenusRising]

27. I actually never heard it as a goof.

It sounds like a dream quality added to the music in the form of a note.

When I went and listened to it, I caught it, but it still doesn't feel like a goof.

[Aristus]

30. Okay.

:-)

[leeroysphitz]

33. ???

Wow. Did all of these "old bands" just coincidentally go to the Brill building to write their own songs?

[VenusRising]

34. They wrote their own songs to break into the business.

Touring, recording, and generally busting their ass to make it. Now there are more manufactured acts where a person's looks seem to supersede talent.

[leeroysphitz]

36. I'm with you on the now. I just think you're idealizing the then. nt

[VenusRising]

37. Maybe so.

I've been accused of being an idealist from time to time. ;)

[Common Sense Party]

38. I absolutely LOVE your nametag graphic.

I just spent the last three minutes laughing about it.

I can't wait to write that on my next convention nametag.

[Lady Effingbroke]

6. Because it's better?

:shrug:

[lildreamer316]

7. Sorry to say..

the only fresh stuff is the new house/electro/breaks/prog house
But it is off the hook........
I love the old too. So very much.

[CGowen]

8. To me Devo sounds like 80's music I prefer 70's n/t

[kentauros]

9. First, you need to get away from corporate/broadcast music

Broadcast radio is losing ground anyway to the Internet. Don't rely on what the majority listens to. That's not the only new music being produced. In fact, most new music never gets aired on broadcast radio or even public radio, because there's just so much of it and so much time in the day. You should already know why most of it doesn't reach corporate ears, too ;)

Look over the following links and so some searching for the types of music you love:

Free Albums Galore
Net Label
Comfortstand
Internet Archive: Audio Archive

Alternately, look up my music post I made here a few days ago. I didn't bookmark it, but maybe someone else did or I'll do a search for you and post the link :)

[dpbrown]

10. Because today's music is written by MBA fuck-heads to conform to a "formula"

Heaven forbid someone actually use their imagination again!

The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw
And the teacher said.. What you doin' young man
I'm paintin' flowers he said
She said... It's not the time for art young man
And anyway flowers are green and red
There's a time for everything young man
And a way it should be done
You've got to show concern for everyone else
For you're not the only one
And she said...
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen
But the little boy said...
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one
Well the teacher said.. You're sassy
There's ways that things should be
And you'll paint flowers the way they are
So repeat after me.....
And she said...
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen
But the little boy said...
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one
The teacher put him in a corner
She said.. It's for your own good..
And you won't come out 'til you get it right
And are responding like you should
Well finally he got lonely
Frightened thoughts filled his head
And he went up to the teacher
And this is what he said.. and he said
Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen
Time went by like it always does
And they moved to another town
And the little boy went to another school
And this is what he found
The teacher there was smilin'
She said...Painting should be fun
And there are so many colors in a flower
So let's use every one
But that little boy painted flowers
In neat rows of green and red
And when the teacher asked him why
This is what he said.. and he said
Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen.
But there still must be a way to have our children say . . .
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one

Harry Chapin Flowers Are Red lyrics

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. Because it was creative and done with a sense of integrity

Though there was also a fair amount of derivative, uncreative awful shit back then, the record companies were still interested in producing creative good music.

Now it's all demographic-based industrial shit; at least in the pop/rock world.

Blues and jazz are still producing lots of great music.

But, wow - rock has totally lost it. And it it only took less than four decades to go from the music of protest and something utterly different from what had gone before to turn it into a great big mucky world of mediocre garbage, celebratory of the average, designed for responsibility-from-tasting-it-free mass consumption like Coke and microwavable dinners and Thomas Kinkade and most of what's on TV.

[HamstersFromHell]

25. Not to mention...

Those totally without talent who merely have a "hunky" or "sexy" look who can't sing for shit.

The Nashville Scene magazine did an article a few years back about how many of the top acts in Country couldn't sing but were corrected for pitch in the studio (and even in live shows) to sound good. The record labels sell an image nowdays as much or more than they care about real talent.

[ghostsofgiants]

26. Again, you're listening to the wrong new music.

But I think most people who complain about how shitty today's music is kinda get off on it and don't want to discover good new stuff.

[Rabrrrrrr]

32. No, I don't listen to the shit. But it used to be that one didn't have to go all Lewis and Clark

to find good music. It was just sitting there, in the bins at the music store.

Now you gotta hunt it down like a snow leopard because most of the music stores are great big chains who only make profit on volume, catering to the music industry that is only interested in profit, and so good music is going to appear only rarely in said stores; and if it does show up, it isn't going to be pushed at all because they only have it because the record company said "If you want 100,000 of the new Brittney CD, you also have to take 200 of these other CDs".

The good stuff also gets little radio play, little MTV play, and little attention in the press.

I mean, for fuck's sake, even Rolling Stone doesn't cover music any more. It, too, only deals with shit.

[ghostsofgiants]

39. I forget if it was Lester Bangs of Joe Carducci who said it, but...

The radio has been useless since the '60s, and by extension, so are MTV and mainstream magazines.

[stevedeshazer]

13. Devo is old?

Sincerely,

Grandpa

[Capn Sunshine]

21. 25 years , easy

Make that thirty- I remember when they silenced a crowded bar playing "Satisfaction " on SNL. on TV. That was 77?

[stevedeshazer]

29. Damn, time flies

I saw the Beatles live in 1965. 42 years ago.

Damn.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

40. Tempus fugit. It sure does.

I saw the Righteous Brothers in '64. 43 years ago.

My first rock concert.

[fishwax]

31. selection bias

In any given era, there's going to be plenty of crap put out by record companies and in heavy rotation on the radio. Most of the stuff that would still be around and listened to (or watched in a block) two decades later is probably halfway decent.

There was plenty of recycled crap back in Devo's day, and fortunately there's plenty of great stuff now. You can't always hear it on the radio, though ...

[leeroysphitz]

35. Check out www.3wk.com for GOOD free indie radio.

They offer new and old indie/prog streams. Check it out and see if you can't find something that sounds fresh to you. :hi:

[kentauros]

45. For that matter...

...here's a wealth of online radio "stations" and music archives:

Pandora - the Music Genome Project
WFMU - Freeform radio
(that's in New Jersey, 91.1 FM)
Digitally Imported
SKY.fm
soma.fm

It's really worth spending a little time to find the good stuff. Radio made us lazy that way. Now that radio isn't worth listening to for the most part, you have to take the effort the music director once did and find the good stuff on your own.

It really is worth the effort. I can't emphasize that enough :)

Alternately, tell us what you like; I'm sure you'll get more than enough alternate stations or sites to go to :D
I've certainly found a few new ones to look into from this thread alone :)

[Capn Sunshine]

41. SOME new music still sounds fresh

check out all the new bands at Bellyupforblues.com.

But you have to like red hot scorching blues rock genre.

[TreasonousBastard]

42. Maybe it's because they actually played instruments? And...

because back then some of the more interesting artists had a little more creative control.

Or maybe the playlists now just really, really, suck and you gotta work to find something good. The same tone-deaf shits who run corporate radio run the record labels and are the producers who follow the script:

A-- Crash weddings to find hot looking singer who can stay in key for an afternoon.

B-- Call Babyface to get some riffs and charts.

C-- Call Geek-O-Matic to create background sounds, aka "music."

[Kucinich4America]

43. Look at the biggest concert tours of this year....

Van Halen. Genesis. Heaven & Hell (aka Black Sabbath version 2.0). The Police.

All bands that broke up in the mid 80's, and yet they're all selling out arenas without even a new album on the charts from any of them.

What was the biggest tour other than that? Hannah Montana. Worse than a one hit wonder.... the 14 year old daughter of a one hit wonder (Mr. Achy Breaky Mullet himself)

[LeftCoast]

44. That's because you're not listening to the Scissor Sisters

http://www.scissorsisters.com/intro/

I WUV this band! :)