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Am I Old, Or Is Today's Pop Music Really That Terrible?


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#16 kfergo

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Posted 26 August 2014 - 09:16 AM

 

Indeed. It seems there is pressure, either from the record labels or the artists' entourages that tells singer/songrwiters to comply with the crap movement (no pun intended). 

 

It seems that Taylor Swift is much like Jewel, Nelly Furtado, and yes, Robin Thicke; all successful singer/songwriters who were convinced or decided on their own that their images had to change who they were as artists sell sex with funky beats and hoardes of dancers in order to please the masses. 

 

Sam Smith gives me hope that there's still some room for exceptional singers.

 

 

 

You are correct, sir. I am fairly passionate about music, and just don't 'get' what's going on today. We don't want to hear good music or musicianship, we want to dance and be shocked by edgy lyrics that you have to look up online to understand.

 

I was that the Tower Bistro at the Embassy Suites Saturday Night. Executive Chef Clay Purcell (husband of myfolsom's own 'amethyst organizing') has an outstanding menu, patio setting is beautiful, with a view of the Tower Bridge, and they had a truly professional jazz trio playing. There were only 4 tables full.

 

Too bad they don't rap or where thongs while serving. The place would be packed. 

 

 

This is true. There's a handful of producers who are responsible for most of the crap we hear, and artists clamor for their attention.

 

 

 

I asked my daughter what MTV stood for and she didn't know.

It stands for Music Television. It launched in !981.



#17 Steve Heard

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Posted 26 August 2014 - 09:32 AM

It stands for Music Television. It launched in !981.

I know that! She didn't! 

 

It used to be music videos and some music news 24/7

 

They don't play much music on it anymore.

 

Looking at today's line up:

 

Music feed from 6 to 8 am

 

5 consecutive episodes of Ridiculousness the show where idiots mock internet videos

 

4 consecutive episodes of Jersey Shore

 

3 more episodes of Ridiculousness

 

A rerun of the VMAs

 

House of Style: "All up in the VMAs"

 

An episode of Girl Code

 

3 consecutive episodes of Finding Carter, a tv drama about a girl who finds out she was kidnapped as a child

 

Followed by another rerun of the VMAs


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#18 WolfMom

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Posted 26 August 2014 - 09:44 AM

I miss Freddie Mercury. :(


Dawn Grove

#19 Dave Burrell

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Posted 26 August 2014 - 06:31 PM

iHate iHeart Radio. I want Clear Channel to die!

 

 

Why? Please elaborate.

 

I like iHeart because I can listen to two favorite radio stations of mine that are out of state - one is in Oregon and the other is in North Carolina.  Their morning shows are 1000x's better than the idiocracy I hear on 98 Rock in the a.m. I want to hear music, not non-stop inane banter.

 

Joe - great posts! That guy kinda reminds me of Al Di Meola. Good stuff!

I absolutely dig good acoustic tunes that are creative and moving. My favorites are finding random street musicians that are extremely talented.  Here is a duo that I saw someone post about last week, I did some research, found them and bought a couple of their CD's. Most of their tunes are classic rock cover songs but it's done really well and very unique by this very talented culturally diverse female duo based out of New Orleans.  

 

(on a side note - did you guys know the George Thorogood is coming to town to play at Harris Center next month? Gotta luv some good ol' rock n roll!)

 

 

 

 

and speaking of Al Di Meola while sticking with a Beatles Theme in this post :-)

 

 


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#20 Steve Heard

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Posted 26 August 2014 - 07:55 PM

This one is about 10 years or so old, but it features one of my favorites of all time, Kenny Rankin. He wrote great songs, sang them beautifully and was a guitar master.


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#21 cw68

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Posted 26 August 2014 - 08:14 PM

 

 

Why? Please elaborate.

 

I like iHeart because I can listen to two favorite radio stations of mine that are out of state - one is in Oregon and the other is in North Carolina.  Their morning shows are 1000x's better than the idiocracy I hear on 98 Rock in the a.m. I want to hear music, not non-stop inane banter.

 

CBS and Cumulus Media are guilty as Clear Channel of the following, but I have had many friends negatively affected by Clear Channel, hence my personal beef. These are the three biggest radio operators in the US. They are fueled by profits, not by music.

 

Clear Channel used the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to buy up entire markets, maximizing efficiencies by homogenizing formats. In doing so, DJs and people are not needed anymore - national programs and playlists rule. That guy telling you about the traffic? It used to be a local guy in a helicopter looking down at the city. Now one guy (or gal) in one city records the traffic for stations all around the country. One person to pay. Saturday morning DJs? If it's not national, they recorded the banter/words during the week and the radio station is barren, running on its own. If it's national, and more and more DJs are national, people all around the country are hearing exactly the same thing except for ads. No regional influence, no choice, just corporate structure.

 

Radio as an industry is in contraction because of corporate consolidation. Radio stations are just profit centers for big corporations now. It's not about the music, the art - it's about the money.

 

Radio is also in its last gasp; kids don't pay attention to radio anymore. They get their music from YouTube, Pandora, on their phones, etc. Remember all the efforts us old folks used to spend to build the perfect system? They don't care about fidelity, they just want it to be portable. (As an aside, my kids tell us to turn down the music often. They don't listen to music in their rooms. What? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?)

 

Nobody really likes pop music, except kids. Adults don't like it. It's always been that way. The thing is, adults are the only ones listening to radio nowadays so it's hard for us to avoid the crap that the marketing money-making music machines are pushing on us. 

 

If you can't tell, it's something I'm pretty passionate about. My passion pales compared to my husband's, who spent 34 years in the radio industry, starting as a 14-year old in Iowa from 5-10pm on a local station. Next year he will publishing a book on radio, tentatively titled, "The Fading Signal" about the death of radio.



#22 The Average Joe

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Posted 26 August 2014 - 09:35 PM

Funny thing. I couldn't help but notice that no one stopped to listen to the street musicians (except for the blind guy who briefly paused). I don't understand how people can ignore moments of beauty when they are right in front of them.  I was recently in Tahoe, and took a side trip to Truckee for a street festival. There was so many street performers and they were incredibly talented. My wife finally had to pull me away so we could get dinner. The street video you linked reminded me of an experiment with the world class violinist Joshua Bell when he performed on a 3 million dollar Stradivarius in a subway as a "street performer". The well written article on what happened is here http://www.washingto...7040401721.html

A short clip of the scene is below.  Take time to smell the roses people!

 


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#23 SacKen

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Posted 27 August 2014 - 02:22 PM

 

... They are fueled by profits, not by music. ...

But isn't that the whole point of having a business?  It's not about the music, and probably never has been outside of University and "pirate" radio stations. It's about building a playlist that attracts the most people, and the majority of people are stupid simpleton sheep that prefer chain restaurants.

 

I agree that radio sucks, but to be fair, it has for my entire life.  I don't think Clear Channel can be blamed.  Even when they were locally owned stations with playlists managed by local program managers, the top stations would play the same handful of songs that got the most requests over and over and over and over again.  Just like they do now.  They have a single feed and need to get the most listeners with one shot, so you get the least common denominator.

 

I also don't agree that Clear Channel doesn't regionalize when it matters and always feeds the same playlist and format everywhere.  They do when it works, which is probably true for most genres.  However, I find that 106.1 KMEL in the Bay Area is still heavily influenced by local listeners because it is necessary.  Rap/Hip-Hop is one genre that has very different tastes region to region.  Of course they play what is hot right now nationwide, but they've always played a lot more of the West Coast rappers and often play more grittier stuff than the national least common denominator playlist.  It's a Clear Channel station and I love that I can now listen to it on iHeart Radio when I want.

 

Local on-air talent is also overrated.  I can't stand listening to 98 Rock in the afternoons. All I keep thinking about is how Dog and Joe are a couple of bickering old chickens that need to STFU and play some damn music!  I'm not sure why some guy reading a traffic report from NYC is any worse than a local dork reading the same CalTrans traffic report.  They had an "eye in the sky" 20 years ago because they had to.  We didn't have a constant stream of updates available to everyone on the internet. That "eye in the sky" was a distinguishing trait that made one station better than another because they had up-to-date information. Totally unnecessary now.

 

This is why services like Spotify are so popular. Get rid of the on-air talent and single-playlist-driven-by-ad-money model and allow anyone to create a playlist and share it with the world.  For the first time in modern radio history, it is closer to being about the music than radio ever has been.  As those services, and even iHeart Radio, are more integrated into new cars, terrestrial radio will begin to dissolve even more.


"Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!" -- George Carlin

#24 cw68

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Posted 27 August 2014 - 03:04 PM

With nationalization, radio stations are not able to react and shift to local needs/desires like they used to. They are not part of the local fabric like they used to be. They are not innovators like they used to be, nor do they really "break" music anymore either. Profits are drying up and radio is barely breathing, to be replaced by all of the other formats mentioned on this thread. A large part of it is because the format couldn't morph and adapt as needed because of corporate consolidation. It was their death knell.

As for KMEL, it may adjust its playlist some for the Bay Area, but it hasn't been a force in breaking new music in over 20 years. CBS has a similar star in Chicago, WXRT. Unfortunately, stations like these are few and far between.

#25 cw68

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Posted 27 August 2014 - 09:01 PM

So the other morning, a friend (mid- to late-50s), woke at 3:20am to his house shaking. What mistake did he make? He reached out to turn his radio on to find out what was going on. Was there any info? Nope, nothing but syndicated shows. Nobody was at the station to broadcast the news. KCBS was the first station he found with coverage - 20 minutes later.

Twitter, FB, these had the info instantly. Who needs radio?

#26 olivia

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Posted 31 August 2014 - 10:11 AM

I watched most of the VMA's last night and must say that 99% of it was terrible.

 

Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj and some squeaky little girl that the crowd went wild for all had big dance numbers but no substance or discernible talent.

 

What ever happened to musicians playing music and singers singing songs?
 

 

 

We are that old ....and it is that bad.



This one is about 10 years or so old, but it features one of my favorites of all time, Kenny Rankin. He wrote great songs, sang them beautifully and was a guitar master.

Great stuff!  But that may a bit older than that.  He died how long ago?  That song was from an album recorded 30-35 years ago, i believe.



#27 Steve Heard

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Posted 31 August 2014 - 10:30 AM

We are that old ....and it is that bad.



Great stuff!  But that may a bit older than that.  He died how long ago?  That song was from an album recorded 30-35 years ago, i believe.

 

The song is old, but the performance was from a BET Jazz special. I just looked it up, and it says the DVD was released in 2001, so I'm assuming it was done somewhere around that time.

 

He died in 2009.

 

My wife and I sometimes sit on our patio with a bottle of wine and put that DVD on and watch through our window.


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