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a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
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Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Edited Aug 28, 2008, 18:44
Rock careers and the end of music!
Aug 28, 2008, 18:38
Very well put! Rock has entered a sort of "careerist" phase, the "art rebels" are long since passe.

Absolutely like what happened to jazz "after Miles retired" in 1976 (that was the turning point, or at least symbolic thereof!)

For rock I think the turning point happened around the time Cobain offed himself and Snoop Doggy Dogg had the biggest selling record since "Thriller" (though I don't think it was any one person who did it, the more likely culprit would be "the music & media biz" conglomerating and merging and all but eliminating truly "independent" outlets. "Grunge" was a marketing label that spelled the death of "Indie"!)

I kinda feel like hip-hop was going to be "the next thing", but it got strangled in the cradle after a good run of barely 15 years. The "thug/bling" stuff that's popular today is just the worst commercial drivel. (Remember when hiphop was sonicly adventurous and had meaningful lyrics, and couldn't be easily stereotyped as "some gold-toothed guy grunting about how rich he is over a lowest-common-denominator dance beat"? Again, I think this is driven by media & business imperatives, though if you have to point a finger I nominate Dr. Dre for inventing the slick but ultimately empty "gangsta" style.)

In the bigger historical perspective, I wonder if the "age of music" isn't waning -- replaced by "the age of televison screens" of course!

Our society is getting a lot more "visual" and less "audio."

Remember when having a big cool fancy "stereo system" was all the rage? Reel to reel quadrophonic sound!! Nowadays you only get fancy audio gear for your "entertainment system" which always has a big TV screen at the center . . .

While these days music is often listened to on iPods and similar devices, which have the audiophile quality of a transistor radio! That says a lot about the priority of music in our culture . . .
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