| Author | Message | ||
     Kurt Stephan Member Username: Slothbert Post Number: 1039 Registered: 04-2005 |
...or has popular music pretty much played itself out, and now is just going in circles, combining things that have already been done in infinite but not very surprising ways? I ask because I can't even remember the last time I heard an artist or band and thought, "this is really something new." Discuss. (Please...somebody...anybody...don't let this be one of the embarrassing "zero reply" threads.) | ||
| Little Keith Member Username: Manosludge Post Number: 1283 Registered: 03-2006 |
I read a great book a few years ago, called, "The End of Science", by John Horgan. In it, the author makes the case that all of the big discoveries in science have already happened and that there's nothing new left to be discovered. In the future, what will be done will amount to just fleshing out those big discoveries... Music, I think, is exactly like that. All the big discoveries have already happened. From here on in (actually for quite a while now), it's going to be an endless pageant of recombining, pulling old styles off the shelf that will sound new because they haven't been heard in a while, and also, because they offer a fresh change from whatever style we've previously gotten tired of...The White Stripes and the Strokes are just two examples of that...not to mention that whole cadre of Gang of Four-sounding bands. Even if one likes them (and I do like a lot of them), there's no escaping that they're rehashing old, familiar ground... So, blah blah blah. Count me on the side that thinks music has played itself out. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 179 Registered: 08-2006 |
I'll bite, Kurt. I think by and large music evolves slowly, and it's evolving now just like it's always done, regardless of how you and I might hear it. Granted, every now and again, a real innovator comes along to shake things up, but you could argue even that's overstated. Elvis Presley, for example, might have been shockingly new to the mass audience, but people who were music fans at the time had probably heard his type already, albeit not on top 40 radio. Also, and I hate to admit this, but we're not getting any younger (I'm making an assumption about your age, Kurt), so we're harder to surprise. I found bands like the Replacements and the Minutemen absoultely mind-blowing when I was 18, but I bet a lot of 30 and 40 something listeners simply heard them as really good bands who were carrying on with something someone else had already done. I'm sure there are kids listening to the Arctic Monkeys or whatever thinking it's the freshest, most original thing they've ever heard and we're like, yeah, been there done that. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 825 Registered: 03-2005 |
Ok, I just shot my wad in the "albums of the year" thread. My question to respond to your question is "does there have to be something new?" I'm satisfied if there's something good. The quest for new too often yields embarrassing misfires. The whole hip hop thing was new but, of course, that happened quite a while ago. And I know pretty much zip about it. In my little universe of (predominantly) white boy pop music I'm not sure there's been anything particularly new since the 1980s. But there have been some incredibly good things since then. Indeed I view the 90s as the decade when people figured out how to make the most out of the musical discoveries of the 80s. This decade? Maybe there IS a bit too much circling going on, but still some people are doing incredibly good things. Here's an example: Nick Cave's best work since 2000 is better, i.e., more refined and more sophisticated, than his best stuff from the 80s and 90s. It's not new, but it's better. | ||
| Kurt Stephan Member Username: Slothbert Post Number: 1041 Registered: 04-2005 |
Great points, everyone. And Randy, that's certainly a very legit question you pose. Problem I have (and it may be an age thing, as I'm likely to hold things from my musical "formative" years in higher regard than current things*) is that I don't think most things are better these days. There's just a lot more of it. There's more good stuff now, that's for sure. It was actually easier to be up on all (or at least most) of the cool artists in the late '70s or early '80s because there just weren't as many people doing good stuff. I think punk totally saved rock music in the mid to late '70s--it was crawling up its own ass. Punk opened up music in so many ways, returning that "anyone can do it" ethos to music and breaking the rules about what influences could be combined to make new sounds. And, for awhile, rap/hip-hop did the same in the '80s, but it shocks me that anyone still views it as "outsider" music now. It is the mainstream, even the most repulsive gangsta stuff. Since then, I haven't heard a breakthrough. Electronica, bass/drums, and all the other offshoots have had a huge influence, but they're more about the production values and mechanization of music then movements like punk or rap. And I would nominate Beck and Bjork as the two artists in the '90s who pushed the boundaries of at least semi-popular stuff, but neither was a movement in and of themselves. Since then, I think things have been a bit stagnant. *Rob, I have to comment on your Replacements/Minutemen observation. I'm in my forties and cut my musical teeth on the UK and U.S. punk of the mid-'70s on after being a Reed/Roxy/Bowie/Mott fanatic before that. I resisted the punk of the '80s until about '87, thinking I'd heard it all before, but when I finally got into the bands you name, plus Husker Du, Sonic Youth, the Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, etc., I realized they were all going somewhere new and interesting with punk and postpunk. But by the time Nirvana came around, though I could hear they were a great band, I couldn't really understand why they were getting the acclaim and tapping into the public's imagination in a way the bands mentioned above never did. To this day, Nirvana sounds to me like putting the Huskers, Replacements, and Pixies in a blender and adding a pinch of R.E.M. Not that Cobain wasn't a great talent, but to me, it wasn't the breakthrough it was to younger listeners. Blah blah blah...too much coffee, too many words. Sorry. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 180 Registered: 08-2006 |
Nirvana's a great example, Kurt. I loved 'em mightily, but I could hear their roots a little more readily than I could the Replacements etc. Perhaps I'd heard more music by the time Kurt & Co. came around. It didn't sound as revolutionary to my 26-year-old self as it would have were I 16. I do agree there haven't been any mind-blowing movements in music recently, a la punk or hip hop. But I'll echo Randy's sentiment: I'm less concerned with novelty and more with quality. And I still find plenty of CDs every year that make me happy. | ||
| Wolfgang Steinhardt Member Username: Berbatov Post Number: 39 Registered: 09-2006 |
New "movements" - think we can forget that, everythings too divided and split into small scenes and they get smaller and smaller and more distinctive from each other, even as a mean to be different from anything else. But if we make a distinction between popular music in general and what Randy calls "white boy pop music" as a small part of the whole I'm not so pessimistic. I once mentioned an african band here, Konono No. 1. The idea behind is like an african version of Einstürzende Neubauten: if you can't afford real instruments cannibalize an old car or a fridge, put a plug in it and see how it sounds (and it sounds great). Then mix it up with your local traditions (and there are thousands of them only in Africa...).The result of that shortage of means is pure DIY, much more DIY Punk ever might have been and I'm shure there are lots of comparable efforts all around the world we never heard of but someday the influences might appear in western popular music, like Calypso, Reggae, Bhangra, the Balkanbrass, whatever. GoBees are famous for their "spanish guitars", only a slight influence into a white boy pop band, but enough to make as certain distinction. I think there are news - at the edges. We had noise bands from Japan, let's wait for the chinese kids in, let's say ten years. It'll hardly be our concept of popmusic, but maybe interesting though... | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 333 Registered: 01-2005 |
The last new movement that really moved me was the shoegazer movement. I'm waiting for the next one. | ||
| Kurt Stephan Member Username: Slothbert Post Number: 1042 Registered: 04-2005 |
Wolfgang makes some great points. And one thing I tend to forget is what we're hearing mostly is recorded music, and that is hardly an accurate portrait of all the music being made in the world. There's probably lots of non-Western, indigenous, and/or "found" music that never makes it to disc because of lack of commercial potential or that it doesn't really work in recorded format. So I don't doubt that there are some mindblowing sounds out there that I'm not hearing. Maybe some day one of those things will break through to a more commercially viable status and we'll say, "wow...a whole new form of music!" | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 502 Registered: 08-2004 |
Malcolm Mclaren was good at spotting the next big thing. In the late '90's he claimed karaoke bands would take over. It's kind of come true. David Byrne: "Only one record, in this whole wide world Where Jimi Hendrix sings House Burning Down Another Elvis will not come along He got wasted but it's alright And everything is finite" Finite = Alright | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 826 Registered: 03-2005 |
Wolfgang and Kurt's comments remind me of the jaw-dropped awe I experienced the first time I played one of those Heartbeat Records anthologies of Soweto music in the mid 80s. Thanks to Paul Simon, who I'm not generally inclined to thank for anything, some westerners decided to go see what was going on musically in the southern portion of Africa. The recordings were already being made and records being pressed and distributed; they just weren't made for us. And they were fantastic. There will ALWAYS be something like that going on in other parts of the world and they will save us from stasis. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 181 Registered: 08-2006 |
Don't get me going on African music - I probably have 300-400 African music CDs and cassettes jamming my shelves – but Randy's point is well taken. In a weird way, listening to music that's not Western pop of some sort cleanses my listening palette. It might sound strange, but Thomas Mapfumo or Ali Farka Toure or whoever help me not get burned out on what's going on closer to home (and, of course, they're magnificent in their own right). As long as we're on the subject, if anyone's interested in obscure sounds from Africa, I highly recommend this blog: http://bennloxo.com/ The writing's great, and the music he posts is usually very rare and very eye-opening. | ||
| spence Member Username: Spence Post Number: 1073 Registered: 05-2005 |
Randy hits the nail on the head for me, if it sounds good... surely that's all that matters? Its funny looking back as per Matthias' thread, the influence thing, all the music I have taken part in over the years, I suppose musically the influence on me from past masters did not stretch beyond stuff that at the time was more than 5 - 10 years old. What I mean is in 1984 in my first ever proper band, my influences were Echo and the bunnymen, XTC, Josef K (that didn't fit in very well), Simple Minds (due to the drummer's obsession), maybe Sparks and Orange juice. Then in the groups I was in from 87 up to 93, chief influences were REM, Smiths, Kinks, Josef K (again never really fat!!!), Blue Aeroplanes, Magazine, Hugo Largo, Pixies. Then 93 to 96, Suede, Reggae esp dub, Iggy, Heroes & low)(Bowie). So I suppose "Is there a new trend yet to be discovered, from my personal experience, no. It will always be influenced by recent times, in fact I suppose I have to hold a candle to groups eing influenced by New Wave and Punk as they have over the past few years, they sure are looking back further than I ever did. I think you really need to go back to the likes of Robert Johnson and the like to really have a chance of doing nbew things. With the Winnebago Orchestra, in my own little world, what I would say, we know we're not in the slightese commercial, it really is doing things for the craft of it rather than if things fit in, and thankfully we live in an age where people are more tolerant of pretty nuch anything, as long as it sounds good, dare I say, thanks be to the music press. God I am confused now sorry. |