h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It feels like only 35 years ago that I cursed radio DJ's for talking through the intros of songs I wanted to put on tape, with no opportunity to rewind to the start. To fail meant to wait for next week and hope that the song was still in the charts. The music industry around here reacted by introducing a home-copy-tax on empty recordables. So you effectively already paid them. Just checked and we still have this tax. It also applies to smartphones, pc's, USB sticks.

Ah, yes, the era of the mixtape.

You know, before there were tape recorders, teenagers copied down song lyrics off the radio. My mom and her sister had a method for learning the latest Andrews Sisters or Bing Crosby tune: they'd write down alternate lines as they heard them.

Not that easy when the hit of the week was 'Hut-sut Rawlson on the Rillerah'.

I still have a couple of cassette, but no way to play them, if indeed they are still playable

Try a second-hand, consignment, or even an antique shop. I have an old cassette player.

I had to rerecord my old mixtapes to be able to listen to those tracks again. Now I am trying to teach the kids what 'real music' sound like

That's a point. While at first I thought the sleeve meant that home taping means music as an art form won't be commercially viable in the future, but perhaps it meant something different entirely.

Perhaps it meant that by home taping we would unleash demonic forces beyond our comprehension or control and thus cause the record charts to be dominated by drivel?

What if we did, in all innocence and unknowingly, kill music...?

<BB<

You can't kill music. It's still there in your head.

As for the 'There was much more good music in the past!'. That is correct, because the past is much bigger than the present.

If all else goes wrong we can always sing our own songs and hope nobody takes cover.

Well said, Caiman! Even if we're only talking popular music, the selection is huge if you're not temporally provincial.

When the Beatles first came along, I couldn't figure out what the fuss was about. Songs like 'She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah' didn't do anything for me as a preteen.

But I already had an enormous repertoire of tunes in my head and on sheet music at my house. Most of it better than 'She Loves You', but not all. I mean, some of it sounded like 'Old Dan Tucker' or 'Who Threw the Overalls in Mistress Murphy's Chowder?', both of which are arguably musically just as bad as 'She Loves You', although the 'Overalls' song has more interesting lyrics.

Seems to me that Mistress Murphy used the same pot for washing and cooking then... (that probably would trigger some health and safety questions nowadays). Is this from the time when 'hygiene' was like meeting an old friend?

You've guessed it. (I have a weakness for novelty songs no matter what the era.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YurOViRPw34

"When the Beatles first came along, I couldn't figure out what the fuss was about.' [Dmitri]

The Beatles seemed to get better as songwriters every year. The stuff at the end of their reign was quite good. Elvis Presley's singing improved a lot, too. I listened to a recording of all his number one hits, in chronological order, and the improvement in quality was astounding.In any event, you can listen to the best of any artist and ignore the rest. The new stuff of today will have been winnowed and culled so that twenty years from now, the list of good stuff will be quite manageable.

Time also made sure you can now enjoy The Beatles as well as The Rolling Stones without being shunned by your contemporaries.