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

I love 6music as well. It's good to find a station with really good music and no adverts

I think someone asked earlier what happened to the vines and, if my memory serves me, they made a not too great 2nd album (that took many many years to make) and then broke up... oh well...

bye

>new music thats because its a load of rubbish , i mind when the top 40 on a sunday afternoon there was at least 20 - 25 great songs in there ,nowadays your lucky if there are 5<

Funny. I don't ever remember the charts being fullof anything other than puerile sh*t. It's in the charts because it appeals to tghe lowest common denominator, thereby selling more. Of course it's sh*t.

'New' music could mean anything you've never heard before. Expecting to hear anything worthwhile in the charts is like expecting to find nutrition in a macDonalds. At best misguided and at worst ridiculous.

<>


I dislike most new mainstream music myself, but at the end of the day that's just an opinion. In the 50's people were saying Elvis was rubbish, in the 60's the Beatles were rubbish... Sure, most of the groups around today won't be remembered 40 years from now, but how many of the bands who were in the charts in the 50s, 60s and 70s are remembered now?

<<'New' music could mean anything you've never heard before.>>

Exactly. If I went through my record collection and picked out, for example, the album 'World Downfall' by Terrorizer. Anyone who wasn't into metal would probably assume that it's just some new racket in the same style as Mudvayne and Slipknot, which is an assumption I've heard.

The album 'World Downfall' was released in 1989.

IMHO there has been loads of good new music coming out over the last couple of years, just most of it does not chart.

The Libertines, Stellastarr, Interpol, Bloc Party, Roots Manuva, Dilated Peoples.

Just a handfull of my fave acts from the naughties.

Agree with Blues that the 'top 40' has always been fluffy and mostly not very interesting. Yeah, the odd top 40 hit from the 60s-80s strikes chords within us, but usually not because of them being quality music. It's more like 'time and place' music - we like it because it reminds us of what and where we were back then.

Though of course there were always exceptions to the rule, as there are now.

When I was 10 and playing the Beatles non-stop my father used to complain about *THE NOISE* as he preferred Frank Sinatra.

My own personal music tastes start back in the 30s (or even earlier) with old blues and jazz musicians and also some very cool big band stuff. Benny Goodman's live recording of Sing Sing Sing at Carnagie Hall still sends shivers down my spine. As does Destiny's Child singing a cappella gospel.

To say that 'music is dying' is much like those of 'a certain generation' who also think society is going to hell in a handcart.

The other day I saw a documentary about a favela in Brasil called The Miracle of Candeal, featuring many fabulous Brasilian musicians. Music is as alive and thriving as it has ever been.

If one *only* looks to the top 40 for their musical pleasure then they will probably feel disappointed. But I think it has always been thus.


az

"todays music is know where near as good as it was in the 60s 70s in fact since the mid 80s there has been a decline

One of the top "music" shows of the 60s had cilla Black singing on it every week....pinky and perky...Max Bygraves...ah the good old days.

The 70s Shawaddywaddy, Stus Quo, Smokey the Rubettes yes the music was as good as the clothes.

After the mid eitghties all we got was the inovation of people like Nenek Cherry, Jazzy B and Dr Dre. Then in the 90s when hip hop started its rise to dominance all that we could expect is some upstart kids with no training and who couldnt play guitars but could use the technlogy to get their own ideas onto record...that's just wrong.

What we have to have is people with all the originality ground out of them by the pop music mill pumping out derivitive music like Oasis do. Proper Music....

I think the only thing I can smell death on 'round here is your *soul* tig

one love

No, definitely not! It depends on how you look at it. And also, it depends on what kind of music you like, indeed.
My favourites:

Paco De Lucia,
Al Di Meola,
Underworld,
Snowboy,
Franz Ferdinand ,
Norah Jones,
Sportfreunde Stiller,
there are a lot of wonderful soundtracks as well.

The thing is that there is enormous quantity of music these days. The market is vast. And if you simply listen to the radio you'll hear only a small percent of the music that comes out. You will hear the one that sells really good And in my opinion, that's not the best music you can hear these days.

I saw the question and immediately went to look at my CD collection. It's still there, nothing has died. And it all still sounds magnificent. The Who at Live8 doing Won't Get Fooled Again was just about the most exciting 8 minutes of live music I can remember, Note: I am under 40. And I'm not that keen on The Who.

I saw the Who perform live when I was ten years old. They were the 'warm up act' for Hermans Hermits. I was there to see Herman (swoon) and ended up being blown away by the Who.


az

I'm so old I saw The Who at Charlton

But didn't Floyd and The Who blow away the dross the went before at Live8 ?

Old men playing repetitive and dull music for other old people to enjoy. Really, how long can you stretch a song on for!

Was all the music in the old days so bad?

Thank god it's not like that anymore.

Totally, McKay. I had shivers when The Floyd were playing

I'm not trying to subvert the prevelent argument here that the charts in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s were mostly bobbins, as they are now, (far from it, in fact, as these are the records I'm about to mention are the exceptions that prove the rule,) but over the last few days I've listened to my 7" copies of the following records:

Laurie Anderson - 'O Superman'
The Associates - 'Party Fears Two'

Listening to them made me very happy, not just because they are great records, but also because they are both so damned *weird*. 'O Superman' got to *number 2*! What a wonderful world it is where that could happen, and could still happen, despite what you might think of modern music. There's still no accounting for an utterly strange single coming out of nowhere, capturing the imagination for a few weeks and then disappearing without trace again. Might never happen again, but on the other hand it could happen tomorrow.

The baffling one hit wonder. What pop music is all about.

Sorry. Went a bit off-topic there. As you were.

*Joy.*

Gary Jules, Mad World.

Is just one example of an unhyped record people liked OK it was written in the Early eighties but what of it people were saying music had died years before that too.

People have been saying that since music was invented. Every generation thinks that the music of the next is rubbish, derivative and not 'proper'.

In other words, everyone turns into their parents.

That's *my* chair.

Turn that goddamned stereo down...

I have to say the dreary and totally mindnumbing lineup at Live8 is a pretty good argument in favour of the proposition put forward by tig.

IMHO, anyone who claims that music is dying is in fact experiencing their taste in music dying instead. There is so much out there, and so much more available than ever before, that it's not even a real effort to discover really different or new music. As for listening to Top-40 or other such stuff, one gets what one deserves.

I personally seem to discover a new genre or subgenre that I want to explore nearly every year or less. Right now, I've been enjoying alt-country (I've just given up and started to use the genre/subgenre names that stick, though they never seem to fit perfectly) as well as re-discovering some really great old Texas/Oklahoma country and blues musicians from the 50s-60s. Not really bluegrass, just good ol' songwriting that's like listening to war stories your granddad used to tell, but much more interesting thanks to the style and music. And this is right after I got out of my IDM and minimalist 1970s electronica phase (isn't 'intelligent dance music' a stupid genre name by the way?).

- JD

I usually find Google a good way of tracking down quotations that I can half remember, but this time it's failed me.

"Parents are right about the music their kids listen to: most of it *is* junk.
And kids are right about the music their parents listened to: most of *that* was junk too."

TRiG.