Just an observation

Larry

Larry

"Uncle Larry"
First of all, I hope everyone feels kind of the same way as me regarding this.

Last night it occurred to me that holy crap did I grow up with some insanely great music...from birth to about age 30.

I was born in the last days of 1958. Shortly afterwards, Motown started. I heard my share of 50's music in my first years. On the radio, driving around with my parents. Phil Spector. Elvis. My dad liked Sinatra. Ray Charles. That right there would have been enough. In the 60's there was the Wrecking Crew, and the staggering number of great acts they recorded for. The Beach Boys. OMG that's all I need, really.

Whoops, I forgot to mention the Beatles. And Chicago. Creedence. Hendrix. Wow, I must be dreaming. Then there's the whole British invasion. Pile it on baby. The Stones, The Who, Cream, The Kinks. There was Stax and Muscle Shoals in the States. Sam and freaking Dave is the most soulful music I ever heard even to this day. All this stuff was going on simultaneously. I never really realized how blessed I was to be shaped by all that until last night.

There was some great rock music in the 70's, when I really came of age. Zeppelin, Bowie, Elton, Rod Stewart. Bruce Springsteen. Deep Purple, Jethro Tull. Skynyrd. The Allmans. Kansas. Yes. King Crimson. Music to me seemed like it was growing in leaps and bounds, with all the great fusion stuff, Return To Forever, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Billy Cobham...I left so many out.

In the 80's I discovered blues and that really rocked my world and kind of took over my life. Hot damn was I lucky for what I was exposed to. I'm very thankful.

Somehow I missed out totally on jazz.

AM radio was GREAT in the 60's.

FM radio was even more awesome in the 70's

I heard Bermuda do "Another One Rides The Bus" on Doctor Demento's radio show the very first time it was aired. (And many times after that)

Music as far as I could tell was on an uphill climb since America started, and really started accelerating near the 1900's, and didn't really stop until IMO the digital age hit, but that's another topic.

I hope everyone feels the same as me about the music you grew up with.
 
I think everyone has a special place in their heart and upbringing for the music they grew up with, and generally regard it as the 'best'. Just as our big-band-era parents didn't like Elvis, or the Beatles, etc., we tend to not like today's music. But, consider how well '60/70s and even '80s music has held up and is appreciated by much of today's youth. In the '60s, we weren't fans of music from 30-50 years prior. In hindsight, that early recorded music is certainly memorable, and the oldies and classic rock and new wave eras have stood the test of time. But will today's music hold any value in 10 or 20 years, or will the kids just keep looking backwards?

Obviously there are some standout exceptions. But there were far more memorable songs and artists from 25+ years ago, than in today's assortment of singers and bands. I'm not too out of touch, but I can't name any songs by Justin Bieber, Demi Lovato, or even a comparatively 'legit' artist like Ed Sheeran.

Bermuda
 
The 10 year younger guys and gals I studied with felt just as deep of a connection with Coldplay as I did to the stuff I grew up with.

I can say that there's less modern stuff that I connect with, but honestly, it was the same back in the day. I was selectiv and didn't follow the fashionable stuff. I should be way into all the grunge stuff like my friends were, but I really wasn't.
 
Quick "I am at work" thoughts....

There has always been-and will always be great music and musicians who produce it.

The 20th century made it progressively easier for people to "find it" and hear it.

All of those great musicians had to make it throught the "funnel" of the system before they could be heard by the masses. Obviously, being a funnel-not all made it and reached our ears. Thankfully many did.

In our youth, typically, we have the time and the interest to seek out and acquire music. For many if us that opportunity fades quite a bit as we take on more repsonsibility and interests. Perhaps we get a little lazy and find our need for music it easily satisfied by returning to our lersonal tried and true?

I have no doubt that there exists great talent world-wide right at this moment. I have no doubt I have easier access to a huge pool of talent at my mousetip. It IS there waiting for me to discover and enjoy.

There is more good music available to us today than we had access to in say 1970....without investing in great effort to travel the world to find it.

I have no reason or excuse to exclaim "music sucks today" anymore than my father did in 1969.

The only reason I could think that would be because of my own laziness and lack of effort.

The downside of so much music being available is that it is almost impossble for a large number of stand out groups and artists to be heard. There are just too many voices competing to be heard....
 
In my opinion (with few exceptions, i.e. Nirvana) rock music went down after the 1980's. I'm about to turn 50 and just started getting into Led Zeppelin recently. The 60's and 70's had great music. However, I'm partial to the 80's. But I can't see too much current music being "classic rock" in 30 years.
 
I feel lucky that way too. Different generation, but most of my teen years were spent in the 90's and damn did we have some good "real" music in the 90s. Grunge, alt, and rock were in a pretty serious heyday and things had been getting "heavier" in the rock scene through the 80s. Even the rap we had back then was just so smooth and musical unlike a lot of the "gangster" stuff now days which seems to be just weirdly sort of rhythmical speaking and being a hard ass. I miss the stuff like Snoop's early work; just dripping with style and smooth while sampling some sweet old funk records.
 
My household was full of Big Band as my dad played saxophone, my mom sang, 78 RPM records on the old turntable, then there was some country as my mom was raised in the hills of WVa. My family would travel to Upstate New York until I was 13 and that was big band with my grand dad and my two Uncles. Then like you, came Motown, and then the British invasion , and life was great. 70's disco was OK because I liked to dance, but then after that, down hill. As a young teen, I used to do my homework to classical music. And you can have most of todays.
 
My early childhood that really shaped how I listen to music was dictated by my jazz loving parents, who were listening to what my jazz trumpet playing Uncle was feeding them. So I actually listened to people like the Four Freshmen, Louie Prima, and early Maynard Ferguson before my sister started bring the Beatles into the house. It kind of slanted me towards being a musician rather than just enjoying music to be socialable. So I think I got it all.

But like everyone else, I lose touch with stuff from the 90s-onward. Although I did like Brittney’s “Toxic” ;).

I do try to be open though. Being a Luddite curmudgeon is a pretty lonely existence.
 
I agree and lots of great comments. My Mom, god bless her soul, was one musical lady-one tap dancing, piano playing lady from classic to be bop to you name it. She put music in all my families heart-kids, grandkids, great grands. I was reading an article about people who don't like music-I mean it's like a genetic trait. I can't imagine-that really is a genetic defect-I know that sounds harsh. But a world without music I just can't imagine.


As an aside-damn Larry I didn't realize you were so old dude. I was born in 55-I was thinking you much younger. I thought I was hanging with the young crowd ;) All my juvenile humor has been wasted on the wrong audience (so from now on it's all old people humor LOL :)
 
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I'm a child of the 70s and 80s - born in 1970, graduated HS in 1989.

There was some awesome music in my formative years - classic rock ruled in the 1970s, there was some arguably decent stuff from the 80s, even with the pop scene.

The 90s brought about a change in the classic rock scene, that IMO started to die in the late 1990s.

Today's pop music, is IMO trash. While I suppose I can appreciate the level of production going into it, it's formulaic, it's repetitive, and it doesn't say the same things as the music of my youth, particularly my youth of the 1970s.

Right now, again IMO, the "best" music a person can get their hands on is all coming out of the indie rock scene. Bands like Weatherbox, Into It/Over It, Polar Bear Club, Intronaut, Cloudkicker ,etc - those are the bands to dig into and listen to.

There's another band in that scene that I also like - Have Mercy - but I'm slightly biased due to the fact that my son is a member and co-wrote the last few projects. :)
 
The 90's themselves were amazing, and really that was the last generation things could stay that way. Online music sharing came onto the scene and the recording industry almost immediately lost it's marbles now that we weren't beholden to them for our entertainment access.

The actual music of today is more varied than it EVER has been. We the people are deciding what we want to make, distribute and listen to. Without an industry putting stuff they want in our faces it's harder to make out an overall trend other than the way overproduced formula stuff that they're still trying to pump out.

Who knows what the next 20 years will bring!
 
I'm just a few months older than Larry. Neither of my parents were musical, but they loved to dance (even won a few contests). There was a lot of different styles of music played around my house. When I was a baby, my mother would put a stack of records on the hi-fi (before stereo) and set me in front of it. As long as music was playing, I wouldn't move. That old hi-fi was my baby sitter.

Growing up through the end of the 50s until now, I learned to love most styles of music. I still struggle with rap, but have heard a little that is okay. I'm the one that turned my oldest grandson on to the Foo Fighters!

Just to make a post an encyclopedia....My grandmother had a beauty salon in a shopping center. One day as she was working on this little old blue-haired lady, some guy drove by with the stereo blasting. A lot of the ladies in the shop started making comments about how that wasn't music, just a lot of noise. The little old blue-hair said "Oh my, you're SO mistaken! I've played with the Atlanta Symphony for over 30 years! What these kids are doing with music today is fantastic! They're doing things we never dreamed of!"

I always try to keep that in the back of my mind when I hear new music. A lot is not my cup of tea, but I respect the constant innovation.
 
There is just as much good music today, if not more. The difficulty is finding it. I’m glad many of you have and enjoy the connection you have to the music of your youth, but it also makes some of you to appear to be stuck in time.

Even within myself, I find myself looking and sounding old. I don’t have the connection with EDM that so many have. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it in my youth or would appreciate a great act of today, my problem is I cannot embrace it as and don’t understand how it’s considered live music. This picture alone blows my mind. What are these people looking at, a dude pushing a few buttons?
 
Jml said:
In my opinion (with few exceptions, i.e. Nirvana) rock music went down after the 1980's.
Click to expand...

Yup. I'm 50 and, with a few exceptions, draw the line at 1985. From 85' to 90', rock became too formulamatic and stale.
 
One thing that is radically different today than when I was a kid was the great unifying factor, radio. The Top 40 then appealed to the great majority. Now you have to search to find the good stuff because arguably it isn't in the Top 40, generally speaking.

So you have millions of different people searching for millions of different niches. The result of that is, there's no real common thread to unite everyone. Everyone has a favorite band that no one else has heard of. I exaggerate to make the point. Everyone is doing their own thing, compared to when I was a kid. No one had to search then. It was all right there.

Again, I'm not passing judgement, just observing.
 
There was a Psychology Today article or something a while back that explained why we like the music we grew up with.

Typically, when we're about 13 or 14, our brains are entering a very important stage of development, and we tend to release a lot more dopamine during that stage than others before or after it, and thus we are attaching a feeling of joy, happiness, or sorrow to it and that sticks with you. Similarly, we tend to attach music to memories during that time period and we'll always look back at it fondly EVEN if they weren't that great. So, largely your music tastes are formed when you're about 14 and you never really truly grow out of it. You'll likely find other forms of music at other times, but you'll almost always hear a song from way back when and it will move you differently because of that.

Even being a millennial I'm finding myself falling into that as well. Although during that time I got into my dad's music a lot and was listening to The Police, Zeppelin, Rush, and The Who, I still get nostalgic when I hear stuff like Wolfmother, Velvet Revolver, Black Tide, Green Day, White Stripes, or anyone else who was pretty popular during that 2005-2009 period. Of course now I listen to jazz, funk, and fusion mostly, but Jesus, even I'm not exempt from nostalgia.
 
Jml said:
In my opinion (with few exceptions, i.e. Nirvana) rock music went down after the 1980's.
Click to expand...
Interesting - of the musical groups that had their heyday in the 1990s, Nirvana was one I never particularly cared for. I like Green Day, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Beck, The Offspring, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Weezer, but never really cared much for Nirvana.
 
Larry i'm gonna leave this here for old dudes. i think it represents what studio recording did for great musical stylings and wonderful vocalising. in the eras of which you mention people honed in on mastering their craft a thing that gradually got lost as time moved on. https://youtu.be/ZXsB1SFyCCY
 
I was 11 in 1963 when The Beatles appeared on the radio here and it was the first time I really connected with music. I listened to music in my early youth but never connected.

Some of the music that followed was amazing to me and some, not so much.

I remember being 15 and seriously wondering if I would start liking Frank Sinatra etc when I got older. I didn't :)

I never got stuck in an era/decade. I quit playing in the early 80's and quit paying attention to music but would still passively listen to the radio. I would hear things that I liked, loved even, through the 80's. 90's, 00's and still today.

It's been an interesting transition to watch because you can hear how new music is influenced by the older stuff and once in a while you hear something that is very fresh.
 
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