It may be just my perception, but it seems to me that groups today are based more often on one or two songs that make it big, as opposed to coming out with a new sound. That’s not to say that there aren’t groups coming out with their own sound, but these types of groups have almost always been relegated to obscurity due to their own sound not being palatable to the majority. There doesn’t seem (to me) to be such a wide acceptance to new sounds as there was thirty or forty years ago. New groups seem to me to be trying to find their place within existing sounds/styles/genres, thus their need to get one or more hits within that style.
I saw a video clip recently of Crosby and Nash doing backing vocals for David Gilmour, and they are looking totally ancient - frizzy white white hair on both.
I have never liked listening to Cher’s bellowing. I do not understand the attraction.
I haven;t really souhgt any remotely mainstream for the past year.5 (too much homework on trad to have time to) but the only rock bands I’d pay much money to see these days are Sleater Kinney, The Shins, and maybe Opeth.
Somebody mentioned craving “substance” a while back and finding it in classic rock. I think I grew up when Classic Rock had totally oversaturated radio and, if you were in high school, it was extremely difficult to find much else. So I burned out on it and can;t listen to 99% of it. That doesn;t make it bad, per se, rather, stuff I can;t listen to.
Radiohead was a fairly ground-breaking band. Too bad watered down knockoffs like Coldplay have gotten more popular.
Everyone’s in love with the Shins, recently. I’ve got several of their albums, and when I listen to them I say, “That’s good,” but I just can’t get all worked up about it. And when they come up on random in iTunes, I normally skip them. I’m not sure why.
The first time I heard Coldplay on the radio, I thought “Damn! Dave Matthews sounds cheesier than ever!” Yecch…
I saw Echo & The Bunnymen a few months back and the audience ranged in age from teens to people in their 50s or maybe even 60s…The vast bulk seemed to be in the 28-35 range. Good show, though. Ian McCulloch’s voice & hair hadn’t changed at all and Will Seargent really pounded out some fantastic stuff on his Vox Phantom and Fender Jaguar…
All the Post-Punk/New Wave bands have been reuniting lately. Talking Heads did a one-off reunion a couple of years back when they were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Gang of Four got back together recently and have been blowing all the young “it” bands of the moment off the stage at recent festival appearances. Depeche Mode, The Cure, and New Order are all sweaty old buggers now (especially New Order) but they’re still doing quite well touring and managing to write decent new music to boot. Elvis Costello’s still sounding fantastic…Nick Lowe has gotten praised for putting out “the album of his career” for his last three albums in a row…He put on a nice show in Portland a while back as well.
Camper Van Beethoven, Hall & Oates, Duran Duran, Madness, rumor has it maybe The Specials…There is money to be made among the late-30-something-ex-coke-snorting-hip-'80s-teenager-crowd.
The only band that hasn’t gotten on the reunion bandwagon is The Smiths and that’s never going to happen…
Back in the good old days, bands actually played their instruments, composed their own music, wrote their own lyrics. Then along came the record companies and shyte like “The Bay City Rollers”, groups who couldn’t actually play the instruments they posed with, but who the money-grubbing weasel record companies could hype to the barely pubescent market they targeted. Thus were “pop stars” born, as Wombat briefly alluded to.
The ‘mature groups’ still playing 30 or more years on have the benefit of all those years of playing and performing behind them, whereas the pop idols of today are, generally speaking, one-hit wonders that’ll rake in a few tens of millions for gits like the Sony Entertainment Corporation before they’re dumped and disappear into obscurity, while the computer-generated backing tracks and Stock, Aitken and Waterman-style poopy lyrics sadly endure.
The movie industry is very similar. Seems that Hollywood and its writers are incapable of producing anything original with any degree of quality, and thus churns out over-FXed chuddy re-makes to generate fresh income, regardless of the fact that the originals (starring actors who could act) are superior, even in black and white.
“They don’t make them like they used to” probably has more to do with the popularity of ‘the old supergroups’ today than fans having more disposable income in middle age, I reckon.
