[roscoe65]

This title thread refers to pop FM top 40.

If we’re only talking about Top 40 then I can name dozens of crappy songs from the last 60 years.  “Pop” music, as in music fed to teenagers and young adults to serve as the soundtrack of their lives, has traditionally been pretty devoid of musical virtue.  I will second the assertion that there is a lot of really great music being written today, but finding it requires more effort. 

[Emsquare]

Point taken. It's a subject that keeps being rehashed and I responded to the title and didn't watch the YouTube it linked to. My bad. Sometimes I read people making assertions that there hasn't been any good pop music since the 80's. And they do things like using Jimi Hendricks as a mic-drop argument for "Best guitar player EVER". What does one even say to that? It's kinda pointless to get into it on a forum. If you feel that way then I guess you're entitled to your opinion. Now if you mean commercial radio has become worse since the 80's then I can find common ground. Commercial radio and top 40 is open to all kinds of criticism.

[Larkston Zinaspic]

But... The internet has changed everything. Some of the very young musicians can make a study of their inspirations so easily nowdays. I would argue that the level of musicianship is reaching new heights because of that. If you can find it. People have just as much passion for music as they ever did. Victor Wooten impressed me as much as any bass player I am familiar with and he isn't done yet. I remember having my head turned by Stanley Jordan because he played like nobody I had seen before. Now it isn't quite as unique. Evidence...

https://youtu.be/sMbW4sptVnE
https://youtu.be/sMbW4sptVnE

I think you make an interesting point here, although I'm not sure that this level of virtuosity is any less unique inasmuch as it is just more visible these days, due to the fact that any kid can post a video on Youtube and be seen worldwide. I didn't know anything about Vittorio Camardese until recently:

https://youtu.be/UmTQYquqxSY

Obviously Dr. Camardese was a very gifted individual who most likely had no reference to this technique beforehand that became almost ubiquitous many years later after Eddie Van Halen. And even Eddie was very critical of the imitators who came after him, accusing them of sounding like typewriters with AM radio tone. Music as an athletic sport rather than artistic expression can be a downside too, to this kind of a trend.

As for Hendrix, this kind of points to the other side of the argument. He is often cited as the greatest guitarist ever, and I think even he would have disagreed with that. I think Jimi was obsessed with getting the sounds out of his head into the world, by any means necessary, and for him it was usually due to having a guitar in his hand. And the guitar has been such a lead focused instrument for so long now that people forget what a great rhythm player Jimi, and Eddie, both were. You can even go back further in time to hear Barrios playing his own music on Youtube, and of course the Youtube commentators reply with numerous objections to his technique. But he was a composer with a guitar (who hasn't been alive since 1944), not a technician looking to be the next circus act. 

Anyway that's way OT. Let's hope the new generation of musicians will inspire us as serious listeners instead of being mere spectators.

[geowak]

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this but for many, many people the older one gets, so too does modern music get worse. It seems that the saying "the music was better in my day" seems to resonate with many people.

[Emsquare]

I think you make an interesting point here, although I'm not sure that this level of virtuosity is any less unique inasmuch as it is just more visible these days, due to the fact that any kid can post a video on Youtube and be seen worldwide. I didn't know anything about Vittorio Camardese until recently:

https://youtu.be/UmTQYquqxSY

Obviously Dr. Camardese was a very gifted individual who most likely had no reference to this technique beforehand that became almost ubiquitous many years later after Eddie Van Halen. And even Eddie was very critical of the imitators who came after him, accusing them of sounding like typewriters with AM radio tone. Music as an athletic sport rather than artistic expression can be a downside too, to this kind of a trend.

As for Hendrix, this kind of points to the other side of the argument. He is often cited as the greatest guitarist ever, and I think even he would have disagreed with that. I think Jimi was obsessed with getting the sounds out of his head into the world, by any means necessary, and for him it was usually due to having a guitar in his hand. And the guitar has been such a lead focused instrument for so long now that people forget what a great rhythm player Jimi, and Eddie, both were. You can even go back further in time to hear Barrios playing his own music on Youtube, and of course the Youtube commentators reply with numerous objections to his technique. But he was a composer with a guitar (who hasn't been alive since 1944), not a technician looking to be the next circus act. 

Anyway that's way OT. Let's hope the new generation of musicians will inspire us as serious listeners instead of being mere spectators.

Wow! Thank you for linking the video of Vittorio Camardese. That made me very happy. I am not surprised that I was oblivious of him. But it does speak volumes as to what we are talking about. Musicians and audiophiles have this tendancy to make top ten or top five or greatest ever player that no one compares to. It isn't really a fair comparison. I dabble in the guitar and that's what I tend to notice. It is entirely relevant to refer to benchmark artists that demonstrate new techniques and expressions that may not have occurred to mere mortals before. But elevating whatever artist to the rank of godhood is rather pointless. There isn't one. And I find that the vast majority of the musicians we may be passionate about are very humble about what they do. Even dismissive about the idea that they're doing anything special to begin with.

I found myself in an interesting argument with my brother with him taking the position that SRV was, hands down, a better player than Jimi Hendricks. I wasn't interested in trying to make points to the contrary. Was he right? Meh ... to some extent. But would there have been a SRV if there was no Hendricks? I don't know. Hendricks was a watershed player that changed the way electric guitar players thought about the instrument. As far as I know he invented that genra of music. As you know he was very uncomfortable with being portrayed as a guitar god.

When I first was trying to learn how to play guitar the resources for amateur students was pretty sparse. Take band class, pick up a set of Mel Bay's books and play with other people. If you weren't going on to study music in college or someplace like Berkeley that was about all you had. Not that a lot of people didn't go far doing something like that. But nowdays? Oh... My ... Goodness... I wanted to be Leo Kotkke. That isn't easy to figure out by yourself. Now? You can Google many fantastic videos that will walk you through it. The internet resources available nowdays one can only marvel at. Some of these 14 year old Pakastani kids are studying Chet Atkins and B B King and make it look easy. I think this bodes well for the evolving culture of musicians we are going to have in the years to come.

[Johnny2Bad]

This title thread refers to pop FM top 40.

Obviously I must have approached this totally incorrectly.

Can you explain what the difference is between pop FM top 40 and pop AM top 40, or just "top 40"? As far as I can tell, they are all exactly the same.

If it's FM only, that complicates the issue considerably, since where I'm from FM radio didn't play any top 40 music before about 1990 (it was album, not single, based), which makes for a pretty small sample size to compare to. At about that time a broadcast CD player was about $2000 a copy, so stations were just getting over their resistance to buying them, and weren't that eager to junk those paid-for turntables and paid-for CART machines (for the ads) just yet.

It would be another five years before the early adopters would start selling their 24-tracks from the recording studios and were still using DAT, ponying up for their first newfangled CD-R drives around then for $thousands (first released in Professional form in 1991 at who-knows-how much, but the first "low cost" consumer CD-R was released in 1995, and by that we mean December 1995, for $995).

[FullRangeMan]

Can you explain what the difference is between pop FM top 40 and pop AM top 40, or just "top 40"? As far as I can tell, they are all exactly the same.
Today they are all the same crap, but in the 80/90s AM used to play country music and FM international music and easy listening.

[Tyson]

Can you explain what the difference is between pop FM top 40 and pop AM top 40, or just "top 40"? As far as I can tell, they are all exactly the same.
Today they are all the same crap, but in the 80/90s AM used to play country music and FM international music and easy listening.

Yep, that's a direct result of the 1996 Telecommunications Act which got rid of a bunch of regulations around radio broadcasts, among other things.  So big companies like Clear Channel can come in and monopolize the airwaves, and as a result, quash variety.  Free market capitalism for the win, yo!  [/sarcasm]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_homogenization

[FullRangeMan]

Maybe the 90s was the worse era for good music in FM as a huge wave of screaming radio speakers man and woman took over the urban FMs in my country, this harmful influence came from the US radios, so some 10 years ago I noticed that on the Internet this had disappeared or diminished.

[Tyson]

Maybe the 90s was the worse era for good music in FM as a huge wave of screaming radio speakers man and woman took over the urban FMs in my country, this harmful influence came from the US radios, so some 10 years ago I noticed that on the Internet this had disappeared or diminished.

I think the title of this thread should be renamed from "The Real Reason Why Modern Day Music Is So Awful" to "The Real Reason Why Modern Day Radio Stations Suck So Bad".  And the link I posted before perfectly explains this.  Telecommunications Act of 1996.

[FullRangeMan]

I think the title of this thread should be renamed from "The Real Reason Why Modern Day Music Is So Awful" to "The Real Reason Why Modern Day Radio Stations Suck So Bad".  And the link I posted before perfectly explains this.  Telecommunications Act of 1996.

In my country there was no this 1996 law and happen the same misfortune to radio stations, unfortunately radio top 40 shape the ''music'' young artist compose.

[charmerci]

Maybe the 90s was the worse era for good music in FM as a huge wave of screaming radio speakers man and woman took over the urban FMs in my country, this harmful influence came from the US radios, so some 10 years ago I noticed that on the Internet this had disappeared or diminished.

I basically stopped listening to the radio in the mid to late 80's. In the 70's (as I mentioned earlier) big money got into the music industry. Then came disco and which obviously is dance music but it took over the radio waves. (Geez, even the straight-ahead rock n' rollers such as the Kinks and Rolling Stones put out "disco"/dance albums!) Grunge (Nirvana, etc.) simplified the music in the 90's, then rap followed by hip-hop took over. All through that period there were MOR pop acts like Whitney Houston, etc. that basically churned out pop song after pop song, pop album after pop album with big money behind it. Why bother with moody, creative or complex music like early Supertramp or the Moody Blues when it's so much simpler to write a 4 note, love song and still make millions? The average dope doesn't give a shit so why "waste" money and time when they lap it up like a thirsty dog?


Hence, our present situation.

[FullRangeMan]

It is said that the guilty of Break Dance creation was Herbie Hankook and his Head Hunters album released 1973 but I fail to listen how:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m3qOD-hhrQ

[JerryM]

I think the title of this thread should be renamed from "The Real Reason Why Modern Day Music Is So Awful" to "The Real Reason Why Modern Day Radio Stations Suck So Bad".  And the link I posted before perfectly explains this.  Telecommunications Act of 1996.

+1, although it's been iHeartMedia for quite a while, now.

[charmerci]

It is said that the guilty of Break Dance creation was Herbie Hankook and his Head Hunters album released 1973 but I fail to listen how:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m3qOD-hhrQ

I just listened to the first two minutes and I'm not very knowledgeable but a quick search shows James Brown was doing that at least a couple years earlier (I'm sure he was doing it much earlier.)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2D2oUNTbjU

[JerryM]

Oh, and speaking of iHeartMedia and how bad radio really truly sucks these days, iHeartMedia filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection a couple of months ago, with over $20 Billion in debt. Proving once again that it is expensive when people suck at their jobs.