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Scott
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9/30/2015 9:36:46 PM
Some will think I'm foolish for typing this
but I'm going to anyway cause I tell it like it is.
I was away for a couple days for my realtime business. With me I took CDs for the newest Kayak Big 25 show to check it out on my long drive. This sort of thing, countdown shows, were something that were big in my youth. I never missed Casey Kasem during the years 71-74 or so which were the first years I got into popular music on the radio.
Now when I look at the charts from back then, I can't believe how they were packed with hits. Remember top 10s with American Pie, Let's Stay Together, Without You, and Heart of Gold. All playing on the radio at the same time. Contemporary Top 40 to be blunt has been shitty for years now, but it wasn't then.
So anyway we get to the top 10 on Kayak and we have these songs coming one after another by Piranya, Ice Giants, Salim Nourallah, James Harker. All absolutely great, classic songs. Melodies that are great, that are original. These folks are meant to be stars. This music is so much better than the current mainstream, it's comparable to those magic days I mentioned above. We had 2 songs which debuted highly on the 25 by Dead Bed Bad and Alex Siegel which are clearly in the league with any song I've heard since the turn of the century.
Maybe I'm the only one who sees (hears) this but I'm surely the only one crazy enough to say it. Great original music excites me and acts who have come onto this site since the relaunch are basically better than any acts anywhere. I know this to be true, the task is to turn people on to what's going on which is no easy feat. It's been so long since great music ruled the day that it's almost incomprehensible what's taking place right before our ears.
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Zeeza
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9/30/2015 10:22:17 PM
Yes, it's almost incomprehensible what's taking place right before our ears and what we see. Almost, that is,is a mysterious world. As I, remember it, 1999 was a digital portal, leading music into a very magical realm.
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9/30/2015 10:32:47 PM
I've said this before and I'll say it again. You can't generalise about the quality of 'current mainstream' music unless you listen to it.... and I don't.
It's not because I don't want to or that I have a paradigm that it'll be bad, it's more that I don't know how to find it. The radio shows I listen to are still playing songs from the last millennium and there are no Pop music shows on the mainstream TV channels.
Having said that I do occasionally hear something that grabs my attention but mostly it's produced to within an inch of its life
The thing you have to remember here is that music may have changed but so have ears and general lifestyle preferences - people are looking for different gratification from their entertainment these days.... maybe that's why everyone thinks covering their beautiful bodies in ink will make them happy .... (Old UK Lady)
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Scott
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9/30/2015 11:52:08 PM
People often point to mainstream popular music and state that this is what people are choosing. I don't believe that's true in a general sense. Maybe some people are thrilled with the current top 40 but I think a lot of people unfortunately just accept what music they are exposed to for better or worse.
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10/1/2015 3:58:11 AM
It's not just people"accepting" what they're exposed to but more that music doesn't have the same function or importance as it did - it's more fashionable to SAY you like certain artists and songs than to actually listen to them. No different in my day except there was much more exposure to current music and less distraction from the electronic world back then.
I liked just about everything I heard, [and I include some pretty dire songs too]. My enjoyment was reinforced because I heard the same songs everywhere, radio, shopping malls, dance halls, concerts, record shops. I knew the tunes and the lyrics and could join in, I'm sure those of us of a certain age cling to these song memories as symbols of the joy of yoof. But there was a lot less going on in life generally as I recall.
I may have been exposed to music but I wasn't exposed to nature, literature or World affairs and I never had the same values as my elders - these things have been elevated to greater importance now. Music is not so relevant to my life aside from its creative aspects. In fact I'm getting tired and bored with music altogether these days, even the new songs that you rave about Scott... I agree, it's refreshing to hear a band with artful integrity, but I don't remember how their songs go or even what they're called for longer than a minute - so maybe I shouldn't be commenting on it here.
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Scott
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10/1/2015 5:04:59 AM
well, one of the products of ,many being exposed mostly to mediocre mainstream music is that music ends up mattering less to the masses.
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10/1/2015 6:10:03 AM
Music matters less but why is that such a big deal?
Do we really need a constant glut new bands trying to do what has already been done over and over?
Take a tip from Mother Nature, every new generation of birds sings the same song, they have no desire to improve on perfection.
There comes a point where novelty wears thin. I say, find a good song, play it to death then go and have sex or eat some chocolate and tweet about that :)
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Richard Scotti
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10/1/2015 7:20:23 AM
---- Updated 10/1/2015 7:25:03 AM
Could it be that many people (not all) tend to gravitate to the music made by their age group? For my mom it was Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. For me it was Dylan and the Beatles. For young people it's John Legend or Bruno Mars or whoever. Maybe it's a biological imperative to stay loyal and form a lifelong emotional attachment to the music of your youth. To pit all of these styles against one another is somewhat subjective. Each style has it's own best and worst and it not fair to compare the worst of one with the best of another. Proof of how it all comes full circle is Dylan doing an album of Sinatra songs. Bringing it all back home, once again.
(And let's not forget Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett. Who knew?)
But as far as the situation with great talents never getting their fair shot at success ~ I don't have any answers. Life is unfair. All you can do is your best and work for change. Some say TV is the new music. But they just smoked my eyelids and punched my cigarette.
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10/1/2015 10:49:26 AM
Hello. This is George Harrison speaking. I'm afraid I don't understand. Seems an accurate and fair statement, that. You'd sooner be foolish for not saying it. But it's okay, you said it, and the largely inane pile o' crap that walks around calling itself "mainstream" knows it's been called out. Presently it looks at Kim Kardashians large protruding buttocks and forgets what was being talked about. Meanwhile, we do the thing we do, which is to say we do the shit out of it and don't sweat the little shit like Lesley said. Whether it's a new one, or a well recorded old one, damned if Thousand Eyes isn't horribly good, the fact that it's going on here, oh look, I'm making John jealous, I have a bloody brain too in my ethereal non corporeal state as well John.
Basically, all we have to do, we all at the Magical Land of IMP,
is keep doing whatever it is we're doing.
Can't get an idea? We covered that. Stand there and wait for the shit to hit you.
Good luck bad luck? Inhale... exhale...
It's the art of dying you know, once you lick that, you can piss on the lot of it.
said George Harrison, scouting for attention.
Once you're dead you're past it, but that somehow hasn't stopped us.
All Hail Our Mighty Mum, Lesley. Thank you Lesley.
Oh shit, now I'm making her blush.
Well Look,
here's the dynamic you need to keep in mind....
Yes, it's real. So get past the 'is this really happening?' thing. Yes. It is.
And we just keep doing it.
Sooner or later, it's going to get so fucking good and hot and bright,
that it'll reach critical mass. Some idiot in some paper real or cyber will
write about it as the new "Kardashian Ass" or whatever it is they call it,
And then John will say "We're IMP, we're Bigger Than Kim Kardashian's Fat Ass."
Love, George. The very nice one. Unless you're a mainstream puke launcher,
in which case I don't wanna bloody know you anymore.
Hare Krishna
~GH
2015
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10/1/2015 11:01:52 AM
---- Updated 10/1/2015 11:02:59 AM
Hmmm. What you said is pretty accurate. What would be the foolish part exactly?
Did you type it with your toesies? That would on the one hand appear foolish,
but in actuality be pretty fuckin' talented if you could do it.
So... I see now we're talking about a general decline in music quality level....
Yeah everybody loves their own period till it's that time of the month,
but a fundamental shift happened along the way, where music became more a weapon than a work of art. A lot of people now wield it as such, and then they stand there and act like it's all that, and if you don't agree, they'll jump on stage
and take the mike from you and yell at Beck. Or whatever.
Here, you wanna see talking about the freakin' illiterate elephant in the room?
Elephant STOOOPID.
Really. Asides from the beauty and aesthetic perfection of the music
we all remember, being all but lost in a quest for the 'perfect scary noise'....
Everybody really got seriously fucking lazy.
It's easier to make crap. And somewhere along the way...
I'm neatly suspicious of the time immediately following Lennon's murder,
little by little, it's like the artists with heart in mainstream stopped trying,
thus allowing the whole thing to shift into a big sinkhole of stink.
Didn't happen all at once.
And mind you, I myself have made some of that noise.
Just to see if I could do it. And I can. I even did it well, got a hit or two out of it.
But I still love the power of exhilaration that music can have
when it is firing on all cylinders.
Now, here's more foolish....
It's My Fucking Life's Mission...
To Help Usher In The Next Wave Of REALLY REALLY Good Shit.
Not like the mainstream shit they got now.
The shit we barely remember and when we hear it we go, YEAH....
and....
"what the fuck happened?"
I call it the Emperor's New Noise.
That is Nakedly Awful.
There. Now THAT, Scott, is how you do foolish.
Ta-DA!
I'm American Lesley Jane and I flashed my boobs and approved this message.
Nyeah Nyeah.
Meep Meep...
ZOOOOOOMMMMM......
~L
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IMPoster
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10/1/2015 11:03:54 AM
Just saw GH's words there, Hahahaha! "We're IMP, we're Bigger Than Kim Kardashian's Fat Ass." Hey Scott, there's your new slogan!
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Scott
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10/1/2015 11:34:36 AM
I think I'll go post that on our Twitter page right now to see what the reaction would be. haha
You know, I've probably gone around saying music sucks in this era more than anybody in the world. But I was wrong. The music is just as good, the best of it just doesn't ever see the light of day though.
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Scott
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10/1/2015 11:41:16 AM
By the way, speaking of stars, check out the lady artist currently on top of the featured songs list, another dynamo has arrived on the site.
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