Has music "been done"?

[glastoman417]

I'm not going to moan about the headliners, as a) there are plenty of these threads, they are boring and c) I've never been fussed about the pyramid headliners and usually go and see someone else (though I did controversially enjoy Gorillaz last year, and the wonderful Stevie Wonder), that said I do think Beyonce is really scraping the barrel.

Anyway it got me thinking about who I'd like to headline, and the music scene in general.

Now firmly in my 40s I feel like I should be moaning that today's music isn't as good as in my day, but I'm going to break the mould and complain that music is exactly the same as it was in my day

What I mean is, imagine if (off the top of my head) Elvis had started releasing his songs in the 30s, the Beatles in the 40s, the Sex Pistols in the 50s and New Order in the 60s, or Massive Attack in the 70s, already revolutionary when they hit the scene anyway, they'd have sounded like they were from another planet 20 years earlier.

But I can't think of anything around at the moment that would particularly have stood out from what was around in the 90s. Case in point, listening to the Festive 50 on Dandelion, I enjoyed it like a comfortable old paid of slippers, but if it had been the 1991 festive 50 I wouldn't have blinked! (Though to be fair perhaps listeners to dandelion are nostalgic for what Peel used to play, rather than embrace his pioneering spirit and quest to find something new).

So I'm wondering if there is some underground, cutting edge music out there that's slipped under my radar? Or is Opportunity Knocks, sorry X-Factor as radical as it gets?

[Bradders]

Like them or not, nobody sounds quite like Klaxons' first album, although it has already aged badly.

Yeasayer's Odd Blood is a fantastic blend of experimental sounds that I actually find very easy to get into (although it seems I'm alone on that, it sounds pretty poppy to me anyway).

I don't personally know of anyone who sounds like Holy f**k, WU LYF, LCD Soundsystem or 65daysofstatic.

The Streets (even if only the first album is especially creative) could also lay claim to genre-defying music.

Animal Collective continue to sound mental and consistently different.

I think when Arctic Monkeys came out they were pretty original, The Libertines, too. Obviously as they both just do 'rock/punk' type guitar music they aren't obviously 'out there', the amount of bands that have gone on to copy them show how influential they are.

Whether any of these would have sounded revolutionary if they were around from 1980-1991 I don't know, I wasn't born.

One other thing. Some of those would sound revolutionary because of advances in technology. New Order's synth sounds would have been alien 20 years earlier (I think), as would Elvis' electric guitar.

Edited February 12, 2011 by Bradders

[LondonTom]

Klaxons + Dubstep, but even dubstep is getting a bit shit and adding in loads of rocky guitars (I like it, but its merging back into the indie to point where we just going arive back at similar sounds to the Klaxons, Synths and guitars)

[Atterz123]

Let me take an excerpt from Cracked.com

"The Complaint:

"Two words: 'Justin Bieber.' Turn on a classic rock station and you can listen for hours without hearing one bad song. Now turn on a Top 40 station and try not to gouge out your ears. Today's music is just a bland product mass-produced by corporations. Don't take my word for it -- ask any music critic. They'll tell you the stuff that sells today is generic garbage. Not the music back in the day, like Zeppelin, Elvis, The Beatles, Pink Floyd ... bands like that would never top the charts today."

The Reality:

There are two things that skew our cultural memory on things like music.

First of all, you have the fact that the crap from previous eras gets forgotten, leaving only the great stuff behind. Those songs on classic rock stations are obviously cherry-picked as the best and most indicative of an entire era; it's not a random sampling of all the music available at the time. Modern rock or pop stations, on the other hand, have to play whatever's come out in the past six months or so.

So there is a filter applied to the old stuff. Even most of the music in Mozart's day was bullshit. And because it was bullshit, nobody felt the need to keep copies. And what was preserved isn't played today. Because it's bullshit. So it's easy to look back at Mozart's era (or the 1960s, or whatever) and assume that because only the classics survive in our memory, everything made back then was a classic.

The other problem is we assume that what gets remembered over time is whatever was the most popular. Not true.

For instance, what survives from the Vietnam era (thanks mostly to Vietnam movies) are songs like the badass protest song "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival and "Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones. Both were released in 1969, after the war started going bad.

Now look at the Billboard year-end singles charts from 1946 to today. The top song in 1969? "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. Let us quote the entire lyrics of that song:

Sugar, ah honey honey

You are my candy girl

And you've got me wanting you.

Honey, ah sugar sugar

You are my candy girl

And you've got me wanting you.

I just can't believe the loveliness of loving you

(I just can't believe it's true)

I just can't believe the one to love this feeling to.

(I just can't believe it's true)

Ah sugar, ah honey honey

You are my candy girl

And you've got me wanting you.

Ah honey, ah sugar sugar

You are my candy girl

And you've got me wanting you.

When I kissed you, girl, I knew how sweet a kiss could be

(I know how sweet a kiss can be)

Like the summer sunshine pour your sweetness over me

(Pour your sweetness over me)

Sugar, pour a little sugar on it honey,

Pour a little sugar on it baby

I'm gonna make your life so sweet, yeah yeah yeah

Pour a little sugar on it oh yeah

Pour a little sugar on it honey,

Pour a little sugar on it baby

I'm gonna make your life so sweet, yeah yeah yeah

Pour a little sugar on it honey,

Ah sugar, ah honey honey

You are my candy girl

And you've got me wanting you.

Oh honey, honey, sugar sugar ..

You are my candy girl .

At least Britney Spears is most of a real person.

"Fortunate Son" got no higher than No. 14 on the charts. "Gimme Shelter"? It was never released as a single at all.

Go ahead, look down the list. There is some great music on there, but it's mixed in with a lot of stuff you've probably never even heard of. And do you know what you don't see on there? Queen, Led Zeppelin and a lot of other great musicians. Groups that are well-remembered now, when classic rock radio stations wouldn't be caught dead playing some of the shit that outsold them. Even Elvis and The Beatles are only on there twice, tying for the most No. 1 year-end singles with none other than George Michael.

And that's not even considering that, thanks to the Internet, we have far more access to all kinds of niche music genres and independent artists that we'd have never heard in the past.

And as for the critics, you have to keep in mind that there will always, always be critics who hate whatever the latest trend is. Rock music as a whole was blasted pretty harshly when it first got popular. Melody Maker called it "one of the most terrifying things to have ever happened to popular music." The Daily Mail decided to up the ante by mixing in some good old-fashioned racism: "[Rock music] is deplorable. It is tribal. And it is from America. It follows ragtime, blues, jazz, hot cha-cha and the boogie-woogie, which surely originated in the jungle. We sometimes wonder whether this is the negro's revenge."

Hell, even The Beatles weren't safe. The Daily Telegraph said that they were "something Hitler might find useful."

Holy shit, music critics of the 50s and 60s sound oddly like the Glenn Beck of today.

Why? Because it's easier to be negative. That part will never change."

http://www.cracked.com/article_18983_5-complaints-about-modern-life-that-are-statistically-b.s._p2.html

Thought that may prove an interesting read. Anyway I believe a lot of unique music is around today, a lot of which springs to mind has already been stated by Bradders. I think more revolutionary bands are coming through due to the internet allowing us to share music so much faster than previously done before, and now we have the choice of all this music we are more divided in our music taste. Consider in the 60s Beatlemania may have taken off partly because they were one of very few acts around. In this more diverse and competitive market we are really spoilt for choice. On that note, i'll leave you with a band i find to be unique and very enjoyable from three hugely talented musicians;

*apology for long post*

Edited February 12, 2011 by Atterz123

[rubenz]

Good post above , some good points there

OP you should check out the new Kanye West album - I thought it was brilliant and pretty original stuff..

[Gregcharlie]

Would say in terms of good things that have seeped into the Radio One playlists, would be at the moment James Blake and Sleigh Bells, both of who are, in my opinion brilliant and something different.

[glastoman417]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll check them out, and great post Atterz123 - a really good read and makes some good points. I think a lot of nostalgia is selective memory. Good point someone made about technology too, I was maybe spoiled by growing up around the time that synth and sampling technology went from very basic to what it is today,.

I do like some current bands, Joy Formidable, Chappel Club, Indelicates and so on, but they do sound a bit too familiar if you know what I mean.

The last act that I really got into was Roots Manuva, and that was when I first heard him in 2004!

I'm not really moaning, even if there isn't a lot of originallity about (and maybe I've just not seeing it) there is a huge back catalogue to explore, and the internet makes it pretty easy. For example my other half's dad is into Northern Soul (indeeed we're going to the wheel club in Manchester tommorow) so I'm getting into that!

[RoyC]

*apology for long post*

[Gregcharlie]

http://pitchfork.com/features/why-we-fight/7923-why-we-fight-10/

this is also quite an interesting read

[Spindles]

Great post Atterz123, also nice to see the daily mail has been a nasty ass racist rag for so long.

[Buff124]

You could give these guys a listen... http://www.archive.org/details/JanxTheGathering .. from Wirral ..

[dirk4danger]

Like everything else us humans touch, music has been discovered, enjoyed, and exploited until there is nothing left.

It is all derivative.

Yes, it is 'done'.

By that I mean only the type of music we currently enjoy (1950s onwards 'pop' 'rock'). Something else will replace it. Possibly driven by technological change, possible societal change, who knows. The only certainty is that things will not remain the same forever! Change is the only constant.

[Milbert]

Dubstep makes me feel my age. I've loved nearly all forms of dance music since the late eighties, and I just cannot get into that. Listening to it I think I know how my parents must have felt when I playing old skool rave in the house in 1991

[JC-Mo'Fucka]

Dubstep makes me feel my age. I've loved nearly all forms of dance music since the late eighties, and I just cannot get into that. Listening to it I think I know how my parents must have felt when I playing old skool rave in the house in 1991

[Lizzim]

Dubstep makes me feel my age. I've loved nearly all forms of dance music since the late eighties, and I just cannot get into that. Listening to it I think I know how my parents must have felt when I playing old skool rave in the house in 1991

[irons]

Of course it hasn't. It just moves with the times. John Lennon said there is an impossible combinations of notes, we just have to find them.

[dirty_dog]

what you have at the minute is a lot of different combinations. Rap is being mixed with rock, indie is being mixed with folk or dance.

[ghandi]

As we all know , music is objective. Tastes will dictate weather or not you think there is anything new out there. The fact already raised that music is so widely available in all forms these days makes it harder to find something new, when it could be buried, and because of all the media driven drivel that is massed produced it becomes harder for these artists to be brought to light. But this makes it all the more enjoyable to track down, and when you find something you enjoy and think "wow how did i miss that" it becomes clear that you cant really find everything out there alone. A lot of music is passed by word of mouth , is underground, and when it surfaces you find you've missed half of it. I have many musical tastes, probably owing to my age ( nearly 50), going through some decades and i am still finding missed delights. New trends? Is music regergitated?( spelling). Yes it is in its different forms and i get the original posts point that say, Punk was not regergitated ( if you pardon the pun ), this though is and has been formed by changing political landscapes and the way we live, as do musical rends and styles.

I think that new stuff from old established artists that still make cutting edge stuff, like Radiohead and PJ harvey, Bjork ( all 90's bands i know), will keep me interested. But as i have said any new stuff i find that becomes 'popular', will probably passed on by word of mouth.

Excuse the drivel !!!!!

[Festival Liam]

You should check out Scouting for Girls and Bruno Mars. Genre defining.

Just kidding. If you are looking for stuff that sounds totally different to most of the dross around .. try Sleigh Bells for something new. Or the first Yeah Yeah Yeah's album (you've probably already listened to it), Klaxon's first album, M.I.A has some different sounding stuff, the good half Empire of the Sun's album or Imogen Heap's 'Speak for yourself'. For stuff that is perhaps not genre changing, but purely amazing, obviously Arcade Fire but also Janelle Monae.

[FunkyDenz]

Music is technologically driven, and with people's laptops being capable of acting as home studios, there's a lot more music being made. That unfortunately means there's a lot more crap music being made, making it harder to sieve through it to find the real gems.

There's also the issue that record labels no longer nurture artists, they sign them up, and if they don't succeed straight away, they spit them out again. Musicians are forced to get "proper" jobs, they either give up their musical dreams, or they don't have the time they need to perfect their skills or write their songs.

Two bands in recent years which have stood out to me, have been Late of the Pier (a synth heavy indie band, but when I first heard them it sounded fresh and vibrant) and Vampire Weekend (OK, it is harking back to Paul Simon's Gracelands album, but it is still different from vast majority of music in the charts).

[4AssedMonkey]

Creativity is not dead and nothing has the ability to surprise and delight me more than new music.