Best rock band ever, but from a new perspective.

Discussion in 'Art & Culture' started by Fraggle Rocker, Sep 18, 2006.

  1. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    The thread on "Best Band Ever" has gotten pretty long. Let's look at it a different way.

    Almost all of the "classical" music that is today considered truly "classical" is roughly 75 to 350 years old. Only a couple of composers like Richard Strauss and Ralph Vaughan Williams created music during my lifetime that critics, fans and musicologists agree is both "classical" in style (whatever that really means) and great enough to take its place among the works of Bach, Mozart, Chopin and Tchaikovsky.

    It's really remarkable for a piece of music to retain its appeal that long. It helps to be entirely instrumental. Even in the "popular" vein, the swing of Benny Goodman and the ragtime of Scott Joplin can still connect with us. But singing styles change with the times. Few people besides nostalgia buffs and the survivors of my parents' generation care to hear the pop tunes of the early 20th century sung any more. Older vocal works like operettas and grand opera have avid but very small fan bases. (Don't try to throw "Carmina Burana" at me. It was written in 1935, making it roughly contemporary with George Gershwin and Billie Holiday.)

    Still, a few "songs" from earlier centuries survive, generally with their composers' names forgotten and now passed on as "folk" music. "Sheandoah" from America, "Blackjack Davy/Gypsy Rover" from England. The oldest I know of is "Greensleeves," which has been continually translated into more modern English, probably dates to the Crusades, and is surely a tribute to the legions of camp-following prostitutes. After all, how does a lady get green sleeves?

    So let's take a longer perspective on this question. Which bands or compositions from the rock era will people still remember, much less respect and appreciate, hundreds of years from now?

    I have a couple of suggestions to start the list.

    One is the Beatles, but not for the reasons you're thinking. Check out the children's section of your music store. You'll find songs like "Yellow Submarine" and "Hey Jude" on contemporary albums of nursery rhymes. No artifacts of our culture are more enduring than those of children because we carry the memories of our childhoods forever. I've read that a popular children's game in modern Europe is mentioned in the writings of the ancient Romans, in almost identical form. Some of the nonsense syllables that people coo to their toddlers over old Celtic-sounding melodies are actually Gaelic lyrics passed down over the centuries by English people who were raised by Irish nannies but never learned the language.

    The other is of course Pink Floyd. You saw that coming because I've noted a couple of times here that "Dark Side of the Moon" has been on the Billboard Top 200 for 33 years and they had to arbitrarily drop it to get it off the chart. The grandchildren of the people who first heard it love it. It's easy to predict that when it's been around for merely seven decades like Ravel's "Bolero" or a century like Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra," it will... well it will still be around. But how about when it's as old as Bach's Brandenburg Concerto?

    So, my friends. Those of you who say Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix or the Rolling Stones or Lynyrd Skynyrd are your favorites. That music is as old as Pink Floyd and it is still very popular. But what do you suppose people will think of it in 2040 or 2070 when the purchasers of the original vinyl are gone? Or in 2320? Will they think about it at all? Will they even remember it?

    And those who picked more recent stars like Guns n Roses. Same assignment, but tougher for you.

    The people who picked new bands like Green Day, you're off the hook. You're just telling us who your favorite band is and that's cool. No one has the perspective to place something that contemporary into a future historical context.

    And keep it interesting. If you think this music will endure through a couple of new eras, tell us why.

    Hmm... I don't think anyone mentioned Bob Dylan. Think his songs will endure? Hank Williams? Elvis? This is the kind of stuff I can see becoming future "folk music."
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. alain du hast mich Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,179
    You're right about Bob Dylan, he will not be forgotten for a long time. But unfortunately not in the way you meant. His songs will be studied by historians, but no longer loved by music fans who can no longer relate to his views on contemporary events.

    I believe that good jazz songs have a chance of surviving, unless the change towards electronica continues indefinately.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. thedevilsreject Registered Senior Abuser Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,812
    most of the mid 70's and 80's rock music is already being forgotton. take a trip into a school and now you will see that most children have dance or hip hop on. There is no led zeppelin, no GnR and no pink floyd. Soon rock music will be a thing of the past, it's losing its appeal. Another thing is take a look at films, most of the music now used in films is not rock music but again its dance and hip hop. I fear that in a few generations rock music will fade into the darkness
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. spuriousmonkey Banned Banned

    Messages:
    24,066
    I was born in the 70s and I have never even listened to Pink Floyd other then the stuff I was forced to listen to on the radio. Too pretentious. I doubt many people will listen to it in a few decades time. Same for David Bowie. When I was in the Army I came accross suddenly with a bunch of David Bowie lovers. The early stuff. It was just out of place in the late 80s. Already.

    The stuff that will be remembered is the stuff of simplicity and directness. This doesn't mean the song in itself is simple of course.

    They will play the beatles. They will play queen.

    They will not play britney spears. Maybe a bunch of retro-hippies will play pink floyd or Rush.
     
  8. thedevilsreject Registered Senior Abuser Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,812
    i think that the level of music at the moment is so poor that next to none will be remembered soon
     
  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    Children have never been good barometers of the arts. They tend to prefer easily accessible works because they haven't developed the mental context to relate to subtlety, complexity, dynamics, depth or sheer length. When rock and roll first came out and it was all "Tutti frutti oh Rudy" and "Dip dip boom boom get a job" and "Fe fe fi fi fo fo fum I smell smoke in the auditorium" the younger kids thought it was great fun. Kids kept tuning in rock stations right up through the early Beatles and Stones.

    Acid rock lost them but heavy metal with its cartoon lyrics and parent-enraging power chords brought some of them back, and the kids who really had an innate liking for music as an artform tended to appreciate the folk rockers and the singer-songwriters. Then art rock, progressive rock and fusion really lost them.

    Today rap, hip-hop and the style I call red noise metal like Korn are bringing youngsters back with their technical simplicity and urgent beat, and a kid-pleasing attitude ranging from Let's Party to Let's Get Laid to Let's Stick It To The People In Charge.

    But this music is still rock and roll. I find no reason to classify it as a new genre any more than I would reggae. Like reggae it has more of the defining attributes of rock--especially a driving backbeat and lyrics about rebellion--than some of the long works of the mid-70s like "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" or "Carry On Wayward Son," which are staples of "classic rock."

    Rock is jazz and hip-hop is rock. The dance music you refer to is 100% rock and roll, just ask any musician who has to learn to play those songs.
    I started this thread with a reference to the music which is now called "classical." Beethoven, Rossini, Bizet, Stravinsky, Elgar, Grieg, Dvorak, Copland. This is not simple and direct music. A few simple and direct popular songs like "Greensleeves" and "Home Sweet Home" endure and eventually become "folk songs," but only a few.
    As I said, some Beatles tunes have already become nursery rhymes so they will probably be around for thousands of years. But Queen? I'm not arguing with you but it seems that you're arguing with yourself. "Bohemian Rhapsody" is holding up almost as well as "Dark Side of the Moon"--but it's a really complicated piece.

    Pink Floyd, Rush, Yes, Genesis, Kansas, Gentle Giant, King Crimson, Renaissance, Jethro Tull, Nektar, UK... all the (mostly British) progressive rock bands as well as the other bands who ventured into the genre for one or two albums like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath... Yes, a lot of people called them "pretentious" at the time, and worse. The people who wanted to listen to music with their feet and couldn't tap in 7/4 time. "Middlebrow" was a common adjective. Still, much of it was deep and rich and had substance. Challenging to play and challenging to understand. Dynamics, themes, layers, counterpoint. Exactly what people today say about Bach and Satie. At that time there were still a lot of amateur musicians among the fans and they loved it.

    I wouldn't be so quick to assume that future music lovers, free of the context of the disco/headbanger/rap era that immediately followed and appealed to audiences who no longer wanted to think about their music, won't find this stuff as exciting as we did.
    Every generation of elders has said that about every new generation of rock music from roots-rockabilly on forward. There were people who said with sincerity that they thought the Beatles were the worst thing that ever happened to music. Popular music is popular music, meaning that most of its appeal is shallow, narrow and easy, and isn't likely to connect with anyone but its target audience and certainly won't be remembered once its target audience is dead or even grown up. Most of these new young artists simply need to mature like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin did. Some of their predecessors who have been around long enough to do that are making really good music, like Green Day and Audioslave. If you look into the second tier of musicians who have stayed true to their vision and therefore not achieved mass popularity, you discover astounding artists like Radiohead and The Mars Volta.
     
  10. Roman Banned Banned

    Messages:
    11,560
    Up until the late 19th and early 20th century, this type of music was commonly played by people around the United States. Then the elites made a push to make it elite music, and it was taken from everyone. The same thing happened with Shakespeare.

    What's considered great music is entirely dependent on culture norms at a current time, and who's trying to sell what.
     
  11. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    19,083
    Never liked Pink Floyd.

    My bet is on Nirvana. They are hummm classic. In these parts every kid who plays a guitar knows at least one song by Nirvana, even if they were mere toddlers when Kurt Cobain was alive.

    I and my friends are enjoying Jethro Tull and Patti Smith a lot, also Aerosmith,
    but I don't know about hundreds of years.
    Patti Smith is quite intellectual and her lyrics are great, but the minus is that she is not so well known.
     
  12. Fathoms Banned Banned

    Messages:
    244
    As a twenty-something I would be perfectly comfortable listing off all the standard answers (the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, I love them all as much as my Dad's generation) however I think it would be more interesting to stick with what I really know well, what I'm still growing up with. These aren't necessarily my "favorite" bands, though of course most are in that range, just modern stuff that I think has a chance at some sort of longevity...

    Sigur Ros and Godspeed! You Black Emperor will likely have a lasting effect as influencial bands as well as critic's reference points. Most don't know Sigur Ros but those that do know them well. Their songs are among the most poingant ever crafted, there aren't many bands who can be that sonically ambitious and still retain the powerful emotional resonance of more straightforward bands. Ágætis Byrjun is on par with Ok Computer as a candidate for the "Dark Side of the Moon" of the modern era (obviously not in terms of popularity though). Godspeed! You Black Emperor have taken an ensemble of classical/rock instruments and made some of the most epic, dark music imaginable. I think both these bands have a shot at still being known 25 years from now. Hopefully Sigur Ros will still be putting out albums then too!!!

    Radiohead, Mars Volta, and Jaga Jazzist are all skilled bands that specialize in the atmostpheric. Radiohead fearlessly pushing the envelope of what is acceptable for a "rock" band to do. The Mars Volta are making really massive sounding progressive rock not seen since the glory days of Yes and Rush, but they will probably not acheive the recognition or widespread acceptence while they are still around (very much a love it or hate it band). Jaga Jazzist are single handedly making jazz cool again, by fusing it with gorgeous electronic flourishes. I can see them acheiving some manner of relevency years down the road.

    Bjork, Neko Case, Elliot Smith, Kaki King, and Sufjan Stevens as solo acts have compiled impressive discographies that have their own cult following. Bjork has pushed the boundaries of what can be done through the experimentation of her compositions, as well as pushing the medium of music videos by working with many visionary directors (with the visual medium being a very important tangent to music this day in age). Neko Case and Sufjan Stevens are brilliant songwriters/performers who only seem to be getting better. Case's straying away from the conventions of the typical country sound and into darker, less predictably structured songs has greatly benifited the quality of her music. Stevens' is a musical savaant making the most epic folk music I've heard in my life. Elliot Smith (R.I.P) is the modern Nick Drake. Someone whose popularity won't reach it's peak until decades after his passing. I'm also including Kaki King in this list just because she kicks so much ass.

    I don't really know if anything will be well known hundreds of years from now though. Countless recordings are released on an annual basis, I'm pretty sure most everything from the rock era will get lost through the din of time. I think the age of their being a handful of bands that achieve worldwide popularity as well as critical acclaim are on the down turn. There's more niche genres out there than there ever have been and music is also more accessable than it ever has been. I can't think of a single band formed post-Nirvana that might acheive the longevity and enduring popularity of the Rolling Stones or any other of the big bands from the 60's and 70's. There are still plenty of bands willing to shoot for that stadium sized rock sound. But if they ever achieve that type of popularity it'll be more of a passing trend than something that echoes through the ages. But I guess every once in awhile one will crop up out of nowhere.
     
  13. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "commonly." Before the Electronic Revolution--or at least the brief flurry of pre-electronic automation just before it that gave us the player piano and nickelodeon--people only had access to music if there was a reasonably accomplished musician in their midst. For a lot of people that was Cousin Gertie's charming harp recitals, the pianist in the saloon, or the church choir. Unless they lived in a big city--and most people didn't back then--they might get to hear something by one of the "great" composers a couple of times a year when an orchestra or opera company came through town, or a few more times for smaller ensembles and soloists.

    A typical performance by a traveling band was primarily the popular stuff the musicians could master, with the piece de resistance perhaps being one concerto or one suite from an opera or ballet that they were able to practice until they were pretty good at it.

    What we call "classical" music became the music of the elite because the rest of us suddenly had access to recorded and broadcast music. The average person can now listen to performances by professional musicians any time they want, and a good many people appear to be listening during almost every waking hour. They voted with their wallets, radio dials and browsers and it turns out that "classical" music is not really all that popular. This gave rise to the term "popular music" to describe what the majority of us like to hear except on rare occasions.

    However, as I've noted, pop music tends to be of its time. Vernacular language, topical themes, technical simplicity, no dynamic or thematic structure. This works against it being popular for very long. Most of it is forgotten in a few years, very little of it is picked up by an ensuing generation, and only a vanishingly small fraction from any era endures as long as works of substance like symphonies, concertos, or even operas do.

    So I guess I'm asking two questions.

    1. Which of the blatantly "pop" songs of the rock and roll era will be the "Camptown Races" of the 21st century, the "Matty Groves/Shady Grove" of the 23rd, or the "Greensleeves" of the 29th?

    2. Do any works of more length and depth, like Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," Nektar's "Recycled" or Pink Floyd's DSotM, transcend their time and space and the musical taste of their audience, so that people looking for something longer and deeper than "Camptown Races" and "Shady Grove" 350 years from now will be attracted to them?
     
  14. Roman Banned Banned

    Messages:
    11,560
    Fathoms–

    Of your list, I think Radiohead will be the only one with real staying power. Elliott Smith is dead. Sigur Ros, Mars Volta, Bjork are just to inaccessible to really hang around. They're too much of a niche market, a niche that may not be there in 4 years, much less 10 or 50.

    Fraggle–
    Well, I really don't have much to respond to that with, other than "oh that makes a lot of sense, I wish someone had explained it to me like that before."
     
  15. Fathoms Banned Banned

    Messages:
    244

    You may not be taking everything into consideration Roman. The music culture is such right now that any niche can be a very different animal than a mere trend as it might have been in the past. Bjork has already amassed a devoted following over a thirteen year long solo career, and I don't really see any reason to think her music lacks the substance to still command a following for another thirteen and beyond. Historically an artist or band hasn't had to sell a ton of records to have a credible amount of relevence or influence. The Velvet Underground only ever sold a handful of albums, yet thier place in rock history is venerated to a higher degree than most of the bands that outsold them by the millions. I think the electronic age is going to harbor similar examples over the next few decades.

    Today, a niche can be a wonderful thing, it can be music that grows and evolves over time as it's own demi-genre. I look at Sigur Ros as already part of the causal legacy of Pink Floyd, as well as being part of a movement that started in the early 90's with bands like Slint. Even niche artists are all part of a larger organism. Too strange for mass consumption perhaps, yet it's that distinctiveness itself that will lead to a certain amount of reverence over time. We're not explicitly talking about what will have staying power on a vox populi scale here. Most hugely successful rock bands of the moment are simply just playing power chords while going on about boring relationship problems. I think there may be more room for music that doesn't appeal to a mass audience to have a lasting impact, even if it is only too that small crowd of devotees (Classical Music doesn't exactly rip up the billboard 200).

    The modern electronic age has already been shown to fascillitate the growing importance of the music enthusiast in pushing more avante garde music into the limelight. Most of the music I listen to I would have never even heard about or given much of a chance in 1995 (and most of my freinds it's the same). There is alot more personal freedom to go outside the boundaries of what gets played on radio this day in age, and with that, you won't have to be the next Queen or Led Zeppelin to still have an audience decades after your heyday. Unless Al Quada bombs the internet, there's way to much documentation for quality "niche" music to simply die. I think this is a great thing. It would be rather silly if Radiohead were the only band of the past ten years that went down as doing anything interesting (and nothing beyond Ok Computer really being aknowledged as more than a footnote at that).

    niches = wave of the future!
     
  16. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    The Mars Volta is much bigger in Latin America. Don't sell them short. They are, after all, called "the Puerto Rican Radiohead."
     
  17. Roman Banned Banned

    Messages:
    11,560
    But what happens when everyone who listens to Bjork dies? I highly doubt new generations will pick up Bjork and go "oh wow, this is good stuff, let's venerate her to the degree of Bach." A handful of indie-kids-of-the-future will, but indie kids and indie kids-of-the-future don't really count as credible musical critics.

    Again, niche market. Bjork's not going to reach the level of reverance as Beethoven has. What happens when your cult following passes away?

    Granted, there are some bands that are going down in rock-and-roll history that didn't make it "big," like the Velvet Underground as you said, but they are still a musical footnote in a very young genre of music. Which means they're a long way from being placed alongside Tchaikovsky.
     
  18. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    Obviously we're getting into the limitations of the popular music genre, which is what I was driving at when I started the thread. A song like "Shenandoah" endures because the river is still there and the love people have for it binds generations together, something that cannot be said for blue suede shoes.

    Some songs stir us deeply in our souls, speaking of human conditions that are almost as timeless as a river: "This Land Is Your Land," "We Shall Overcome."

    I am really pissed off about the controversy over translating "The Star-Spangled Banner" into Spanish. We should be in awe of the fact that the United States of America as an institution reaches so deeply into the hearts of people who haven't even mastered our language. They want to share their love of America with us. Our national anthem transcends one of civilization's biggest stumbling blocks: the language barrier. Would that our people could do the same. This is a song that won't have any problem with longevity.

    But on to the other type of music that we call "classical." We presume that musicologists of the future will find "Dark Side of the Moon" to be in a class with symphonic music, or at least operatic, and that serious music fans will find something there that speaks to them across the centuries. Considering that we make the same presumption about some of the stellar compositions of the other subgenres of jazz that preceded and informed rock and roll, particularly blues and swing, I don't think we're being too presumptuous to wonder whether someone besides Pink Floyd and Radiohead will speak to them as well.

    One of the permanent changes of the Paradigm Shift (or the Age of Aquarius, Post-Industrial Era, whatever you want to call it) will be the continued ability of many more people to listen to much more music much more often than was possible before. It may be that a new tier of music fans will arise, bridging the gap between the "serious" ones who in our era listen to symphonies and the "consumers" who in our era listen to the Top Forty.

    After all, this is already happening. Look at the people right here who are speaking passionately and analytically about performers like Bjork and Radiohead. These are certainly gap-bridgers. The academics who write columns in the Art Section sniff at this music, but it gives the folks who program parties a headache.

    A friend dragged me off to see a bar band he loves a few weeks ago called Switched At Birth, a really good band it turns out, one of the best I've ever seen. In the middle of the evening they launched into a fifteen-minute set of Dream Theater! Turns out the place was packed with loyal fans and they loved it. Fifty people enraptured by a quarter hour of dense undanceable retro-progressive rock, by a group that was never famous, in a bar, in suburban Virginia!

    Just as the aristocrats and slaves of Ancient Greece could never have foreseen the rise of the Middle Class in the economy made possible by industrial technology, perhaps a Middle Class of music lovers is being created by the advent of electronic technology. And these people will carry Quicksilver, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Green Day into the future. And maybe Dream Theater.
     
  19. Fathoms Banned Banned

    Messages:
    244
    I never claimed Bjork would be venerated hundreds of years from now. I was merely talking about music that MIGHT have some type of impact or noteriaty in a few decades, and I explained that clearly. Your usage of "niche'" is starting to come across as rather patronizing. Most of these artists have more than a cult following (I'm not part of the Bjork 'cult', for example but I'm still a fan), or they are also widely respected and refrenced by critics who tend to have long memories. Who counts as credible music critics anyway? Stuffy Classical afficianados? Fraggle Rocker posed the question about what bands from the rock era will have a lasting impact, so rather than be boring and talk about the Beatles and Pink Floyd, I thought I'd put some different names out there that are more modern and that I'm familiar with and explain, indirectly, why the era of big mega rock bands, with univerrsally adored music, is dead. Furthermore, this is a completey different era and style of music than classical. Comparing the two is rather silly. Also keep in mind this thread isn't exclusively about artists that will have a lasting impact, but also about what are the best or personal favorite bands are, which opened the door for people like myself who aren't well versed in the Beethoven or Motzart, and don't feel like talking about how great the Beatles are for the fifty-thousanth time, to put their own silly stupid spin on the whole ting.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  20. Roman Banned Banned

    Messages:
    11,560
    Fathoms–

    I didn't mean to be patronizing. Music genres come and go, and when large contituencies of music listeners change their favorite bands as often as they change outfits, the longevity of that music is diminished. In my experience, there are a great deal of mediocre bands touted as 'great', simply because people haven't heard of them. It's the whole scene thing, which, IMO, is bogus. There's a serious fashionability to music, and I posit that a great deal of music that is popular now, won't be popular later.

    Take Neutral Milk Hotel. Incredible songs, incredibly powerful lyrics. Very moving music, I greatly enjoy their stuff. Few know of them. Fewer will know of them in the future. They ought to last, but there's not much of a reason to, as their market audience is exceedingly small.

    Think of these bands like endangered species in fragmented, endangered habitat. When you lose the habitat, you lose the species. And it's in the habitat's nature to change.

    Here was the bit of Fraggle's post I was trying to address:
    Stuff that's a lifetime or older than a lifetime. Real enduring stuff.
     
  21. Fathoms Banned Banned

    Messages:
    244
    Good debating skills Roman. You successfully hijacked the "evolution" metaphor and turned it against me. I conceed defeat (with a few qualifiers of course). I know Briteny Spears will always be more popular, as well as have greater influence, than pretty much anything I put up on a pedastal, but at the same time I'm not going to use that as a liscence marginalize music of more substance, even if nobody can agree on who the creators of said music are. It's too depressing to think that you have to be dead for a couple of hundred years and have an almost exclusive audience of nerdy intellectuals to warrent genuine elite status, or any kind of legacy. I have to believe not everything is going to fall into a black hole. I was more interested in taking the contemporary angle anyway.
     
  22. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    Britney Spears's popularity will wane unless she develops more as an artist. She seems to be content to be a pop star and her fifteen minutes are running out. Maybe she thinks she'll become an actress, I don't know. My wife taught me to notice the difference between beauty and cuteness, and to understand that cuteness never ages well, so Britney is not likely to have a long career. As for influence, I think she's done with that too. She has definitely had some, we might have her to thank for the entire jailbait-rock phenomenon. Christina, Jessica, Mandy, Avril... and ironically many of them have more artistic talent and some of them are not only cuter but more beautiful. I wouldn't be surprised to see Avril in particular have a real career as a singer-songwriter.

    But influence... Musicians pay attention to other musicians. Roxy Music hardly made a splash, especially on this side of the Atlantic, but practically every New Wave band seems to have learned to play by listening to Roxy Music albums, from Talking Heads to The Cure. Their style is practically a genre now.

    Evanescence gets the fame but they obviously cut their teeth on Lacuna Coil.

    Have faith. If your bands are as good as your musical instincts tell you they are, there's a songwriter out there right now whose work is influenced by them.

    Bach and Beethoven were acknowledged in their own lifetimes, and in fact the vast majority of the "classical" composers we venerate were. As I've said in previous posts, the only reason for the elitism of their fans is that up until very recently you had to be a member of the elite class to be able to hear music very often, much less difficult music that your precocious sister and the pianist at the corner saloon couldn't play.

    I'm brave enough to presume that Pink Floyd's music will withstand the test of time, and while they have a strong appeal to the nerdy their fan base is far broader.
     
  23. Fathoms Banned Banned

    Messages:
    244
    It seems as though the modern pop star has a much longer lifespan than in years past. I mean, if there were a God Britney spears would have flickered out in 2000 as a one hit wonder. It just shows the power of marketing dollars to get behind any performer and make them a household names (as demonstrated in how you didn't even have to say any of those girls last names). Out of all of those I think Christina Agulara has the best chance of still being around as a popstar in a few based simply on the fact she has some vocal talent and is willing to be more adventurous with her music. Britney and Jessica will be forgotten as quickly as the Spice Girls, and Mandy will probably have a good acting career. It'll be interesting to see what Avril does once she can't play the rebellious, more spunk than punk, teen world conquerer angle when she hits her mid-twenties.

    That's really all that matters too me. I don't care if anybody knows or cares about Sigur Ros now or ten years from now. I just hope musicians with some talent are inspired in some way by them so they can leave some degree of a sonic legacy that I can follow over the years.

    That's probably one of the best ways to stand the test of time. Having mass appeal. Pink Floyd came along at a time when there was still so much ground left to cover in rock music, so they really offered something new that alot of people were able to dig. This day in age I imagine it would be damn near impossible for anybody to accomplish what Floyd did ala Dark Side of the Moon. The only thing left is the Nirvana route, to take an existing genre, and somehow, against all odds, produce a massive hit that explodes throughout the music culture. Of course, it didn't hurt Nirvana's cause to have their frontman shoot himself at the height of the band's popularity.

    Classical music has hundreds of years of history going for it. It's pretty easy to be intimidated by that alone. I'm just of the mind that a two chord accoustic song with imperfect singing can be every bit as impactful and valid as a 30 minute symphony. The fact that the two chord song will be forgotten in the blink of an eye shouldn't diminish it's value.

    The irony about Classical music of course, is that although I'd agree with anyone that says Classical music is pretty much the most intellectual and rewarding forms of music it's really not all that exclusionary. Most people are fans of it without even knowing it. Many of the most poignant moments in television and movies have a wonderful classical score backing it up, conveying all of the emotion and intensity of the characters struggles to the audience. How much worse would Stars Wars be with a hip hop soundtrack? It's funny how such diametrically different forms of expression could work so perfectly together. So in it's own weird sort of way, classical music has a mass appeal. Even if quite alot of it is subliminal.
     

Share This Page