JV wrote:

alz wrote:

After a little thought, I think the most irritating thing about this is the mingling with Fact/Opinion that is being stated.

There's also a clear age line being drawn. When I was younger (through the 90's) I believed that Korn, Limp Bizcut, Nirvana, Pearl Jam were all major players in the age of music. I enjoyed some Metallica, Aerosmith, even the occassional KISS song well after their premier days. All other music was shit! It's old!

However, you will reach a point in your life where you will attempt to maintain the youth connection through music, but will inevitably drift out to the other older music too. I began to notice the work of Jim Croce, Jimmy Buffet, Billy Joel, Don McClean (sp?), The Eagles, etc. I realized that older music had great value and listening quality. I didn't like all of it, some was too indicitive of the genre for me to fully appreciate. At some point, you'll expand your cultural education to a more mature point too.

For some comedy I put together a list of other people/things who "sucked" using your scale of nothing other than opinion, paired with them being the best/most successful at what they did.

Bill Gates sucked at making money.
Pete Rose sucked at hitting.
Nolan Ryan sucked at pitching.
The Yankees suck at baseball.
The Lakers suck at basketball.
John Wooden sucked at coaching.
Albert Einstein was an idiot.
Babe Ruth sucked at baseball.
Stan Musial sucked at baseball.
The United States sucks at war.
Antonio Stradivari sucked at making violins.

Jerry Sandusky sucked as Penn State's defensive coordinator.

Sucked and swallowed, I reckon.

Max wrote:

You get to work on that "Music of 1990's that Changed the World" book, AP.  You should be done by noon-ish.

Max wrote:

First off, the Beatles broke up when I was five.  So their music outlived the 60's in fine style.  The music of my youth might have sucked in comparison the 60's, but as my thread in music suggests, the 80's and 90's got worse and worse.  Maybe you are just envious that music of previous generations was better than the music of yours?

I give up.  You cant draw pictures on this board so me continueing post on this subject is pointless.  I still laugh at how offended people get when you simply state that you dont drool over 60-70 music and that the singers were not perfect humans.  I didnt call your mother a whore.  I just said that the Beatles suck.

APRTW wrote:

Max wrote:

You get to work on that "Music of 1990's that Changed the World" book, AP.  You should be done by noon-ish.

Max wrote:

First off, the Beatles broke up when I was five.  So their music outlived the 60's in fine style.  The music of my youth might have sucked in comparison the 60's, but as my thread in music suggests, the 80's and 90's got worse and worse.  Maybe you are just envious that music of previous generations was better than the music of yours?

I give up.  You cant draw pictures on this board so me continueing post on this subject is pointless.  I still laugh at how offended people get when you simply state that you dont drool over 60-70 music and that the singers were not perfect humans.  I didnt call your mother a whore.  I just said that the Beatles suck.

I know that, and I wrote that we just ignore this stuff now.  Some how the topic exploded while I was busy doing other things.

I laugh at people who get offended when I say I don't bow my head in respect to the generation that freed Europe from Nazism and stormed across the Pacific island by island until they reached Japan. I didn't call them a bunch of pussies.  I'm just saying my generation did awesome stuff, too.

truth artie. I'm not saying AP isn't entitled to think the Beatles suck.

Fors: I'm not saying that any specific song is great because you associate it with parts of a life. I'm saying that more than anything else we have, music is magical in having that ability at all. Personally, I don't listen to a ton from the 70's. Croce is really big on my list, I just loved the sound he had. I also don't listen to much from the Beatles, and I avoid the 80's like the plague. On the list of music I really enjoy, it's from the 2000's and 2010's. Even shit that I hated has been remade and made amazing (Listen to Seether's version of Careless Whisper, and you'll shit your pants for how a song that was that gay, can be that damned amazing).

AP the thing you're missing from the older generations that you don't specifically identify with at all, and probably the major reason you scoff at music as a whole is that there was no internet until the 1990's for public use. There was no Playstation, cell phones with applications, mp3 music players, xm satellite, directv with 700 channels, books and movies on demand and viewable from anything from a droid phone to a laptop (including a tablet). That's all shit that nobody had any access to until the mid 1990's and beyond, so going back into the 80s and farther back, you have no appreciation for how much of a role music actually served as a source of entertainment. It was one of the few venues those people had. I remember recording songs off the radio using my ghetto blaster and using cuts to make mix tapes of the shit I loved on the radio. I remember having to rewind a cassette to hear a song again. I remember also taking GI Joes, and rubber bands, and creating the best goddamned simulated war game a 7 year old could ever hope to achieve! Of course, I had no access to Call of Duty or Halo. If you decide to blanket out and tell me GI Joes also suck, expect a similar reaction!

Last edited by alz (11/08/2011 1:17 pm)

I have to admit that I enjoyed the earlier songs by the Beatles much more than the later ones.  I'm not overly enamored by Paul McCartney these days either.  Truthfully, I never liked "hard rock-head banger" kind of music & really detest that thing which pretends to be music, also known as RAP.  I went through a serious love of folksy ballads by Joan Baez, Melissa Manchester, Karla Bonoff & individual males singers on the same thred.  I used to think I could sing just like Barbra Streisand & had everything she put out.  I just wish she'd keep her big nose out of politics now.  Not that I didn't like bigger groups.  Loved the Moody Blues, Chicago & Eagles.  I want to be able to understand the words & melody!  I love most kinds of music these days - except for RAP & garbage that should be coded XXX rated!  I still think the old faithful stuff from the 1960's & some from the 1970s are the best & there will never be another time like it!  They were halcyon times

Last edited by Webstergrovesalum (11/08/2011 1:36 pm)

Webstergrovesalum wrote:

Loved the Moody Blues, Chicago & Eagles.  I want to be able to understand the words & melody!

I will share with you a secret, a secret so cool that someday, instead of writing a novel, building a house, and banging a supermodel, I'm just going to write an essay on it.  The songs of the Moody Blues--Days of Future Passed through Seventh Sojurn, anyway (plus "Driftwood" from Octave)--have a thinly veiled subtext that has not been commented upon, but it is pretty obvious once you see it.  It's like one of those dots paintings that look like nothing, until you see the secret image, and forever after cannot not see the secret image.  They're definitely not hippy dippy songs about peace, love, and understanding.

I believe that the generation that stormed Normandy and Iwo Jima displayed far more guts than the one that made the Walkman a household word, but then again they had a better hand dealt them, if sheer bravery is how you are going to judge a generation.  That doesn't seem odd to me to make that opinion.

Likewise I think the music of the 60's changed the world and none of us are sitting here positing whether the music of the 60's > 70's > 80's > 90s on a message board, unless the music of the 60's had some credibility to the claim that it changed the world.  Granted, like the generation of the 40's had a better hand, if you wanted displays of bravery, the 60's had a better hand if you wanted deep thoughts about society: civil rights movement, women's rights, birth control pill leads to free love, Vietnam War, assassinations of JFK, Malcom X, MLK, RFK, etc. but that doesn't mean that the musicians of the 60's didn't rise to the challenge, just as the soldiers of the 40's rose to theirs.

Last edited by Max (11/08/2011 8:01 pm)

Here's one I bought in my early teens & discovered my mother had thrown it away later.  Society's Child:-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QPF-duKQro

Max wrote:

I believe that the generation that stormed Normandy and Iwo Jima displayed far more guts than the one that made the Walkman a household word, but then again they had a better hand dealt them, if sheer bravery is how you are going to judge a generation.  That doesn't seem odd to me to make that opinion.

Likewise I think the music of the 60's changed the world and none of us are sitting here positing whether the music of the 60's > 70's > 80's > 90s on a message board, unless the music of the 60's had some credibility to the claim that it changed the world.  Granted, like the generation of the 40's had a better hand, if you wanted displays of bravery, the 60's had a better hand if you wanted deep thoughts about society: civil rights movement, women's rights, birth control pill leads to free love, Vietnam War, assassinations of JFK, Malcom X, MLK, RFK, etc. but that doesn't mean that the musicians of the 60's didn't rise to the challenge, just as the soldiers of the 40's rose to theirs.

Wow.  Just wow.  I suspect even Bob Dylan would be embarassed by this comparison.  Wow.

forsberg_us wrote:

Max wrote:

I believe that the generation that stormed Normandy and Iwo Jima displayed far more guts than the one that made the Walkman a household word, but then again they had a better hand dealt them, if sheer bravery is how you are going to judge a generation.  That doesn't seem odd to me to make that opinion.

Likewise I think the music of the 60's changed the world and none of us are sitting here positing whether the music of the 60's > 70's > 80's > 90s on a message board, unless the music of the 60's had some credibility to the claim that it changed the world.  Granted, like the generation of the 40's had a better hand, if you wanted displays of bravery, the 60's had a better hand if you wanted deep thoughts about society: civil rights movement, women's rights, birth control pill leads to free love, Vietnam War, assassinations of JFK, Malcom X, MLK, RFK, etc. but that doesn't mean that the musicians of the 60's didn't rise to the challenge, just as the soldiers of the 40's rose to theirs.

Wow.  Just wow.  I suspect even Bob Dylan would be embarassed by this comparison.  Wow.

Is this you intentionally misunderstanding everything I say because you like to hear me argue?!?

I don't see the issue.  No one is saying that the musicians of the 60's are comparable to the soldiers of the 40's.  The point is that if we can all agree that the soldiers of the 40's showed remarkable courage, then we can all agree that not all generations are the same.  Thus, APs contention that one generation's music is no better or worse than another's is no truer than setting up a straw man and saying no one generation has demonstrated greater bravery than another.

forsberg_us wrote:

I'm not sure what you think I misunderstood Max.  It seems fairly obvious to me that the statement "but that doesn't mean that the musicians of the 60's didn't rise to the challenge, just as the soldiers of the 40's rose to theirs" is a comparison.

Two pair is just as good as a royal flush if it wins the hand.  That's a comparison. 

forsberg_us wrote:

If it was meant sarcastically or tongue in cheek, then I must have missed that while trying to figure out of the "challenge" a musician in the 60s faced beyond an unexpected shortage of drugs/women.

Documenting the social change around them and inspiring young people to be part of positive change for the future.  Take the blinders off, Dude.  Lots of shit happened in the 60's and the musicians documented it brilliantly.

"they did a documentary on the supposed most average 16 year old in the U.S.  It was called "Sixteen in Webster Groves" put on by CBS. They came in & picked the school apart."

Thank you!! I watched that in high school, and I never remembered what it was named.