When do you think that music deteriorated?

[coloradodem2005]

I would agree that there is always good music at any given time but it seems that it has reached a level of soullessness. Mainly because it is so corporate. So for me, I would say 1998. In 1996-1997, alternative rock was in its death throws. Soundgarden and Alics In Chains broke up. There were a number of good bands that gave way around that time and it seemed that we started seeing more Limp Bizkits and Kid Rocks around 1998. That and the stupid teen pop started getting big. That is my opinion.

[LastKnight]

1. two words: mmmm bop. nt

[crimson333]

4. well at least Hanson

wrote and played their own songs, which is more than most pop bands did.

[henslee]

33. And based upon their sheer youth, I give them a lot of leeway..

Like other (fogies)I may lament that musics gotten shittier, but I dont hold individuals accountable. I also think theres always something good out there. Just gotta dig.

I think Outcast is pretty amazing and mainstream at the same time.

[coloradodem2005]

5. That is about when I say.

I will give Hanson some credit. At least they play their own instruments, unlike the Backdoor Boys and their ilk.

[LastKnight]

8. sure they played thier own stuff, but they opened the door

for kids gettin into mainstream music, at least thats as far as i noticed... then came all the boy bands... and britney spears and the ones who came after her...

before hanson, there was rarley a kid in mainstream pop music at least that i remember (no, mickey mouse club does not count)

-LK

[wickerwoman]

35. We had "New Kids on the Block" years before Hanson.

And Tiffany was more of a proto-Britney.

I think they're a one-hit gimick act but I wouldn't blame them for boy bands. At least they had some soul and could play. They were homeschooled by their hippy parents who were in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica and taught themselves how to play listening to records.

[AmandaRuth]

22. the first time Elvis Costello played in my home town

i waited up all night to get tickets, and it was a good thing too, as it sold out in like 7 minutes (not kidding, it was the first time ever for Elvis in our town) I almost didn't get tickets because the person in front of me took too long picking out seats, which was almost excusable as it was for Elvis, but then i find out they were buying HANSON tickets. There is just no accounting for some people i guess. And we wonder why so much bad music is made.......

[Maple]

2. 1753

eom.

[Massacure]

3. I agree with the corporate part of it. The damn RIAA goes around like

They know what is good for the music industry.

For hundreds of years, musicians made a living by permorming live. Now they think a living is all in the CD.

{edited for spelling}

[stranger_with_candy]

6. When MTV

stopped playing videos.

[LastKnight]

11. woah, there was a time when MTV played videos? nt

[stranger_with_candy]

12. haha

yeah i barely remember it. and TRL does not count.

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

16. When MTV came into existance was the day the music died...n/t

[stranger_with_candy]

20. Video killed the Radio Star

[samplegirl]

31. Nasty Rap

Guys pointing the finger with there pants half on and there caps on
back wards.

[bbernardini]

7. It hasn't.

There's always been crap, and there's always been good stuff. This argument is pretty pointless, as there's no real base line to measure anything.

[Systematic Chaos]

9. It has deteriorated numerous times

but somehow it keeps rising like a Phoenix from the ashes. In my personal experience, the last year I could even remotely tolerate top-40 radio was 1988 but things started getting bad in about 1986. Then, alternative hit the scene big time in 1992 and I was glued to current radio stations again, until about 1997 when the alternative station in Vegas became something else. Similarly I think most of the commercially successful music from the 50's and early 60's is just godawful but then the British Invasion came along and ushered in a whole new vibe, though this is far before my time as I was born in 1969.

I'm just wondering when all the great indie and neo-progressive bands (not to mention all the surviving stalwarts from the 70's) will break big enough to warrant their own format. From the looks of things, I guess I won't be holding my breath on that one. :(

[69KV]

17. Yep I think you're right

It goes in cycles.

Rock as a new and subversive force in 1955 gave way to lightweight teen pap in the late 50s and early 60s. The innovation of the British Invasion, Motown, psychedelic bands, folk-rock, Woodstock rock, prog rock etc. evaporated around 1974-75 after disco and arena rock came along (fatal signs that things were going awry: "Kung Fu Fighting", "Billy Don't Be A Hero", and Kiss, Aerosmith, and Peter Frampton). The innovation from punk, new wave, early rap, funk, etc deteriorated into a synthetic pop formula and hair metal by 1988 or 1989 (fatal signs: Milli Vanilli, New kids on the Block, Poison, Stryper, Warrant...) Then of course there was the late 1990s and the boy bands :puke:

We're overdue for a new injection of talent and innovation into popular music.

[coloradodem2005]

23. I love early Aerosmith.

I would agree that in the mid-seventies things started going down hill but "Aerosmith", "Get Your Wings", "Toys In the Attic", "Rocks" are great albums.

[Nevernose]

19. 103.5! Oh, how I miss you!

Converted to the Kissy station or something, currently Mexican pop.

Vegas radio RALLY took a nose dive the year or two after, when 91.5 KUNV went all modern jazz, because they wanted better ratings.

We're now left with 92.3 and 107.5, and occasionally that 80's station owned by KKLZ.

[henslee]

10. when singles became the rage and the album no longer was an art form.

This was especially escalated during the rap era and during the download era. I think about two years in to the disco era, sometime in the late 70's was when it happened.

[Systematic Chaos]

13. Yeah, concept albums were great, weren't they?

Actually there are still bands out there who fashion music in that kind of format, but you would have to enjoy neo-progressive rock and prog metal to get anything out of it. For example, Dream Theater released an album a couple of years ago called "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" that was on two CD's. The first disc was five or six songs of a shorter length (by their standards that is, mostly around 8 to 12 minutes), then the whole second CD is a sort of rock opera that is divided into tracks but actually plays like one huge 45-minute song. I highly recommend that or just about anything else they or their members have done or collaborated on.

[coloradodem2005]

24. Know all about it.

I bought Six Degrees back when it came out. Good album. So is all their other stuff. I have just about all of it. I also have the Liquid Tension Experiment albums. I don't have Transatlantic or O.S.I. though.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

14. Two words:

Milli Vanilli

:puke:

[bo44]

15. do you mean rock and roll? If so listen to other styles of music and

you will find soul in sounds you may not have known existed.

As for rock and roll it will always suck when its practioners have no direct virtuoso connection to modern African American popular, gospel, and jazz musicians. Or as Quincy Jones once said if a player knows his chops then he will never run out of good ideas and unique ways to express him/herself musically. How far can a player's career go if he is just ripping off the dude who ripped of the original creator of a sound of popular music. Go to the source, learn your stuff and make a career from scratch. Do not mimic the mimics.

Can you expect rock and roll players to reproduce a variation of the same song for the rest of their careers and maintain the soul of a genre?

[HEyHEY]

18. Around 1995

[Joylaughter]

21. The day they shot John Lennon

All we are saying.

[DemWitch]

25. Music hasn't deteriorated at all...

With the internet, the music choices available to us all are now almost limitless. We don'thave to swallow what's being played on our local stations, or buy what's hot at Camelot Music (are they even in business still?).

Music today is a great thing, and there are many good artists in many genres out there selling stuff on their own labels.

[TahitiNut]

26. Nearly everything after the mid-70's is crap.

I still listen to Motown, beach music, and classic Rock'n'Roll. It never gets old. Jimmy Buffet is an exception, of course.

[Spider Jerusalem]

27. There's still good music.

It just seems for the most part not to be especially popular. If you mean "when did popular music begin its slide into overcommercialised, overproduced, bland, derivative garbage?", I would say circa 1996-1998. There's still some good stuff getting commercial airplay...but for every White Stripes, Modest Mouse (whose earlier stuff I like better because it's not as overproduced) or The Streets there are a dozen suck-arse bands like The Killers, Good Charlotte, u.s.w.

But, it was ever thus...look at the '70's. Almost the whole decade is a musical wasteland, with a few bright spots. 99.5% of all popular music is crap...but the other .5% can make up for it. (Of course, living near a really good college radio station helps, too...I haven't really listened to commercial radio in years.)

[Screaming Lord Byron]

28. 1982.

Just before Wham!, Culture Club, Duran Duran et al destroyed music.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

29. I don't and I'm sorry you do

[samplegirl]

30. When Artist's went from Album covers to Videos

Don't you just remember you could'nt wait to get home with your new
album to read the inside cover??? Put it on the turntable and
sit and imagine what they were thinking when pictures were shot??
Music deteriorated when artists focused on video dance routines
with less musical talent and much more theatrical persona.
When real talent involved only a voice a guitar & pic and the
roll of the drums.

[XNASA]

32. The day I first stepped into a recording studio.

I ruined it for everybody.

[Commendatori]

34. The day the first rap song hit the top 40

I honestly thought it would be a fad, but it just won't go away. :(

[mvd]

36. We reached a low point in the mid-to-late 90s

It seems like all the anticipation was about what new, bland boy-band album would outsell the last one. But I think music's mainstream has improved. Mostly because of more of a pop-rock style now than trite balladry, bubblegum, synthesizer, and rap-metal. It's easier to find little-known artists now, too. I think there's a lot to enjoy in modern music, though hip-hop is still huge and I'm not a fan. Some country albums are worse than ever - balances out the improvement in country a little. There are too many lame copycat bands in modern rock. Finally, I'm not an electronica fan.

[wickerwoman]

37. When Kurt Cobain shot himself.

Call me a crank, but I can't think of a single really memorable band that was formed after 1994.

There was a slow deterioration, but I agree that after 1998 it was pretty much all garbage.

[mvd]

38. Well then, we'll agree to disagree

:hi:

[jus_the_facts]

42. Smells Like Teen CRAP.....

......in my not so humble opinion!!! :D

[mvd]

43. You know I..

:loveya: despite our musical differences.

[jus_the_facts]

44. Backatcha Babe!

[asthmaticeog]

39. I dispute that it deteriorated at all...

...but if you're looking for ground zero of music being compromised by commerce, the event you're looking for is Alan Lomax 's field recordings of southern folk and blues artists. Such musicians weren't necessarily looking for music careers, and if they were, it was traveling around playing at square dances and juke joints. The popularity of pre-recorded music for sale tainted American music forever by introducing a profit motive into what had perviously been a folk art engaged in for its own sake.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

40. everything you said and also take into account

the record industry mergers from about the same time. scores of developing artists like bufffalo tom and juliana hatfield were dumped from the major labels. combined with the beakup of most of the major alternative bands (include the pumkins and rage who split up shortly after this time) and the grunge inspired musical revolution was killed off and replaced with sexist throwbacks to hair metal like kid rock, korn, and limp biskit

[HughBeaumont]

41. 1993

When the focus started really REALLY shifting to rap rap rap rap RAP. That's when the landslide began and continued on a 90 degree drop with the Pop Explosion of 1997 and MTV2 being created to play videos . . . and then just rap videos . . . and then eventually becoming a second version of MTV (all about the ad-space and viewer attention span FOR that ad space).

I wouldn't say music sucks completely, but anymore, you SERIOUSLY have to dig for good stuff.

[johnnie]

45. I would have to say

..when Ung was kicked out of the Gambas for getting too full of himself in 9,856,013 B.C. He started wearing those spandex animal skins and he added a second cat gut to his pickin' stick. He thought he had become "all that". It was an end to an era.
But music moved on and always will. I don't think it ever deteriorated because music is just music. I think it's the listeners that deteriorate, not music in itself.

[northzax]

46. well, aren't we just a bunch of old fogies?

95% of all the music ever created sucks. just like 95% of all the literature ever written stinks. and 95% of all the philosophy ever written is junk. And 95% of all speeches ever given are crap. and those are generous numbers. So what's the deal? why do we look back on those halcyon days of the past and think, "boy, the 18th century sure produced great philosphy, today sucks'. and 'boy, the 1970's produced great music, today sucks' and 'boy the 19th century had great poets, today they all suck." because of the filter of history. it takes time for art or thought of any kind to become a classic. you don't think that while Mozart was writing the Magic Flute that there were 100 other composers in Austria who were producing commercial crap? of course there were, we just don't remember them, there work failed to stand the test of time. (ok, maybe not 100 in Austria, but definately in Europe) you don't think that every generation laments the death of culture? of course. And the next only gets the stuff filtered through time from the past. Sure, I can remember the 70's as a time of great music, but that's because I can remember Led Zepplin, and the J5, and Jim Croce, and the Eagles and don't have to think of Meat Loaf, BTO, bad bob Dylan, Donna Summer or John Travolta. they got lost in the time warp. There will come a time when the great music of today will filter down, in 20 years maybe, and people will think back to the Halcyon days of the Postal Service, Minuteman, Keane, Scissor Sisters, Franz Ferdinand, or whatever, and think, "boy, how come the early 2000's had such great music and all this new stuff sucks?"

It is the curse of poor memory to remember only the good (and the very bad) and forget the mediocre. sorry.