How do you picture the PA charts changing?

I think that technology has allowed music to come full circle. Recorded music began as a crinkly 'singles' affair. You'd have some guys with a can and studio equipment bring in Charley Patton or Blind Willie Johnson or who knows how the Carter Family came about to recording all those hundreds of classic country and gospel (as much as I love it). For nearly half a century music was almost entirely a 'singles' type affair. A song like Tom Joad by Woody Guthrie (recorded as early as the 1930's I believe), which would have clocked in at just over six minutes, took up both sides of a single record. In 1940 they compiled this and other depressing folk tunes in 'Dust Bowl Ballads'. 

Now I don't know much about how the future of music will become. I think it has become too easy to make music and too easy to electronically manipulate it. People seem to be too busy being 'just good enough' and releasing it hoping their Facebook buddies will 'like' it and give them some vacuous, plastic sense of accomplishment. I think Dean has written a good deal of eloquent, informative material on that subject and I mostly agree.

But I do think modern technology propels the opportunity for musical creativity into overwhelming degrees. We are seemingly regressing into a state of 'singles' again. But now there is decision - Bands and artists are no longer limited by technology in how long their songs can be. Flaming Lips can record a 24 hour song if they wish it an easily release it for mass consumption. 

Will a 13 hour composition be as popular as a 5 minute composition (which seems to be today's standard for average song length)? Never. When in the past 100 years would a 13 hour composition ever have sold better than a 5 minute composition in near any regard? When the double album came out it was an attack against the recording format. One 40 minute LP just ain't enough room! I gotta have double! And then triple albums came out. That was the reasonable means of conquering the limitation. Now when CDs came out soon after they even had 2 hour long (or longer) double CDs which would've roughly equated to quadruple albums back in 1968.

We're in a time where a recorded musical composition can be in excess of years. I could take all my song mp3s and, using a program such as Audacity, connect them together into one massive 3 year long song file. So where do I think the PA charts will go and, by extension, where recording habits will go? I can't say. It'd be pure bullsh*t pontificating and hypothesizing. It depends on if music will become less utilitarian and more of a background mush. Almost everyone I talk to speaks of music as 'something to listen to while I'm washing dishes'. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

As for whoever spoke about 'taking any modern album over a 1970s album because I wasn't there'. Well, everyone's different. My mom listens to modern rap and hip hop (she really digs Trey Songz). She was 'there' in the 1970s. My dad listens to Kid Rock and Metallica. He was 'there'. He grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. Me, on the other hand. I'm 22 at the time of this nonsense writing. I'm currently addicted to Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads (1940 - folk), Ella Fitzgerald's Cole Porter Songbook (1956 - vocal jazz/pop), John Coltrane's Giant Steps (1960 - Jazz) Waylon Jennings' Honky Tonk Heroes (1973 - country), Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom (1982 - baroque rock), Ween's GodWeenSatan: The Oneness (1990 - experimental rock), and Antony and the Johnson's I Am a Bird Now (2005 - baroque pop). I like recorded music all the way from 1927 to 2011. That doesn't take my (relatively new) fondness for select classical compositions into consideration. 

I don't completely agree with the idea that time will weed out the inferior music and leave the best. Time will weed out the least popular music and leave the most universally popular. The music that keeps the strongest staying power with the most people over the longest period of time will remain, I guess - unless practically all music will be saved digitally. Best is a vague concept in the first place.

Hey! Where will the PA charts go? I got no clue! I'm no expert on any thing on this planet and my existence is pretty damn meaningless. Nothing I've got to say has classy weight to it. I think the PA charts will be skewed more toward modern music as things go by. Chilton embodied the idea of it - Tell your old man get off my back. Tell him what we said 'bout Paint it Black. And Paint it Black was released only about six years before that! 

^ Agreed, Pedro. 

I think that DT has had their good days, and they are now done. It's sad, because they deserve a lot better than what they are getting and the dedication to making good music has always been there, even if not to everyone's tastes, but then ... that is the same for all of us, isn't it?

 

I actually think that the album with an orchestra is far better than some of this earlier stuff ... because, yo unot only have to be talented, you have to be musically aware, and on top of it the whole time, and that is something that more than half the musicians that we list in our board, are not capable of doing ... and the main reason why they do "songs", or 4 minute cuts that we call ... "prog" or something else.

 

If that guitarist was playing a violin, we would freak and say he is insane ... instead some of us don't like it, because it is all metal ... but if you get off that idea, and look at the whole thing from an orchestral perspective, all of a sudden you have ... something rather strong and talented ... that would make a few violin crazies over the century look cheap and poor.

 

You know what? ... I would like to turn this guitarist loose with Klaus Schulze ... and instead of calling it "In Blue" (done with Manuel Gottsching) I would call it ... "In Purple"! ... so you can see a guitar player get loose and then some! I, personally, feel, that what he is doing with DT is at an end, and they do not have the ability to improve their composing ability. The keyboard player is lazy, and more interested in goof'ing off, you have an excellent note player with the bass, but he can't compose, you have a singer that goes out and does 2 minute Stooges and Ramone like songs, you had a drummer that was all show and very little go that needed to have a snare drum broken over his head until he grew up, ..... in other words ... they needed to get out of the school area ... and go try different things ... unffortunately, I think the band will be over after that ... since these folks are not interested in working together ... because if they did, we would have a whole LOT more than the same thing -- in the past couple of albums!

I mean, say a band releases a masterpiece to end all prog masterpieces then proceeds to (maybe from death/personnel changes or sick sadism streaks) release fifty of the worst prog albums in existence. Is it reasonable to punish that first masterpiece album and condemn it to relative obscurity because of what followed? Surely if somebody chose to investigate this hypothetical band further than that one record they'd see all the blistering negative reviews associated with the rest of their work. 

For example: Yes' highest album typically hovers around 4.63 or so. Yes as a group would be rated as 4.63 or so. This guarantees that there would be 100 bands in the top list as well as not punishing a good album for the sake of a poor one. It would still point newcomers to the most famous albums on the site but offer them even more at first glance.