Were things really better in the 70s?

Atavachron wrote: ^ What a bitter, depraved, bullsh*t thing to say.  "Hey man, I'm a gifted musician and most of the world doesn't care and they're all fools and so are the record companies...and your little dog, too".   No, Mr. V, the world doesn't care because they'd rather not listen to poofy electronic New Age.   Yes Mr. V, The Police and Van Halen and U2 have sold more records than you.   You're a highly successful composer with a career many would die for.   Deal with it and stop whining.

In fact, Mr Papathanassiou in 1976 was already a big star signed to RCA (and he was not doing any "electronic New Age" at the time as you insinuating), and if he then complained about the music industry, we can ask ourselves a quite logical question: when was that big time for the musicians with a new ideas, original approach, etc? In above posted interview from 1976, Vangelis Papathanassiou was mentioned 60s as a good era, but, on the other side, I have read an interview with John Entwistle (RIP) where he said that The Who in 1968 were waiting at JFK for the money for their air-tickets to return home from the tour, as they were broke after that U.S. tour as actually in the entire 60s, and that was changed only after Tommy was released. So, when there was that big time for young musicians with "crazy ideas", of just the artists which main purpose wasn't solely to make music to the masses? Never.

Edited by Svetonio - November 08 2015 at 02:35

BaldJean wrote: in my opinion they were. the freshness has been taken out of the music. everything has to be "perfect" now, which in essence means "boring". the only thing I really still like are some live albums, but modern studio albums usually bore me because everything is sterilely clean

Another thing to think about: If you were around in the 1970s you would not have been able to hear all the great music from the 1970s that you can hear today.

Edited by Dean - November 08 2015 at 02:46

Dean wrote: Another thing to think about: If you were around in the 1970s you would not have been able to hear all the great music from the 1970s that you can hear today. That may sound like a contradiction but it is a sad reality. Today I can buy any album that was released in the 1970s, I may have to pay a lot for a very rare album, but in general I can get practically any 1970s album delivered to my door in a few days for a few quid.  You couldn't do that in the 1970s. Record stores had limited shelf space and so only stocked latest releases and high-selling albums. Low-selling albums had one production run and were deleted from the label's catalogue, some unsold albums were sold-off at discount prices but after the fuel crisis of 1973 most unsold vinyl was recycled. Very few stores sold import albums and their stocks of those were small. Mail-order existed but the range of music available through them was very limited and the postal costs for an LP were often more than the cost of the album itself. You may have been able to find one or two albums by a particular band but their entire back-catalogue would be very difficult to find - this applied to all artists, not just obscure or lesser-known ones.  I can be nostalgic about the hours I spend trawling through every record store in every town I ever visited because that was the game back then, that was what being a music fan entailed. However, I cannot be nostalgic about all those albums I never managed to find but can now order with one-click online, or all those albums that I'd never even heard of back then that I can see at a glance on this website...

Some good points here, though I'd shed a different light angle

It is the information about those rare or import releases that lacked us back then - and of course the cash to afford them in case you did hear and wanted them. In Toronto, I had an import store (called Record Peddler) where Gong and Magma and Banco were available, but it was at 20.00 a pop, sealed (and therefore not availble for a listen)... and 20.00/pop for newspaper dekivery routes money was just too expensive. But it was available, as were all these strange Vertigo, Neon, Dawn label releases.
So yeah big stores like Sam The Record Man had huge spaces (including jazz & classical music), but maybe not a wide import selection, but most of 70's music could bemore or less easily found if you knew about it



Yup as well: I still think a lot about my weekly saturday afternoons taking the train downtown and hitting quasi all the record store (including my two fave second-hand ones) on the way uptown and all the way back downtown and coming back by train, unwrapping mot of my acquisitions in front of disapproving grown-ups;...  Nostalgie, quand tu nous tiens... But to be honest, I'm a bit appalled (and slightly ashamed) at the amount of hours wasted in those spending spree trips, as I must've had an awful lot of time to waste then.

Something I simply can't afford the time (or the patience)... or even have the wish to do so  if I did have the time to spare... I mean, i get quickly bored looking through stacks of albums (vinyls or CDs) after some 20 minutes... My best music  buddy who is still going on strong through whatever record shops still around every second week or so. And he's going to the world-famours three-days Utrecht record fair this month (only his third time though). Whereas I'm already tired (bored, actually) after a morning of the Ghent record fair - which is rather small scale, compared to Utrecht anyway.







Edited by Sean Trane - November 08 2015 at 03:16

Negatives:

BaldFriede wrote: That's not true, Dean. In Cologne, where I live, there was a record store named Saturn (it still exists). You could get any album there; they prided themselves for that and even advertised with it. It usually even was in stock, but if you told them of an album which they did for some reason not have they would get it for you. My oldest brother, who is ten years older than me, bought his whole huge collection there.

I suppose you're not speaking of the Saturn downtown (very disappointing selection), but the one on the Blvd with the subway station (let's call it midtown).  OK, I've been going to it since the mid-90's, but it's now hardly the shadow of its former self (which is why I haven't been there in three years). Yes, back in the 90's their offer was fairly impressive, but Saturn is a big chain store selling household appliances as well - bit like Mediamarkt was doing a decade ago. 

Did it (that Saturn store) exist in the 70's or even the 80's, though??

I think the basic mechanism behind the "things were better back then" sentiment is selective memory.  Unless your childhood was traumatic, you'll fondly remember the music that reminds you of it.  Or the music that was playing in the café when you first kissed your great love.  Etc.  No matter how cheesy those songs really were.

Each time had its good music, and its awful music.  But everyone likes to remember the good stuff, and forget the bad stuff.  Like, you often pull your Yes records from the cabinet, but not your Osmonds records (if you had any).  In the end, it seems as if music was better back then.  The fallacy lies in comparing the music you like of a past age with the music that's on the market today, and in such a skewed comparison, the old music will always win.

In the year 2050, people may remember Dream Theater and Spock's Beard (or Muse and Coldplay, to draw examples from more mainstream music), but Justin Bieber will probably be forgotten.  And they'll say, "Oh, how much better was the music of the '10s!".

And what regards the state of the world, the 70s weren't any better than our time.  Just look at it: half of Europe under the Soviet yoke.  Apartheid in South Africa.  Military dictatorships in South America.  All these things are now gone.  Of course, there are other troubles today, but I don't think they are worse.

Well, music was better IMO especially prog which is probably why so many contemporary prog bands try to imitate that classic sound.

Beyond that, the 70's were fairly bleak IIRC. I was only a child but I seem to remember skinheads everywhere, and spending many evenings without electricity.

i just phoned my brother about this. He said there certainly were albums that were out of print, and you could not get them then. But anything that was in print could be bought there, and that was as he says the majority.

He also says that even if albums were out of print there were ways you could get them. There were two big 2nd hand record stores in Cologne, and twice a year there was a record fair where you could get rare albums. He said he bought many a gem there.

He also mentioned that the albums that came out on the label "Mood Records" were exclusively sold at so-called 2001-shops. 2001 had shops in Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt and a fourth city he can't recall. The albums of the "United Jazz and Rock Ensemble", a band that is in the archives, were for example published by Mood Records.

He also said that Saturn was and still is is the biggest record shop he has ever seen.

So at least in Cologne it was quite easy to get most records.


Edited by BaldFriede - November 08 2015 at 07:36

From personal experience living in rural England with a small number of record stores the selection was small, add to that the fact you could only find out about this stuff from reading the music press, it difficult to know you were even missing it. Now someone on a music forum mentions a band you've never heard of and you can have fully researched them and listened to their albums within hours. The music in the 70's was great but frankly I was unaware of 90% of it until the internet.