Bizarre post ? Why ? Mike Giles post is accurate. It is superficial to say he is in a time-warp back to 1992. GRUNGE and PUNK may be distant in time, but they keep producing its effects to the present day.

 

Thanks to them and to the support of the music press, the music industry was corrupted by this (small thinking) idea that rock has to be loud and agressive and everything else which is not guitar-driven is crap.

 

Unfortunately people were led to believe in this  "school of thinking" which says that rock has to be kept down to 3 chords and it can't be well played by good musicians.

 

Mike Giles is right when he says that the actual state of music is awful:

 

1 )  RAP or HIP HOP is not about "music" at all.

2 )  Modern R&B may be tolerable, but it is nothing if compared to the orchestrated Philly Soul of the 70's or to the great FUNK bands of the 70's and 80's.

3 ) INDIE ROCK (an offshot of punk & grunge) sucks. They are still even worse than today's electronic groups that can't play a note and program everything using computer generated music.

 

So why call Michael Giles rant IGNORANT and CHILDISH ?

People are really something:

When they don't agree with a statement, instead of explaining their point of view or explaining why this or that may not be an accurate statement, the first thing they do is to offend the guy who said the thing one doesn't like.

 

Does the offense represents what one thinks about the subject? No.

 

If it is not a subject of your interest why offend ? Just keep away from the thread and let the guy say what he thinks.

 

Blacksword wrote: Blog..? More like 'Ranting Room' fodder. Not that it really a worthy rant. If you dont like Rap or grunge dont listen to it......

 

Oh how innocent.... And do you think the music industry allow it ? It's on the television. It's on the cinema soundtrack. It's on the radio. It's on the elevator music. It's on the sound sistem inside the room we work. It's on the mall. It's on the supermarket ambient music.

 

You can't escape it... one has to keep up with it. ... unless you become a hermit... don't see, don't hear, don't talk, don't live.

theres some really great music around today, you just need to know where to find it

 

I escape it very well, don't see any problem doing it. I don't have to keep up with it; never have, and probably never will. Don't impose on us your views. Maybe you feel like you have to keep up. Others don't feel the same way. Is there anyone forcefully making you listen to this?

 

 

 

 

 

It seems as if there is just no escaping this headache-inducing noise pollution any more. I feel personally violated when I can't try on a new pair of of trousers (pants) in a changing cubicle without getting the urge to flee the premises.

 

Of course the same thing applies (applied) in the '70s when everyone was bombarded with Donna Summer and Boney M, but it does seem that there was less of it and it was not so damn intrusive ALL THE TIME!!!

 

Expressing one's opinion,  it is not imposing it on anyone.

 

I've just expressed what I thought about the subject. Nothing beyond that.

 

Since I am not forcing my view upon anyone, please don't feel imposed by it.  That view is MINE, NOT YOURS.

Blacksword wrote: Buy yourself an Ipod then, and dont get so upset about it..

 

Hi Blacksword.... It is not that I can't sleep, but being raised in a musical family, It really makes me feel sorry for the state of  music today... but what can I do? It seems that the vast majority of people prefers to listen to it.

Try and get your friends into some "better" music; I try to do it but by bit and it sometimes works. It is inevitable that the majority will go for the mediocre, popular and dull music;

We have the pleasure of listening to fabulous music; Let's do our best to try and spread the word.

 

 

Hi..

 

Well.....  the indie/alternative is one area of music I could never really appreciate. Too rough sounding for me.... What I like about music is the arrangements and the melodies.

 

But I love a lot of 80s POP bands like SWING OUT SISTER, SADE, KATE BUSH, PET SHOP BOYS, THOMAS DOLBY, PREFAB SPROUT, MORRISEY, THE SMITHS, SIMPLY RED, DOUBLE, TEARS FOR FEARS, LEVEL 42, LISA STANSFIELD...

 

For POP, I think the 80's where a perfect time : very adult and musically sophisticated with high standards set for POP MUSIC. It's a shame that this kind of sound, this kind of POP was sweapt away in the early 90's. From then on, even POP became crap... target to the adolescent market with a lot of fly-by-night silly things around (forgive me those of you who like it... I don't mean to offend anyone's tastes).

 

Needles to say that I love 70s ROCK too : VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR, KING CRIMSON, ELP, PINK FLOYD, YES, GENESIS, CAMEL, PFM, GENTLE GIANT, UK, McDONALD & GILES, CROSBY STILLS NASH AND YOUNG, TANGERINE DREAM...

 

... and in the soul area O'JAYS, TAVARES, EL COCO, DONALD BYRD, LE PAMPLEMOUSSE, BLUE MAGIC, HAROLD MELVIN, HALL AND OATES, MARVIN GAYE, FIRST CHOICE....

 

There was an excess of good music flying around in the 60s, 70s and 80s. It seems to me that all exceptional music was heavily concentrated in these decades. When it was over, nothing good or new was left for the next decades.

 

And what's wrong with grunge? Mudhoney, Dinosaur Jr, Melvins, Nirvana, all that stuff is great.

 

Not really.

This ideia of proficient musicians playing rock died in the 70s and is absent from the music industry since the 80's up to the present. One can only find it in guettos (small ones). But I believe that in the initial post by Mike Giles he was speaking about the state of music today AS A WHOLE. If we are going to talk about specific scenes, of course there is very good music being made today. For example:

 

The albums SOMEWHERE DEEP IN THE NIGHT or WHERE OUR LOVE GROWS by Manchester soul-jazzy-pop band SWING OUT SISTER are fine exemples of sophisticated music being made in the 2000s. But those are exceptions if compared to the whole state of the music business. Their success is small and local (Japan only) and like many other good bands that still exist, they don't count for the analyses of the actual condition of the music industry (because of poor sales, lack of exposure in TV, radio, press, music books, etc...    ...in other words: no one knows they exist).

 

And this happens to a lot of other groups which make (these days) daring, well crafted and complex  music : they pay a high price for being good : they make no commercial success.  Today, image counts more than talent. Today, joe public normally goes after the easiest sounds made by the sexiest girl or the handome guy. These days nobody cares anymore for better music. People prefer what's more raw, direct and immediate. They won't waste time learning a good melody that demands more than one listen to be understood.

 

If it wasn't for the internet these groups which are still going against the grain would be gone a long time. Lack of commercial succees has wrecked many bands in the past.

 

To avoid confusions, I was kindly asked to not login under the nick MAN-ERG because there is another MAN ERG here. So these are my last posts under this nick. And to make things clear I AM NOT THE ONE WHO IS A LONG TIME MEMBER which, by the way, I haven't spoken too.

 

I used to be really narrow minded about pretty much all 'punk. I still don't like a lot of it, but actually get to know it a bit more and just the many people don't realise prog has many sub genres, many people don't understand punk has many sub-genres too. No I don't like Punk Rock, Skate Punk, Pop-Punk and the simpler genres of punk, because I like music that shows that artist is expressing themselves more freely and that shows they are challenging themselves. Two years ago, I heard an album by a 'hardcore punk' band called Refused, and I ended up loving it. It happens this band falls into the Post Hardcore genre, an off shoot of punk rock, with much hardcore influence as well. That album was so far ahead, creatively and expressively, of the simple punk genres, that I almost could not accept it was hardcore, because the general hardcore scene had become very stagnant, and here was something that seriously amazed me. Listen to At The Drive In, which is labelled a 'punk rock' band, and tell me it sounds like Greenday or any of those overly commerciaised generic punk pop groups. It doesn't. 2 of the At the Drive In guys went on to form The Mars Volta, whom are great musicians (even if you like them or not, they are undoubtably creative and expressive musicans, just like I don't really Opera vocalists music, but they are undeniably good at their craft nonetheless), and a great band in the progarchives listing, so surely At the Drive in had great musicans on board (and IMO they really did).

And I learnt a great lesson out of those 2 bands, which is to, instead of dimissing a whole genre because of the negative stereotypes and examples, give it a fair chance, because you are likely to find at least 1 good band among 100, 200 or even 500 sub-par bands. And if you dont want to have to just randomly sift through bands, do what I did, and research the genre, which lead to me discovering the sub-genres. Find out which sub-genre/s have the most appealing musical traits to your mind, and give some bands/artists in that sub genre a shot.

 

I didn't know Swing Out Sister were back but I couldn't stand them first time round. I can't deny the sophistication but I just don't like them.