Re: Do you have a least favorite era of music?

I’m guessing most people have particular bands / albums / songs that they find particularly irritating... but curious if any of you have a particular era whose music you find cringey?

I’m finding a timeframe in the very early 70s when there was an over abundance of horns. Just crazy incorporation of horns into rock songs that just rubs me the wrong way. And I think it was all over by ‘74-75, other than say Chicago.

And organ. Just a lot of bands in that early 70s timeframe over-relying on a ‘heavy organ’ sound. Why was organ so ubiquitous in that 70-73 timeframe?

Oh, and don’t get me started on the mid-90s....

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2021 11:18PM by That One Guy.

I agree with That One Guy -- assuming that I'm interpreting him correctly. I'm still finding good new rock bands to check out and enjoy, but nearly all of them have a pretty low profile. (Of course, every band has, since the pandemic began.) Since the late Nineties, for the most part, mainstream pop/rock has squatted down and taken a huge, stinking, fetid, ungodly shit. I can't tell you how badly it disheartens me when I hear someone who professes to love rock ask me if I like Imagine Dragons or Twenty One Pilots.

Fortunately for me, my wife is with me on this score. We almost never tune in any mainstream rock or Top Forty pop, but whenever we have, over the past ten or twelve years, we both have had pretty much the same reaction: it hasn't improved since our last dalliance with it.

Yeah, I’d have to agree. I worked retail last year when offices shut down, and if in-store Muzak is any indication, hoo boy what a crap fest. AirPods were a necessity when it would play things like “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi. He sounds like he’s singing while vomiting.

I do like “Shut Up and Dance,” and “Call Me Maybe” has a pretty catchy chorus, and... uh...that’s all I got? A lot of it is just so miserable. Even the cheesiest of pop used at least have stoopid joy going for it.

But like Delvin, I’ve found plenty of coolness, however it is usually in Bandcamp-land. Finding the gems requires digging deeper and deeper...

My first reaction is to concur with sentiments expressed in this thread. I, too, find fewer bands that excite me now than I did 35 years ago. But then, on second thought, it feels like a kind of willful blindness not to acknowledge that old folks in every generation *always* say that music was better back in the day. This suggests that it's more about where I am in my life circumstances than something inherent in the music. Further, as I think about it some more, even 35 years ago the music that excited me most wasn't what was played on mainstream pop radio. I was excited by weirdo niche music then and I can find great weirdo niche music now as well. In the end, I'm not convinced that there's any general decline.

A few years ago, I heard a podcast about a psychological study which suggested that people's interest in new music peaks in their teens and early 20s and pretty much ends by 30. Watching YouTube videos by music critics in their mid to late 20s, where they say things like "the 2000s/early 2010s were the greatest period for pop music" I understand how one generation's ideas about music fall by the wayside when the next one rolls around and the canon is constantly in flux. For instance, emo never meant much to me - I also never really explored it beyond a handful of bands - but it means as much as post-punk does to me to the critics I'm referring to. This probably sounds horribly self-serving, but I've realized that it's very unusual to be a 49-year-old man who doesn't think the present is a fallen age for music.

I agree with Duck Rabbit. There's good and bad music in every era, and it's only in rare instances that good music achieves a prominent place in the popular consciousness. And there is a tendency, as we get older, not to want to put in the effort we expended as teenagers to find the good stuff that's hiding behind the gloss.

That said, some eras were worst than others. Late 1950's-early 1960's, after the original Elvis had been shipped off to Germany and before the British Invasion came ashore, was pretty bleak. Early 1970s dominated by prog rock, useless horns and organ riffs as mentioned above, and classic rock bands with ever-expanding egos, was pretty bad. The disco era was awful, mainstream-wise, but incredibly fruitful underground (shout out to this obscure musical rag called "Trouser Press" for helping us navigate through this).

In the mid to late 1980s, when big record companies became dominant again in the wake of Michael Jackson and tried to impose their standardized product on every potential listener, the scene was bleak again (I stopped buying records for a spell). Late 1990s was also bad, mostly due to the thankfully short-lived rap-rock phenomenon, but there was again a lot of creativity underground. Since the second half of the 2000s, popular music has really hit a nadir, largely because of increased pre-formatting of hits and lack of physical sales to sustain slightly less mainstream artists who help to move the needle leftwards. But, as the 801's regretted program demonstrated week after week, there's a huge amount of great music being put out in obscure corners of the universe, but readily available via Bandcamp and other similar venues. The problem is that hardly anyone ever hears it and I'm not sure how anyone can make ends meet though this business model. But whenever I get an urge to start digging around, I discover interesting stuff, a lot of it coming from outside the usual USA/UK orbit.

Late 80s to late 90s was pretty bad for me. At least from '78-'85 the none-mainstream stuff I liked was considered hip and therefore, available if one knew where to look for it. What was considered hip from '87-'97 was depressing to me.

House music
Grunge
Industrial/Metal
Techno/Trance
Gangsta rap

I put the difference down to the ascendence of heroin/weed/X over cocaine. Even though I've never ever used any drug! Cocaine seemed to lead to the creation of music more hyperstimulating, which fit better with my tastes. The parts of the brain that had receptors for heroin/weed/X were not were my pleasures lay. So the trendy drugs of that era affected the music being made to my detriment.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

The production in the mid to late 80s renders some of that music almost unlistenable to me. For example the heavy reverb on the drum sound on main stream rock music like Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" album, Cheap Trick's albums from 85-90, bands like Def Leppard, etc.

There was some discussion of an artist like Michael Stanley a few months back after he passed away. His song "My Town" was listed in Dave Marsh's top 1001 singles of the Rock and Soul era so I sought it out. However good a songwriter he was the production on that song is quintessential 80s and just ruins if for me.

Who do we blame for this? Phil Collins? Jeff "mutt" Lange? Hugh Padgham? Albums from the Smiths and New Order didn't sound like this so it wasn't all the 80s. It just seems particular producers were just enamored with this sound.

jothoma Wrote:
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> Who do we blame for this? Phil Collins? Jeff
> "mutt" Lange? Hugh Padgham? Albums from the Smiths
> and New Order didn't sound like this so it wasn't
> all the 80s. It just seems particular producers
> were just enamored with this sound.

Blaming Phil Collins strikes me as a valid fall back here. I'm very much dismayed by the whole "critical and popular rehabilitation of Phil Collins" groove thang in recent years.

Agreed. We don't this fatuous groove thang.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2021 11:18PM by That One Guy.

Wasn't that gated snare sound invented by accident during the recording of Peter Gabriel's third solo album? It was Phil Collins' snare, and he soon made it his signature, but it's a date-stamp. (Sharon van Etten's REMIND ME TOMORROW struck me as an attempt to redo the production style of BORN IN THE U.S.A. with better taste, thanks to decades of hindsight.) Trap drum programming, especially that tinny hi-hat sound, seems like the contemporary equivalent.

> A few years ago, I heard a podcast about a psychological
> study which suggested that people's interest in new music
> peaks in their teens and early 20s and pretty much ends by 30.

My own observation is, that's probably true for most people. Just last week, I was talking to my brother-in-law. He's about my age, and about as comfortable in his life, overall, as I am in mine. And he told my wife and me, when it came to a discussion of music, that he's tried more than once, and just can't find any new music that he likes.

But it depends, in part, on the criteria one applies to deciding if one "likes" something or not. For a lot of people, those prime "liking years" that Steevee mentioned -- teens and twenties -- kinda coincide with the general phase of life that those years represent for a lot of people. They're young, they're full of energy, they can experience a sense of discovery about a lot of things in life, and they aren't fully burdened quite yet by the responsibilities of adulthood. By the time most people get to age thirty, they're getting a lot busier, the pressures on their everyday lives are starting to increase ... and before long, seeking out new music just isn't as big a priority as it used to be.

I think that also explains why so many older rock fans love their old favorite artists, but don't tend to continue to buy the later records that those artists are putting out. A lot of the boomer artists (Steve Miller, Journey, Styx et al) have continued to put out records over the years, long after their commercial heyday has passed. They may draw good-sized crowds on the summer concert circuit, but those crowds want to hear the old classics. They may listen to the newer records, and objectively say, "Yeah, those are pretty good" ... but the newer songs just don't carry the associations, the reminders, that the older songs do. And when a listener gets to be 50 or so, those newer songs aren't as likely to get the opportunity to build associations of their own with such a listener. Time is not on their side.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2021 11:19PM by That One Guy.

Well, if we’re gonna get all scientifical, how ‘bout them studies that analyze music and have shown that today’s music uses fewer elements than the past, sticks to the same rhythms and sounds, has less variation in songwriting styles. There’s the infamous “brick” mix which flattens dynamics.

Oh, and I’ve gone on record here before blaming Roxy Music’s “Avalon” for the dreaded ‘80s production style. Some good songwriting buried under all that...

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2021 11:19PM by That One Guy.

I get what you mean. I have a 1980s Beggars Banquet compilation. Brilliant songs but super-soft production. Makes one wonder what some of these songs might have sounded like.

> If you hear a record, or an artist from
> 40 years ago, and it's something
> you've never heard before, then you
> know what that is to you? Something
> new. Who cares about the when, what
> or why? Just enjoy it - or dislike it -
> for what it is.

Hear, hear. As somebody who has become a Beach Boys fan in just the past few years, I can agree with that. (I was familiar enough with their more popular songs, but I never really listened to the craft behind those records, until recently.)

I WISH I could unlock the mystery of learning how to enjoy and appreciate The Beach Boys. I’ve never gotten it. And I’m convinced the problem is me, not them. I’ve read too many pieces praising how “revolutionary” Pet Sounds is to know it’s not a real thing. Yet I can’t get myself to hear or savor the revolution.

Their whole damn catalog just sounds like one-dimensional oldies good-time rock to me. I don’t ever want to hear “in my room” ever again.... regardless of whose room it’s in. WHAT the hell am I missing??

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2021 11:19PM by That One Guy.

Not an Allen Toussaint or Dr. John fan I take it. To me the 70s are pure gold. Love it all.
The jam band thing escapes me.

Actually, I agree with your assessment of the 70s.... though it’s taken me awhile to come around to it. I just find that the era of overblown horns (ala “Spinning Wheel”) is just not for me.. And that particular style seemed pretty tightly tied to just the first 2-3 years of the decade.

Same issue I have with some disco.... the more lush, string-drenched orchestration it has, the less I enjoy it.

Interesting aside on the 70’s. Every Sunday morning my local oldies station plays full episodes of Kasey Kasem’s ‘American top 40’ from a week on the 70s ( the week of may 10, 1973 or June 3, 1975 etc etc). You quickly realize how predominant black artists in the top 40 were then. Pretty edgy, incredible stuff. (Not just fluff).

So why was it such a big deal for MTV to finally show its first ‘black artist’ videos? What was the reasoning for NOT showing them? America had already embraced black music....with doo wop of the 50s or Motown of the 60s. Had we really become that racially-biased in the early 80s?
(Not sure if these questions are entirely rhetorical.... )

I'd guess that Black music became equated with disco after that period when Curtis Mayfield, War, Sly & the Family Stone, etc. had hits with quite adventurous music, and then disco became discredited in the eyes of the mainstream by 1979.

Well, that’s just it Bip - black artists were so popular all across the board, all over the Top40 as you noticed. but MTV wasn’t playing many. It didn't make sense.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2021 11:20PM by That One Guy.

MTV was specifically designed to replicate the AOR format where the only African American you were allowed to hear was Jimi Hendrix. For some reason. Fortunately, there was a dearth of AOR videos when MTV premiered; leading to them using a hella huge amount of UK pop [who had embraced music video years in advance of the typical US AOR act], so MTV quickly mutated to play New Wave [since there was a ton of programming] and eventually, even black artists. Because they were topping the charts and by then MTV was a Pop/Rock/CHR channel. Fortunately, MTV failed at being a rigid AOR analog.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

MTV originally followed the AOR format simply because that was the format popular on American FM radio at the time. It only made sense to tack to the prevailing commercial winds. That was before it became clear that the American record labels simply didn't have enough videos (yet) to fill 24-hour programming.

As for the decision to play videos by black artists, Michael Jackson and his label, Epic, basically forced MTV's hand. The label knew that Thriller would be a hot album, if only it could be presented to a wider audience than his last album, Off the Wall, had reached. The label also recognized that Michael's videos offered a superb means of promotion. So they presented MTV with an ultimatum: either add the videos for "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" to regular prime-time rotation, or Epic would pull the videos for all its artists.

MTV was not even a year and a half old at the time, and still gaining its foothold in the marketplace (although doing it pretty well). The network couldn't afford to lose that much content. Three years later, MTV had grown so ubiquitous that another ultimatum like that would've been unthinkable. For any label, by 1985, withdrawing its videos from MTV would've been tantamount to declaring bankruptcy.

Interesting points about MTV.

I’m still befuddled that the original premise / format of the station couldn’t be maintained. Yes, I understand that youtube allows you to see videos instantly blah blah .... but people are lazy by nature, and like to be fed it. The programming is always new because music is always evolving somehow.

Watching an hour of MTV could be like a pre-made Spotify playlist, no? Why wouldn’t kids today want to watch videos of Billie Eilish or Megan thee stallion? They still make the videos. The images would still reverberate for a 15 year old like they did for me.

There still is a cable channel run by MTV that only shows music videos, as well as a Nickelodeon offshoot that's all pop videos, plus several all-hip-hop video channels . But they're near the end of my Spectrum cable dial. The laziness of following YT & Spotify algorithms seems different than watching commercial TV (and the Eilish/Rodrigo audience prefers phones to TV.) They're used to being able to skip songs we don't like (or shut them off after 10 seconds.) Streaming has also trained the potential new-MTV audience to get used to seeing music videos with unedited lyrics. But YT does have music video playlists like "Conditions Underground" which is obviously inspired by "120 Minutes."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2021 01:00AM by steevee.

> I’m still befuddled that the original premise / format of the station couldn’t be maintained.

From Viacom/CBS' point of view, the problem was that the network couldn't get sustained ratings by airing music videos. After all, when a typical "program" on your network is only four minutes long, it's hard to expect viewers to sit and watch for a protracted amount of time (although my brother and I made a pretty decent go of it, in the network's earliest days).

So they tried introducing longer music-related programs, to varying degrees of success (120 Minutes, Headbanger's Ball, Yo! MTV Raps, MTV Unplugged) as well as a few non-music-related shows in somewhat more conventional formats, such as The State (sketch comedy by a regular cast) and the original version of The Jon Stewart Show (more of your typical '90s talk show -- not the more topical host he'd eventually become). But they realized they had hit it with The Real World. Why? Because reality TV shows are cheap.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2021 11:20PM by That One Guy.