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So I've been playing professionally for 43 years as my main job. In that time by playing all sorts of styles and different types venues from concerts,clubs, radio, t.v., churches, casinos, record dates, jingles,etc.
Covering everything from Muddy Waters to Frank Sinatra, Merle Haggard, to Bob Marley, Z.Z. Top to Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, etc.
When I started out in the mid to late 1970s Disco was just coming in, but Weather Report, John McGlaughlin, were also at their height popularity wise.
Now we have computer generated Pop and free downloads as well as weekend warriors who take up club dates as a hobby.
I feel sorry for any serious musician who still is trying to chase it as a profession.
I've often bemoaned how anyone can hardly survive even teaching with all the free lessons available, no jingles, or venues that pay any longer.
I don't think anyone who is not in the business truly understands how this affects the ultimate quality of Music.
People keep saying how great it is to be able to share everything and collaborate, etc. And that music is actually better.
My answer is no doubt there are some fantastic young musicians like Dirty Loops. But technology has gotten so into music that it sanitized and corrects everything like it's Robot. Where are the Bernard Purdie, Ray Brown, Cornell Dupree, Larry Carlton, Soulful grooves that permeated so many great albums and hits?
Since music has become so soulless and grooveless imo, I have no longer interest in listening. And this is true of Jazz, Country,Pop, Rock, etc.
All of the great bands from The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Hendrix,The Police, as well as Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty, Geroge Jones, had Soul and Feel!
Now what passes for it is music school graduates imitating Prince imitating James Brown etc. Very Sad what actual input of real musicians in the Music has become!
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04-12-2021 05:27 PM
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At risk of poking the bear:
No one is saying it's better now. There are certainly lots of neat things you can do with technology. But, no one is saying it's better.
No one thinks free downloads are good for artists.
Who is saying music is better?
Who is this post for?
Are you hoping there is some new member to the board who hasn't read all your other threads on this topic?
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The kids might be. It goes without saying that every generation is "the best". Just ask 'em.
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I actually think for musicians there was a Golden Era. When musicians actually were involved in the creative process . But for those of you who were never able to be part of that process, it probably doesn't matter.
My point in this thread is we are at a very sad state of affairs when Music is produced by non music people on computers for just sales or efficiency.
The Wal-Mart model does not work in the creative arts.
I never became a musician to be to a Rock Star, just a better musician. And when all of the great Music of all genres lives in a past tense, that's incredibly sad!
I really can't name any song of any genre that will actually become a standard of repertoire from the last 10 to 20 years!
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Originally Posted by jads57
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You made this thread before .. and that was an epic thread btw
Yeah, not fan of the everything getting corrected and quantisized either ... The apperance of Beat Inspector around 2000 was a disaster for anything groove.
But as as a living .. stuff comes and goes all the time ... Once we had a lot of people working as typesetters to take an absurd example. C'est la vie
Hope you're doing good and can survive well til the end Jads .... and the young? .. Let them worry. They'll probably do good anyways .. Usually they do ... Maybe they'll pass on doing music and maybe they won't .. Who knows?
Cheers Jads
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I'm not hearing good melodies often enough. 80's music was goofy but it had melodies. I hear good vocals. Naturally musicians are bigger stronger faster and more robotic. It's evolution.
Like BB King said- melody is the common link between all music.
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More about jazz:
Is there any young jazz musician who could compete with Coltrane?
Don't worry!
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Originally Posted by kris
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Originally Posted by Half-trick pony
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Oh well, then maybe we need more of that!
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Originally Posted by djg
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II: topic :II
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Originally Posted by jads57
Stay well.
Cheers
TLB
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TLB, this threads for you.
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Tonight I spent time on the electric telephone with an old friend from days of yore, we talked of musicians we had known and/or played with. One name came up that I had to search for and in the process came up with this "colorful" review of what was then my local watering hole:
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As a basically homeless 16-year old in 1966 I earned whatever I could in various places. One was Frank Traynor's 291 Club in Melbourne. This ran after hours on Friday and Saturday nights when the folk club had closed and the various band members needed somewhere to relax after gigs. My job was to keep serving them "Black Death" - a mixture of claret and coke that became more coke and less claret as the hours went on. I met and heard some of the best musicians I have ever known in that place! [also some of the closest friends I know until this day]. The various youth gangs of those days could be united in only one thing - their hatred of Jazz - and so things became "tricky" at times.
With that in mind I am far from disposed to criticize any young [or old or whatever age] people who get together to make any form of music, no matter how far I am from comprehending or appreciating it. What matters is that it moves them.
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To call it "Dostoyevskyan" may do it a slight dis-service. On one night a patron at the bar was fatally stabbed and taken to hospital by "persons unknown". The police of course descended and shut the place down with everybody inside until they had given statements. One enterprising local had in the meantime bought up cartons of takeaway booze that he proceeded to sell to the trapped patrons at an outrageous markup. He was even heard complaining loudly to the "jacks" when the lockdown ended that he still had beer to sell.
Don't know if we could get away with this in modern Australia - and probably never in anytime USA. But all in the spirit of personal enterprise <<G>>
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Originally Posted by djg
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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Good discussion fellows on all sides! I started this again from my viewpoint at my age and as a pro musician who's always loved Jazz.
To me music that Grooves and has human interaction is what moves me.
So that can be any genre as well, even Pop.
When it became drum machines and Pro Tools, it became too robotic. Actual songs are not jingles or music sound tracks which depend on the exact clock.
So when Prince and Michael Jackson became huge in the 1980s Pop embraced this rigid formula, which basically affected all music genres.
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Originally Posted by jads57
I think popular music went from being about melody to being about rhythm.
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Hi, Jads,
Art reflects the culture. Simple. Music began a serious decline, IMO, in the late 70's/80's. Jazz Clubs disappeared, live music was replaced with sophisticated sound systems and DJ's, and Jazzers became technical phenoms with graduate degrees in Jazz and cut their chops ,later, in 2005 on Youtube. For me, the greatest factor in this decline was the disappearance of venues for live music where working musicians could make a meager living and hone their skills. I doubt we'll ever see a reversal in this reality. Less than 1.4% of America's population listens to Jazz music. Play live . . . Marinero
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There is always good music out there, you just have to know where to find it. Yes there is not the jazz scene or folk scene or whatever there once was. Yes top 100 music is full of dreck.
My main beef with "music these days" is that no one bothers with melody anymore. There aren't any songs, only beats or sad grooves.
That said, there are great musicians and singers and songwriters out there. Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, Chris Thile and his fellow neo-grassians, Jason Isbell, Brittney Howard and the Alabama Shakes, Brandy Carlisle, Donny McCaslin, Ben Monder, Julian Lage--that's off the top of my head.
The problem from an analytic point of view is that music is so fragmented these days. Top 100 really is the scum that rises to the top--not that every single artist who's very popular is untalented, but just that the overarching effect of Top 100 is mind-numbing in its uniformity and lack of imagination.
So to get to those gems you have to pan a lot of mud as it were. Frustrating, but you can't stay locked in the past. There are a lot of younger artists who deserve to be heard.
KA PAF info please
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