The state of Music

[ronuva]

I never thought I would see the day when guys who rhyme words aimlessly and scratch recordplayers would be considered great recording artists. All rap is is violent disco. I lived through disco once and I don't want to do that again. I'm not saying that all rock music was great art but at least they played their own instruments and did not have to sample others songs to manufacture hits. I hope the pendulum will swing back to the day when guitars ruled the airways. But until then I refuse to listen to regular commercial music radio. Satellite radio gives a choice. I choose to keep rocking.

[Socrates]

Try jazz. Not "smooth" jazz which is just elevator music with saxophones, but real jazz...Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, J.J. Johnson, Wes Montgomery...

[King Cantona]

I quite agree, all my favourite bands are guitar bands.........

[Jíbaro]

Try jazz. Not "smooth" jazz which is just elevator music with saxophones, but real jazz...Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, J.J. Johnson, Wes Montgomery...

Real Jazz is great African-American music, while Rap is Mumbo-Jumbo, that is, it is rythmic poetry, which for now is more risquè than aesthetic. ReggaeTTON beats Rap in melodiousness and fun factor. By the way, military marching cadences qualify as Pro-Rap, but at least have a melody, while many Rap songs nowadays lack.

As far as melodious drums are concerned, nothing is more African and beautiful than Salsa and Samba (and their variants, such as Rumba, Mambo, Chacha, Guaracha); Rock and Roll consists of merely military beats in comparison.

And for the life of me, as a person born and raised in the Caribbean, I can't get a handle on Egyptian/Arabic rythms. They are cute, but have no melodious romantic soul to them.

[curtis123]

Music has splintered off into too many genres. Too many divisions. Radio doesn't know what to play anymore. The top station in my town plays largely classic country.

It wasn't that long ago, there were only a couple of music charts. (country and all that other crap) :D

Now, I'm hearing pop artists on the country stations, trying to pawn their stuff off as country.

[slick_trip]

i can remember being laughed at in '86 when i said metal and rap would breed.

i think it's wonderful the variety of music out there - the exploration, the creativity.

yes, nine ince nails and trent reznor - dj's who sample and mix - are just as creative as their originals. like the artist who builds a mosaic out of smaller pieces.

doesn't have to appeal to you - and 'classic' whatever will always have a creative source. someone will always appreciate a hank williams sr. or a led zepplin or what have you...

[PhilRocksinOHIO.]

I have basically stuck with my generation of music, which is rock and roll from the 50's, 60's and 70's. The only "new" stuff I listen to is blues, like Chris Duarte, Sonny Landreth, Tab Benoit, and Tinsley Ellis.

All of the homies in the hood can have their rap and hip hop. I recently seen a short video at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame of Run DMC and they said that people should respect rap as music. Not in this lifetime, brutha. Makes me wish all of the rappers driveby shoot each other and see who survives. Bunch of thugs.

I'll stick with what made me happy. Music of today most certainly has gotten worse.

[BrittleBullet]

The Minstrel Show by Little Brother and Phrenology by The Roots are perhaps two of my favorite albums released in recent history and they're hip hop albums.
Not all hip hop is bad, its just the bad **** that sells.

[sgdp]

I like all kinds of music. I go from big band to folk rock to hip hop.

[BrittleBullet]

Every generation will complain about the next generation's taste in music.
Its guaranteed.
I personally listen to more of the hipsterish alt rock although my distaste of some of the new bands just proves to me that I'm getting older not so much that the quality of music is going down.

[FidelisAdMortem]

I favor 80's rock.

[ScottFree]

All rap is is violent disco.

You know, your right!

Check out these lyrics from 50 cent from his cover of "Stayin' Alive"

"Whether youre a brother or whether youre a mother,
Youre stayin alive, stayin alive.
Feel the city breakin and everybody shakin,
'Till I bus a cap in yo motha ****in' ass!"

[BrittleBullet]

I went to ITunes and downloaded me a load of "instumental rap" without the words. Got me a great cruise CD made to drive around town of songs like, "What U Gon' Do, by Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys, "Disco Inferno," by Fifty Cent, and more. Love it.

I can enjoy that kind of music as long as I don't take it seriously.
I prefer that over some of the music my friends will listen to (prog metal) when I'm just trying to have good time.

[BrittleBullet]

Not the kind of avatar I'd expect to find here.

The cover to a Dr. Octagon album?

[BrittleBullet]

Yah.

I'm a lib though...

[sgdp]

You know, your right!

Check out these lyrics from 50 cent from his cover of "Stayin' Alive"

"Whether youre a brother or whether youre a mother,
Youre stayin alive, stayin alive.
Feel the city breakin and everybody shakin,
'Till I bus a cap in yo motha ****in' ass!"[/LEFT]

:))

I like the Gibbs and Fiddy Cent, but I still appreciate this.

[angelicmadrigal]

I try not to judge other people's music. In general I don't listen to rap but I can appreciate the likes of Will Smith as well as some of the more old school rappers. In general the type of music I listen to would make most people on this forum a little leery of me.

[MrShotShot]

I always try to use the lense of longevity when I look at artists and their music. When it comes to rap and almost all popular music, I have a hard time seeing anyone that's going to be getting airplay and selling out concerts in 25-30 years.

Seriously, are our kids going to be talking about Lady GaGa and Flo Rida in 30 years the way my generation talks about Zeppelin, The Who, and the Stones?

[sgdp]

I always try to use the lense of longevity when I look at artists and their music. When it comes to rap and almost all popular music, I have a hard time seeing anyone that's going to be getting airplay and selling out concerts in 25-30 years.

Seriously, are our kids going to be talking about Lady GaGa and Flo Rida in 30 years the way my generation talks about Zeppelin, The Who, and the Stones?

People will probably still talk about Tupac, 50 Cent, Snoop, etc.

Every genre has its one-hit wonders.

[MikeJF]

Commercial music use to be great, back in the day. Today, they give us Lady GaGa. However, music hasn't died yet. It's alive and well. One has to seek out the good music now. It no longer plays on the over-air-radio. One can still even listen to the great songs of the past which are now broadcasting on internet radio (shoutcast, etc).

But now thanks to the internet we have access to the unsigned, un-commerical artists, and this is a great source for new great inspired music. It's a music treasure. They live on soundclick, myspacemusic, etc. But one must seek out the gems among the many wannabes. It's sad that great new music is being made but the big labels don't seek it out, and care nothing of it. The labels use to bring the good music to us. Now, we have to go find it.

[WhiteHatBobby]

Once you've been to the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville, and also spent many hours at the Koger and Gaillaird Auditorium for great concerts, the classical genre is the genre for you.

But at church, I see the trouble with the state of music. When everything is hard rock without theology or doctrine, and choirs are relegated to karaoke pop of modern rock tunes, and teens who dance to secularised songs are relevant but choral singers are not, what can you do?

[Dregun]

The age of some of our posters really come through with this thread. :razz:

I was a child of the 80's, I grew up listening to the hair band music of my generation but I believe I have a varried taste in music.

I like:
Gansta Rap
Hip-Hop
R&B
Rock
Classic Rock
Metal
Classical
Techno
and many more I can't name.

The only music I really can't stand is 99% of country, not to say I hate all country music because I do like some.

As far as Rap is concerned I don't particularly care for the southern style as much as I like/d the east and west coast rappers.

This quote disturbed me..
guys who rhyme words aimlessly

Because I can point out a lot of artists both Rock and Rap who do this, you can hear a song for the first time and be able to complete the lyrics because they have no orginality. YET just like Rock sometimes you get some very nice word play, metephors etc etc that make you smile because it was really clever. Some Rap/Hip-Hop artists are true ARTISTS because they can take the most mundane and make it orginal.

Tech N9ne "Worst Enemy"
Listen I'm losing my life because of you
I lost my life because of you; I'm losing my wife because of you
I even had sex and a baby with that crazy bitch you introduced me to
Now I'm straight depressed, I hate your flesh
The fate was just, belate the Tech laid to rest
Every time you got drawls you made my
Poor little life fall (N-word) you got balls


This is one section of lyrics; he tells the story about a friend of his who keeps getting him in trouble. At the very end of the song he tells YOU the listener who hes talking about...I'll just say his male member. It was like the moment you found out Bruce Willis was dead in The Sixth Sense, you listen to the song again and it then seems obvious. Tech N9ne sings/raps really fast so that entire verse in the song is performed in about 5 seconds and its not one of his faster songs.

[WhiteHatBobby]

I always try to use the lense of longevity when I look at artists and their music. When it comes to rap and almost all popular music, I have a hard time seeing anyone that's going to be getting airplay and selling out concerts in 25-30 years.

Seriously, are our kids going to be talking about Lady GaGa and Flo Rida in 30 years the way my generation talks about Zeppelin, The Who, and the Stones?

Lady GaGa and Flo Rida?

Both of them have been called to the Oval Office for consultation, as Mike Joy says.

Serena's there to go after them!

[PhilRocksinOHIO.]

Kind of an immature thing to say, no? And how, exactly, are Run DMC "thugs"?
Immature? It's called an opinion. Ever have one before?

Every single rap "song" I hear comes from rappers who are obviously angry at just about everything. Ever see a cover of a rappers CD? They don't look happy at all. And judgeing by the clothes they wear and their hand gestures, it describes "thug" to me.

My generation of music has gotten dumped on before but guess what? It's actual music, with actual instruments, and they carry a tune when they "sing", all of which rappers can't do.

[Wilhelm Scream]

Immature?
Every single rap "song" I hear comes from rappers who are obviously angry at just about everything.

The same can be said for just about every genre of music. What is music if not the expression of an emotion, be it anger, love, or anything else? Weren't heavy metal bands also "angry?" What is the emo genre if not complete angst?

I'll concede that some (not all) modern music has lost the lyrical sense of ambiguity. There's just no reading between the lines of song lyrics on some of these new groups. To me, that was part of the fun of listening to music: trying to out what the heck they were singing about!

This conversation makes me want to pop High Fidelity into the DVD player.