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| Noam, screengrabbed during Zoom™ call yestiddy! |
You'll know Noam from his award-winning work for the Bumfight Foundation Trust®, which sponsors boxing competitions for the homeless, but did you know he's also something of an Arena Rock maven? Noam brought us up to speed in a Zoom™ call yestiddy!
FT3 Yo, Noamster! Lookin' buff, my man! Wassup?
NC Good day to you, sir! Can you see me?
FT3 Loud and clear, Noamie! Hey - what's wit' that album which you're desirous of sharing wit' th' Four Or Five Guys©??
NC Ah! This is Mr. Richard - Rick, as I believe he prefers to be known - Derringer's first solo album, All American Boy. I've been what the young people call a "fan" of his work since the McCoys, but I'm particularly fond of this solo album, for its winning combination of rhythmic urgency and melodic adroitness. It is my firm conviction that we may discern within its grooves the genesis of what came to be known as Arena Rock.
FT3 I think most guys would have you down as a Beethoven-type dude. Maybe Stephen Sondheim. Rick Derringer?
NC Oh, he's woefully undervalued, as a composer, musician, and memetic paradigm of popular Western culture at what might be termed its Babylonian zenith. Plus, he could rock out.
FT3 (glances at wristwatch) Well, thank you for taking time out from your work with the homeless bums to share this with us, Chomster!
FT3 Uh - okay. I guess.
NC Could I perhaps contact her via you? I have some-
FT3 You're breaking up! BZZZZRRRRRT!
Support the work of the Bumfight Foundation Trust™ by sending me money - used, non-sequential low denomination U.S. currency please. No singles.
Okay, Chomsky's Choice may be outside your comfort zone, but I gotta admit it does what it does in spades and to th' max. Tunes are here in abundance (ever seen a dance in a bakery?), musicianly skill in no short supply, and if you have a Bic to wave you'll hold it aloft for Rick. Sometimes, a guy needs to Rock Out, and this rocks out so hard it comes in the other side.
ReplyDeleteSuggestions for similar exercises in irony-free rockular excellence? There are a couple on Noam's shelf awready. Let's do this, people!
Had the four channel quadraphonic release of Rick's 'All American Boy', which was a pretty popular album on this side of the Atlantic and Pacific.
ReplyDeleteAs for "irony-free rockular excellence", and somewhat related: 'Johnny Winter And Live', which rawks live nobody's business. The albums on the shelf, in my eye: are decidedly pedestrian.
Which brings us to Mr. Chomsky, who's my favorite "Pinko". Had a phone conversation with Noam, want some screed?
Always need screed here, Babs! Sharpen that quill!
Delete(Incidentally, the four channel quad release isn't as rare as the two channel quad release. Somebody on the Steve Hoffman forum claims it's a fold-down to stereo, but it's a dedicated mix.)
Ah, the rare two channel quadraphonic release (color me jealous).
DeleteDon't get me started on the Steve Hoffman forum, and I say that as an audiophile (with a small a).
Sharpening the quill.
Await the Foam Chomsky with delight...
ReplyDeleteEric, you are a gentleman, not like dem other freeloadin' bums what lounge around th' IoF© scratchin' their balls. So this link is your personal loaddown, and anybody else clicking it will be subject to th' CURSE O' FOAM™, today manifest as a crow circling overhead ominously.
Deletehttps://workupload.com/file/Z3KAtVBwems
No gentleman I, but you are too kind, sir.
DeleteWhile Anxiously awaiting Bab's promised Screed O'Noam, I heartily recommend his "How To Read the New York Times," _The Utne Reader_, no. 14 (Feb/Mar 1986): 56-65.
Oh, erm, and rock and roll hoochie koo and fuck yeah Johnny Winter And. In 1971 (I think...) I saw them maybe at the Louisiana State Fair or somesuch thing and they melted my 12-13 year-old mind. At some point a blazing version of Highway 61 turned into Great Balls of Fire, Long Tall Sally, and Johnny B. Goode and folx, I was edumacated. Praise be.
DeleteThe good old Utne Reader! I had a subscription once and Z Magazine before it! Noam is quite the cunning linguist.
DeleteIt appears that Bodacious Ta-Tas have been lifted aloft... I nominate post-punkular Lp "Talk Talk Talk" from the Psychedelic Furs.
ReplyDeleteRick Derringer? That's surely got to be Suzi Quatro toting a 6-string guitar instead of a 4-string bass?
ReplyDeleteI like a bit of 'Rock', but Arena Rock, not keen. On Noam's shelf I see Aerosmith, in the early 90's I enjoyed their show at Donington Park, but all their albums from then on were pretty poor I thought.
ReplyDeleteI've always loved RD's guitar playing. His solo on Steely Dan's "Chain Lightning" is one of my favourites.
ReplyDeleteI'm astonished that a piece about Noam Chomsky's liking for Arena Rock is getting so little internet traction. Absolutely astonished. And I guarantee that if I'd put Kreemé's picture at the top, page visits would be through the roof. So much for intellect, for discourse, for oratory! Give us a broad in a bikini!
ReplyDeleteI take a moment or two away from reading Scripture to apologize for the four or five guys who notice Rubenesque women. Tits -- er, uh, -- it’s disgraceful. Now, I must get back to knitting trussers for the homeless.
DeleteRick Derringer - Bottom Line, NYC, Jan. 3, 1980 WNEW-FM. This is from a low bias tape I bought off Ebay. Complete with the famous hits "Tape Flip" and "WNEW Announcers!" Hear! Rick Derringer chastize the Ayatoolah with a word that sounds like "FCC!" See! An actual scan of a ticket from this epic appearance! https://mega.nz/file/2MQAVCxY#eQfAAiMmQlmMTkN65F-KF0YJdHG_AE5r29qlDKGTCto
ReplyDeleteAwesomeness!
DeleteI'm not finished with this thread. I am going to support Mr. Chomsky's stance on Arena Rock for a while until everybody returns to their senses for the next Steve Shark piece, which is next.
I'm open to most genres, and Arena Rock is fine with me. As I slid into punk in '76-'77, I rejected most of it if it fell on the prog side, but Derringer was a rocker, plus...Hang On Sloopy. That's suitably "garage" which was cool.
DeleteI'm OK with the genre until it turned into an excuse for Oldies Nights.
DeleteSo modern day Fleetwood Mac/Doobies/Kansas and the like shows are just retreads of over-familiar material from people who should have given up s while ago.
The beauty of being on th' Isle O' Foam© is that all epochs, all years, are simultaneant. Everybody's still alive, and all records are new releases. The music knows.
DeleteI'm open to listening to just about anything to see if I'll like it. I'm trying to stop my preconceived notions BEFORE I hear the record.
DeleteThe period 1968-1974, when I was 12 to 18, saw the development of rock "criticism." A significant portion of thereof was denigrating artists and genre while being clever. Or one subcultures music was "cool" and another's wasn't. (And lets limit our listening to records from the U.S.A., U.K., Canada, and maybe a few from Australia.)
Styles go in and out of fashion, and different generations often view each other with reflexive disdain. ("Dad Rock." "Music today sucks").
I recently drove up to Reno to see America. I never owned so much as a single, if anything I was disdainful of their style, but I had a perfectly good time, and yeah, to SteveShark's comment, it was EXACTLY "Oldies Night." I could offer lots of criticisms and analysis about what they're doing wrong, what I'd do instead if I were in the band, but that would get in the way of actually enjoying it for what it was.
So...I'm fine with "Arena Rock" as a genre.
To my very mainstream buddies from college I am a music snob with music snob sensibilities. Which, you know, I own. Good taste isn't always everyone's taste.
DeleteThat doesn't mean I'm faking what music I like or don't like.
I know there's many a jazz head on the Isle of Foam. I have tried for years to get into jazz, but try as I might, it ain't my thing. So no intellectual chitter chatter about which Miles albums is the best for me.
If I have a guilty pleasure, and we know that no pleasures (exluding those linked to Kreemé are guilty), it's the songs I heard on the radio when I was young (Kindergarten class of 1982, remember...).
So I have a strange/strong affinity for AOR rock of the mid to late 80s. Big choruses! Big keyboard lines! Big guitars! Big mullets! Fist in the air, fuck yeah!
So there. Arena rock, bring it on.
PS.: Today's music really does suck. I know every generation says that, but some are more right than others. People who were complaining in the 80s didn't know how good they had it, questionable production styles notwithstanding...
If people want the "Old Stuff", fair enough - there should be room for that. I just find it a little ironic and rather depressing that music that once rebelled against the norm has become the norm and those who currently rebel find it hard to actually make their mark in the business.
DeleteThe question is, rather, whether there still is a business to make your mark in. Rock'n'roll as any sort of popular music bothering the charts (who, well, aren't really having any meaning these days either) is a thing of the past, and has been for at least ten, if not fifteen years. Funny, and indeed, a little sad that when the mini-boom of all the "The-Bands (Strokes, White Stripes, Vines, Hives etc.) happened, everyone remarked on its retro aspects, but I'm not sure anyone figured that this really and truly was the last gasp of rock'n'roll as anything close to culturally relevant.
DeleteIt wasn't only rock criticism that invented itself in the late sixties, it was the critics' liking for genres. Back in those days, there were basic genres like, rock, folk, blues, pop, and jazz, which were each easily stretched and mixed if necessary. Further classification is unnecessary. What is alt-rock if not rock? Punk rock? Rock. But critics got all sniffy about rock music. It was for the uneducated, the blue collar. Only Creem was honest in that respect. Rolling Stone led the way to fake academic authority, writing the scripture of rock, teachers' pets like Ben Fong-Torres making lists. Critical reception became as important as the music, and the sub-genres proliferated (like paperwork for bureaucrats) to keep the critics in work.
DeleteSteve, you say:
Delete"If people want the "Old Stuff", fair enough - there should be room for that. I just find it a little ironic and rather depressing that music that once rebelled against the norm has become the norm and those who currently rebel find it hard to actually make their mark in the business."
There's contemporary music that rebels against the norm? I must have missed that. Contemporary music, without exception, conforms to norms established in the 60's, 70's. There is nothing new, only reshuffles of an old deck.
As to people wanting the Old Stuff - the music doesn't know it's old. Old in what sense? A few years? How can that possibly matter? What matters is - would I rather listen to some gap year Americana or Dylan? Would I rather listen to some technically brilliant Norwegian jazz combo or some Blue Note from the 'fifties? Would I rather listen to some guitar-strumming, placeholder drumming, record collectors' "psychedelia" or the real thing? Rebellion in music? There isn't even invention, only re-iteration. All contemporary music has quotes around it.
Oh yeah, there is only Old Stuff, when it comes to recordings. Listening to something because it was recorded a few weeks ago, as opposed to a few years, has never struck me as valid. Every recording exists in a place called the past, the same place, equally accessible.
DeleteI'm not sure truly contemporary music just "reshuffles the deckand conforms to norms established in the 60's or 70's", mainly because the style of most contemporary music didn't exist as such. Almost all contemporary popular music seems to rely on electronic beats, copious use of vocoder, various degrees of rap content or - if possible - all of the above.
DeleteI'm younger than most folks on this blog, and hey, I listened to a bunch of hip hop in my younger days, but yeah, the combination in which these things are served these days is just something I can't roll with. It ain't from the 60's or 70's, but you kind of wish it was...because even the worst parts of those times are probably better than most of what is bothering the charts nowadays...
"Hip hop is a subculture and an art movement that emerged from ... the early 1970s", it says here. Electronic beats/electronica have been around since the late 'sixties, but "the simplest and most appropriate way to discover the origins of electronic music is by declaring its birth in the 1970s" (again. it says here).
DeleteExtend that timeframe to the 80's, if you want. You say yourself that "the combination in which these things are served these days ..." which kinda sorta makes my point for me.
Edit: I know, electronic music has been around since much earlier than the 'sixties.
DeleteHey, OBG, if you can post contemporary music that I can't trace back directly to innovation in the 60s/70s, I want to hear it.
I'm 65, and regularly listen to hip-hop...but it's mainly the 80s/early 90's hip-hop. I like sample-based music, and lots of the fun is "where did THAT sound come from?" I just discovered Kool G Rap & DJ Polo's sampling of Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express" on "Rhymes I Express."
DeleteTo Steve, I offer that it is ironic that yesterday's Storm the Bastille rebels are today's get off my lawn grumps, but it's also Shakespeare's "seven ages of man." To me...it's not depressing but normal. If you're lucky enough to live through your 30s, you may change your mind about what's cool (or uncool). If you're unlucky enough to die young, your rebellion is preserved forever...like an insect preserved in amber.
I'm sixty-five. I listen to new music every day. I have looked at the "random shuffles" of most of you, and if there's one thing I've noticed, it's a wide diversity of taste. None of you seem mired in the tarpits of a specific decade or genre.
I'm mired in th' Tarpit O' Quality©!
DeleteThe "innovations" of the 60s/70s were derivative of norms established in the 40s/50s, which were in turn derivative of norms established in the 20s/30s, and whattaya know, you can argue that it's derivatives of previous norms all the way down to the first man, woman or child who put a shell to their lips and blew.
DeleteOr you could persuasively propose that each generation's genres generate new innovations and new norms, which inspire the next generation to reject those norms and create new noises that will one day be rejected in turn by the next new generation, who will gyrate to gleaming new genres that we can't even conceive of yet.
No doubt we will hate the new genres when we do hear them, and we will say "that's not music, that's just noise," just like our fathers and their fathers before them. It was better before, before they voted for what's his name. So push that next valve down, and the music goes round and round, and where it comes out nobody knows.
I was expecting this. Of course all art is influenced ("informed" as the Young People are saying) by previous culture. Listening to contemporary music is an exercise in spotting recognisable influences - this sounds very much like that. Listening to (say) Electric Music For The Mind And Body [or YOUR CHOICE HERE] back in '67, you weren't able to see where that came from quite so easily. The combinations were new. In contemporary music, the combinations have been exhausted. All the cards have been dealt. Reading a record review on Slate, or The Quietus, is checking which boxes have been ticked. Which artist has been "chanelled" (as The Young People call copying). How a touch of phasing makes it "psychedelic".
DeleteRock music in the sixties was recognisably music (at least to the generation that produced it) but radically different to what went before. Revolutionary. All contemporary music that I've heard sounds like so-and-so. And the songs aren't as good. I'm not saying Young People should stop making music, but the context that enabled the rock n' roll of the 'fifties, the shift that older generations found genuinely threatening or offensive, the shift that birthed the sixties, that's just not there any more. Basically, nobody really cares that much what music is made any more. Computer games, yes. Sneakers, probably.
(Probably a lot of this I could express better, but it's an on-the-fly comment and I have to go to the farm for lunch, so it is what it is.)
@jonder ... annnnnd another thing that occurred to me during lunch: musical evolution didn't, and doesn't, happen in a smooth line, one album appearing after another, referencing those behind it and anticipating those to follow. It is subject to chaotic changes, like species evolution, sudden leaps and stops. In the sixties, everything changed seemingly overnight, exploded. Music was part of a societal change, and music changed lives. Nothing like that has happened since, as much as subsequent generations would like to think it has. You couldn't listen to (say) The Doors first album and point to music from the fifties that it sounded like. There are countless examples from the 60s/70s that sound nothing like music of previous decades. Please do convince me that this level of innovation continues to this day, by posting an album that I can't say "sounds like". It all sounds like something done before, and mostly done in the 60s/70s and okay 80s, and mostly done better. Pop music is not an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of keyboards, the permutations are limited, and they've all been used. Over and over. Why listen to distant echoes when you can listen to the source? Because the echoes are "new"?
DeleteThere's definitely been a change, and it's not just in music. Subcultural styles don't seem to be changing. Decades once had easily identifiable youth sub-groups..greasers, beat-niks, hippies, skinheads, punks...we ought to be able to name five or six since 2000. I guess emo and nu-metal sort of count but I don't think I could describe the "uniform" of the subculture without peaking at the Internet.
DeleteThe other thing that's been lost is "the commons" of the Top 40. We sliced n' diced the demographics into smaller and smaller groups and then dispensed with radio altogether. Streaming gives you more music you like (because algorithm figures you out). While you'll get things you don't like they're still pretty close to your style.
Compare that to the Top 100 of 1966...where to get through to the songs you like you had to wade through...Frank Sinatra, Lou Rawls, Sgt. Barry Sadler, Slim Harpo, the Troggs, the Beatles. We had TWO pop stations with virtually identical playlists. So when something came on you didn't like, you just listened and waited for it to be over. But listening meant you actually heard it, and that (in my case...) expanded my taste.
The internet, and phones, are the culture today. Music intrudes sometimes as a soundtrack. Backthen, you'd hear something on the radio that would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and you'd want to leave home to find out where this stuff was happening and be part of it. Today you just wait for spotify to serve up something else that it thinks ticks your boxes.
DeleteI just wish we could all sit down and talk about this - maybe over a beer or six...there's so much to say and it's a fascinating subject.
DeleteWhat I will add - and forgive me if this has been said - is that much of that past music we love so much was never designed to last. Even the people who produced the really groundbreaking stuff thought it had a very limited life span.
Nowadays, because of the longevity of that music, people think that what they're recording can be like that, too. But can it? Only time will tell.
It hasn't been said. That was very much part of its power - rock music seized the moment without a thought for posterity. Pop was disposable entertainment. There was never a thought for tomorrow - we were never going to get old. That came as a surprise. Gimme the beat boys, free my soul, wanna get lost in that rock n' roll and drift away ...
DeletePlus, work. You worked for the music. I did thirty mile round trip rides on a bicycle to get a record. Later, I'd spend years looking over lists in Goldmine searching for a song I'd heard once on a radio. As I traded live shows on cassette, I'd include a "want list". It was wonderful to have the Internet show up and I could just ASK the Internet, and there was the record for sale somewhere. At the same time...growing up where and when you can just say "play _______" means you don't work to hear it...so you value it less. It doesn't mean quite the same thing. You like it, you don't love it the same way.
DeleteFab discussion, I'm a bit late here and like Draftervoi says, we did have to make a lot of effort, there was no free music, unless someone recorded a couple of albums on a C90 cassette for you, and because of this we cherished/valued music.
DeleteNow the good bit. I regard you guys as 'my' Spotify. I have plenty of friends who tell me to put Spotify on my phone/computer, but I'd really rather take my chances on a human recommendation, which is why I try thank the 4or5guys if something really 'floats my boat'. I doubt Spotify would have recommended to me the Japanese Jazz that Swami posted last year.
Also I believe Spotify are now too big, and like Amazon destroy more than any good they may have done. I have nothing against Ed Sheran, he's a very good pub entertainer (imo), who sells out multiple nights at Wembley Stadium. This is the good side of the internet if you happen to be Ed S, but as we know there are many like him still playing the pub circuit - if they financially survived the year or so of no gigs that is.
I've been trying unsuccessfully to recommend a newish record that came out of the blue, with little earlier influence. My first thought was Talk Talk, Spirit of Eden, but that was from the 80's. When that album came out it blew a few minds at my Friday Night Bachelor Pad. But really its lovely pop/jazz with some modern classical thrown in, maybe.
It's also never been easier to make music, record, and distribute it. Musical instruments of reasonable quality are relatively cheaper today. You don't even need to be able to play if you're nifty with loops, samples and software, which can all be found for free.
DeleteYou also don't need to duplicate your product if you're keeping it all digital, and you can sell it online.
Hey, wanna know a secret?
DeleteWell I'll tell you anyway. A few years ago I was searching for a song from when I was a kid, I only had a few of the words, no idea who recorded it, but always loved its uplifting 'feel'. Anyway a short time later it got played on the radio, turns out it was from 1970 (I thought it was earlier), and was We're Gonna Change The World by Matt Monroe. I still love the song but I thought it was by someone really 'cool'. Does this make me a square though? Should I stop wearing my Swingle Singers tee shirt in public? These thoughts worried me for a while.
WGAFA as Frank Z would say.
I have all manner of what I call my "guilty secrets" - stuff that is totally at odds with what's already a very diverse collection. If you like it you like it!
DeleteI love the Swingles - heard them first when I was about 15 and still like them.
According to Psychology Today (Oct. 1, 2019):
Delete“We know that musical tastes begin to solidify as early as age 13 or 14, and that they get locked into place pretty firmly in our early 20s. Studies indicate that most of us stop exploring new music entirely by the time we turn 33.
Curiously, men are even less likely than women to explore new music and listen to new artists as they get older.
Why does this happen?
For starters, there is evidence that the brain’s ability to make subtle distinctions between different chords and other musical elements gets worse with age, so new, unfamiliar songs may in fact sound more alike to older ears than to younger ears."
I believe this has a great deal to do with the discussions going on here.
FT3 says “post... an album that I can't say "sounds like". It all sounds like something done before, and mostly done in the 60s/70s and okay 80s”
Try this one?
Injury Reserve - By the Time I Get to Phoenix (2021)
https://mega.nz/file/L40kgAAD#Sbd7DcvjQAn0UPG2Rdq8QpP9jTXXelodX1KlgiE7PqQ
@Joey:
DeleteIt's hip hop, so it sounds a lot like any/all hip hop to someone - like me - who has only a superficial knowledge of the genre, i.e. low on melody/harmony and the chords they spring from. But the guy doing the review here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t3xLtOCF4w
mentions reference after reference - other acts it sounds like, sources for the elements within their music, and the comments do too: Clipping, Death Grips, Pink Siifu, Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE, JPEGMAFIA, Shabazz Palaces, Moor Mother, Chynna, Backxwash, Prison Religion, Rico Nasty, Denzel Curry, Bbymutha, MHYSA ...
So it sounds very much like something else to people who know what it sounds like! It may be well done, but it's not revolutionary - it's familiar territory to those who enjoy the landscape. Hip hop is decades old as a genre, and it's not immune to artistic exhaustion as a form, in spite of freeing itself from the nuisance of pop - a decent tune.
If you're familiar with the form, write a hip hop piece - I'm sure there'll be many interested!
All the "sounds like" comments on Youtube are contemporaries of Injury Reserve. Denzel Curry, Death Grips, Earl Sweatshirt and Shabazz Palaces are the only ones who were around even five years earlier than Injury Reserve.
DeletePoints of reference are just recommendations. If you like JPEGMAFIA, you might like Backxwash -- or you might hate her.
Save your breath, Joey. You're trying to convince someone who has already decided that four decades of hip hop has failed to produce "a decent tune".
@ jonder
DeleteHmmm - sounds like something done five years ago, you say? Good enough.
But the thing about a decent tune - you must be using the word in the sense that hip hop enthusiasts use it. Post a hip hop song that uses melody and harmony over a chord sequence, in a way that others can perform it. A tune that inspires cover versions, basically - like, say, By The Time I Get To Phoenix.
As to convincing me - I've said before that it's almost impossible to convince anybody of anything, even where facts are staring us in the face. It doesn't matter if I'm "convinced" or not. You write with obvious passion and expertise and eloquence - that's what matters here. Please do go on!
You're quite right it is impossible to convince anybody of anything, however much I try to like modern popular music, something will very often grate and I'll just switch off the radio(!)*. So I admit to living in the past with regards to the technology (Spotify has won), but radio and the 4or5guys will often point me in the direction of new (to me) music.
DeleteBut there is something else, I don't have any children. My friends that do are often listening to their childrens music or even grandchildrens music, this familial connection to music must be very strong and is something I obviously miss out on. But in chatting to these young people I notice they don't seem to have the passion for music that I did at their age - I know this is a bit of a generalisation and I'm sure there are plenty with passion for music.
* we do have BBC radio 6 which will play modern chart music during the daytime as well as a few oldies, but after 7 at night (UK time) the music gets much more interesting, gone are any chart songs and the weird and wonderful stuff both old and new will get played, this will often be so good I'm still listening 3 or 4 hours later.
One for Babs, th' IoF©'s shrimp boat hostess!
ReplyDeleteJohhny Winter And Live
With you and Bab's permission, don't mind if I do....mil gracias
DeleteHere's Montrose.
ReplyDeleteHere's some Canadian Arena Rock - and it's not Rush, so yah, boo and, indeed, sucks.
ReplyDeleteSaga, with what I think is a stonkingly good album.
https://workupload.com/file/87S3T4GNWKL
I've forgotten about Saga, they came to the uk about 1980, tickets were so cheap, me and a friend went to see them, they were really good, but I lost touch with them - I see they made many more records.
DeleteDid somebody say Quad? https://www68.zippyshare.com/v/QULWq2EO/file.html
ReplyDeleteThis is All-American Boy, not only in quad, but also with the original horrorshow cover that helped kill it in the racks.
Delete"Music was part of a societal change, and music changed lives... Nothing like that has happened since" -- nothing that you were young enough to claim as your moment, your awakening, or your revolution.
ReplyDeleteIt happened for you during one era. You treasure that era, and you believe that it was unique. You feel compelled to refute that it happened for other people who came of age before you, or it has happened since then for people younger than you. Why deny the validity of their lived experience? Why insist that one decade is culturally superior to another?
How can you be certain that young people don't feel a deep, visceral connection to music being made today? How could we possibly know that they don't? It doesn't move you, therefore we assume that it lacks the qualities to affect others -- or worse, assume that young people lack the capacity to be moved and changed by a cultural experience.
Whoah! Deep breaths, deep breaths. Even if your accusations are justified (which they are, a very little) it's getting personal and overheated.
DeleteContemporary music obviously means a lot to you, which is nothing but a good thing. But hip hop is what, fifty years old? How old are you?
I'd like to point out that Jonder n' me are big pals.
Delete