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For a long time punk rock industry vet his arguments sure sound a lot like my dad's. "Modern music is garbage and you kids today don't know anything." I don't

For a long time punk rock industry vet his arguments sure sound a lot like my dad's. "Modern music is garbage and you kids today don't know anything." I don't know where this guy is, but I don't think it's a controversial statement to say that more music is being made now by more diverse groups of people with better technology than at any other time in history. I'm not saying garbage isn't being made and bought, but to ignore the actual musical revolution going on at the same time is just damned shortsighted. And ironically for an aging punk rocker the exact same thing people said about his music when he was still young.

nailer 11y ago
I dislike Kim Kardashian (who is mentioned in the article along with Bieber), but contrast her to previous sex symbols: rather than have someone else make money from her sexuality, she's created and distributed her own porn, made a bunch of money doing it, and used it to become a pop culture figure without any obvious talents asides from self promotion. I dislike Bieber too, but he was a Canadian kid with a giant guitar on YouTube who could really sing. The ability to become well known without agents / labels at the beginning of his career means now he has them he's probably taking more home than he would have if they'd been there as a distribution gateway like they were in the 90s.
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Roonerelli 11y ago
absolutely. He says the musical spectrum runs from Johnny Rotten to Sid Vicious. Two members of the same band. That's an incrediably blinkered view point
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  No, he was talking about just punk; the full quote was "On one end you have Johnny Rotten, where he’s smart and sarcastic and aware, and on the other end you have Sid Vicious, a heroin-shooting ignorant person."
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AimHere 11y ago
Worse than that, I'd say. The new revamped Dead Kennedys are essentially complaining that they're finding it too hard to make serious money from 30 year old material. In the 15 years or so since they reformed, they've not apparently written or released one new song. The closest they came was when they played one of their old songs in concert with the lyrics reworked as 'Mp3 Get Off The Web', which was essentially a complaint that it was too hard to seek rent in the modern recording industry. If they were actively trying to record new music to compete with the newer musicians they're moaning about, and finding that hard, it might be easier to sympathise with them. As it is, the new Dead Kennedys are just a cover band which collects royalties (and the collection of royalties seems to be their main focus). I still have my Dead Kennedys albums from the first time round so I don't have any need to buy them again, and younger kids have younger musicians to listen to. Who do the Dead Kennedys think is going to pay money for them to rerecord 30-year old material?
vlunkr 11y ago
I couldn't agree more, sure there's lots of coverage on Kanye, but you can ignore it and listen to the ridiculous amount of indie artists out there instead. (New Animal Collective album is good!)
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  It's a golden age for indie music of all kinds. There's an unbelievable amount of talent out there - not even counting how easy it is now to find good music from Eastern Europe or Thailand or other places that used to be completely off the Western music map. It's not a golden age for making a living as an indie artist. The unbelievable amount of talent makes it hard for anyone to break through, or even to scrape by. I don't think Bieber and Kardashian are any worse than their equivalents in previous generations. There's always been a lot of manufactured product sold by image in pop, all the way back to vaudeville and music hall. But I think the 70s and especially the 80s hit a sweet spot for cost-of-entry which kept dabblers out while promoting some of the strongest talent. Now people are a lot more likely to be making music at home than paying someone else for it. Software synths and samplers have become the modern parlour upright piano. It's good in a way, but it makes it much harder for the talented artists who are selling music to stand out from those who are selling an image and a lifestyle brand.
bad_music 11y ago
And way, WAY more music sucks even worse now than at any other time in history. If you don't know where to look (or maybe more importanly how to look for it), then confronting the horrors of the default mainstream pop nightmare set before us, and being unable locate something that suits your tastes can feel truly hopeless, and leave one completely bereft of satisfaction. I don't think that's a contraversial statement. The shining examples really do get buried in an avalanche of gruel. Meanwhile, experiments like Black MIDI are tangentially interesting, but not actually useful.

nailer 11y ago

I dislike Kim Kardashian (who is mentioned in the article along with Bieber), but contrast her to previous sex symbols: rather than have someone else make money from her sexuality, she's created and distributed her own porn, made a bunch of money doing it, and used it to become a pop culture figure without any obvious talents asides from self promotion. I dislike Bieber too, but he was a Canadian kid with a giant guitar on YouTube who could really sing. The ability to become well known without agents / labels at the beginning of his career means now he has them he's probably taking more home than he would have if they'd been there as a distribution gateway like they were in the 90s.

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Roonerelli 11y ago

absolutely. He says the musical spectrum runs from Johnny Rotten to Sid Vicious. Two members of the same band. That's an incrediably blinkered view point

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
No, he was talking about just punk; the full quote was "On one end you have Johnny Rotten, where he’s smart and sarcastic and aware, and on the other end you have Sid Vicious, a heroin-shooting ignorant person."

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AimHere 11y ago

Worse than that, I'd say. The new revamped Dead Kennedys are essentially complaining that they're finding it too hard to make serious money from 30 year old material. In the 15 years or so since they reformed, they've not apparently written or released one new song. The closest they came was when they played one of their old songs in concert with the lyrics reworked as 'Mp3 Get Off The Web', which was essentially a complaint that it was too hard to seek rent in the modern recording industry. If they were actively trying to record new music to compete with the newer musicians they're moaning about, and finding that hard, it might be easier to sympathise with them. As it is, the new Dead Kennedys are just a cover band which collects royalties (and the collection of royalties seems to be their main focus). I still have my Dead Kennedys albums from the first time round so I don't have any need to buy them again, and younger kids have younger musicians to listen to. Who do the Dead Kennedys think is going to pay money for them to rerecord 30-year old material?

vlunkr 11y ago

I couldn't agree more, sure there's lots of coverage on Kanye, but you can ignore it and listen to the ridiculous amount of indie artists out there instead. (New Animal Collective album is good!)

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
It's a golden age for indie music of all kinds. There's an unbelievable amount of talent out there - not even counting how easy it is now to find good music from Eastern Europe or Thailand or other places that used to be completely off the Western music map. It's not a golden age for making a living as an indie artist. The unbelievable amount of talent makes it hard for anyone to break through, or even to scrape by. I don't think Bieber and Kardashian are any worse than their equivalents in previous generations. There's always been a lot of manufactured product sold by image in pop, all the way back to vaudeville and music hall. But I think the 70s and especially the 80s hit a sweet spot for cost-of-entry which kept dabblers out while promoting some of the strongest talent. Now people are a lot more likely to be making music at home than paying someone else for it. Software synths and samplers have become the modern parlour upright piano. It's good in a way, but it makes it much harder for the talented artists who are selling music to stand out from those who are selling an image and a lifestyle brand.

bad_music 11y ago

And way, WAY more music sucks even worse now than at any other time in history. If you don't know where to look (or maybe more importanly how to look for it), then confronting the horrors of the default mainstream pop nightmare set before us, and being unable locate something that suits your tastes can feel truly hopeless, and leave one completely bereft of satisfaction. I don't think that's a contraversial statement. The shining examples really do get buried in an avalanche of gruel. Meanwhile, experiments like Black MIDI are tangentially interesting, but not actually useful.