24 ms·

Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

199 points by Phithagoras 5y ago

gaucheph 5y ago
Probably needs a (2016) label.
- dang 5y ago
  Eventually added. Thanks!
llamataboot 5y ago
I often reflect on the similiarities to that and how techno and house became EDM. When I started going to Midwestern raves in the 1990s they were literally some of the first fully integrated places I hung out in. Definitely some of the Detroit techno parties we went too, some of the first places where it was a majority Black space. EDM now is thought of as this totally white music, all electronic music really, by everyone. Oh some rappers might flirt with some electronic beats, but the whole genre has just been whitewashed basically. But for some of those years in the 1990s it really felt like we were living in the future. Hopped up on smart drinks (and LSD), gay and straight, black and white, talking about this new thing called the internet and dancing all night together. We were it - the New Humans…
- crucialfelix 5y ago
  I was in the 90s Midwest rave scene as well. This pattern repeats itself in music over and over. Jungle to DNB. Dubstep was like two tone, then it got destroyed by the US market takeover. Garage, grime, dancehall, hip hop all stay mainly black (with some white artists accepted) to defend their scene. Precisely to stop the take over from happening again.
  - hntroll999 5y ago
    This leftist style of racist crap is normal and accepted on HN now, isn't it?
    - stuaxo 5y ago
      This is just name calling and doesn't address any of the points, which are all valid - for anyone who pays attention to music.
      - hntroll999 5y ago
        It's not just name-calling, it's accurately naming somebody's fallacy. The actual process that goes on with music and all other phenomena is that they change and eventually "die" in that nobody cares about them anymore. It happens with everything, and there is no villain.
      - pjc50 5y ago
        Don't feed the troll, just downvote and move on.
        hntroll999 5y ago
        HN has really become despicable. If people had integrity or guts, they'd take my comment apart and show everyone how wrong it was. But they can't do that, so they just hide what I said. Don't you feel ashamed? Why are people so afraid to put the strength of their ideas to the test? I really pity people who would put their hand over the mouth of someone calling out fashionable racism for what it is.
        dang 5y ago
        Better yet, flag, as described here: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cflag https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cflag If no one takes the flamebait, there won't be any flamewar.
  - yoz-y 5y ago
    With streaming, what does make a genre more or less appreciated by a group of people? TBH for most of the artists I listen to, I have no idea who they are, how they look like or even how many of them are in the band.
    - ehnto 5y ago
      I think the musical styles and their in the flesh club/rave scenes are getting conflated a bit. Music is often born in a specific location and scene and then grows into it's own monster. Especially now with the internet, music is for everyone. But locally speaking there are different groups listening and producing styles of music you may not even know about yet, that will enter the global lexicon of music and get much the same treatment of commercialization as house and others got.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I thought the Jungle/DnB split was just the result of cocaine getting popular and the Jungle scene wanting none of that, but I wasn't there so I only have third party accounts to go off. Remembering as well that these musical styles live on and elevated above their once-upon a time rave/club scenes. So this is commentary specifically about the club scenes in the UK at their time of provenance.
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  First: The parent comment is stereotyping and racist. Edit: they changed their comment to remove some racism (use of "white" and "whitewashing") but are still racist. They don't understand what EDM is: the superset of most electronic music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music In my opinion, the phylogeny of EDM and related genres looks like this: Funk beget disco and boogie. Funk and boogie beget electro. Disco and boogie beget house. Electro beget techno. Electro and funk beget breakbeat. House and techno beget trance. (Trance and its subgenres (like acid trance) and deep progressive house are/were what raves were made of.) Calypso beget ska. Ska beget reggae. Reggae beget dub. Dub and breakbeat beget dubstep. Dubstep != brostep. (Brostep is crapstep.) Reggae, rock, and rockabilly beget punk. Funk, disco, jazz, and punk beget hip hop. Hip hop beget trap. Dubstep and trap beget EDM trap. --- DigitallyImported had zillions of genres, subgenres, and maybe genres of EDM.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    EDM is its own separate thing now, it basically means "radio pop with a four-on-the-floor beat and synths".
    - failwhaleshark 5y ago
      No. Just no. You can redefine terms but this doesn't make it so. Edit: "Despite the industry's attempt to create a specific EDM brand, the initialism remains in use as an umbrella term for multiple genres, including dance-pop, house, techno and electro, as well as their respective subgenres." - Wikipedia. Wikipedia being right for a change, this is industry BS. Don't buy it like a willing consumer.
      - jorvi 5y ago
        What, no? At least in Europe, EDM is a specific set of big club / festival House that's all about big bombastic bass drops. If one of my Techno buddies says with disdain 'all they were playing at that place was EDM' I know exactly what he means, and it isn't techno
- pupdogg 5y ago
  Motor City Lounge brings back good old memories! Still a fan of AUX88 to this day.
- ehnto 5y ago
  Hm I don't quite agree but it could be that the scenes are different in different places. It could also be that our definitions of EDM differ. I might also be missing something so take my comment as just my perspective from where I stand. I think there is a split between commercialized EDM and "real" EDM. The true culture and heritage of house and techno definitely live on in the greater electronic music scene in general, especially online and in clubs. I call that scene EDM because it is easier than trying list all the dozens of subgenres it has grown to include, and commercialised EDM used to be referred to as Top40 during the late 2000s, as a way to differentiate it from the "real" EDM scene. Not sure if that term lives on. It is usually pretty easy to tell when a song exists in the commercial realm. House is unique in that it has had more than one era of commercial success, but I think there has always been a delineation between commercialised house (stuff on the radio and in adverts) and the culture of house music (in the clubs and mixes)
  - dijksterhuis 5y ago
    > I think there is a split between commercialized EDM and "real" EDM. This could be a locale thing, but in the UK what you call "real" EDM is often known as the underground electronic music scene (at least in my circles). I.e. the long tail of folks pissing about with machines in their bedroom. Note the lack of "dance" as not all underground electronic music needs to be danced to. Autechre is a good example of this. In the UK at least, EDM as a whole is often viewed as a commercialisation that started over in the USA (e.g. with Skrillex) and spread. What the EDM term generally refers to has changed over the years, and is now closer to "pop trance with super saw synths EVERYWHERE" these days. So, at least for us Brits, it's a catch all term for a specific type of electronic music (and most of the time a disparaging term). I think we mostly agree on the differing content, and in disagreeing with the parent, but it's the general "lumping in" with the same terminology that is often protested by the underground folks over here. Personally, I would hate for my tracks to be called EDM (I'd rather stab myself repeatedly in the eye with a spoon). Disclaimer: I'm just one UK dude who has spent a lot of time around electronic music. Other UK residents may have other opinions or nomenclature that they prefer to use.
    - ehnto 5y ago
- antihero 5y ago
  You know, techno parties (and illegal raves) like the ones you talk about are still happening, especially here in Europe. EDM is pure garbage and rife with narcissism.
  - WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
    I think of EDM as a dance tool (not a criticism). It's practical, a tight design to serve a specific purpose. FTR I've adored techno my entire life - from back when synth, industrial and underground were more common labels. eg: Eno, Cluster, Tim Blake, Sensation's Fix, Klaus Schulz, anything produced by Conny Plank
  - sideshowb 5y ago
    you must be using a different definition of edm to me. according to the definition I accept, then our rave scene is a small corner of edm which literally is an umbrella term for all electronic dance music. ...i'd be interested to know what term you use for the latter?
    - glitcher 5y ago
      Not the commenter you posed the question to, but I suspect their dislike for the term EDM is similar to how I felt about the term "electronica" back in the 90's when mainstream artists were appropriating sounds and ideas from electronic artists. When the music was mostly underground or found at illegal parties it felt original and pure, but once the broader music industry took notice and started pillaging it for profit it felt dirty and sacrilegious. My preferred umbrella term for electronic dance music is simply "electronic music". This helps make room under the umbrella for all manner of experimental and sometimes undanceable music as well. Death to the over-(sub)-genre-fication of electronic music!
      - sideshowb 5y ago
        I see where you're coming from, but though we might dislike the commercialisation, the fact you can complain that something got commercialised shows it's a continuation of the same genre. Electronica was always a rubbish pretentious ill defined term but at least edm (as I use it) is a good name from the perspective of being exactly what it says on the tin. Thanks for the perspective though!
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  >But for some of those years in the 1990s it really felt like we were living in the future. It certainly felt like it. But people were quickly put back in their place.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Yeah before PLUR and candyravers in the early 90s it was just warehouse parties and you'd see all kinds of people there. Gay/straight/black/white/young/old. I can still remember some black guy in a suit out dancing in the middle of the floor.
8bitsrule 5y ago
Lotta early-rock-history-for-newbs in there, I'll give it that. Dylan's insights - race, payola, manipulation - were already gospel long ago, for example in 1984 in Patrick Montgomery's Rock and Roll: The Early Days (1984). [0] (Despite the resolution) Enjoy! (About the garage-band thing supposedly happening? Not on the radio!) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL2K-KrtBNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL2K-KrtBNs Edit: while I'm on it, if you'd like expert rock history, Alan Cross is your man. Check into all those 900+ 'Ongoing History of New Music' casts, about 25m each. The man's accurate and thorough. https://omny.fm/shows/ongoing-history-of-new-music https://omny.fm/shows/ongoing-history-of-new-music
- yummypaint 5y ago
  People interested in the Alan Cross content might also like the five watt world short history videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5OAMxnvhTyc3rjgpY6u8cA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5OAMxnvhTyc3rjgpY6u8cA
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  > Lotta early-rock-history-for-newbs in there, I'll give it that. I think this is not giving the article enough credit. It's not just that people are "newbs" to music history, it's also that real music history is buried under manufactured-consent style industry narrative, which the article explicitly points out halfway through: > the rest is music industry history — something we need to make an discerned effort to divorce from actual music history. By the time I write this comment, the article has received 1.8k "likes" (or whatever they are called on Medium), and has probably been read by an order of magnitude more people. It pushes back against this narrative. The fact that you already knew this as a music superfan (or whatever the reason might be) does not reduce the article's value in this regard. Thanks for the links though!
  - 8bitsrule 5y ago
    Didn't mean to suggest that they didn't do a fine job with what they did write. I did feel that the title overstated Marshall Dylan's role in it. As for the 'music industry history' quote ... couldn't agree more. The industry did and does a great deal of damage to popular music since it popped up in the 1930s to decide what songs appeared on 'Your Hit Parade'. I also wanted to take this chance to promote Montgomery's overlooked film; it gets so much right with so much heart.
redis_mlc 5y ago
US racial harmony was ok in the 80s and 90s (aside from the 1992 LA riots) until the 2008 election when Obama promoted racial divisiveness to get elected. Like the 2020 Floyd riots, the 1992 LA riots were also about a video, but in that case videotape. A big difference with 2020 is that Marxist elements (antifa and BLM) amplified unrest, and the corona lockdown left people with nothing else to do. The article has a long section on Hendrix, worth reading just for that. Note that record labels make a tenth of what they used to, and have that much less power. Overall that's not a good thing - musicians now have to wear 50 hats - besides writing and performing, they're doing ther own production, merch and PR.
ObserverNeutral 5y ago
Mad respect to Bob Dylan, he's the best at what he does and this inteview proves it, because he touches the social and human aspect. You need these capabilities to write great songs. To me the reality is much simpler. A rock n roll song needs more time to be appreciated compared to other styles of music. Modern society goes much faster than the 60s and 70s. Also competition with other forms of entertainment...music quality has remained essentially the same compared to the 60s...whereas the quality of video based story telling (TV, movies, live sports etc.) improved from distorted out of focus sporadic content to 8K whenever you want
WJW 5y ago
It's just https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths all over again. As old as the world.
- mycologos 5y ago
  I like that theory, but TFA doesn't really advance it. Among other things, TFA argues that commercially powerful interests like record companies deliberately fractured rock and roll's racial integration into segregated genres. I don't think "geeks, mops, sociopaths" covers this kind of intentional, external crackdown on a subculture.
  - WJW 5y ago
    The way I read the article, the actual "crackdown" was motivated more by financial than racial reasons by the record companies. The racial segregation was just collateral damage from that process. Doesn't that fit super neatly in the "sociapaths extracting value from a subculture at the cost of internal coherence" part of the theory?
  - SyzygistSix 5y ago
    TFA? What are you referencing?
    - friehe 5y ago
      TFA - The fucking article
      - mycologos 5y ago
        Huh, I always thought of it as "the featured article". Maybe I should stop using it if it's actually that aggressive.
bumbada 5y ago
What killed rock n roll is the same thing that "killed" every other music genre before: Demographics. People get older and young people want to differentiate themselves from older people, so they just do different things, including listening to different music. This even happened with what we consider classical music, from Beethoven Eroica to Stravinski Rite of Spring and specially Operas. Old people will consider a new style an "scandal", specially established musicians and young people will adopt it. It is not different from Einstein being a revolutionary against the Elders and then being the Elder against Heisenberg.
- wayneftw 5y ago
  Why hasn't rap died? It's been popular for multiple generations now.
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    Hip hip is the philosophy of survival in a racist culture. It dies when the racism dies.
    - fourtrees 5y ago
      I hope it doesn't. I'd like to see a world without racism and with hip hop. Also, there have been so many changes in the popular sub-genres of hip hop, with each new generation of musicians altering the popular form (maybe not always for the better (RIP DMX)), that it's almost like rap has died and been reborn several times since the 80 -- a bit like rock between the 50s and 2000s.
    - ramphastidae 5y ago
      Oh come off it. Little to no mainstream hip hop addresses racism in any meaningful way. It’s still mostly sex, drugs, objectifying women, glorifying the rich, and violence.
      - SyzygistSix 5y ago
        It doesn't have to address racism in any meaningful way to fulfill the function of being centered around identity. When that identity becomes meaningless, the culture around it will lose meaning as well. The Martians and the Belters will have their own music.
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
The article makes a very strenuous effort to make a point about something something racism in rock that sounds a bit boring and trite to my ears. After all, Bon Scott said it best years ago: In the beginning Back in nineteen fifty five Man didn't know 'bout a rock 'n' roll show And all that jive The white man had the schmaltz The black man had the blues No one knew what they was gonna do But Tchaikovsky had the news (Although, Tchaikovsky? What the...?) What I want to know is why young black Americans, do not, in their majority, do rock anymore. I get that the music industry always tries to control what gets airtime, but who needs the music industry today, and who needed the music industry in the past? If it was for the music industry, nobody would have heard of Jimi Hendrix- a black man with a guitar? That'll never sell! Look at metal and how it took hold. Growing up in Athens, Greece, it seemed like every neighbourhood had a metal band and you would never know by looking at billboards, or even coverage in the metal press (a lackey of the music industry, if there ever was one). Euro kids took Rock from the Americans and ran with it and made something new, all ours, and all working class (see the early years of Sabbath and Priest in Manchester; remember the apocryphal story of Ozzy and Tony having one pair of good shoes between them and wearing them on alternate days to go out). Metal quickly became the authentic popular music of entire generations, without ever any need of mainstream acceptance. Metal grew from below, with no help from above and despite the disdainful snorts of mainstream music critics. So why didn't the black grasroots ever sprout an analogous new rock scene, instead of turning towards the mainstream, big stage, light show, for-profit music that comes from black artists for the last few decades? Why Rihana and Beyonce, rather than a new Jimi Hendrix? Female, even. Why is Rock 'n' Roll pretty much dead to black kids, nowadays?
- xphilter 5y ago
  I mean, if you exclude racism and structural racism as an answer, you’ll be wondering for a long time “why black people don’t rock anymore.” But it’s not my job to educate you, I’d suggest you look into yourself.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - 5y ago
bserge 5y ago
> For the record, rock is far from dead Alright then.
- dang 5y ago
  I've posted this before but it belongs here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnyCJDYONSU#t=57 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnyCJDYONSU#t=57
- blacksqr 5y ago
  Dead as a doornail. Its corpse is sometimes put on display as a curiosity.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Dead as COBOL.
    - blacksqr 5y ago
      And in exactly the same way: boring, no mainstream mindshare, but still occasionally needed to service legacy market segments.
TOSSAWAY_1 5y ago
Haha I guessed racism. Man I'm like 10/10 at guessing the proposed american narratives lately.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive or flamebait comments to HN. We're trying for a different sort of conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - TOSSAWAY_1 5y ago
    I know the rules and any reader knows I'm commenting on the very obvious slant we're given. It's substantive to acknowledge when something is more era than merit.
    - dang 5y ago
      Please deepen your understanding of the rules. We don't want reflexive, repetitive reactions here. That's because such comments lead to shallow, repetitive discussion (which usually turns nasty too). This is the opposite of the kind of conversation we want in HN threads. If you want more explanation, there are a bunch of past ones here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
      - kdmdmdmmdmd 5y ago
        More is never enough is it
        dang 5y ago
        Never!
stuart78 5y ago
I think that the narrative of last twenty years has been a re-blending of genre in a way that is not fully appreciated. While you can certainly find plenty of music that fits the mold established in the 60s, 80s or 90s around you also find much more at the top of the charts that challenges those categories. Right now the top 10 Billboard chart includes Lil Nas X and The Weeknd, neither of whom fits comfortably in the genre they are assigned to by the RIAA. And if you look at what is happening on Bandcamp or Soundcloud or YouTube or wherever else young people are trying new things you see a tremendous heterogeneity of inspiration and not a lot of concern for where the sound fits in. The parallel trend of course is the power migration from labels and producers to artists, and these are intrinsically related. The artist wants to experiment and find their own path, the label is always trying to replicate success (to radically oversimplify on both counts). Labels have a role to play in supporting artists, but the power dynamic is different when the artist brings the audience they've been building independently for years. The direct connection between artist and audience shows how much more open to new ideas we can all be. It is the same receptivity that powered the integration Dylan describes taking place in the 1950s, and I think its great.
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  To compare this to the 1950s is... very strange. For listeners, the broadening of access to the full diversity of music between 1950 and 1990 was unprecedented in history and will never happen again, simply due to the rise of technology, and the sudden access to all the traditions of the world within a single generation. > Lil Nas X and The Weeknd, neither of whom fits comfortably in the genre they are assigned to by the RIAA. For me, this is generic and formulaic music that could have come out any time in the last thirty years (except for the ubiquitous "autotune/overcompress" sound I suppose). "Not fitting comfortable into a genre" is so bland a compliment! But I agree with this - all the action is in Bandcamp and similar. ----- A composer named Steve Reich wrote several pieces of tape music (processed tape recordings) back in the 70s that were a huge hit (in avant circles), but then he went to study in Ghana and decided that this was a mistake. He felt that the purpose of music was for humans to play and sing together as a group activity, and that pre-recorded music did not fulfill this very deep human need. I was skeptical when I first read this, but time has proven him entirely right.
ilamont 5y ago
Popular music has been on a fast-track evolutionary cycle since the invention of the radio and LP. Other factors have contributed, from the music press to cable television to more disposable household income in the United States after WWII. The idea that popular youth music would stay locked into the modes of mid-1950s America while culture and society shifted, millions of new teenage humans entered the scene every year, musicians absorbed new influences, and musical trends crossed borders and linguistic barriers -- and sometimes came back -- seems like a stretch. But one thing that is not a stretch is what might be called Payola 2.0, after the 1.0 scandal described in the article died down. Record companies couldn't give outright cash payments to DJs, but there were many other ways of exerting influence on influential media gatekeepers. In my opinion, this is where the suits really were really able to promote biases and sideline non-mainstream musical trends. Some of the influence was obvious. Picking artists that had the "right" look. Promoting "safe" artists. Selective access and backroom benefits for powerful DJs and music journalists and other influencers. Ignoring, sidelining, or co-opting trends bubbling up from the underground, from proto-metal in the late 60s to punk in the 70s to rap in the 80s. And then there are the charts, which were segmented according to race and other factors aligned with the needs of the music "industry." Did you know that until the early 90s music charts in the United States were based on a sample of self-reported sales from record store managers? Can you imagine the bias and BS that went on with those numbers? As soon as soundscan was implemented, there was an immediate realignment, with rap and grunge and techno and country storming the pop charts. (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/22/arts/billboard-s-new-charts-roil-the-record-industry.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/22/arts/billboard-s-new-char...) Since then, the digital transformations have resulted in an interesting fragmentation of pop music and youth tastes ... but with the music industry literally controlling major streaming platforms, we're shifting into Payola 3.0, and with whatever algorithmically dictated patterns that will entail.
sunstone 5y ago
Apparently Sun Records was on the look out for a white kid who could sing black music and they found him in Elvis Presley. It wasn't by accident.
cainxinth 5y ago
What's interesting to me about the music scene of today is how closely it now hews to a "long tail" model. The publishers have so much data about what streams, so the most popular stuff has become incredibly homogenous (not that pop music wasn't always in a pretty narrow groove). But at the same time, thanks to the proliferation of music production tools and channels to share it on, the long tail is filled with diverse and interesting stuff from every conceivable genre.
vanderZwan 5y ago
> Whatever Hendrix was, he was the only performer capable of reconciling the broken, racially-charged, and dichotomized state of rock ’n’ roll. I guess the author forgot for a moment who Prince was when they wrote that sentence
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  BB King managed to stay somewhat relevant into the aughts as well, however these examples are quite the exception.
  - vanderZwan 5y ago
    For sure, I just found it a bit silly to single out one artist as a lost savior when other musical geniuses came in to fill that gap and didn't manage to "fix" things either. As much as I agree with the idea that Hendrix' would have given us so much more if he had lived, I doubt he would have been able to single-handedly stop the music industry from pushing their own (segregated) pop music narrative everyone's throat. Systemic problems need to be solved at that systemic level.
l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago
In the age of computation I think the real dichotomy is between rhythm-focused loop-based composition and music made by people playing instruments. It's easy to see why hip-hop and technology is winning: it's easier music to make. Why compose minutes of music when you can compose 20 seconds and loop it? Or sample it altogether? Why spend thousands of ours learning an instrument?
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  Have... you ever tried to make a track in Ableton from a sample library? While there's plenty of examples of crap lazy music out there, making good music electronically is in fact exactly the same: you spend years learning how it all works and how you can best adapt it to your own ambitions. Electronic music production is not like copy pasting some paragraphs together and calling it done. In fact, the versatility of digital production methods means that learning how to produce good music electronically is like learning not just a single instrument, but the whole dang orchestra sufficiently well enough you can compose for it.
- __david__ 5y ago
  I think you are confusing composing with performing. A composer doesn't need to be able to play an instrument to compose music for it. Composing hip-hop tracks doesn't mean that you need to be a skilled performer of a musical instrument—but it still means you need to be a skilled musician. You aren't just going to throw 20 seconds of some nonsense together and then loop it over a whole track and come away with something that stands up to what a skilled producer can make. Also, criticizing hip-hop for having repetitive background music is kind of like criticizing Bach's Prelude in C Major for having no rhythmic variation—it may be true but it's completely missing the point.
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
I personally don't feel music has to be anything. Some music would just come to me (Gong, Sensation's Fix) and some I had to meet half way or more (Can, early Kluster). Some groups like Negativland aren't very tonal. Are they music? Who cares. It occupies the same space and will make it's own changes in our brain, if allowed. Ultimately, music is what it is.
dang 5y ago
I wouldn't have thought the article was very good, and the title is neither an accurate representation of what Dylan said, nor really what the article is about. But this thread is surprisingly pretty good! As a gloss on what Dylan is saying about race and the music business, this clip where David Bowie turns the tables on an MTV interviewer in 1983 is worth watching, in a high-tension sort of way. He's pretty impressive as an investigative journalist: cool as steel, conceding nothing, and charming even as he drives the knife in deeper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3i53rjh-PA#t=11m3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3i53rjh-PA#t=11m3s (Edit: As a performer, at least,) the man ages well. (If you watch to the very end, he makes the same point as Dylan: "yeah but let's face it, somebody laid the ground rules down in the beginning".)
- skystarman 5y ago
  Yeah, this is a really great video, thanks for sharing "woke" Bowie. As you say, he ages well, except for his molesting young girls in the '70s. There's at least two 15 year olds that admit having sex with him. I'm a Bowie fan but it's difficult to separate those unacceptable acts from the great things he did.
  - dang 5y ago
    If that's true, you're right—that has not aged well. I guess I meant he ages well as a performer, which is what that interview was. I've added that qualifier to my comment above. Generally though, I don't think it's that hard to separate unacceptable from great things. Everyone is a combo of good and bad–that's how humans are. It's childish to expect otherwise. The fashion of denouncing historical figures by anachronistic standards is especially puerile. Not a single person who ever lived would pass such a test. The related internet habit of saving the worst thing one can say about anybody in a big hash table [1] and then looking it up and repeating it every time the name is mentioned, is also a bit silly. What are we doing when we do that? certainly nothing interesting. But I rant. I take your point that "ages well" needs a qualifier! Edit: I noticed something else that's mildly interesting—calling this "woke" is also an anachronism. The word that Bowie uses in the interview is "integration". That places him ideologically as a civil rights moderate, and of course wokeness (whatever it may mean) didn't exist yet. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22hash%20table%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
n00bdude 5y ago
Dylan’s 1966 “moto accident” ended rock N roll / end of story The album that would have come after Blonde On Blonde (hinted at on Eat The Document (1/2) would have been like angels on ze livewire) [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j-1n5g8fM0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j-1n5g8fM0 [2] https://m.facebook.com/vidclosetphx/videos/2709040459351627/ https://m.facebook.com/vidclosetphx/videos/2709040459351627/
- redisman 5y ago
  Rock n roll died before Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Pink Floyd had release any albums?
  - n00bdude 5y ago
    That question seems about right .. Am also of opinion that Led Zeppelin’s simultaneously the greatest rock n roll band ever. (And Waters such a great writer also) Probably just a lil xtra-bitter about the prospect of an electric Dylan album after blonde on blonde being hinted at yet not happening but probably was time https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EvHq5UTRldo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EvHq5UTRldo ~ 7:30 ~ Interviewer: “and we’re flying low over New York City ..” Bob: “flying low?” Interviewer: “yeah .. aren’t we flying low ?” Bob: yeah. Did you notify Albert Grossman we were going to fly low? Interviewer: “no I didn’t notify Albert grossman - whose Albert grossman?” Bob: he’s my uh pepper maker. He makes all the pepper & keeps a good supply of um bandages ..” (sounds like burnout)
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
Is it possible that the internet killed mass culture? i think that music gets big when a large number of young guys identify with it; rock n roll was big in the twentieth century (be it r&b, rock, punk, metall or hip-hop), when everyone was listening to the same radio stations and you could easily push the same narrative down their throat; nowadays things seem to be much more fragmented (for whatever reason) and it is quite common to listen to a more varied combination of tunes.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  I have been thinking on this heavily, and the social implications of it, I do believe the internet killed the common cultural thread Americans had, for better or worse.
  - krapp 5y ago
    It may have killed the common pop cultural thread by virtue of fragmenting publishing and consumption, but Americans never had a common culture to begin with.
    - MichaelMoser123 5y ago
      > Americans never had a common culture to begin with So far the US has had a significant amount of soft power, and that is said to be based on a common culture, says wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power#United_States
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      The vast majority of Americans worked during the daytime business hours, drove home listening to a handful radio stations with a relatively limited number of songs, sat on the couch and turned on the TV where what was on depended on the time of day, drank one of 5 beers available at the store, then at some point they turned it off and took off their blue jeans and went to sleep, for several decades. Before that the difference was TV, before that a car, before that radio. People who say that America doesn't have a unifying culture have never experienced another culture first hand beyond maybe as a novelty, like going to the zoo. All cultures have subcultures. That doesn't negate a unifying culture. If you can't see it it is because it has been a constant for you your entire life, just like a fish that can't see water.
gverrilla 5y ago
just wait to see the damage spotify will do in a decade or so. an algorithm to rule it all
andyxor 5y ago
horrible article, very hard to figure out what was actually said by Dylan vs. other people vs the author 'stream of consciousness'.
Joeboy 5y ago
> why, in 1967, was it so rare to see a black man ... fronting a major American rock band The band referred to is The Jimi Hendrix Experience, a two thirds British band, assembled by a British manager, in Britain, where they recorded Are You Experienced and got famous. It would seem to me that they were effectively a "British invasion" band in the US. Hendrix's break in America was the Monterey Pop Festival, which he headlined at the instigation of Paul McCartney, a member of the mother of all British Invasion bands.
bsanr2 5y ago
Some thoughts as they come to me: This completely trackballs my perspective on rock, which has been set for some time now by my understanding of what happened on Disco Demolition Day. The dynamics therein are hard to articulate in their complexity, but I realize now maybe best summed up not as attempted cultural genocide but instead as a sort of Cain-and-Abel moment. Wow. On black musical artistry and afrofuturism, and in particular, this line: "He would’ve taken experimental cosmological jazz to new dimensions, marrying philosophical inquiry with technological speculation, and tapped into the potentialities of futurist prophecy long before Silicon Valley." Please go listen to Earth, Wind, and Fire's Fantasy. What strikes you about its thematic thrust? Transcendence, reflection, mind made manifest? It's about the Singularity.

199 points by Phithagoras 5y ago

gaucheph 5y ago

Probably needs a (2016) label.

dang 5y ago
Eventually added. Thanks!

llamataboot 5y ago

I often reflect on the similiarities to that and how techno and house became EDM. When I started going to Midwestern raves in the 1990s they were literally some of the first fully integrated places I hung out in. Definitely some of the Detroit techno parties we went too, some of the first places where it was a majority Black space. EDM now is thought of as this totally white music, all electronic music really, by everyone. Oh some rappers might flirt with some electronic beats, but the whole genre has just been whitewashed basically. But for some of those years in the 1990s it really felt like we were living in the future. Hopped up on smart drinks (and LSD), gay and straight, black and white, talking about this new thing called the internet and dancing all night together. We were it - the New Humans…

crucialfelix 5y ago
I was in the 90s Midwest rave scene as well. This pattern repeats itself in music over and over. Jungle to DNB. Dubstep was like two tone, then it got destroyed by the US market takeover. Garage, grime, dancehall, hip hop all stay mainly black (with some white artists accepted) to defend their scene. Precisely to stop the take over from happening again.
- hntroll999 5y ago
  This leftist style of racist crap is normal and accepted on HN now, isn't it?
  - stuaxo 5y ago
    This is just name calling and doesn't address any of the points, which are all valid - for anyone who pays attention to music.
    - hntroll999 5y ago
      It's not just name-calling, it's accurately naming somebody's fallacy. The actual process that goes on with music and all other phenomena is that they change and eventually "die" in that nobody cares about them anymore. It happens with everything, and there is no villain.
    - pjc50 5y ago
      Don't feed the troll, just downvote and move on.
      - hntroll999 5y ago
        HN has really become despicable. If people had integrity or guts, they'd take my comment apart and show everyone how wrong it was. But they can't do that, so they just hide what I said. Don't you feel ashamed? Why are people so afraid to put the strength of their ideas to the test? I really pity people who would put their hand over the mouth of someone calling out fashionable racism for what it is.
      - dang 5y ago
        Better yet, flag, as described here: "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cflag https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cflag If no one takes the flamebait, there won't be any flamewar.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  With streaming, what does make a genre more or less appreciated by a group of people? TBH for most of the artists I listen to, I have no idea who they are, how they look like or even how many of them are in the band.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I think the musical styles and their in the flesh club/rave scenes are getting conflated a bit. Music is often born in a specific location and scene and then grows into it's own monster. Especially now with the internet, music is for everyone. But locally speaking there are different groups listening and producing styles of music you may not even know about yet, that will enter the global lexicon of music and get much the same treatment of commercialization as house and others got.
- ehnto 5y ago
  I thought the Jungle/DnB split was just the result of cocaine getting popular and the Jungle scene wanting none of that, but I wasn't there so I only have third party accounts to go off. Remembering as well that these musical styles live on and elevated above their once-upon a time rave/club scenes. So this is commentary specifically about the club scenes in the UK at their time of provenance.
failwhaleshark 5y ago
First: The parent comment is stereotyping and racist. Edit: they changed their comment to remove some racism (use of "white" and "whitewashing") but are still racist. They don't understand what EDM is: the superset of most electronic music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_dance_music In my opinion, the phylogeny of EDM and related genres looks like this: Funk beget disco and boogie. Funk and boogie beget electro. Disco and boogie beget house. Electro beget techno. Electro and funk beget breakbeat. House and techno beget trance. (Trance and its subgenres (like acid trance) and deep progressive house are/were what raves were made of.) Calypso beget ska. Ska beget reggae. Reggae beget dub. Dub and breakbeat beget dubstep. Dubstep != brostep. (Brostep is crapstep.) Reggae, rock, and rockabilly beget punk. Funk, disco, jazz, and punk beget hip hop. Hip hop beget trap. Dubstep and trap beget EDM trap. --- DigitallyImported had zillions of genres, subgenres, and maybe genres of EDM.
- bitwize 5y ago
  EDM is its own separate thing now, it basically means "radio pop with a four-on-the-floor beat and synths".
  - failwhaleshark 5y ago
    No. Just no. You can redefine terms but this doesn't make it so. Edit: "Despite the industry's attempt to create a specific EDM brand, the initialism remains in use as an umbrella term for multiple genres, including dance-pop, house, techno and electro, as well as their respective subgenres." - Wikipedia. Wikipedia being right for a change, this is industry BS. Don't buy it like a willing consumer.
    - jorvi 5y ago
      What, no? At least in Europe, EDM is a specific set of big club / festival House that's all about big bombastic bass drops. If one of my Techno buddies says with disdain 'all they were playing at that place was EDM' I know exactly what he means, and it isn't techno
pupdogg 5y ago
Motor City Lounge brings back good old memories! Still a fan of AUX88 to this day.
ehnto 5y ago
Hm I don't quite agree but it could be that the scenes are different in different places. It could also be that our definitions of EDM differ. I might also be missing something so take my comment as just my perspective from where I stand. I think there is a split between commercialized EDM and "real" EDM. The true culture and heritage of house and techno definitely live on in the greater electronic music scene in general, especially online and in clubs. I call that scene EDM because it is easier than trying list all the dozens of subgenres it has grown to include, and commercialised EDM used to be referred to as Top40 during the late 2000s, as a way to differentiate it from the "real" EDM scene. Not sure if that term lives on. It is usually pretty easy to tell when a song exists in the commercial realm. House is unique in that it has had more than one era of commercial success, but I think there has always been a delineation between commercialised house (stuff on the radio and in adverts) and the culture of house music (in the clubs and mixes)
- dijksterhuis 5y ago
  > I think there is a split between commercialized EDM and "real" EDM. This could be a locale thing, but in the UK what you call "real" EDM is often known as the underground electronic music scene (at least in my circles). I.e. the long tail of folks pissing about with machines in their bedroom. Note the lack of "dance" as not all underground electronic music needs to be danced to. Autechre is a good example of this. In the UK at least, EDM as a whole is often viewed as a commercialisation that started over in the USA (e.g. with Skrillex) and spread. What the EDM term generally refers to has changed over the years, and is now closer to "pop trance with super saw synths EVERYWHERE" these days. So, at least for us Brits, it's a catch all term for a specific type of electronic music (and most of the time a disparaging term). I think we mostly agree on the differing content, and in disagreeing with the parent, but it's the general "lumping in" with the same terminology that is often protested by the underground folks over here. Personally, I would hate for my tracks to be called EDM (I'd rather stab myself repeatedly in the eye with a spoon). Disclaimer: I'm just one UK dude who has spent a lot of time around electronic music. Other UK residents may have other opinions or nomenclature that they prefer to use.
  - ehnto 5y ago
antihero 5y ago
You know, techno parties (and illegal raves) like the ones you talk about are still happening, especially here in Europe. EDM is pure garbage and rife with narcissism.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
  I think of EDM as a dance tool (not a criticism). It's practical, a tight design to serve a specific purpose. FTR I've adored techno my entire life - from back when synth, industrial and underground were more common labels. eg: Eno, Cluster, Tim Blake, Sensation's Fix, Klaus Schulz, anything produced by Conny Plank
- sideshowb 5y ago
  you must be using a different definition of edm to me. according to the definition I accept, then our rave scene is a small corner of edm which literally is an umbrella term for all electronic dance music. ...i'd be interested to know what term you use for the latter?
  - glitcher 5y ago
    Not the commenter you posed the question to, but I suspect their dislike for the term EDM is similar to how I felt about the term "electronica" back in the 90's when mainstream artists were appropriating sounds and ideas from electronic artists. When the music was mostly underground or found at illegal parties it felt original and pure, but once the broader music industry took notice and started pillaging it for profit it felt dirty and sacrilegious. My preferred umbrella term for electronic dance music is simply "electronic music". This helps make room under the umbrella for all manner of experimental and sometimes undanceable music as well. Death to the over-(sub)-genre-fication of electronic music!
    - sideshowb 5y ago
      I see where you're coming from, but though we might dislike the commercialisation, the fact you can complain that something got commercialised shows it's a continuation of the same genre. Electronica was always a rubbish pretentious ill defined term but at least edm (as I use it) is a good name from the perspective of being exactly what it says on the tin. Thanks for the perspective though!
SyzygistSix 5y ago
>But for some of those years in the 1990s it really felt like we were living in the future. It certainly felt like it. But people were quickly put back in their place.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lamontcg 5y ago
Yeah before PLUR and candyravers in the early 90s it was just warehouse parties and you'd see all kinds of people there. Gay/straight/black/white/young/old. I can still remember some black guy in a suit out dancing in the middle of the floor.

8bitsrule 5y ago

Lotta early-rock-history-for-newbs in there, I'll give it that. Dylan's insights - race, payola, manipulation - were already gospel long ago, for example in 1984 in Patrick Montgomery's Rock and Roll: The Early Days (1984). [0] (Despite the resolution) Enjoy! (About the garage-band thing supposedly happening? Not on the radio!) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL2K-KrtBNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL2K-KrtBNs Edit: while I'm on it, if you'd like expert rock history, Alan Cross is your man. Check into all those 900+ 'Ongoing History of New Music' casts, about 25m each. The man's accurate and thorough. https://omny.fm/shows/ongoing-history-of-new-music https://omny.fm/shows/ongoing-history-of-new-music

yummypaint 5y ago
People interested in the Alan Cross content might also like the five watt world short history videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5OAMxnvhTyc3rjgpY6u8cA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5OAMxnvhTyc3rjgpY6u8cA
vanderZwan 5y ago
> Lotta early-rock-history-for-newbs in there, I'll give it that. I think this is not giving the article enough credit. It's not just that people are "newbs" to music history, it's also that real music history is buried under manufactured-consent style industry narrative, which the article explicitly points out halfway through: > the rest is music industry history — something we need to make an discerned effort to divorce from actual music history. By the time I write this comment, the article has received 1.8k "likes" (or whatever they are called on Medium), and has probably been read by an order of magnitude more people. It pushes back against this narrative. The fact that you already knew this as a music superfan (or whatever the reason might be) does not reduce the article's value in this regard. Thanks for the links though!
- 8bitsrule 5y ago
  Didn't mean to suggest that they didn't do a fine job with what they did write. I did feel that the title overstated Marshall Dylan's role in it. As for the 'music industry history' quote ... couldn't agree more. The industry did and does a great deal of damage to popular music since it popped up in the 1930s to decide what songs appeared on 'Your Hit Parade'. I also wanted to take this chance to promote Montgomery's overlooked film; it gets so much right with so much heart.

redis_mlc 5y ago

US racial harmony was ok in the 80s and 90s (aside from the 1992 LA riots) until the 2008 election when Obama promoted racial divisiveness to get elected. Like the 2020 Floyd riots, the 1992 LA riots were also about a video, but in that case videotape. A big difference with 2020 is that Marxist elements (antifa and BLM) amplified unrest, and the corona lockdown left people with nothing else to do. The article has a long section on Hendrix, worth reading just for that. Note that record labels make a tenth of what they used to, and have that much less power. Overall that's not a good thing - musicians now have to wear 50 hats - besides writing and performing, they're doing ther own production, merch and PR.

ObserverNeutral 5y ago

Mad respect to Bob Dylan, he's the best at what he does and this inteview proves it, because he touches the social and human aspect. You need these capabilities to write great songs. To me the reality is much simpler. A rock n roll song needs more time to be appreciated compared to other styles of music. Modern society goes much faster than the 60s and 70s. Also competition with other forms of entertainment...music quality has remained essentially the same compared to the 60s...whereas the quality of video based story telling (TV, movies, live sports etc.) improved from distorted out of focus sporadic content to 8K whenever you want

WJW 5y ago

It's just https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths all over again. As old as the world.

mycologos 5y ago
I like that theory, but TFA doesn't really advance it. Among other things, TFA argues that commercially powerful interests like record companies deliberately fractured rock and roll's racial integration into segregated genres. I don't think "geeks, mops, sociopaths" covers this kind of intentional, external crackdown on a subculture.
- WJW 5y ago
  The way I read the article, the actual "crackdown" was motivated more by financial than racial reasons by the record companies. The racial segregation was just collateral damage from that process. Doesn't that fit super neatly in the "sociapaths extracting value from a subculture at the cost of internal coherence" part of the theory?
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  TFA? What are you referencing?
  - friehe 5y ago
    TFA - The fucking article
    - mycologos 5y ago
      Huh, I always thought of it as "the featured article". Maybe I should stop using it if it's actually that aggressive.

bumbada 5y ago

What killed rock n roll is the same thing that "killed" every other music genre before: Demographics. People get older and young people want to differentiate themselves from older people, so they just do different things, including listening to different music. This even happened with what we consider classical music, from Beethoven Eroica to Stravinski Rite of Spring and specially Operas. Old people will consider a new style an "scandal", specially established musicians and young people will adopt it. It is not different from Einstein being a revolutionary against the Elders and then being the Elder against Heisenberg.

wayneftw 5y ago
Why hasn't rap died? It's been popular for multiple generations now.
- bsenftner 5y ago
  Hip hip is the philosophy of survival in a racist culture. It dies when the racism dies.
  - fourtrees 5y ago
    I hope it doesn't. I'd like to see a world without racism and with hip hop. Also, there have been so many changes in the popular sub-genres of hip hop, with each new generation of musicians altering the popular form (maybe not always for the better (RIP DMX)), that it's almost like rap has died and been reborn several times since the 80 -- a bit like rock between the 50s and 2000s.
  - ramphastidae 5y ago
    Oh come off it. Little to no mainstream hip hop addresses racism in any meaningful way. It’s still mostly sex, drugs, objectifying women, glorifying the rich, and violence.
    - SyzygistSix 5y ago
      It doesn't have to address racism in any meaningful way to fulfill the function of being centered around identity. When that identity becomes meaningless, the culture around it will lose meaning as well. The Martians and the Belters will have their own music.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

The article makes a very strenuous effort to make a point about something something racism in rock that sounds a bit boring and trite to my ears. After all, Bon Scott said it best years ago: In the beginning Back in nineteen fifty five Man didn't know 'bout a rock 'n' roll show And all that jive The white man had the schmaltz The black man had the blues No one knew what they was gonna do But Tchaikovsky had the news (Although, Tchaikovsky? What the...?) What I want to know is why young black Americans, do not, in their majority, do rock anymore. I get that the music industry always tries to control what gets airtime, but who needs the music industry today, and who needed the music industry in the past? If it was for the music industry, nobody would have heard of Jimi Hendrix- a black man with a guitar? That'll never sell! Look at metal and how it took hold. Growing up in Athens, Greece, it seemed like every neighbourhood had a metal band and you would never know by looking at billboards, or even coverage in the metal press (a lackey of the music industry, if there ever was one). Euro kids took Rock from the Americans and ran with it and made something new, all ours, and all working class (see the early years of Sabbath and Priest in Manchester; remember the apocryphal story of Ozzy and Tony having one pair of good shoes between them and wearing them on alternate days to go out). Metal quickly became the authentic popular music of entire generations, without ever any need of mainstream acceptance. Metal grew from below, with no help from above and despite the disdainful snorts of mainstream music critics. So why didn't the black grasroots ever sprout an analogous new rock scene, instead of turning towards the mainstream, big stage, light show, for-profit music that comes from black artists for the last few decades? Why Rihana and Beyonce, rather than a new Jimi Hendrix? Female, even. Why is Rock 'n' Roll pretty much dead to black kids, nowadays?

xphilter 5y ago
I mean, if you exclude racism and structural racism as an answer, you’ll be wondering for a long time “why black people don’t rock anymore.” But it’s not my job to educate you, I’d suggest you look into yourself.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- 5y ago

bserge 5y ago

> For the record, rock is far from dead Alright then.

dang 5y ago
I've posted this before but it belongs here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnyCJDYONSU#t=57 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnyCJDYONSU#t=57
blacksqr 5y ago
Dead as a doornail. Its corpse is sometimes put on display as a curiosity.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Dead as COBOL.
  - blacksqr 5y ago
    And in exactly the same way: boring, no mainstream mindshare, but still occasionally needed to service legacy market segments.

TOSSAWAY_1 5y ago

Haha I guessed racism. Man I'm like 10/10 at guessing the proposed american narratives lately.

dang 5y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive or flamebait comments to HN. We're trying for a different sort of conversation here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- TOSSAWAY_1 5y ago
  I know the rules and any reader knows I'm commenting on the very obvious slant we're given. It's substantive to acknowledge when something is more era than merit.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please deepen your understanding of the rules. We don't want reflexive, repetitive reactions here. That's because such comments lead to shallow, repetitive discussion (which usually turns nasty too). This is the opposite of the kind of conversation we want in HN threads. If you want more explanation, there are a bunch of past ones here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
    - kdmdmdmmdmd 5y ago
      More is never enough is it
      - dang 5y ago
        Never!

stuart78 5y ago

I think that the narrative of last twenty years has been a re-blending of genre in a way that is not fully appreciated. While you can certainly find plenty of music that fits the mold established in the 60s, 80s or 90s around you also find much more at the top of the charts that challenges those categories. Right now the top 10 Billboard chart includes Lil Nas X and The Weeknd, neither of whom fits comfortably in the genre they are assigned to by the RIAA. And if you look at what is happening on Bandcamp or Soundcloud or YouTube or wherever else young people are trying new things you see a tremendous heterogeneity of inspiration and not a lot of concern for where the sound fits in. The parallel trend of course is the power migration from labels and producers to artists, and these are intrinsically related. The artist wants to experiment and find their own path, the label is always trying to replicate success (to radically oversimplify on both counts). Labels have a role to play in supporting artists, but the power dynamic is different when the artist brings the audience they've been building independently for years. The direct connection between artist and audience shows how much more open to new ideas we can all be. It is the same receptivity that powered the integration Dylan describes taking place in the 1950s, and I think its great.

TomSwirly 5y ago
To compare this to the 1950s is... very strange. For listeners, the broadening of access to the full diversity of music between 1950 and 1990 was unprecedented in history and will never happen again, simply due to the rise of technology, and the sudden access to all the traditions of the world within a single generation. > Lil Nas X and The Weeknd, neither of whom fits comfortably in the genre they are assigned to by the RIAA. For me, this is generic and formulaic music that could have come out any time in the last thirty years (except for the ubiquitous "autotune/overcompress" sound I suppose). "Not fitting comfortable into a genre" is so bland a compliment! But I agree with this - all the action is in Bandcamp and similar. ----- A composer named Steve Reich wrote several pieces of tape music (processed tape recordings) back in the 70s that were a huge hit (in avant circles), but then he went to study in Ghana and decided that this was a mistake. He felt that the purpose of music was for humans to play and sing together as a group activity, and that pre-recorded music did not fulfill this very deep human need. I was skeptical when I first read this, but time has proven him entirely right.

ilamont 5y ago

Popular music has been on a fast-track evolutionary cycle since the invention of the radio and LP. Other factors have contributed, from the music press to cable television to more disposable household income in the United States after WWII. The idea that popular youth music would stay locked into the modes of mid-1950s America while culture and society shifted, millions of new teenage humans entered the scene every year, musicians absorbed new influences, and musical trends crossed borders and linguistic barriers -- and sometimes came back -- seems like a stretch. But one thing that is not a stretch is what might be called Payola 2.0, after the 1.0 scandal described in the article died down. Record companies couldn't give outright cash payments to DJs, but there were many other ways of exerting influence on influential media gatekeepers. In my opinion, this is where the suits really were really able to promote biases and sideline non-mainstream musical trends. Some of the influence was obvious. Picking artists that had the "right" look. Promoting "safe" artists. Selective access and backroom benefits for powerful DJs and music journalists and other influencers. Ignoring, sidelining, or co-opting trends bubbling up from the underground, from proto-metal in the late 60s to punk in the 70s to rap in the 80s. And then there are the charts, which were segmented according to race and other factors aligned with the needs of the music "industry." Did you know that until the early 90s music charts in the United States were based on a sample of self-reported sales from record store managers? Can you imagine the bias and BS that went on with those numbers? As soon as soundscan was implemented, there was an immediate realignment, with rap and grunge and techno and country storming the pop charts. (https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/22/arts/billboard-s-new-charts-roil-the-record-industry.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/22/arts/billboard-s-new-char...) Since then, the digital transformations have resulted in an interesting fragmentation of pop music and youth tastes ... but with the music industry literally controlling major streaming platforms, we're shifting into Payola 3.0, and with whatever algorithmically dictated patterns that will entail.

sunstone 5y ago

Apparently Sun Records was on the look out for a white kid who could sing black music and they found him in Elvis Presley. It wasn't by accident.

cainxinth 5y ago

What's interesting to me about the music scene of today is how closely it now hews to a "long tail" model. The publishers have so much data about what streams, so the most popular stuff has become incredibly homogenous (not that pop music wasn't always in a pretty narrow groove). But at the same time, thanks to the proliferation of music production tools and channels to share it on, the long tail is filled with diverse and interesting stuff from every conceivable genre.

vanderZwan 5y ago

> Whatever Hendrix was, he was the only performer capable of reconciling the broken, racially-charged, and dichotomized state of rock ’n’ roll. I guess the author forgot for a moment who Prince was when they wrote that sentence

mixmastamyk 5y ago
BB King managed to stay somewhat relevant into the aughts as well, however these examples are quite the exception.
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  For sure, I just found it a bit silly to single out one artist as a lost savior when other musical geniuses came in to fill that gap and didn't manage to "fix" things either. As much as I agree with the idea that Hendrix' would have given us so much more if he had lived, I doubt he would have been able to single-handedly stop the music industry from pushing their own (segregated) pop music narrative everyone's throat. Systemic problems need to be solved at that systemic level.

l-_l-_l-_lo_ol 5y ago

In the age of computation I think the real dichotomy is between rhythm-focused loop-based composition and music made by people playing instruments. It's easy to see why hip-hop and technology is winning: it's easier music to make. Why compose minutes of music when you can compose 20 seconds and loop it? Or sample it altogether? Why spend thousands of ours learning an instrument?

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
Have... you ever tried to make a track in Ableton from a sample library? While there's plenty of examples of crap lazy music out there, making good music electronically is in fact exactly the same: you spend years learning how it all works and how you can best adapt it to your own ambitions. Electronic music production is not like copy pasting some paragraphs together and calling it done. In fact, the versatility of digital production methods means that learning how to produce good music electronically is like learning not just a single instrument, but the whole dang orchestra sufficiently well enough you can compose for it.
__david__ 5y ago
I think you are confusing composing with performing. A composer doesn't need to be able to play an instrument to compose music for it. Composing hip-hop tracks doesn't mean that you need to be a skilled performer of a musical instrument—but it still means you need to be a skilled musician. You aren't just going to throw 20 seconds of some nonsense together and then loop it over a whole track and come away with something that stands up to what a skilled producer can make. Also, criticizing hip-hop for having repetitive background music is kind of like criticizing Bach's Prelude in C Major for having no rhythmic variation—it may be true but it's completely missing the point.

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago

I personally don't feel music has to be anything. Some music would just come to me (Gong, Sensation's Fix) and some I had to meet half way or more (Can, early Kluster). Some groups like Negativland aren't very tonal. Are they music? Who cares. It occupies the same space and will make it's own changes in our brain, if allowed. Ultimately, music is what it is.

dang 5y ago

I wouldn't have thought the article was very good, and the title is neither an accurate representation of what Dylan said, nor really what the article is about. But this thread is surprisingly pretty good! As a gloss on what Dylan is saying about race and the music business, this clip where David Bowie turns the tables on an MTV interviewer in 1983 is worth watching, in a high-tension sort of way. He's pretty impressive as an investigative journalist: cool as steel, conceding nothing, and charming even as he drives the knife in deeper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3i53rjh-PA#t=11m3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3i53rjh-PA#t=11m3s (Edit: As a performer, at least,) the man ages well. (If you watch to the very end, he makes the same point as Dylan: "yeah but let's face it, somebody laid the ground rules down in the beginning".)

skystarman 5y ago
Yeah, this is a really great video, thanks for sharing "woke" Bowie. As you say, he ages well, except for his molesting young girls in the '70s. There's at least two 15 year olds that admit having sex with him. I'm a Bowie fan but it's difficult to separate those unacceptable acts from the great things he did.
- dang 5y ago
  If that's true, you're right—that has not aged well. I guess I meant he ages well as a performer, which is what that interview was. I've added that qualifier to my comment above. Generally though, I don't think it's that hard to separate unacceptable from great things. Everyone is a combo of good and bad–that's how humans are. It's childish to expect otherwise. The fashion of denouncing historical figures by anachronistic standards is especially puerile. Not a single person who ever lived would pass such a test. The related internet habit of saving the worst thing one can say about anybody in a big hash table [1] and then looking it up and repeating it every time the name is mentioned, is also a bit silly. What are we doing when we do that? certainly nothing interesting. But I rant. I take your point that "ages well" needs a qualifier! Edit: I noticed something else that's mildly interesting—calling this "woke" is also an anachronism. The word that Bowie uses in the interview is "integration". That places him ideologically as a civil rights moderate, and of course wokeness (whatever it may mean) didn't exist yet. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22hash%20table%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

n00bdude 5y ago

Dylan’s 1966 “moto accident” ended rock N roll / end of story The album that would have come after Blonde On Blonde (hinted at on Eat The Document (1/2) would have been like angels on ze livewire) [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j-1n5g8fM0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_j-1n5g8fM0 [2] https://m.facebook.com/vidclosetphx/videos/2709040459351627/ https://m.facebook.com/vidclosetphx/videos/2709040459351627/

redisman 5y ago
Rock n roll died before Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Pink Floyd had release any albums?
- n00bdude 5y ago
  That question seems about right .. Am also of opinion that Led Zeppelin’s simultaneously the greatest rock n roll band ever. (And Waters such a great writer also) Probably just a lil xtra-bitter about the prospect of an electric Dylan album after blonde on blonde being hinted at yet not happening but probably was time https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EvHq5UTRldo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EvHq5UTRldo ~ 7:30 ~ Interviewer: “and we’re flying low over New York City ..” Bob: “flying low?” Interviewer: “yeah .. aren’t we flying low ?” Bob: yeah. Did you notify Albert Grossman we were going to fly low? Interviewer: “no I didn’t notify Albert grossman - whose Albert grossman?” Bob: he’s my uh pepper maker. He makes all the pepper & keeps a good supply of um bandages ..” (sounds like burnout)

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

Is it possible that the internet killed mass culture? i think that music gets big when a large number of young guys identify with it; rock n roll was big in the twentieth century (be it r&b, rock, punk, metall or hip-hop), when everyone was listening to the same radio stations and you could easily push the same narrative down their throat; nowadays things seem to be much more fragmented (for whatever reason) and it is quite common to listen to a more varied combination of tunes.

betwixthewires 5y ago
I have been thinking on this heavily, and the social implications of it, I do believe the internet killed the common cultural thread Americans had, for better or worse.
- krapp 5y ago
  It may have killed the common pop cultural thread by virtue of fragmenting publishing and consumption, but Americans never had a common culture to begin with.
  - MichaelMoser123 5y ago
    > Americans never had a common culture to begin with So far the US has had a significant amount of soft power, and that is said to be based on a common culture, says wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power#United_States
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    The vast majority of Americans worked during the daytime business hours, drove home listening to a handful radio stations with a relatively limited number of songs, sat on the couch and turned on the TV where what was on depended on the time of day, drank one of 5 beers available at the store, then at some point they turned it off and took off their blue jeans and went to sleep, for several decades. Before that the difference was TV, before that a car, before that radio. People who say that America doesn't have a unifying culture have never experienced another culture first hand beyond maybe as a novelty, like going to the zoo. All cultures have subcultures. That doesn't negate a unifying culture. If you can't see it it is because it has been a constant for you your entire life, just like a fish that can't see water.

gverrilla 5y ago

just wait to see the damage spotify will do in a decade or so. an algorithm to rule it all

andyxor 5y ago

horrible article, very hard to figure out what was actually said by Dylan vs. other people vs the author 'stream of consciousness'.

Joeboy 5y ago

> why, in 1967, was it so rare to see a black man ... fronting a major American rock band The band referred to is The Jimi Hendrix Experience, a two thirds British band, assembled by a British manager, in Britain, where they recorded Are You Experienced and got famous. It would seem to me that they were effectively a "British invasion" band in the US. Hendrix's break in America was the Monterey Pop Festival, which he headlined at the instigation of Paul McCartney, a member of the mother of all British Invasion bands.

bsanr2 5y ago

Some thoughts as they come to me: This completely trackballs my perspective on rock, which has been set for some time now by my understanding of what happened on Disco Demolition Day. The dynamics therein are hard to articulate in their complexity, but I realize now maybe best summed up not as attempted cultural genocide but instead as a sort of Cain-and-Abel moment. Wow. On black musical artistry and afrofuturism, and in particular, this line: "He would’ve taken experimental cosmological jazz to new dimensions, marrying philosophical inquiry with technological speculation, and tapped into the potentialities of futurist prophecy long before Silicon Valley." Please go listen to Earth, Wind, and Fire's Fantasy. What strikes you about its thematic thrust? Transcendence, reflection, mind made manifest? It's about the Singularity.