I think those of us who grew up with Radio 1 - warts and all - were pretty lucky. But even then one could choose to listen at different levels: mainstream in the daylight hours; more adventurous later. First listening to John Peel on my transistor radio, with an earphone as I was meant to be asleep, was a great awakening.
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Is Old Music Killing New Music?
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Originally posted by diggedy derek View PostWho knows when the first art was done, but I suppose carving stuff out of tusks might have been one of the more straightforward things to achieve, and that artwork from 13,000 years ago feels very close and human to us despite the gap
To begin Sapiens Harari has a photo of the outline of human hand on a cave wall from 30,000 years ago. He captioned it: "Somebody tried to say 'I was here!'" Which initially struck me as an arrogant very 21st century assumption. But I guess he might be right. OTOH, it could be just "My paw. How is it different from the paws of others?" or "Is the paw of the Great Spirit like mine?" Or, and I personally favour something like this, "If I take the soot from last night's fire, then throw it over my hand when its on this rock. What will it look like?" We don't know. We can't know. What we can do is wonder. And wonder is one of the most important attributes our species possesses.
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostJust wanted to reiterate Hot Pepsi's point that the US and UK "cultural ecosystems" for popular music in the last quarter of the 20th Century were very different places.
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Fucking hell, truly was the worst of times for poor old NYC.Last edited by Lang Spoon; 29-01-2022, 20:38.
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Originally posted by Jah Womble View PostYes, in some cases they 'can' - I just don't think folk are generally going to be of a mind to do that. In my experience, people need to have music with which they're unfamiliar plonked into their laps to pay any attention. They really aren't likely to do that unprompted.
You're right in that the world was very different in my day - for one thing, the mainstream was far more a melting pot of styles. There was a lot of tribalism among UK music fans, but most of your punk/new wave/glam fans (for example) were at least 'aware' of what was happening in prog, metal, disco, etc - and vice versa - regardless of whether they liked it or not. I could be wrong, but I'd doubt whether the average Drake fan would have a clue who Nick Cave is.
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But pre-internet, UK radio/TV was to some extent exposing their audiences to the styles/genres out there. If you listened to R1 or watched TOTP (which for many was all there was), then, yes, it was largely mainstream pop, but there was always a chance they’d showcase something leftfield. It wouldn’t be much, but it was basically thrust upon you, so for a significant minority, a whole new world of music would then be opened up as a result.
I just don’t think that happens now, for the reasons I expressed upthread. Broader outlets doesn’t mean ‘greater exposure’ - these platforms are almost exclusively preaching to their converted.
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Pre-internet I had the Pricey/Reynolds/Stubbs/Taylor/Kulkarni etc MM lot referencing Can or 80s hip hop/70s funk/whatever, on radio 1 John Peel (though mostly he was a bit shit early 90s) and Tim Westwood (even if he had utterly cringe delivery), Annie Nightingale, plus a local library that would get literally anything in if you requested it for cd/tape (plus all the stuff folk prior to you had got put in their stock-which is how I first heard Sly Stone (and a shit 80s Can reunion album that almost soured me off them forever)), and a very good indie record store off the high st.
None of those things exist now for a kid growing up in provincial Scottish towns of circa 50k folk. You have the whole world at your fingertips on teh internets, but no guides like I had. Maybe that doesn't matter tho.Last edited by Lang Spoon; 30-01-2022, 00:08.
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They’re only preaching to the converted insofar as people insist on using them that way. Everything is available to anyone with the slightest curiosity.
There may have been a time when all kinds of random stuff would show up on the top 40 and therefore appear on TOTP or the US equivalents (although I think TOTP was more diverse and less organized). Certainly, there was less of a clear cut division between country and pop or pop and rock in the early 80s, IIRC.
But that sort of thing ended, in the US at least, long before the advent of streaming platforms.
Radio stations picked fairly narrow “formats.” And AM radio, which used to sometimes play the hits, became only talk radio, either right-wing bullshit or sports bullshit. Or both.
I lived in major markets in the 90s that had lots of radio stations compared to what I could access growing up, but each one was more narrowly focused - classical, jazz, hip-hop, npr, country, “modern rock,” “classic rock” and RNB. That was pretty much it.
The same happened on TV. In MTVs Golden Age, you might see AHa followed by Van Halen and then Quiet Riot and then Springsteen. That’s how I was exposed to a lot of that.
That was pretty much over by the 90s. They switched to devoting certain hours to specific genres or target audiences and then gradually stopped playing music at all.
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Originally posted by Jah Womble View PostBut pre-internet, UK radio/TV was to some extent exposing their audiences to the styles/genres out there. If you listened to R1 or watched TOTP (which for many was all there was), then, yes, it was largely mainstream pop, but there was always a chance they’d showcase something leftfield. It wouldn’t be much, but it was basically thrust upon you, so for a significant minority, a whole new world of music would then be opened up as a result.
I just don’t think that happens now, for the reasons I expressed upthread. Broader outlets doesn’t mean ‘greater exposure’ - these platforms are almost exclusively preaching to their converted.
Again can only draw on my own kids' world view and say their tastes probably span more genres than my tastes did at their ages, and while some of that comes from their upbringing, much of it is them finding their own way, and they are doing it somehow.
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Originally posted by Walt Flanagans Dog View PostRadio 1 still does that as far as I know - it's been a long time since I dared listen to it, but a look at the current playlist shows that amongst the many "features" and other mainstream acts, they are playlisting e.g. Fontaines DC, Mitski, Wolf Alice, Holly Humberstone and The Wombats. None of which are Throbbing Gristle admittedly, but all are potential gateways to genres at least slightly away from the pop mainstream.
But, as we’ve already established, the singles chart is of little relevance anymore.
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Indeed - I'm not sure what purpose it serves these days, given that popularity can be measured in different ways, and almost instantly.
At the last music quiz we went to, the fella silenced the room with the simple question "what is the current UK No.1 single?" and in our generation spanning team I was the only one willing to answer. It turned out I was wrong, but only because a new chart had come out a couple of hours before the quiz started - but even know I knew the name of the song and artist from the previous week's no.1 I've never knowingly heard the song and only knew it had been No.1 because I saw it mentioned on Twitter.
Fun chart fact while we're at it, unless there is a glitch in the Matrix this week Mr Brightside will hit the milestone of 300 weeks on the chart.
Meanwhile for another example of the decreased relevance of the singles chart, my daughter asked me to take her to see this chap Rex Orange County just before Covid. I had to be on the ball for the ticket scramble and he sold out two, maybe three nights at the Apollo in Manchester. Not my thing, but I see why the young uns like him. He's just announced his next album and tour, including a c. 20,000 capacity outdoor show in London, and he'll sell it. He's had one single in the Top 75, and it spent only one week there.
The albums chart still seems to hold some kudos for indie bands and the like - Yard Act threw everything at it through social media to try and beat Years & Years last week (and failed). I guess having the UK No.1 album is something that carries some weight when marketing bands further, particularly internationally.
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Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View PostThe same happened on TV. In MTVs Golden Age, you might see AHa followed by Van Halen and then Quiet Riot and then Springsteen. That’s how I was exposed to a lot of that.
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Originally posted by WOM View PostAt this remove, I can't recall how long it took me to realize when covers were covers. I'm sure I wouldn't have known Tainted Love was one, but did I know You Can't Hurry Love was one? Can't recall. Every now and then, even today, I'll hear an original and go "Wait, that was a cover?" You don't know what you don't know.
On Aretha, I think she'd be recognized as the act whose songs are most likely to be covered in talent show auditions, even if listeners only heard those songs in that form rather than from her performances.Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 30-01-2022, 21:00.
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Originally posted by Jah Womble View PostGuess that’s a good thing. The main difference with ‘back in t’ day’ however, is that none of these acts will likely ever feature with any kind of prominence in the singles chart. Which would’ve been a big deal in the past.
But, as we’ve already established, the singles chart is of little relevance anymore.
It got more boring from around 1984 when the charts could be gamed by giving singles to Radio 1 six weeks before release, ensuring that any record by a big act crashed straight into the Top 5 and massively reducing any chance of a Laurie Anderson gate crashing the pop club (although you'd still get the odd anomaly like 'Jack Your Body').Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 30-01-2022, 21:24.
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For a few years after that, records still had the chance to 'grow' as they drifted into the public consciousness - Dead Or Alive taking seventeen weeks to top the chart at the start of 1985 being a very early example. For me, the real watershed was in the early 1990s, when actually climbing the chart to reach one's peak position seemed to become a thing of the past almost overnight.
Jack Your Body's an interesting case-in-point: it benefited somewhat from a post-Christmas release, but nonetheless made a considerable (albeit brief) impact despite almost no daytime airplay by any of the major radio networks.
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Lang Spoon touches on an important consideration not yet fully developed in this conversation with his reference to MM crew. For me it was the NME 1977-1983 but it shouldnt be forgotten how important the music press was to influences especially in provinces. Probably as important as TOTP once you got to a certain age-15 or 16 years say.
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Is the argument that NME was the best until around the time Stuart Maconie showed up (1990?) then it turned to shit just as Parkes, Kulkarni and Price were turning the Maker into a good paper? To my shame, I binned the papers and started reading Q and MOJO like a stupid old fart. But that also reflected my failure to explore that decade's music properly, which I now regret.
As Kulkarni has noted on the CM podcast, the Maker only had a few good years until its editorial policy became racist (no black faces on the cover because "those issues always sell less").Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 31-01-2022, 20:15.
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As it turns out, a kid I know is blowing up on TikTok
https://www.centredaily.com/news/loc...257898228.html
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Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View PostIs the argument that NME was the best until around the time Stuart Maconie showed up (1990?) then it turned to shit just as Parkes, Kulkarni and Price were turning the Maker into a good paper? To my shame, I binned the papers and started reading Q and MOJO like a stupid old fart. But that also reflected my failure to explore that decade's music properly, which I now regret.
As Kulkarni has noted on the CM podcast, the Maker only had a few good years until its editorial policy became racist (no black faces on the cover because "those issues always sell less").
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