If you can’t kill a message kill the way it’s conveyed: My thoughts on the music industry!

Goal #22 of the Communists in America (1963):
Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

Sources and the entire article are located here: www.rense.com...

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More goals if you are interested:

Goal # 23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

Agree agree agree!
Ive been thinking about this for ages now.
Look at the rise of drug abuse/violence/rape etc over the last 60 years.
Then, look at the change of music over those 60 years.
There is your answer

reply to post by Muckster


Well first and foremost, AUTO TUNE,killed the music industry.

Secondly, there is plenty of modern music that is incredibly deep, well written, well played and worth your listen.

Here are a few of my favorites.

-Jason Mraz-- ( Acoustic and Live performances only, he even says that the experience is at the show, albums are just fluff.)

-Tool--Anything by them is a journey from one place to another in 6 minutes.

-The John Butler Trio--Ever see a man make a 12 string sound like a violin?


Those are three examples (there are many more) which show that the quality music of old is still around, it's just harder to find.

~Keeper

The problem is that your looking at the past through the filter of some pretty strong rose colored spectacles as time passes all of the throway dross from each period gets forgotten and only the good bands survive in the public conciousness.

You want to know what the best selling singles were of 1967

1 Release Me Engelbert Humperdinck
2 There Goes My Everything Engelbert Humperdinck
3 The Last Waltz Engelbert Humperdinck
4 Just Loving You Anita Harris
5 San Francisco (Flowers In Your Hair) Scott McKenzie
6 Puppet On A String Sandie Shaw
7 I'll Never Fall In Love Again Tom Jones
8 There Must Be A Way Frankie Vaughan
9 A Whiter Shade Of Pale Procol Harum
10 I'm A Believer The Monkees

Yes seriously Engelbert Humperdinck had the top 3 selling singles of the whole year

How about 1977

1 How Deep Is Your Love The Bee Gees
2 Mull of Kintyre Paul McCartney & Wings
3 Marquee Moon Television
4 Anarchy In The UK R The Sex Pistols
5 Night Fever The Bee Gees

These years were a random selection, so unless years that end in 7 just happen to suck I don't see how music has got any worse

No i agree with you i'm 22 and i feel the same way about MAINSTREAM music. however, in this technological day and age its soooo much easier to be an artist without having to be in the mainstream. and it usually is the underground artists who have the real message, or any message at all for that matter.

I think the point people are missing when they

1. point out vapid 1960s and 70s starts
and
2. point out poignant and socially conscious modern stars

back in the 60s and 70s the poignant and socially conscious stars were often TOPPING the main stream charts. today that's just not the case.

reply to post by snusfanatic


I just posted the top selling records for 67 and 77 care to point out where the amazingly poignant social poets are residing in that list?

Someone mentioned Bob Dylan, he never had a single number 1 hit ever in his career. Neither did Bob Marley

That's why I don't listen to that hippity hop or the ploppity plop bubblegum pop or even country. It's all autotune software, lipsynching and Paris Hilton vomiting her spleen out onto the stage after a hard vodka binge. Then the record companies try to forcefully ram it down our throats and make us eat it.

That's why I don't listen to that hippity hop or the ploppity plop bubblegum pop

haha, that made me laugh!

Well in my opinion mainstream music these days is like verbal diarrhea, but underground has still got meaningful lyrics like some songs of Immortal technique.
www.youtube.com...

It's just entertainment.

If you're banking on music to start some sort of revolution, or get some sort of meaningful message to the youth, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Take it for what it is. If you don't like it, you don't have to listen to it.


-TheAssoc.

I find it very difficult to find any inspiration in todays music. I think that we have entered a postmodern age when it comes to music. What we have now is just a rehashing of what came before, most new bands sound like someone else and alot of music just samples older music and repackages it in a new way (I'm guilty of doing this with my own music productions).

I also believe that hard times create a better environment for music. We in the west are still very well off and comfortable, maybe when things start to get a little harder with austerity and the like, a more counter culture anti establishment element will inspire musicians to create music that connects people and has a message to it.

But I'm sick of the X Factor mentality. This mentality that being famous is the most important thing and if you fail then you life is effectively over. If you have talent you dont need to go on a talent show if you have a message and talent, you will never deliver that message through x factor.

I have given up on mainstream music. I just can't listen to it. The final straw for me was Lady Gaga. What do her lyrics even mean? And Katy Perry's new song about feces and urine? I just can't wrap my head around the music that is infesting the world today.

Give me The Temptations. I'll gladly take Etta James and Sam Cooke. Elvis Presley and even Jerry Lee Lewis make me happy. I'm listening to Buddy Holly right now, but I had Roy Orbison and Hank Williams Sr. on earlier. Patsy Cline usually lulls me to sleep at night. I'm only 36, but I know what GOOD music is when I hear it. And I'm not hearing it from any of today's new artists.

There is a huge amount of good, real music out there. Its called the underground. Not all mainstream/commercial music is bad, good music is good music regardless, but you really need to dig a lot deeper if you want more. Once you do, you'll come across a whole new world of music.

reply to post by Muckster


Hey, Muck,

Listen to ELO - the Electric Light Orchestra.

Great or what?

For me, it doesn't matter if music is either mainstream or underground,
or if it's genre is rock, metal, hip-hop, pop or classic.
And I don't mind music being without a message (although I like it).
But what is the most important to me, is that the artist in question is real
and isn't doing an act (on stage) as if they were somebody totally different.

reply to post by CountFive


Listen to Creedence - they were telling you it was the end of the world back then.

But they were saying live your life anyway.

Creedence Clearwater Revival is may be the greatest band ever.

From the deep south of America.

reply to post by Muckster


Muckster, my friend, I always enjoy your posts! There is an old saying, from somewhere or other, maybe the Bible, about having "eyes to see and ears to hear" that has constantly stuck with me through the years.

In my humble opinion, you, Sir, are one possessed of "eyes to see".

Now to the business at hand... Music. Moreover the concept that it has decayed and that this decay might be a means of killing the message of music.

My first thought... Is anyone else here old enough to remember 1978? Disco? KC and the Sunshine Band? When the best new song, in ages, went "Won't you take me to a funky town?"

What I'm getting at is that we've been down this path before. In fact many times before. Commercial music goes through a period of relevance and then a much longer, and more painful period of cashing in on the relevance until they suck the life out of the genre, leaving it irrelevant.

The blues to rock.
Rock to pop.
Pop to disco.
Disco back to rock.
Rock to rap.
Rap to today.

(Yes there are many more branches on this tree - enough even to change the path I took, but for the sake of conversation, and my half-awake, 7:00 am mind, this suffices. Agreed?)

And, always, within the haystack of recycled junk and flat out garbage, littering the musical landscape, there are always little gems of genius and voices, with a message, just dying to be heard. They are out there to be found for those who look. But the search is not without its hazards and difficulties. Behaviors have to change. The status quo has to be upset.

You have to turn off your radio.

Go to your local privately owned (not chain) music purveyor and ask the kids behind the counter what they listen to. Then buy it. Some of it will make you stare at your speakers with your head cocked. Some of it will move you. Who knows, a bit of it might even change you.

Find local shows. Not the big mega tour of the month that's spewing out $100.00 lawn tickets and playing in venues which seat thousands... Find out who's playing at the local coffee house. Find out who's doing the Friday night show at the local dive bar. Go see them. Some are awful. Some make for great background music. And some will have you begging to buy their horrible screen printed T's and sloppily burned CD's out of a van.

In short Muckster, you aren't old. You aren't jaded. You've just forgotten how to watch for good music... Look to where most people are fixing their musical gaze, and then look in the opposite direction. You'll find what you are looking for.

Oh, and support local music!

reply to post by SuperNatural554


Are you agreeing with me about Creedence?

Oh, man, let people listen to them - they are just the best.

And they know how to save people.