Re: [ARSCLIST] A gripe Was: A Holiday vision

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger and Allison Kulp" <thorenstd124@xxxxxxxxx>
<snip>
> Very little of the good music that is out there,that was worthwhile ever
became popular.The period of 1955-70,being the exception that proved the rule.
> That said,I personally have no period I "nostalgic for".I listen to everybody
from Billy Murray to obscure South American big bands of the 60s to Blur.Two of
my all-time favorite periods/genres of music/recordings are 1925-55
classical,and 1976-82 punk and new wave.Count Basie has just as much merit in my
book,as does The Chocolate Watchband,or for that matter Richard  Adler and Jerry
Ross. Quick,without a "Google",who were they?
>
Okeh...here I use "nostalgia(c)" to suggest the music that most of us
humans recall from their individual "youths"...and listen to in order
to bring back pleasant memories of their younger days, as opposed to
whatever sort of life they are now trying to survive...?! However,
folks like myself, whose "youths" weren't all that happy, often tend
to look back at better "good old days" when nostalgic...!

> I can appreciate the most low-brow,lo-fi unknown 60s garage rock,as much as I
do an Ansermet blueback.Just not on the same level.
>
> Who else here can say this ?
>
Well, I can to some extent...! Except that my enthusiasm basically
covers c.1890 to probably some point in the seventies (though I no
longer own much vinyl...LONG and sad story...!)...and also doesn't
include much opera...
> The fact that there aren't many,is perhaps the biggest disappointment I have
found in all of the time I have spent hanging out here.
>
> My complaint about music nowadays,as I have said here before,there has been
nothing radically new,and different for decades.There is nobody who completely
changed the status quo,rewrote all the rules,or created something entirely new
the way WC Handy,Earnest Stoneman and Jimmie Rodgers,Robert Johnson, Arnold
Schoenberg,Dizzy Gillespie,and Charlie Parker, Elvis Presley ,Miles Davis,Laurel
Aitken (EVERYBODY here should know who he was,and be able to name at least five
of his songs.Without a web search!) and Bob Marley,Bob Dylan, James
Brown,Parliament/ Funkadelic,The Beatles, or The Sex Pistols did.Until there
is,I will continue to be bearish on the future of music.For me,the indie rock
boom of the 90s,was the last gasp of anything interesting and worthwhile.
>
I would also include Jimi Hendrix as a "creator!" There are a VERY few
artists who picked up their instrument and started playing in a way
than no one had previously done...! I'd include Armstrong, Ellington,
possibly Goodman, Charlie Christian and/or Aaron "T-Bone" Walker,
probably Broonzy (but NOT RJ, who I feel is over-rated through having
been the main acoustic/country blues artist available in the UK just
as their blues fascination started...?!), Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams I,
Earl Hooker (Chicago bluesman who was playing that "funk" rhythm in
c.1959...!), Bob Dylan, the Beatles, James Brown, Hendrix...and not
much innovative in a larger use of that term from there on...!

I'm thinking of new musical developments that completely changed the
face of "popular music" when they appeared...like ragtime c.1900 or
so, jazz c.1915, swing and "big band" in the early thirties, combo
blues (late thirties, early forties) and a few years later electric
blues...rock'n'roll (1952, although to my ears Louis Jordan was
playing it on "Cal'donia" c.1941...!)...and the evolution of
country music from the folk "string bands" of the mid-twenties,
through Rodgers and into its "hillbilly heyday" in the forties
and early fifties...!

In theory, we are due...heck, OVERdue...for some brand new and
totally different idea of "pop music" that won't depend on much
that went before it (and those can only be recognized in retrospect!).
Instead, we get "urban dance" that is essentially James Brown's
riffs computerized (to their loss!) and endlessly repeated...?!

Steven C. Barr