What was the day the music died, in your opinion?

[raccoon]

Or was it more of a gradual thing? If so, over what time period?

[suninvited]

1. When Amy Winehouse started singing?

[Orrex]

84. That was a sad day for us all

A very sad day.

[SteppingRazor]

2. The music died?

News to me.



:shrug:

[ghostsofgiants]

15. I think people who say music is dead use the more obscure definition of dead...

DEAD (adj.)
Not the same as what one grew up with, thus clearly inferior to the point of denial of existence.

[SteppingRazor]

22. Ah, yes. How silly of me.

:P

[ghostsofgiants]

27. You have to learn the subtleties of language of the musical crank.

It's invaluable. :P

[SteppingRazor]

28. True. As for me...

anyone who thinks rock 'n' roll is dead has never listened to The Hold Steady.

[ghostsofgiants]

31. I've actually never listened to them. Perhaps I should.

[SteppingRazor]

33. They're what Bruce Springsteen would have become...

if he was from our generation and grew up listening to punk bands and The Replacements.

[ghostsofgiants]

36. That's a pretty good sell.

[alarimer]

70. I second that.

And I am old (well, sort of!).

[DarkTirade]

30. Nah, the music I grew up with mostly sucked too.

:P

[frickaline]

80. I don't know but I think I was singing

byyye, bye, Miss American pie! Drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dryyy.....

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. I read a compelling argument from a DUer (can't remember who) that is was Frampton Comes Alive.

That is, not that the album was bad musically, but that the album was such a HUGE blockbuster mega-motherfucker seller, that the music industry itself took a major swing toward not so much creating music and an artistic outlet for people who like music, but into an industry looking solely for the next HUGE mega-motherfucker blockbuster album, demographically engineered.

I think there is a lot of compelling truth in that argument.

[Taverner]

5. But then again, that gave birth to the Alternative Music Movement

Before then bands like Roxy Music and Velvet Underground were major label artists. But they were THE ONLY ONES exploring.

After that, a brazillion labels like SubPop and Matador sprouted up with bands that changed the landscape.

[Rabrrrrrr]

24. Aye, the independents came out - but, sadly, the radio time was also taken away from them.

Except in obscure independent radio stations.

[ghostsofgiants]

29. All radio has served to do over the decades is expand the market for watered down crap.

As a connoisseur of independent music, I say it's no big loss. The internet is picking up more and more as a true outlet for music that's better than radio could ever be.

[derby378]

101. Hasn't Kate Bush always been on the EMI label?

Not exactly a minor label, though I hear it's facing some financial challenges. Kate, the last holdout of England's progressive rock movement, is one of their best-sellers worldwide - when she can break away from her hubby and child long enough to record new stuff, that is.

[argyl]

13. That's it. It wasn't very good but it was inescapable. Bee Gees "Saturday Night Fever"soon followed.

And the days when you could could call a DJ at an AOR station (often referred to as "underground stations") and request an obscure cut off an album for them to play or the DJ would play a cut simply because he liked it were gone.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

20. That's essentially what happened to the film industry

Following the mega-successes of Jaws and Star Wars.

[Rabrrrrrr]

26. Absolutely - Star Wars was, in many ways, a very bad thing for the movie industry.

Now almost every movie has to be a special effects monster motherfucker gigantic blockbuster CGI-fest or it's a "failure".

[AngryAmish]

60. Without Billy Jack, there would not have been Jaws or Star Wars

Billy Jack was the first "blockbuster". Actually blockbuster is a term of art meaning a moving that opens in many screens all over the country at once. Billy Jack was the first blockbuster. Following the success of Billy Jack, Jaws and then Star Wars followed suit. Movie advertising became national (and eventually spawning free media like Entertainment Tonight).

Anyway, Billy Jack invented the modern movie business.


on edit, and if "One Tin Soldier" didn't kill the music, it backed the car over the corpse a few times.

[mitchum]

79. That is a really great point about Billy Jack

and never occurred to me
I always focus on the unholy trio of Jaws, Star Wars, and Rocky
ending the golden age
but you are right
Billy Jack
set up the kill

"One Tin Soldier" is wretched

[JVS]

92. I hadn't heard of it, so I looked up the trailer.

OMG, what a POS movie! With your trio it seems that the filmmakers had finally gotten production values up to the level of sophistication worthy of all the hyping of the film.

[mitchum]

94. When I was about 13 or 14, Billy Jack and Vanishing Point...

were the cult movies for my crowd. We would go see those movies over and over.
I even had a couple of friends who had "Billy Jack hats"
You are right; Billy Jack was garbage.
Now, Vanishing Point still holds up (maybe not as great as I thought it was when I was a kid, but it's still enjoyable)

[DBoon]

81. 1976 was also the year of the Ramones debut album

an interesting dialectical opposite to Frampton Comes Alive

[Taverner]

4. The Day Lennon was Shot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvaRNxSZr38

[LostinVA]

6. When Karen Carpenter died

And when Britney Spears was unleashed upon the world. Seriously.

[ET Awful]

7. August 9, 1995 @ 4:23 AM

RIP Jerry.

[Rambis]

17. Agree

I miss that fat man!

[Nevernose]

75. Jerry faked his death

So as not to let down his millions of fans, especially the die-hard dead heads -- the ones who had devoted their lives to him. That's a lot of pressure for a guy, you know? You want to live a semi-normal life, take it easy, maybe not drive all over the country playing gigs for 11 months out of the year? But if he did that, he'd have been a major downer to generations of people. So he faked his death, shaved his beard, and moved to Cozymel.

FOr once on DU, I'm being perfectly serious. Elvis was a nutjob who really had nothing to live for, but Garcia was a (fairly) sane genius with a motive.

[Tikki]

8. I know the music (whatever it turns into) goes on...I cried like a..

baby the night we lost Otis Redding...late in 1967.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2-QwWnUDC8

Tikki

[Fire Walk With Me]

9. Kurt Cobain, without question.

Edit: Or at minimum, the majority of what followed.

[BarenakedLady]

10. The day I discovered Rock Band

and decided I should sing!

:headbang:

[Forkboy]

11. Still hasn't for me.

There's never been a better time to be a music fan. :)

[Pierre.Suave]

12. As long as we keep the history around

it will never die.

[ghostsofgiants]

14. It's alive and well but it was forced underground.

[WinkyDink]

16. "In 1964 when Bob Moog and Don Buchla first put together their prototype synthesizers...."

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/pinana/

[ghostsofgiants]

18. Moog synths are fucking awesome.

[WinkyDink]

19. Well, la-di-da to you.

[derby378]

104. Honestly, electronic music has been with us since the 1950s...

We have a few renegade classical composers (Varese, for one) and the likes of Pierre Etranger and Karlheinz Stockhausen to thank for that. This was long before the first Moog.

[Fire Walk With Me]

37. Bwaahahaha!

Visit my profile and check out my "homepage" :)

Can't blame the suck that is Celine Dion upon Bob Moog :)

[Oeditpus Rex]

39. I'd imagine people said the same thing about the electric guitar

It's never the instrument's fault; it's how it's used.



Or...



It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools.

[Fire Walk With Me]

44. But everyone can agree- there ARE poor tools...

Someone needing to do calculus cannot get by with a normal function only calculator.

[Oeditpus Rex]

47. There're tools that are insufficient for the job, certainly

But again, that isn't the tools' fault.

[mitchum]

52. I have never put anyone on ignore...

but you are dangerously close :)

[Lethe]

74. You will lose.

[MissMillie]

21. August 1, 1981

not about music anymore... but about image

[raccoon]

50. August 1, 1981? Enlighten me. nt

[MissMillie]

54. the first broadcast of MTV

:hi:

[JVS]

69. Yeah, because the Monkees and teen idols in the 50's and 60's were about music and not image.

[XNASA]

23. The day that Sony bought Columbia in 1988.

1988 - Also the year that "Faith" by George Michael was the #1 selling album.

I rest my case.

[datasuspect]

25. when peter frampton released his live album

[Oeditpus Rex]

40. What, exactly, was wrong with 'Frampton Comes Alive'?

[datasuspect]

49. it signalled a transition in the recording industry from a mainly artist-driven

to a purely profit-driven dynamic.

although record companies were always profit-driven enterprises, the quality of product, artist development, and A&R were still important functions.

with the release of "frampton comes alive," the first multi-platinum project by a recording artist, the impulse toward creating art was replaced with creating easily-accesible, top 40 friendly formats that moved LOTS of units.

this is not to say that the "hit maker" drive wasn't always there, but it wasn't to the exclusion of everything else.

[Oeditpus Rex]

53. I'm in full agreement

I thought you were slamming Frampton and his music.

[AngryAmish]

61. 'cause Motown wasn't interested in hits?

Novelty records? Monster Mash? Surfin' Bird?

I reject your thesis.

[datasuspect]

65. re-read what i wrote

i thought i sufficiently qualified my statements.

profit making was always a motive, but it wasn't always to the exclusion of ALL else except selling units

[mitchum]

95. Yes, record companies were always interested in making money...

but that meant they put all kinds of stuff out...diamonds and shit. They weren't ever sure what would sell.
"Hey, mebbe those kids wil buy this record of drag racing sound effects"
"Let's put out this record of electronic music by this German guy. The hippies like to listen to this kinda stuff when they're smoking their pot and taking their goof balls"

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

96. And the weird thing is that Frampton himself was only a cult figure

before that album came out. Its success was a gradual, grass-roots thing that no one expected when it was released.

And the Beatles were multi-platinum in their day, IIRC.

[HERVEPA]

32. When Moxie Fruvous stopped performing (nt)

[Fire Walk With Me]

38. Wow- I'm not the only person who knows Moxie Fruvus?

:hi:

[HERVEPA]

59. True. I used to see them at Clearwater Festival in NY State

[bbernardini]

102. No, you're not. I've seen them twice.

And I have enough live recordings of them to last me a lifetime.

[unsavedtrash]

34. November 24 1991

Freddie Mercury died.

[bamacrat]

35. It started with John Lennons death and was finally put down when Kurt Cobain died.

[southpaw]

41. Music isn't dead

Now, as always, there is plenty of good music out there. Some of it is being made by commercially successful artists and some is more indy/underground.

Now, as always, there is plenty of shit music out there. Some of it is being made by commercially successful artists and some is more indy/underground.



I pretty much grew up in an era dominted by some of the worst music imaginable: the 1980's

But even the 80's wasn't all bad...

For every Bon Jovi, there was a Replacements.
For every Merciful Fate, there was a Motorhead.
For every Madonna, there was a Kate Bush.


On edit... rap/hip-hop may not have killed music, but their insidious influence has done a lot of damage.

[mvd]

64. He he.. I agreed until we got to individual artists

Then you lost me. :hi:

[Symarip]

42. I have a few theories

Hang with me here. I may get a little off subject but I'll promise to try and make it relevant.

Music went to shit for a few reasons, and it doesn't really matter what genre we speak of. I do think there are notable deaths and retirements that may have strained specific audiences but the premise is much larger than one artist dying or a band calling it quits, as sad as all that may be.

First, I give a big middle finger to MTV. Though music videos in themselves are harmless and may contain artistic value in visual adaptation to one's music, the concept of a single television channel more or less dictating what the viewer will eventually consume is akin to WalMart changing the landscape of retail services by basically being the only game in town by stifling competition. Also, keep in mind with the advent of music videos, a performer can rely on visual effects to sell music, which is an aural phenomenon. Basically, if you look good you don't have to sound good.

Speaking of sound, ever notice how music just doesn't sound the same, regardless of genre? You can blame Sony for this one. Old men with Marantz turntables always bitch that records sound better than cds. Guess what? They're right. In the late 70s the record industry had a problem. Well, it's not really a problem, they were just greedy. Records cost alot of money to make, and there isn't much mark up. They needed a cheaper alternative in order to sucker consumers into buying a cheaper product. Initially, different formats of tapes (8 track, cassette) were pitched and worked because of portability, but most music consumers were still buying records. Plus, tape players had a shit ton of moving parts which were expensive to produce with little mark up. Sony set out to compete with the long play record and invented the compact disc.

A little history on the compact disc. The compact disc is a digital sample of music. Within the sample, the bandwidth is really only a fraction of the full spectrum of sound a studio recording can contain. Despite all the pops and scratches on an LP, a vinyl record is the closest anyone will ever get to actually being in the studio when a band records because all the music (analog information) is actually stored in the grooves of the vinyl. When coupled with the proper set up (an expensive record player/stereo) analog vibrations allow for an occurance of sound known as overtones (I really don't want to go into depth about this. Just know overtones makes music sound richer). When it comes to compact discs, since the information being passed is only that of a sample, this effect is nonexistant.
But compact discs can sound ok. They're just a piece of the puzzle.

Here's where shit starts to hit the fan. Japan realized early on that you can make a CD for the fraction of the cost of a cassette tape or a record. They just needed to market it correctly. So what did they do? They started making record players and tape players out of plastic thus instilling in the music listening audience, CD's were the only way to go.

But wait, there's more. Somewhere in the 90s, recording companies made a huge discovery: most music is listened to on portable devices - shitty car stereos and walkmans and ghetto boomboxes. A shift occured almost over night where record producers were no longer worried about how good the product sounded but rather, how good their product sounds on a piece of shit sound system. This is where the real tragedy lies. Music companies now have to jam as much music they can with an inferior sampling production onto a set of speakers made from China. Welcome to the world of COMPRESSION and OVERSAMPLING. Basically, we live in world now where music is shot at us like a laser beam instead of trying to fill the room with as much sound spectrum as any medium can hold.

So. To sum it up: the digital age killed music.

[raccoon]

51. Thanks for your post. Some of what you said I can't exactly follow but

I think you have a good point about MTV.

[Symarip]

55. I'm not the greatest writer in the world

But most of what I said can be verified with a few google searches. You'll be amazed at how technology has actually screwed music production in the last 25 years.

[cemaphonic]

67. I can't totally get behind the analog > digital argument.

It's true that you lose some pitch resolution with digital sampling (and some distortion when you convert it back to an analog signal for your speakers), but thanks to the Nyquist theorem, and the tendency to not record much music of excessively high pitch, your fundamental notes and most of the key overtones will be reproduced accurately.

But CDs have a vastly superior dynamic range. Of course, as you said in your post, the CD era coincided with a trend of producers compressing the hell out of everything, so this advantage is pretty irrelevant in most popular music. But try comparing something like the Rite of Spring - you can actually hear the quiet parts without turning up the volume too high, and they aren't partially covered *anyway* by the hum of the needle in the groove.

[dixiegrrrrl]

73. Wow...never thought about it that way..thank you.

[astral]

85. I didn't know that

I believed my hearing CD's over my stereo system was as good as / superior to hearing the records which usually had some scratches and wear and tear on them.

I do notice, nowadays, though, that stereo systems are much poorer quality than the old amp-version ones, and realized only fairly recently that they don't make the old fashioned kinda stereos anymore.

My thrown together part second-hand stereo has a great sound except if you want to record a record to a cassette you usually have only one channel working.

I will have to listen for the compression issue, though, as I am not too sure about that yet. With the proper stereo, that is, not a cheap boombox or a walkman-thingy.

[Deep13]

43. Sometime between MTV and Metallica's Congressional testimony. nt

[rcrush]

45. Metallica died to me when they got me kicked off napster n/t

[DS1]

46. The Fat Boys

billilililliilililililliliili


STICK EM!

[Jamastiene]

48. The day I had to quit working for Courtney Love because of the asshole that runs her myspace page.

He got some spam program (Friend Blaster Pro) and wanted me to spam people on Myspace. He wanted Courtney Love to have more friends than Lindsay Lohan, because he doesn't want Lindsay Lohan to have more friends than Courtney. I added a few people from Canada and he went off on me like it was a major deadly sin or something. It's not that people from Canada cannot add her. It's that he ONLY wanted to send the friends requests from Courtney's page to people from Barcelona, spain and Paris, France.

Talk about making a girl's job impossible. It is hard to get people to add Courtney Love to their friends list, because he bombards them with bulletins so much. The fucked up thing is my job description started out as Courtney Love's blog editor. I edited her blogs for typos and grammar. They were damn near unreadable before that.

I had to kiss one guy's ass just to get on Courtney Love's friends list and then kiss this guy's ass for 9 solid months to stay on it. When he said Courtney Love said she specifically did not want any white trash on her friends list after he had been calling me white trash for 9 solid months, then went off on me for adding a few Canadian people to her friends list, I realized just how enslaved and miserable I really was.

I had had all I could stand of it. He was constantly saying, "I work for Courtney Love. You'll do whatever I want or be kicked off her friends list and be sued by her lawyers." Later, he would say Courtney didn't say what he claimed she had said earlier. He is a pathological liar. I shit you not.

Not only that, the guy emailed me like 50 times a day and called about 50 times a day. He would call about 20 of those times even after I told him my aunt was in bed. I would ask him to use email while she was in bed, instead. It wasn't so much that he'd call about the work. It was that he'd call just to shoot the shit or check up on me. Plus he started wanting me to email him when I woke up, before I cooked, after I ate, after I went to the grocery store, after I went to the dump, and before I went to bed. I got tired of that shit. I don't like anyone keeping tabs on me like that.

The guy claims to be gay, but he's just a male prostitute. I don't think he's really gay going by the way he acted toward me at the end there. No means no, dammit. When he started acting like a fucking asshole to me and wanting to keep fucking tabs on me all the time, then went off on me just for adding a few Canadians to Courtney Love's friends list, I knew something was majorly wrong.

Not only that, he called me a "stupid bitch" for adding the Canadians when his sorry ass cannot even string a decent sentence together. (He types AND talks like a FReeper on crack.) That was it. I went off on his ass and told him I was not trash and he wasn't going to talk to me that way. Also, I told him there was nothing wrong with Canadians being on Courtney Love's friends list and he needed to quit calling other people trash when he was the one spends all his money on cocaine, uses food stamps even though he is perfectly capable of working and has a job, and prostitutes himself on Craig's List all at the same time. He does the prostitution because he wants more cocaine and does not pay his bills.

I emailed Courtney Love's sorry ass management asking them to settle this and got no reply. I didn't even get paid for the last two weeks that I worked.

I have been so disgusted that I cannot listen to any of the 90's music I used to love so much. That's ok though. I still got 70s punk and that snobbish asshole cannot take that away from me.

So, the 90s music died for me on that day. According to my last email from him, that day was September 18th, 2008. I saved the asshole's emails as ammo when Courtney finally figures out that he's pushing fans away from her and talking shit about her behind her back. She wouldn't tolerate that if she knew he was talking shit about her. He called her "gray" and "ashy looking." He also said all the shit they say about her on that web site she hates is actually true. She would hit the fucking ceiling if she knew that shit.

Sooner or later, one of us, who has been treated this way by that asshole, will get it through to her that he is talking shit about her. I have total faith that his ass will be gone when she finally hears that. Until then, the music is dead for me. I cannot even listen to her or Kurt any more without thinking about that sorry asshole and her sorry excuse for management ruining her career and pushing fans away.

I cannot wait until his uppance comes. She who laughs last, laughs loudest. Revenge is a dish best served cold when he least expects it. Payback is going to be a bitch too...only I'm not stupid. :evilgrin:

I'm still seething over this. I guess it is obvious. x(

[Iggo]

56. February 3, 1959.

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/the-day-the-music-died-don-mclean-on-buddy-hollys-crash/2856096785

[Initech]

57. Somewhere between Metallica's Napster comments and the Jonas Bros. appearing on the cover of RS.

Hard to pinpoint an exact date.

[oregonjen]

58. Oct. 12, 1997 the day John Denver died

I can only imagine what kind of songs he would have written, given the turmoil in our country.

[MrScorpio]

62. I'm still finding great music

It's just not on the radio or TV

[mvd]

63. Never for me

I will always maintain that there is good stuff in the mainstream and a lot more if you look.

[Name removed]

66. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[leftofthedial]

68. June 13, 1986

with the passing of benny goodman

[BlueJazz]

71. December 23 2023

[jobycom]

72. When they invented instruments to accompany the human voice.

Hell, sounds as good as any other idiotic comment on this thread. Music ain't dead, so how could it have died?

[Lethe]

76. music is in a constant process of "death" and "rebirth"

usually what happens is a group comes along and totally invents or reinvents a music scene that is totally original and incredibly cool.

then a bunch of other people who imitate said group come along and get signed and the industry mass produces what originally was cool and then it becomes lame. Also, the original innovative artist can sometimes wind up imitating themselves, which is even more pathetic.

the cycle repeats infinitely.

the music scene is 90% uncreative poseurs propped up by "good" engineering.

but, even so, i would define the music dying as the exact second Layne Staley died.

[IDemo]

77. Stevie Ray Vaughan - August 27, 1990

Blues and blues/rock that seemed to make him the reincarnation of Hendrix. He died an untimely death, at the top of his career and after successfully battling alcohol. Came as a terrible shock to me.

[Sebastian Doyle]

78. I don't know about a single death, but there's some serious injustice....

Three of the original Ramones, half of The Who, and the better half of The Beatles are all dead, yet every member of N'Suck, The Backshit Boys, and New Kids On Crack continue to walk this earth.

[DBoon]

82. December 22 1985

The day D. Boon of The Minutemen was killed in an auto accident

[flvegan]

83. When Def Jam fucked the Beastie Boys.

Love ya Russell, but you're still a shit.

[Jamastiene]

86. Yup.

Loves me some Beastie Boys. :D

[flvegan]

87. Love the Beasties?

You're killing me with your perfection, dammit.

[Jamastiene]

90. Awwwwww,

:loveya: :hug:

[Broken_Hero]

88. When Britaney Spears, and Nysnc/Backstreet Boys

hit the scene....

[Throckmorton]

89. Achy, breaky Heart

Ruined music for me for ever. I don't ever want to run the risk of hearing something that awful ever again.

[Breeze54]

91. The day Reagan was sworn into office.. my heart sank... I knew the 'hippies' had abandoned the cause

:( :cry: :cry:

:cry: and I was right!!!!! :grr:

But.....

:cry:

I think they've come back to reality now and left behind the gluttony?!

I hope... this time. :cry: I guess we'll know at 8:30 PM on November 4th. :(

I have my fingers crossed. :scared:

[tismyself]

93. The day my ex's new wife destroyed 3 orange crates of virgin vinyl.

I let the ex borrow my collection to record them.

[Deep13]

97. No jury would convict you, ya know.

:mad:

[Tektonik]

98. Anyone who starts complaining about new music is officially old

[Maccagirl]

100. Wrong.

Today's music sucks-and I'm not THAT old. Thank God I have tons of CD'a. vinyl etc to reminds me that there once was great music.

[mainegreen]

107. Wrong.

You just aren't finding the right bands/composers.

The radio/media industry is not what it once was. But great music is not dead.

[Tektonik]

111. You're wrong AND old

[Bertha Venation]

99. March 5, 1963, the day Patsy Cline died.

:cry: (I was eleven days old)

[bbernardini]

103. December 4, 1993 - the day Frank Zappa died.

Oddly enough, he died while I was witnessing my first ever Todd Rundgren show. Weird.

[TrogL]

105. When I couldn't trust my perfect pitch

When musicians get old, their hearing changes and their perception of pitch goes off.

I have to treat my own brain as a transposing instrument.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

106. The day that this worthless choad got a recording contract

:toast:

[sniffa]

108. B I G, G I E, aka: B I G. Get it? Biggie!

[Chemical Bill]

109. Wait a minute! God gave rock and roll to ya...

put it in the soul of everyone.

It ain't dead.

Bill

[1Hippiechick]

110. Buddy Holly's death, of course--but most who post here would not remember that...one can only wonder

what the future held for him - he preceded Elvis Presley.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Music_Died

[Tuesday Afternoon]

112. September 11, 2007...for personal reasons. n/t

[av8rdave]

113. August 27, 1990

RIP SRV