The Slow Death of the Electric Guitar

[Iceman8.6]

The 70' to the 80's..sooo many good bands..

 

 

[kizanski]

I remember distinctly the day in 5th grade (I'm 51) when I refused to write cursive anymore.  

"But you have to..."

"No.   I don't."

No one could makeme do anything I didn't want to. 

End of discussion.  And other than my signature, I've been writing in print neatly and quickly ever since.  

[Steve Haynie]

I stopped using cursive in junior high so I could read my notes.  I am glad I can read cursive.  Now, if I could read cursive in French that would be better.  My mother's father was part of the elite troops in the French Army in WW I.  Relatives have found his handwritten service records.  I am a descendent of Rambeaux!

[jwhitcomb3]

In the last couple of years I have cashed out my high value instruments. Yes, electric guitars are here to stay, but so are accordions. They had a good run, and who knows, they may see a revival, but I doubt it. If there is a revival, it will look very different. Much of the rise of the electric guitar hero was based on a strain of machismo that is going the way of the dinosaur. So many of the bands trumpeted as being the standard bearers of guitar rock were all male and had all male audiences. Younger people have different ideas of gender identity that don't square with the uber macho guitar hero image. Look at this group. Most of the women who were brave enough to raise their voices had to endure a boys club mentality and didn't stay long. It is significant that the acoustic guitar is resurging based on identification with Taylor Swift. (As an aside, how many Taylor Swift concerts had a "show me your tits" cam?) My guess is that if electric guitar makes a comeback, it will be based on musicians making music that appeals across genders, and will therefore look very different from the studded leather S&M costumes of 70's rock.

[crunchee]

15 hours ago, Stike said:

I'm 47 and was taught cursive in elementary school. Even so every card, letter, etc. I get from any relative over the age of 65 is almost fucking illegible. 

Since we're off on the tangent of 'lost skills', apparently many of us 'country folk' are ahead of the curve...partly because some schools 'round here never quit teaching it, and some less 'cosmopolitan' states have made it state law.  See, if you do something long enough, it comes back into style! 

http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/story/28005066/cursive-handwriting-required-in-tennessee-schools

Edited to add:  People are still pretty 'guitar crazy' around here, too. 

[FGJ]

On July 30, 2017 at 5:44 AM, jwhitcomb3 said:

 Much of the rise of the electric guitar hero was based on a strain of machismo that is going the way of the dinosaur.

Though the social engineering goal of government schools and Hollywood may indeed be to emasculate boys and turn them into beta-males, the vast popularity of MMA demonstrates that, sans radical social engineering (or perhaps, "despite" every effort to inflict it upon kids), boys will be boys; which further means that, in general, most young guys will probably always prefer an electric guitar over a ukelele, or a saxophone over a flute. Sure, one can always find exceptions somewhere, but such exceptions don't alter the basic reality of human nature. That "strain of machismo" is here to stay, and so are electric guitars. 

[BruceM]

1 hour ago, FGJ said:

.... emasculate boys and turn them into beta-males, the vast popularity of MMA demonstrates that, sans radical social engineering (or perhaps, "despite" every effort to inflict it upon kids), boys will be boys; ....

Ah yes, as I explained to the youngsters in my current workplace (there's 8 of them, I work in a tennis shop) during my rant on why I don't like violent movies or sports, and I'm paraphrasing my past eloquence here:  It's just brain damaged men instructing impressionable boys on the advantages of this particular form of brain damage in developing their alpha male image.  The cycle continues. 

Of course it's oversimplification and ignores all of the positive "team building" aspects of said sports, but it sure is fun to watch their impressionable young faces when I say that. ha.

[polara]

• Getting into some sociological territory that is going to touch on politics and religion if we don't watch it here.
• I don't think it's a leftist Hollywood consipracy. It's new technologies, new ideas, and just time passing on. It's mostly guys who were into Zep refusing to acknowledge that Jimmy Page looks like the Cryptkeeper after some face work, and is older than their grandpa was when they told him Benny Goodman was OLD, maaaaaaaan. Cultures that encourage behavior dismissed as "beta male" don't seem to be suffering from a lack of The Rawk. Come on: Nordic countries show leadership in gender equality, renewable energy, social safety nets, pastel shirts, men's hair products, organic food, and METAL OWNAGE! \m/

[jwhitcomb3]

1 hour ago, Ed Rechts said:

All I know is, if David Bowie and Marc Bolan and The Sweet and The New York Dolls and Slade hadn't played the androgyny card, people would be still listening to their music today

Much better to play the repressed homo-erotic card of the long teased hair, tight spandex/leather pants while stroking the phallic necks of electric guitars and gasping into bulbous headed mics like REAL rawkers do!

Bowie still gets plenty of airplay, and your suggestion that the lack of longevity of the second string acts you mention is due to their androgyny is at best dubious.

[gorch]

On 23.6.2017 at 6:48 PM, Ed Rechts said:

Go watch the video of DLR's "Eat 'Em & Smile" tour

I heartedly would have loved to see this. Came to see a later show without Vai. The guitarist had been at a comparably low level to my taste. But still a great show. It's time to dig out old records and listen again.

[polara]

7 minutes ago, jwhitcomb3 said:

Much better to play the repressed homo-erotic card of the long teased hair, tight spandex/leather pants while stroking the phallic necks of electric guitars and gasping into bulbous headed mics like REAL rawkers do!

Bowie still gets plenty of airplay, and your suggestion that the lack of longevity the second string acts you mention is due to their androgyny is at best dubious.

 

That, my friends, is pure heteromasculinity, back when Men Were Men.

[BubbaVO]

44 minutes ago, polara said:

That, my friends, is pure heteromasculinity, back when Men Were Men.

You got to admit that you don't have to travel too far down his side of the bell curve

to end up over here:

and before you know it you find yourself in a part of town you never thought you'd go :

[Steve Haynie]

I took Rechts' comment to mean that those bands sort of died out with a trend, just as many bands identified with trends have died over the years.  Bowie reinvented himself over and over, dumping band members and pursuing different musical directions like a pinball ricocheting off of bumpers and flippers.  David Johansen had to become Buster Poindexter and do his musical style change.  Slade was not androgynous, but definitely was a glam/pop band. 

The androgyny lasted long enough to shock people and then it ended.  Alice Cooper may have started it, and he moved on quickly.  

[crunchee]

 

[jwhitcomb3]

Ed, perhaps you're reading your own issues into my comments? FWIW, I liked a lot of 70's hard rock, though by the 80's had moved on to college radio (where there was as much dreck and gender ambiguity as anywhere else in popular culture). Sure, I see plenty of sexual undertones in the imagery of 70's rock bands that I never gave a second thought to as a kid. Listen to Mick Jagger's or Steve Tyler's innuendo that was oh so naughty at the time (though much of it flew over my tender, young head), and it seems quaint by today's standards. I didn't know what the significance of the band name "Queen" was in the 70's. Did you? Last summer I saw Peter Frampton opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd, and it was attended largely by fellow overweight balding white guys. I had a great time. I didn't go home and cry in my pillow that my kids don't identify with the cultural touchstones of my youth.

The control over the channels of music distribution is becoming much more diffuse compared to the 70's and 80's where you really only had access to what music corporations offered. These days, kids have access to more music we ever had, and they listen to what they want to on the internet, not what corporate owned radio stations shove down their throats. I don't see the grand conspiracy of youth emasculation that you do. My  "progressive observations and predictions that I know you subscribe" are really just observations, not progressive or based on any other ideology. No doubt, my observations in New Hampshire won't align with Iowa or Texas or many other places. But it seems safe to say that the gender models of today's youth (I have two teenagers) don't align with those we grew up with, and that's not due to anyone's social agenda, just time marching onward.

While we old white guys can lament the demise of much of what we held dear, including the electric guitar, there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.

BTW, loved the Putin imagery!

[FGJ]

7 hours ago, polara said:

• Getting into some sociological territory that is going to touch on politics and religion if we don't watch it here.
• I don't think it's a leftist Hollywood consipracy. It's new technologies, new ideas, and just time passing on. It's mostly guys who were into Zep refusing to acknowledge that Jimmy Page looks like the Cryptkeeper after some face work, and is older than their grandpa was when they told him Benny Goodman was OLD, maaaaaaaan. Cultures that encourage behavior dismissed as "beta male" don't seem to be suffering from a lack of The Rawk. Come on: Nordic countries show leadership in gender equality, renewable energy, social safety nets, pastel shirts, men's hair products, organic food, and METAL OWNAGE! \m/

For the record, my statements never addressed anything religious or political. My comment was a response to the false notion that "machismo" attitudes are somehow going the way of the dinosaur and/or that such emasculation will extend into music, effectively killing electric guitars. But history has show us that boys left to themselves, without the distortions imposed upon them by Hollywood and social experiments (distortions which are not "new ideas", but which can be found raising their ugly head throughout history and then collapsing under the realities of human nature), naturally want to act like men (with all the concomitant aggressive attributes of manhood), and no amount of social engineering can magically alter that reality. One can opine to differ with my point, but doing so requires one ignore the empirical facts of history. 

As for the elements of Nordic countries which you raised, many of those items on your list are political issues I won't touch with a ten-foot pole. Suffice it to say that something like "renewable energy" has zero to do with "machismo" attitudes or a lack thereof. Give a macho guy a car powered by renewable energy and which can smoke a 500HP muscle-car and he'll take it. Guys don't care what's powering their cars as long as it gets them across the finish line first (nor would the ukelele supplant the electric guitar for guys unless the former instrument attracted the girls more than the latter). That's the reality of male nature that social engineers fail to grasp. 

[Biz Prof]

2 hours ago, jwhitcomb3 said:

While we old white guys can lament the demise of much of what we held dear, including the electric guitar, there isn't a damn thing we can do about it.

Love the commentary in this thread about the premature declaration of the electric guitar's demise. The recent trend of guitar-oriented music in the sphere of pop culture reminds me of this roadside sign seen frequently across the rural South, which my childhood friends and I always sarcastically interpreted as a descriptive phrase rather than an instruction or admonition:

[velorush]