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"Whither 50-Year Old Rock Bands?"


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Here's a link to a freelance piece just published in the op-ed section of al.com, a collective online site for newspapers in Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama. I think I've referred HFC folks to another article or two that has been published on this site.

The subject is what the title says as well as the promulgation that 1967-73 was the most diverse and creative time in the history of popular music. Comments solicited; enjoy:

https://www.al.com/opinion/2020/05/whither-50-year-old-rock-bands.html

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Good read, Willie. Yet, in the last two paragraphs you couldn’t resist the worn-out hubris boomers exhibit when writing about their generation. 
 

There’s great pop music from all eras. “Most creative time?” Highly specious. 

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Good music can still be found but it seems I have to look a lot harder for it. As for the music of the late 60’s through the early 70’s, well there’s a damn good reason why they call it Classic Rock. 

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While superlative claims will always depend on the eye/ear of the beholder, there's convincing evidence to back up the suggestion that "classic rock" has endured with a stronger listener base than most other byegone genres. To wit, when one travels the USA, it's not that difficult to find an FM station with what could be fairly described as a classic rock format.   Trying doing the same with say, ragtime, big band, or late-'50s/mid-'70s country formats. Merely one example, but a solid one:  DSOTM stayed on the Billboard album chart for 15 years...and it's fair to describe Pink Floyd as a definitive entry in the classic rock genre and whose music is well known by to diverse, multi-generational range of listeners.  Whether or not that supports the assertion that a half-dozen-year range in the late '60s/early '70s was the most creative musical period for any genre is totally up to your ears and mind.  But it certainly has enjoyed a incredibly long shelf life. 

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1 hour ago, Biz Prof said:

While superlative claims will always depend on the eye/ear of the beholder, there's convincing evidence to back up the suggestion that "classic rock" has endured with a stronger listener base than most other byegone genres. To wit, when one travels the USA, it's not that difficult to find an FM station with what could be fairly described as a classic rock format.   Trying doing the same with say, ragtime, big band, or late-'50s/mid-'70s country formats. Merely one example, but a solid one:  DSOTM stayed on the Billboard album chart for 15 years...and it's fair to describe Pink Floyd as a definitive entry in the classic rock genre and whose music is well known by to diverse, multi-generational range of listeners.  Whether or not that supports the assertion that a half-dozen-year range in the late '60s/early '70s was the most creative musical period for any genre is totally up to your ears and mind.  But it certainly has enjoyed a incredibly long shelf life. 

Yes, but radio play targets are based on advertising, not necessarily on the quality or creativeness of the music.  Is it just that the audience for Classic Rock has Cash?

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Fine-tuning: Sometimes during a speech/lecture, I use the 'bookend' allusion but add and discuss another LP to both ends: The Vanilla Fudge's first album was released the day after Sgt. Pepper's and the other '73 album is indeed Dark Side of the Moon, and its staying power is pointed out.

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4 hours ago, Biz Prof said:

While superlative claims will always depend on the eye/ear of the beholder, there's convincing evidence to back up the suggestion that "classic rock" has endured with a stronger listener base than most other byegone genres.

Fortunately, "classic rock" isn't bound by the half-decade in question.  If they were they'd have to choose different songs to play.

hickey-feature-classicrock-41.png?w=1150

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2 hours ago, mathman said:

Yes, but radio play targets are based on advertising, not necessarily on the quality or creativeness of the music.  Is it just that the audience for Classic Rock has Cash?

Definitely a factor, as the sheer numbers of boomers that compose a good portion of the classic rock audience are a primary source of the "cash" you reference, regardless of whether their per capita consumption is relatively high. Still though, there's evidence of adoption of the genre by much younger consumers, which is keeping it relevant and viable long past the traditional pop music expiration date. That alone, makes classic rock more enduring than most other genres. 

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On 5/27/2020 at 7:12 PM, Biz Prof said:

Definitely a factor, as the sheer numbers of boomers that compose a good portion of the classic rock audience are a primary source of the "cash" you reference, regardless of whether their per capita consumption is relatively high. Still though, there's evidence of adoption of the genre by much younger consumers, which is keeping it relevant and viable long past the traditional pop music expiration date. That alone, makes classic rock more enduring than most other genres. 

Some of that adoption is because record companies by the late 90s were so risk averse that repackaging old music and selling it to another generation was incredibly attractive.  The Beatles Anthology Series and subsequent sales in 1995 showed what a cash cow this was.  If record companies had remained as focused on finding new artists and letting the past be the past from 1995 to the current day as they were in in the late 60s and early 70s, who knows?  I can remember a prominent producer writing in Sound on Sound in the late 00s that nothing killed rock quite like the continuing repackaging and reselling of the past rather than finding a future by the music industry over all. 

As mentioned here, there is also just the sheer size of Boomers vs. Gen. X, a group that with at least American Graffiti, was already indulging in a bit of hagiography by the mid-70s.  There's a meta thing I get when I watch the The Big Chill that seriously cracks me up.  The oldest boomer wasn't even 40 when that came out, yet the gushing nostalgia underscoring that movie makes it seem like 1968 50 years ago, not just 15 when the movie was produced.  My entire life, Boomers have been repackaging and selling the late 60s really.  I'd kinda hoped that my generation wouldn't do the same with the 90s, particularly as there was an element of pushback against the narrative that the late 60s were the most important thing ever. 

All of which is not to say necessarily that maybe the late 60s and early 70s weren't the most diverse period in music.  Rock didn't really become the dominant genre until the mid-70s, and it's reign at the top from about 76 to 96 has yet to be matched when looking at the percentage of sales it comprised.  Charts in the late 60s are surprisingly diverse, given the importance placed on rock in that period retrospectively.  Maybe it's on its own merit that so much material from this time remains so popular, but there are lots of competing factors sort of unique to the period, the people, and the industry as it matured that I think make it hard to say really. 

Curiously, and I actually think it would make for a great paper, I think the brand imagery for bands is stronger than the music these days in some respects.  I delicately quiz students I have about whether or not they listen to the bands on their shirts, and the vast majority don't.  Wearing a Rolling Stones or Metallica shirt is a lot like wearing STP (the auto products) or other iconic older brands was and still is.  The imagery just seeps into culture divorced of the products it once represented. 

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21 minutes ago, LucSulla said:

If record companies had remained as focused on finding new artists and letting the past be the past from 1995 to the current day as they were in in the late 60s and early 70s, who knows?  I can remember a prominent producer writing in Sound on Sound in the late 00s that nothing killed rock quite like the continuing repackaging and reselling of the past rather than finding a future by the music industry over all. 

Now, there's a sobering perspective. Anecdotally (and not the least bit scientific), my 11-year-old inherited an LP collection composed of albums purchased by various members of our nuclear family. I can say with a straight face that none of us have tried to push our respective musical favorites upon the others.   Interestingly, after giving each of the platters a few spins her favorites of the bunch are Iron Maiden's Killers, Pink Floyd's DSOTM, The Beatles' Rubber Soul, and her own purchase, When We Fall Asleep... by Billie Eilish.  There are a good number of last-20-years albums in that stack, but she apparently prefers some of the older rock stuff.

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2 hours ago, Biz Prof said:

Now, there's a sobering perspective. Anecdotally (and not the least bit scientific), my 11-year-old inherited an LP collection composed of albums purchased by various members of our nuclear family. I can say with a straight face that none of us have tried to push our respective musical favorites upon the others.   Interestingly, after giving each of the platters a few spins her favorites of the bunch are Iron Maiden's Killers, Pink Floyd's DSOTM, The Beatles' Rubber Soul, and her own purchase, When We Fall Asleep... by Billie Eilish.  There are a good number of last-20-years albums in that stack, but she apparently prefers some of the older rock stuff.

I think you can get into things in different ways for different reasons.  I got into Pink Floyd all on my own via The DIvision Bell.  I got into The Beatles via my father.  I love them both, but I don't really consider The Beatles "my music" like I do PF.   Incidentally, since PF was my own trip, they sit in my mind like other bands more of my generation as far as my emotional connection to them. 

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Fine-tuning: It helps to keep in mind that my perspective is about the music when it was originally recorded and marketed, not how it's been re-packaged and re-sold.

Nostalgia in concert is an entirely different thing, however---a temporary time warp for a lot of audience members, and, depending on the band, that may be a bigger and longer exploitation than a re-issue album with a couple of previously unreleased bonus tracks.

I found some parts of The Big Chill to be laughable as well.

^^^^I got into Pink Floyd via a 45 of "See Emily Play".

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17 hours ago, RobB said:

Wow! What was it like cueing up a single by candlelight, Methuselah?

Word is that he had to find his hedge trimmer to cut back the cobwebs from the candle before lighting it. 😉

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...and my favorite movie genre is horror flicks from American International Pictures (Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, et. al.). Cobwebs galore. The same folks gave us the Frankie-and Annette Beach Party movies.

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1 hour ago, Willie G. Moseley said:

...and my favorite movie genre is horror flicks from American International Pictures (Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, et. al.). Cobwebs galore. The same folks gave us the Frankie-and Annette Beach Party movies.

Oh, man! I love those pictures too. I lived in SoCal for a few years, and the local TV stations have the sort of connections and programming in a league with national broadcasters. The local TV programs in the Sunday newspapers had the listings, synopsis, and quality ratings. I watched a few one-star movies that were a lot of fun: One was an old Robert Redford movie, another a jazzy musical starring trumpeter/singer Louie Prima and wife Keely Smith. The most fun was an AIP horror film titled "The Terror," directed by Roger Corman and starring a 26-year-old Jack Nicholson as an AWOL soldier from Napoleon's army, who gets involved with people living in a big mansion on an estate. Boris Karloff is also in it. Nicholson cut his film-acting teeth on American International Pictures, including "The Raven," starring Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and Peter Lorre.

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