demagogue on 29/2/2020 at 14:26
Definitely. I feel like this upcoming generation doesn't know of any world that isn't mediated. Their voice is already through a medium, a YouTube or a Spotify or a Tweet or whatever. I'm speaking also of even the indie or garage band scene, kids just making music because they wanna be loud and get their emotion out, whether you'd call that something to say or not. (It goes without saying that the producer manufactured music is corporate to its bones.) They always have that kind of influencer tone even for casual talk to people around them. It's not just that they're not going to bite the hand that gives them a voice, but it's like any voice outside of that system doesn't exist. Where would they even be playing; who would they even be playing to, with what voice?
Like I liked the first album of Regrettes because it had a kind of girl punk edge, a little raw and unvarnished and authentic, but it got gutted after that. I guess there will always be some people inherently unhinged that can't be tamed. Xiu Xiu comes to mind, although he's maybe a bit too unhinged to connect with anything in our era. And I like Josh Turner and Vulfpeck so much because they're so self-consciously bucking the trend.
NPR Music Tiny Desk is pretty good at fishing some authentic sounds out. The thing there is, the actual authentic voices out there seem to think of themselves as perpetually out of the loop and aren't all that ambitious to actually make a statement. They seemed to be content just getting their music out somewhere and hope to be listened. What's missing now is the ambition of the outsiders they used to have maybe. I think of someone like Trent Reznor who was uncompromising with his sound but also super ambitious to take it to the world. Where are bands like that now?
froghawk on 29/2/2020 at 14:47
There's a massive amount of very angry underground hardcore and metal happening right now. Sure, the establishment doesn't want to sell angry anymore, but that's not a bad thing - there was always an incredible irony in that. The kids are still listening to plenty of angry music, don't you all worry. They have the internet and they know where to find it. If you're not making an attempt to seek out and engage with new music right now, that's on you more than anything.
Don't forget what 80s pop was like, by and large. Yes, you had thrash metal and death metal and hardcore coming up to combat that, but there was an intense sense of bland commercialism then, too. These things come in cycles.
Beyond that, what you're seeing now is actually all the result of a 1996 telecomm bill which allowed Clear Channel to own most of the radio stations and roll out nationalized programming. That killed local scenes in a way, and it also made popular music much less diverse. The trends in pop are, believe it or not, a legal issue.
Gray on 29/2/2020 at 16:19
Quote Posted by froghawk
There's a massive amount of very angry underground hardcore and metal happening right now. Sure, the establishment doesn't want to sell angry anymore, but that's not a bad thing - there was always an incredible irony in that. The kids are still listening to plenty of angry music, don't you all worry. They have the internet and they know where to find it. If you're not making an attempt to seek out and engage with new music right now, that's on you more than anything.
Phew! Thanks, I feel better now.
Starker on 29/2/2020 at 20:11
Quote Posted by icemann
One thing that occurred to me this week as I've been teaching myself how to do video editing in Shotcut, is that the whole art of teaching yourself things seems to have been lost. Or it just me on that one?
Want to learn how to program (pre 2000s) - Go read a programming book and then learn via experimenting.
Want to use a computer - Learn the above first (basic level) then you can navigate DOS. If you deviate over to Linux this one still exists with that.
Just seems like these days there a hell of a lot of tutorial videos up on Youtube. Now having said all that I did use Youtube videos to know the basics for video editing in the program, but the rest was just messing around and seeing what'd happen.
That's one part I could easily do without. When I think back on the 90s, I must have spent an inordinate amount of time messing around with settings simply to try to get a game to work properly, more or less. And learning about computers was the same -- if there was nobody to teach you, you probably had to find out the hard way that just because a card fits in an ISA slot it doesn't mean it won't get fried because of a voltage difference. And quite a lot of it involved an unnecessary amount of bullshit like fiddling around with jumpers if you wanted to install a drive. And don't get me started on all the different sized AGP slots and cards. Also, to add insult to injury, nobody had yet figured out it might not be such a good idea to have sharp metal edges on the components, so you could cut yourself quite badly, if you weren't careful. There was an incredible amount of bullshit involved and I'm very glad to have Youtube tutorials and PCIe and plug and play and games working right out of the box without the need to tinker with them the vast majority of time.
Starker on 1/3/2020 at 05:27
I think where I'm from, this had more to do with the DIY aspect of punk subculture and the overall resourcefulness of soviet citizens that was born out of sheer necessity. We didn't have the luxury of simply buying new things (or at least most of us didn't), so we had to learn how to develop film, do soldering, needlework, car repairs, and a myriad of other things to save money, often just with the help of a book and lots of experimentation. So, for me, not having to figure things out is more a sign of affluence and privilege than anything else.
Gryzemuis on 1/3/2020 at 14:43
You guys are looking at music with rose-tinted glasses. Music has always been commercial. Mainstream music at least. At least since the fifties. If you were or are interested in music, you had to put effort in, and go look for the good stuff. It always has been like that, and still is. Mainstream music is always simple, positive, upbeat, easy to sing along, attracts children and young teenagers.
During the last 1-2 years, BBC does reruns of old Top Of The Pops episodes from the eighties. The first episodes (from 1980 till 1983) were great fun. Seeing young Undertones, Soft Cell, lots of New Romantics bands, some unexpected stuff, etc. Fun. But I think those years (1978-1982) were anomaly. Once they got to episodes from 1985 and later, the music turns into real shit again. Like the pop and disco of the seventies. Lots of Stock, Aitken, Waterman shit. Lots of stuff that tried to emulate it. People might have good memories about 80's music. But the truth is: most 80's music was really terrible. Just like the mainstream music of the 70's or 90's. You had to know where to look to find the good stuff. I think it's still like that. And it will always be.
I think there must be just as much good music now, as there has always been. There are 2 reasons for that:
1) Making and recording music has never been this cheap. It used to be that a young band needed some record-company-contract. Or else they would not been able to afford spending even a day in a recording studio. Recording was unbelievably expensive. There was a limited amount of recording studios, and they were always fully booked. "Independent" record labels were scarce. And they often depended on the (past) success of one particular band that carried that label.
Nowadays, recording is cheap. All you need is a laptop and some software. Maybe a good microphone for the singer. In any case, the cost of the musical instruments (guitars, drums, keyboards) is probably higher than the cost of recording and mixing equipment. And while instruments don't get cheaper, the recording and mixing equipment still do.
2) You can distribute you own music. This was unthinkable 30-40 years ago. I'm not saying you're gonna get rich if you distribute youw own music. But it's possible. And the initial costs are very affordable. There are lost of small record companies who do that. I think those companies nowadays don't exist to enable you to make music. They are more of a tool to get some publicity ("look, another band from my favorite label"), help you get your music out (no need to set up a website yourself), etc.
During 2019 I've been building my digital music collection (rip CDs, digitalize vinyl, get music from friends, etc, and maybe download some stuff too). I've also been looking for "new" music. I found lots of non-commercial music that I liked. Stuff that would never get played on radio. Stuff that 40 years ago would not been published. And if published, it would have been hard to find a copy of a CD or record. Ambient, dark ambient, electronic, trance, modern classical (like minimal music) etc. I love it. And I think this will continue to happen in the future. Lots of "small" artists who can get their music out to the people who like that music. Which was really hard to do before the Internet, and before computers got cheap.
All you need to do it ignore shitty music. Don't listen to it. Don't watch it on TV. Don't listen to radio at all. I'm sure you can find "Internet Radio Stations" that play exactly the music you like. I've always believed in the "pull model" of information. And I hated the "push model". I decide what I watch, read, listen to. Not some commercial company. Of course there's exceptions. E.g. I watch public TV while I eat my dinner, sitting in front of my TV. Because I'm not really concentrated enough to watch a film or even an episode of a good tv-series. But once I'm done, I watch something I want to see (streamed or downloaded). Not something some company wants me to watch. One thing I hate even more than the "push model" is advertising. A good side effect of using the "pull model" is that it is way easier to avoid commercials.
Regarding music, film and tv-series, I think the future is brighter than it has ever been.
