Do you still love oldskool music?

[fluffy_little_something]

The thread title should really be 'Do you still love music which used fashionable production techniques characteristic of bygone era's?'

Indeed, music tended to sound more compact in the past, it even sounded good on mediocre stereos. Now everything is so exaggerated, too much bass, too much bass drum, too many synths, too fat synths, etc. And it sounds accordingly unless you have a super stereo system because often times you can't turn up the volume unless you remove the bass.
And as I said there are too many synths, so synth sounds are not special anymore, but omnipresent. Maybe that's why almost all modern songs I like are more or less acoustic and electric rather than electronic.

I like this sound a lot, I think there is only one synth in it, namely a soft background pad, and there is lots of space, so one can tell every single instrument. It sounds good to me at any volume...

[KoolKool]

The thread title should really be 'Do you still love music which used fashionable production techniques characteristic of bygone era's?'

i love that title,but its too long!

[deastman]

I like all music, except for the bad stuff.

[aMUSEd]

The thread title should really be 'Do you still love music which used fashionable production techniques characteristic of bygone era's?'

Indeed, music tended to sound more compact in the past, it even sounded good on mediocre stereos. Now everything is so exaggerated, too much bass, too much bass drum, too many synths, too fat synths, etc. And it sounds accordingly unless you have a super stereo system because often times you can't turn up the volume unless you remove the bass.
And as I said there are too many synths, so synth sounds are not special anymore, but omnipresent. Maybe that's why almost all modern songs I like are more or less acoustic and electric rather than electronic.

I like this sound a lot, I think there is only one synth in it, namely a soft background pad, and there is lots of space, so one can tell every single instrument. It sounds good to me at any volume...

Sade is a goddess and thus timeless.

[mutantdog]

My own personal nostalgia period would span the 90s and a little bit either side, mainly the rock/metal and breakbeat/electronica stuff. The whole grunge thing and the rise of drum&bass were significant parts of my life. From time to time I like to play some old favourites, some of them hold particularly special memories or evoke emotions that remind me of my younger days.

I mostly listen to new stuff though. While i don't connect with some of the music from younger artists, i can still find enough that i rarely listen to anything more than a couple of years old. New music excites me in a way that old stuff cannot, it keeps me connected with the world in which i presently live and interests me more than the repetition of familiarity.

Now that i can listen to (practically) anything and everything, there is no need to even consider the mainstream. Generic pop and EDM are not my thing, their equivalents in previous eras never interested me either. The difference now is that it is so much easier to ignore the crap and find what i like. The joy of discovery is something i can experience again and again.

Nostalgia has its place, this week for me is all about Bowie, even then its his new album that interests me more than any others.

[do_androids_dream]

The thread title should really be 'Do you still love music which used fashionable production techniques characteristic of bygone era's?'

Indeed, music tended to sound more compact in the past, it even sounded good on mediocre stereos. Now everything is so exaggerated, too much bass, too much bass drum, too many synths, too fat synths, etc. And it sounds accordingly unless you have a super stereo system because often times you can't turn up the volume unless you remove the bass.
And as I said there are too many synths, so synth sounds are not special anymore, but omnipresent. Maybe that's why almost all modern songs I like are more or less acoustic and electric rather than electronic.

I like this sound a lot, I think there is only one synth in it, namely a soft background pad, and there is lots of space, so one can tell every single instrument. It sounds good to me at any volume...

Sade is a goddess and thus timeless.

Yes, Sade is other-worldly to me. An artist's artist. In the same league as Prince, Kate Bush, Bowie. Even though the mastering was questionable I was blown away by Soldier Of Love (the title track). The beat slams yet the song retains that Sade smooooth..

[Numanoid]

Sade is a goddess and thus timeless.

+10

[chk071]

I really like music from the nineties/early 2000's. I guess we all prefer the music which "founded our taste". There's some cool stuff these days too though. And a lot of crap.

[foosnark]

Why Are SO Many Millennials SO Uncool?

When I first saw this article, at first I figured it would either:

(A) be stupidly judgey about how tastes have changed or fashion trends or whatever.
(B) pretend to be (A) for a while and then subvert it to point out that by their own definition of cool, Millenials are cool and us olds are not.

Well, it's still more than a little bit (A) but there's a pretty good point in it:

Every recent decade up to the 90s had a music revolution that inspired a counterculture. One that challenged the status quo. Political and psychedelic rock during the 60s encouraged young people to leave the safety of their parents’ homes, fight in the streets for civil rights, and protest war…while taking acid and smoking lots of dope. The 70s challenged youth to question the establishment with punk rock, which was still alive and well in the 80s; and along with it, bands like Devo sang about the devolution of the human race. The 90s had grunge, which was an outlet for the pain and frustration that accompanies feelings of isolation and disenfranchisement. It discouraged consumption and showed that opulence was uncool.

Even rock in the 50s was a new thing at first, a taste of freedom and a wake-up call before it got commodotized. Hip-hop was revolutionary in its beginings, too.

While there are still some activists to be found in every genre of music, I think this article is right that there haven't been any big waves in the last couple of decades (and really, even grunge was a mere ripple compared to punk).

So the 90s was the decade when radio stations got taken over by corporate giants (with corporate, not cultural, interests in mind), and, not coincidentally, when radio went to shit.

This bit might be overstated because this was a process already well underway. But the 90s does seem to be when the circle closed, and the only radio stations with any personality left are college radio and internet-based stuff.

Anyway. Any thoughts? And also get off my lawn, and get some tattoos or something.

[fluffy_little_something]

I never cared about revolution in music. For me it is really mostly about the feelings music evokes, and the way it sounds.
Almost all my favorite music is "black music", which has been mostly love songs for a long time. There have been some political songs by people like Stevie Wonder, but I did not like them more than the rest, probably even less so because often such songs are more aggressive, which I don't like. Hip Hop and Rap are more political, but I never liked the sound. It doesn't "flow" in my view, not to mention the vulgar language.

[foosnark]

It just kind of struck me because politically I tend to be way over to the left (by distorted American standards), and I do tend to like weird and different stuff artistically and musically. But usually not so much for the shock value, as for triggering a shift in thought/perception. (I guess that's what "psychedelic" means but too often gets assocaited with just drugs/hippie culture, which is itself a limiting view.)

I'm not much into "smash the system" screamy angry stuff most of the time, but I'm all for making the system weird

[jancivil]

I'm not all that captured by feelings of nostalgia. I will say that my political awareness rather starts with the National Guard shooting kids dead at Kent State U. in 1970, one of them my age (14 at that time). So, "tin soldiers and Nixon coming/we're finally on our own/this summer we hear the drumming/four dead in O-hi-o" was inevitable and I to this day have a lot of emotion behind it.

The bands my father followed, Stan Kenton's and Woody Herman's bands, were populated by a lot of hippies, really and the choice of, the presentation of material reflected the times. Miles Davis went full-on Street at this time. So, my father was not all that reactionary it turns out, and while he didn't get Herbie Hancock Rockit a little bit down the road, I sat in with one his peers' group on the bandstand (ca. '69) because I could handle Watermelon Man on the drums. So you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone/the times they are a-changin' signals where we were at... I didn't know about anybody that resided in such a bubble as to be inured to reality like it can't intrude on your safe 'love' song. R&B on the radio featured Ball of Confusion (That's what the world is today), Temptations and War (good god, y'all) by Edwin Starr.
Sam Cooke
I go to the movie and I go downtown
Somebody keep tellin' me don't hang around
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will
was 1963.

But I don't feel a wave of nostalgia from too many of the ubiquitous radio hits of that time, and it seems like I was in a car with the radio on all the time then. There are just a few things... Sometimes somebody tells the truth musically:



I did find a couple of records takin' me back, Blood Sweat & Tears' eponymous (2nd) album, and Lizard by King Crimson. But for the sense of place and time really hittin' me hard in a rush it was the Rockford Files theme (not first season), that totally captures the world of then for me, behind whatever reason.

[fluffy_little_something]

Funny you feel that way about the Rockford theme, I feel that way about the Hill Street Blues theme for instance.

[Numanoid]

I never cared about revolution in music.

I most def do.

How could I even listen to my vinyls in the 80's without them revolving at 33 or 45 revolutions per minute

[aMUSEd]

The thread title should really be 'Do you still love music which used fashionable production techniques characteristic of bygone era's?'

Indeed, music tended to sound more compact in the past, it even sounded good on mediocre stereos. Now everything is so exaggerated, too much bass, too much bass drum, too many synths, too fat synths, etc. And it sounds accordingly unless you have a super stereo system because often times you can't turn up the volume unless you remove the bass.
And as I said there are too many synths, so synth sounds are not special anymore, but omnipresent. Maybe that's why almost all modern songs I like are more or less acoustic and electric rather than electronic.

I like this sound a lot, I think there is only one synth in it, namely a soft background pad, and there is lots of space, so one can tell every single instrument. It sounds good to me at any volume...

Sade is a goddess and thus timeless.

Yes, Sade is other-worldly to me. An artist's artist. In the same league as Prince, Kate Bush, Bowie. Even though the mastering was questionable I was blown away by Soldier Of Love (the title track). The beat slams yet the song retains that Sade smooooth..

tbh I've never understood what people see in Prince.