The state of music today

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bob_32_116
Posts: 395
Joined: Sun Aug 07, 2005 12:51 pm
Location: Perth, Western Australia

The state of music today

Post by bob_32_116 »

I always considered the late 1960s as a period of unrivalled creativity in popular music. Lind was one of the leading lights of that time, but there were many others. Technology has come a long way since then, but something I feel has been largely missing from the music scene, say from the early 1970s until recently, is the ability to create simple, yet great, even beautiful, music without reliance on computer wizardry. I really missed the way artists used guitar on songs like those Bob Lind or Paul Simon wrote - you hear it on Lind's more recent songs like Maybe It's the Rain, The Laughing Song and Wearing You.

I am starting to hear it again now, not on the radio but in the music that I seek out, which tends to be what generally gets lumped under the heading of progressive rock - though that's really only a label that gets quite misunderstood.

Surprisingly, several artists who come from the heavy metal tradition - even extreme genres like "death metal" or "doom metal", seem to have rediscovered the simple beauty of a great melody played on a guitar (or any instrument) and have moved right away from their metal roots into producing music that sounds like a melding of folk-rock and progressive rock influences. Check out for instance this song from Anathema, a band who started out as a very heavy doom metal band:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouKGKgkS ... tube_gdata

As soon as I heard the opening bars I thought "Wow, that could be Bob Lind or Paul Simon playing that." Of course, as the song progresses, it sounds very different from Bob Lind or Simon and Garfunkel, but it certainly ain't doom metal!

Here's another example of what I consider to be really great music currently being made - though seldom heard on the radio. (This song takes a while to get going - be patient.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkpiglaamiA

Towards the end of last century I was becoming very despondent about the state of popular music. It seemed a long time since I had heard anything new that seemed worth my while buying. Now suddenly I am hearing stuff like this that is giving me hope for the future. There is quite a lot of really good stuff out there, if you can sift through all the rubbish.
Last edited by bob_32_116 on Wed Sep 19, 2012 12:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
grant
Admonkeystrator
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Joined: Wed Aug 18, 2004 10:28 am
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Re: The state of music today

Post by grant »

Anathema even ends with a string section!

I think the kids are calling this "melodic doom" or "melodic metal" nowadays - I've heard some other similar things that are pretty darn good.

It is peculiar how hard it is to find this stuff on the radio. That seems to be the new way of things - huge pools of material that need to be sorted and hunted through.
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