11-04-2019, 14:32
I think there’s a theory floating around somewhere about any artist/band not actually having more than 5 really great albums in them, but I might have the wrong end of the stick! Mind you, applying that idea critically to some that immediately spring to mind actually makes sense – Alan Parsons Project, Camel, Supertramp, Pink Floyd, CSN, Jackson Browne, Strawbs, Jethro Tull, etc, etc. Not a hard and fast rule, obviously there will be exceptions, but yeah – there’s definitely filler out there! And there might be something to be said for the fact that creative juices flow best when there’s impetus and motivation in which case you’d expect good things earlyish on, but that’s not necessarily the case either. Difficult to say!
Maybe 80’s music didn’t carry much weight because new ground was being explored - there was also quite a lot of change in the terms of the production of music and although some artists had the right ideas, there mightn't have been the technology to carry it off properly at that stage – CD’s had only just been produced and digital music was in its infancy – that sort of thing. Pure speculation on my part and some of them got it right regardless - R.E.M, Talk Talk, and so on. The shape of music has changed though, that’s for sure – such a muddle – brilliant stuff in amongst the utter crud that has no right calling itself music IMHO – but I expect that’s what the classicists said about the impressionists in visual art – and they’d have been wrong. Can’t help feeling that now we are mostly going backwards (in so-called popular music at any rate) - be nice to see a renaissance!
Maybe 80’s music didn’t carry much weight because new ground was being explored - there was also quite a lot of change in the terms of the production of music and although some artists had the right ideas, there mightn't have been the technology to carry it off properly at that stage – CD’s had only just been produced and digital music was in its infancy – that sort of thing. Pure speculation on my part and some of them got it right regardless - R.E.M, Talk Talk, and so on. The shape of music has changed though, that’s for sure – such a muddle – brilliant stuff in amongst the utter crud that has no right calling itself music IMHO – but I expect that’s what the classicists said about the impressionists in visual art – and they’d have been wrong. Can’t help feeling that now we are mostly going backwards (in so-called popular music at any rate) - be nice to see a renaissance!
"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." ~ Bill Watterson