Alright Surell, you can pat yourself on the back. On Friday I listened to 3 Animal Collective albums at work, and it was interesting enough that today I bought two of them (Meriweather Post Pavillion and Centipede Hz). When I listened to Strawberry Jam at work I liked it too and am about to buy it from amazon.com.

Merriweather Post Pavillion is definitely the best album. I noticed in the Wiki article about it some reviewers noted it was 'Beach Boys-esque.' In spite of the vast differences between the groups, I could actually understand their point. The first 3 song on MPP are definitely the best - and the 3rd is the best of all. Maybe this will eventually be regarded as the Pet Sounds or Sgt Pepper of the early 21st Century? Or, being as the band is more akin to a 21st Century version of Yes, maybe it's the Fragile of the early 21st Century.

That said, it's still not as good as the 60's-70's stuff. It's very interesting and complex music, but doesn't have the emotional impact the BB's or Beatles, for example, have. On the 3 albums, only 1 song (the 3rd on MPP) had any emotional impact on me.

Also, because so many of the songs are so busy and musically dense, I found myself feeling tense after a while (especially after listening to Centipede Hz). I had this urge to put on Surfer Girl to relax myself after listening to that stuff after a while.

Anyway, if I buy 3 albums of a band after listening to their music, that's a sure sign I'm impressed. You have succeeded - at least partially. ;)

Well, whad'ya know. I check out the Animal Collective forum, and guess what I find?

CLICKY

I can't help but wonder if Surell knew about that and figure'd I'd eventually hook onto AC because of my BB interest? ;)

Can't ... resist ...

This is a new-vs-old comparison where I actually think the new song holds up well to the old one!

There have been some artists/bands which have made good songs during the latest 25 years - for example: Madonna, Oasis, No Doubt, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and probably many which I am unfamiliar with (I have been largely out of touch with the new music scene since the early 1980s).

One reason that generally the quality is poorer today that (say) in the 70/80s (despite the improvement in studio techniques, etc) is that bands very rarely these days get out and gig and gig and gig and gig and gig.

Nothing shows through more than a band expert in live performance, and nothing exposes the instant superstar more than lack of this priceless thing called 'work'.

Fans today are lazy too. Content to download in ignorance rather than get out and form views on live bands for themselves.

Try it. It is so rewarding.

So you want bands that don't get out and perform live to do so. It will suck and nobody wants to see sucky live performances.

Live performances/concerts are NOT the end all be all of the music experience. I'm one of those "lazy" fans that prefer to hear quality studio sound than shitty raw sounding live performance.

Bands rarely gig their asses off these days? Really? I'm under the impression that there's tons of bands out there that get out and gig and gig and gig and gig and gig just like always. In fact I know there is.

Also gig attendances are nearly as high as they've ever been. And even if they are slightly lower that's due to economic reasons rather than laziness. And to echo what DJ said, live performance isn't the end all be all of the music experience. To me an artist's definitive statement, and something that they'll be remembered for decades down the line, is their best recorded work.

Yeah I forgot to add that there are tons of local bands that are gigging their butts off so I don't know where he gets that statement from.

Yes I do, and no it wouldn't.

You clearly don't have the vibrant music we have in the UK.

You mis-understand me. I know there are plenty of super bands out there live, I see them every week. And not all of them are Irish acoustic in pubs.

It wouldn't matter if I was in the UK or anywhere else in the world. I still wouldn't go to see live performances regardless of how "vibrant" you feel your scene is.

Thats a shame. Musically speaking your life is therefore like only eating the vegetables and not also the meat or fish.

Each to his or her own of course, but its much more credible to comment upon something (ie. music) when one has a comprehensive understanding and experience of it.

You mean like listening to it?

Of course. Thats the start.

And the end imo

But during the sixties there were so many good bands too! Are there any equivalents of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Cream, Bob Dylan etc. nowadays? I think not!

This post of mine was a comment to a comment to the effect that the former decades were not less good than the most recent ones - but that we have only forgotten all the crap of the earlier decades. Well there was quite a lot of crap during the sixties - but there was more really good stuff than there is today also!

I actually have recently started to really enjoy modern pop. Best its been in forever imo and I'm serious

I would be delighted to find out what really good pop is being made today. I am quite out of touch with the current popular culture (I am a 59-year old "gubbe"). "Gubbe" is a Swedish word which means, roughly, old man or perhaps geezer.

I like the Korean pop these days which is a mix of pop, electro sounds, hip hop, R&B and dancing too.

My wife is from Vietnam. I will have to ask her about the pop music scene over there (I know that they have some - Vietnam has been westernized in recent decades).

Check out indie pop darlings like Haim, Lorde, Chvrches and James Blake.

I know James isn't indie and he's more electronic but w/e

Now is the best time to go through those best of the year album lists and find out what the current pop culture is really like and how good the music is. You might find some gems in there that you end up liking.

im from vietnam originally and the music is decent, but nothing like kpop or jpop. i like the older vietnamese songs compared to the new ones nowdays.

I am not saying all mainstream music nowadays is bad, but the kpop music of 8os and 90s was actually good.

So you liked kpop back then? the earliest i remember was Isak N Jiyeon which was like 12 yrs ago..but even then, i didn't start following until the Wonder Girls debut...

I believe Pop has gotten worse with every knew artist.

Cliff Richard & the Shadows>The Beatles>>>>>>Diana Ross>Madonna>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>etc etc (to present day)>>>> Katy Perry>Lady Gaga

It's only a theory, but I haven't seen anything that would contradict it.:shycouch:

The short take on this is that when the industry knew it got the small dots and yellow stains on the map with the Wal Marts, it was all going to go down quickly. When the industry focused on the technology and forcing the music just to be a background (expanding on what critics call "wallpaper music"), the development slowed down. The great record store closings of the Late 90's-Early 2Ks also saw it that the power of the outsider vote was going to diminish fast. Then again, I'm also in the mood to think too much, possibly in one of my dark days, so bear with me...I need to rant a bit.

I can take Malcolm McLaren's Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, fuse it with his Bow Wow Wow/Chicken projects (One of the real starts of the Sexual Pop Teenybopper belief that's seriously been in practice for a couple of decades), and can say that whatever happened with his manifestos through those eras is a perfect textbook on understanding what's going on today...but in my opinion without the good music and with more calculated sounds, but in a way very fitting for this age.

Although McLaren was talking about Punk in a classic scene in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, these words can apply to just about everything else: "These kids didn't buy these records for the music. If they did this thing would have died a death years ago!" Despite having some questionable attitudes here and there, you have to admit that he was on the target with a lot of what he did, if not everything.

Pop was ALWAYS about the mix of sound and vision. The look with the beat, the life with the lifestyle, and all of the rest. Your Teens and Twenties are it's target. One slip, and you're done for. The Industry was always Dog Eat Dog, with the Chess Players not caring about what is good, but what's leaving the stores and Internet stores. Sadly, a lot of those in charge have obviously decided that there will be no more musical innovation, just visual and technological.

The gaps are closed. For now...

In a way, the road to the world of bland and monotonous Pop that's being promoted through the media is clearly one that leads to the conclusion of the corporations all closing in leaving no gap at all within a Pop context. The pick of young entertainers is mainly due to knowing that they are possibly the least to rebel at any time being conditioned to their way of thinking (No artistic troubles from anyone mature and with a vision! Don't want anyone knowing more than the suits!) and the lack of any real controversy is made sure of - all of the outbursts, twerks, and cry baby antics from the pampered stars is nothing out of the ordinary although magnified just because they are those that the public wants to see. Producers and teams of Songwriters have been the norm for ages, but in a mechanized music scene, it's very obvious that all of the cliches are in place without any kind of diversion or heart to experiment with different styles. In a Visual-Interactive-Internet world, the music is only a soundtrack to the big show. The name of the game is the domination of your listening senses, and by the looks of it they're winning a lot of the time.

The worst of it is that the public are being mainly sold watered down goods instead of seriously exciting worlds for years. Then again, it's best to make sure that your product is selling in every BFE around the world with a Wal Mart or any other super store. No room for those Niche Audiences that reside in The Culture Bunkers!!!

Most of the blame for this is the Industry wasting a lot of money for videos that it's been reported were usually given away to MTV (Turner tried for a Cable Music station that actually payed for the use of the videos, but honesty was not the name of the game I guess...let the image sell itself damn the logic, right?). This caused a huge loss of money with the expensive crap shoots finding out what sold to the majority, and in turn leaving very little room for any kind of Alternative to exist in a Pop Culture context. Kind of like what Heaven's Gate did for the Movie Industry which sparked the need for Epic after money making Epic (Leave a blank check to a visionary Director, and watch that money slip away in a mega cloud of dust on the screen), the giving the promotion to MTV saw the money slip away in the worst way possible (let alone the so-called "need" for mega productions that had more bloat than you can crawl through).


From Bill Drake's clock that narrowed a Pop Playlist down to 30 songs; the Monday Morning Quarterback that suggested to US FM Radio what songs to play in rotation; the rise of Housewife Music (Hippies never really bought albums anyways, right?!!! Just half kidding, maybe...); watered down Disco sold by the gallons; Pop AOR Rock sold by the double gallons (hey, this is still in the Vinyl era...); the rise of MTV and the importance of video over just music substance; MTV appearing in The UK in 1987 (You might say that the British Pop Scene got "Rick Rolled" or was a victim of a "SAW act"!); Soundscan's charting method reportedly shutting out the few Independent stores in it's first few years (and I think actually including Christian Bookstores for a while from about '94 onward..Those in The US can now see why there was a fame for DC Talk in the Mid 90's!); the taming of Rap from the Urban CNN to a Ice Ice Baby watered down variation of Blowfly's Party; creating Country's Hat Music scene by following MTV and choosing Matinee Idol looking people who looked good in a hat in an expensive variation of the Urban Cowboy years; taking Techno and raping and taming it like the Industry did with Disco; MTV appearing in The UK in 1987 (You might say that the British Pop Scene got "Rick Rolled"!); Taking Grunge and selling it off as Post-Alternative; taking British Indie and trying to sell it watered down as Britpop but possibly being chucked out as it hardly saw any US Soundscan sales; Alternative's dive into a Hot Topic centered world (Remember, for those of you knowing my interest in anything Underground, it was not just about the music, right?!!! I was there too in the Chess King New Wave era!); The Spice Girls/Christina/Brittney/Boy Group (I dare not call them Bands!) era providing the new blueprint for what happened next; and the Industry's final grasp on this promoting through the Internet that it had a lot of trouble with for years due to the usual short-sightedness, you could see where everything was headed.

THERE IS A HOPEFUL SIDE TO THIS!

Then again, we all have been used. We all have been exploited. Every one of us has had a time when we were a piece of the Pop Puzzle. Every generation has seen the last decry it, as well as those who were too young to actually be in the last chapter buying the whines of those who are in a comfortable position to continue living their Retro fantasies and spreading the word, or best to say "their" word and not their own. I think it's best that people have their time with their era, whether I like what's happening or not.

To those who enjoy your Pop today, live with it for that's your mark in time. I can seriously say that its not my special brew, but I will not say it on a high horse. There will be new technologies, new ways of promotion, and new sounds. Plus, for people like me, new reasons why there has to be alternatives.

I hope that some new Pop alternative will arrive when there will be some kind of gap that might happen once all this fades out...I still have hope.

The most basic test for any act: can they pull off an acoustic live show? With most modern pop acts, the answer is a resounding "NO!"

I had modern K-pop inflicted on me recently and was ready to jam an ice pick through my eardrums!

Not all music styles are suited to acoustic live shows.

Yeah, eff that unplugged nonsense

The take your breath away factor has been lost on today's music. There is nothing out there that comes close to comparing with a young Chuck Berry, Elvis, or the Beatles for that matter. Video stations like Much Music and MTV have had to farm out most of their programming time because there is just not enough quality music being made to fill a 24 hour a day station.

And the vast majority that cannot do so, SUCK.

boy those kraftwerk guys suck do they even play autobahn in acoutic???

I get the topic of the thread is to compare. I don't understand why people always want to compare certain artists and make it seem like there needs to be a similar version of the same artist in today's music. MTV has about five different channels dedicated to playing strictly music and quality stuff to regardless of what you think. You have a prejudice against modern music so you don't put any effort into seeking out the quality artists odd today. The medium to find music has obviously changed and it just seems like you are relying on older mediums and that doesn't make sense.

imo music died in the 1890s when the teleharmonium was invented and ruined acoustics

^ this guy gets it

Here follows my idiosyncratic hypothesis concerning the cause of the poverty in pop music nowadays. This hypothesis is based on the essential point conveyed in Ayn Rand's essay "The Comprachicos" (this essay is pubished in the essay collection "Return of the Primitive", edited by Peter Schwartz).

My hyopothesis is that the root cause of the dearth of good new pop music in our time is progressive education.

Why?

In order to create good new music the songwriter needs to possess formidable cognitive skills. Modern education sabotages the development of said skills. Therefore there is a poverty of good minds out there nowadays. And so, just as young people today are less able to read, write, do arithmetic,and so forth compared to the kids of my generation (I was born in 1954), so also kids today are less able to carry out the thinking necessary to create good new music. The minds of the young have been disintegrated by the (mostly public) schools which they have been required to attend.

A tragedy.

Conclusions (two of them):

1) We need a philosophy of reason.

2) We need to get the government out of education (in other words: NO public schools! Privatize both the production and finance of education!)

A person named Galt talking about Ayn Rand? Shocking I tells ya.