Spin magazine has a feature of the 35 most influential artists in the past 35 years. (Here’s a compilation of the names.) I’m assuming this pertains to rock/pop music only, not jazz, classical, et al. What do you guys think of this list?
Category: music
Great Jazz Albums of the Past 50 Years
Jazz Times has a feature covering the fifty best jazz albums of the past fifty years. I was a little disappointed in the list, to be honest. I’m going to use this thread as a place to write some albums I might have chosen. But first, I’ll go over some picks I agreed with as well as some that puzzled me.
Sites Streaming Music, Drama, Etc.
Do you guys have any recommendations for sites that stream music, drama, or other types of performances? I believe the Metropolitan Opera has been streaming, for free, old opera performances. I think Blue Note Jazz streams live performances, but not for free.
Art: Innovations and Innovators
I really love artist that push and sometime break boundaries, leading to a new style or vocabulary, or even redefining what constitutes art or not. Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, and maybe Andy Kaufmann would be examples of the latter. Other innovators, who may not cause us to re-think art, but I still I like a lot are Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, to name a few. This is a thread to discuss innovations of specific artists as well as innovations in art more generally. I want to start by talking about two different innovations in music that I’m interested in.
Could Tower Records Resurrect Itself Today?
I’m sure exactly when the coining of “third places” occurred, but I do believe it’s real–the idea that people have a need for a cozy, appealing space where they can be next to people they don’t necessarily know or interact with. After college, Tower Records was definitely such a place for me, and watching this reminded me of this.
Based on what I gather from the film, Tower Records did not need to go out of business. For one thing, if they had made a transition to online music streaming, thinking they could still be here seems reasonable. On the other hand, I believe they filed bankruptcy in the mid-2000s, and this was before a lot of music streaming sites like itunes. Made going to a music streaming wasn’t viable at the time. But even if you put that aside, there are other, perhaps more critical reasons they went out of business…con’t.
Covers of Songs You Like
We used to have a thread for variations of songs that people liked. I couldn’t find it, so I’m starting a new thread, largely to keep these versions in one place.
Music 2020
All this machinery
Making modern music
Can still be openhearted.
(Neil Peart)
What we’re listening to in MMXX.
Novelty Songs
I don’t know why, but this morning I thought of Manfred Mann’s “Blinded by the Light,” which made me think of another song, “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You,” which then made me think of a song about King Kong, which I recall the DJ, Kamasami(sp) Kong, using clips from this song for his radio show. What other novelty songs can you think of? What exactly is the definition of a novelty song?
Is Streaming Video/Music Economically Unsustainable?
Jazz critic Ted Gioia has some tweets about how streaming services are “the black hole of the entertainment business.”
I’ve updated my quick and easy guide to streaming economics—the black hole of the entertainment business.https://t.co/7AXsrUgB0E— Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) March 13, 2019
His basic point is that streaming services lose, and continue to lose, a lot of money, and I assume he thinks this won’t change. At the very least, Gioia doesn’t seem to believe that streaming model will be able to support the making of movies, TV shows, and music. Equally dispiriting is the notion that musicians are getting even less revenue from streaming services (less than money they’d get from the traditional recording industry). That really sucks. I really don’t want to pay for a service where the musicians and artists don’t really get far less than they deserve (which, actually seems to have always been the case, but this is going in the wrong direction). Should serious music fans consider purchasing music in a traditional way (e.g., cds, records), and, even better, from the musicians themselves?
Another question: Why can’t artists ever take control of the distribution so that they can receive the majority of the profits?
Albums You Really Like
I’ve been thinking about great albums, or albums that I’ve really like (which is not necessarily the same thing). Some titles have come to mind, and then I can’t remember them. I’m starting this thread to keep track of these titles, and also discuss the albums. We can also discuss the qualities that make a great album or one that you really like.
By the way, I realized that for most of my life a great album was one where I liked most, if not all the songs. The flow of the album from song to song and the way each song worked together to create a cohesive whole weren’t criteria I thought much of, at least not consciously. (Well, I doubt that I did.) As an example, I liked Def Lepard’s Pyromania for this reason. Basically, I thought of a good album similar to a “best of” album.