krj
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Classic Rock
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Apr 21 00:06 UTC 2001 |
Lately I've been getting in touch with my classic rock inner child.
I believe it was Homer Simpson who stated that the best year for rock
music was 1974, and somewhere I found a reference to a book or article
defining a classic rock era from 1965-1985. For myself, I have found myself
repeatedly returning to the 1967-1973 period -- an insane font of creativity
which includes late Beatles, best Jefferson Airplane, Santana, best Grateful
Dead, the Who, etc etc etc, and then for good measure throw in the creation of
British Isles folk-rock -- Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Albion Band,
Richard Thompson and so on.
This could be simple nostalgia for my youth; I started collecting rock music
in 1971 and started college in 1975. When I was in college there was sort of
a horizon line of ten years back, and only real music geeks tended to listen
to rock & pop older than 1965, and only eclectic fanatics paid attention
to the pop music of 20 years ago, the stuff pre-Buddy Holly, not yet influenced
by Elvis.
But sometimes in the late 1980s, I was sitting in a pizzeria near Michigan
State University, and as Pink Floyd's "Money" played on the speakers overhead,
I had a blindling revelation: the basic soundtrack of university life had
not significantly changed since I was an undergraduate almost 15 years
earlier. And in 2001 another decade has passed, and the soundtrack STILL
has not significantly shifted. Current college students are listening to
music from 25 and 35 years ago; this was the equivalent of me listening to
Glenn Miller when I was an undergraduate. REM and U2, which are still
thought of as "modern" and "contemporary" bands at least by the media, and
by old geezers like me, are 20 years old...
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tpryan
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response 1 of 24:
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Apr 21 11:58 UTC 2001 |
Let's start the debate: Two things work for Classic Rock,
1) The artistic gap from the 'Tin Pan Alley'ism of previous pop
music. Artists performing their material. Some gaining very
dramatic control over the content and sound of their finished product.
2) The fidelity gap. In 1985, the twenty year old music of 1965
sounded much like what is made into records. In 1965 the 20 year
old music of 1945 was easy to identify by the lower fidelity of it.
(audio veiwpoint only).
3) Classic rock artists had places to get gigs and worked a long
while building audience, so time was on their side in building
their musical chops.
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krj
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response 3 of 24:
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Apr 22 19:20 UTC 2001 |
Here's an article which nudged me to start this item.
http://www.latimes.com/business/cotown/20010418/t000032721.html
"The Oldies Are Still Goodies."
The article's hook is that "Journey's Greatest Hits" sold 11,185 copies in
the retail reports listed last week, a bigger sales figure than recent albums
from Dr. Dre, Ricky Martin or Macy Gray. The sales power of back catalog
classic rock items is glossed over by the music industry; ever since the biz
tired of the embarrassment of Pink Floyd's eternal position on the charts,
albums over two years old are now banished from the official Billboard
Top 200 to a segregated catalog chart. But back catalog still accounts for
a third of the albums sold in the US.
The article cites a Sony Legacy marketing survey which claims that almost
half of the customers for Janis Joplin CDs are under 25.
The industry worries about the Napster threat to their catalog wealth.
Even legitimate downloads, song by song, could threaten that wealth,
because currently back catalog sells in album-sized chunks for between
$10-$19 per album, depending on the artist. The industry also worries
that many current top-selling artists -- both the bubblegum pop and the
hip hop fields -- are not showing any staying power for their older albums,
in comparison to the durable classic rock stars.
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