response 4 of 56:

Jun 29 14:13 UTC 1997

re 1967:        Light my Fire - The Doors

        At the beginning of the Century we had just begun recording 
performers and just got into recording technology.  Buy the end of
the Century good recording technology has come so far, many of us
can do it at home.  Songs are now shared, not only by broadcast, 
but also by cablecast, narrowcast, & microcast technologies.  Since
the record player had just about wiped out play at home music, it 
has again come back strong in the last few decades of this century,
more than ever, making music by yourself or with few others is done
for the fun of it.  The century began with just about all the songs
being written in Tin Pan Alley, the commercial zone of the young 
record music industry.  In the 1960's we learned that commercial 
music can come from anywhere.  Now look around you, if I where to 
ask who all has written a song that was performed before others, many
in this crowd would raise their hand.

        Song of the Century?  Each of us would probably have their 
own pick.  Music of the century?  As noted above, we have seen new
types of music come about in this century, Jazz, Rock & Roll, the 
stage musical, the movie musical, the idea of a song of the week--
the 'Your Hit Parade/American Top 40' has expanded a musical industry.
The idea that a 'new' folk song can be written is so common nowdays
that is one way be define folk music/acousitic music these day.

        These days, we can and we do listen to the rest of the world's
music with patience, intrigue and desire.  We pick of influences and
add them to our music---ever think you would have seen someone pick
of a Dumbeck and play along with Woody Guthrie on one of his songs?
Today alternate instruments are not so alternative in whatever music
you can talk about.

        Oh yes, Country & Western is also a unique music; born in the
USA, as is this century's Rhythm & Blues, Blues, Bluegrass, Gospell,
Soul and the now many names of Rock&Roll.

response 6 of 56:

Jul 1 07:04 UTC 1997

I wouldn't exactly say that Country & Western was born in the USA; the genre
is itself a merger of two genres that were once separate, and has strong ties
to European folk, especially Irish.

Rock 'n Roll isn't an American-born genre, either.  It was really rhythm and
blues until a disc jockey dubbed it with this name so he could play it while
avoiding the racism of the day.

Jazz is the music that was born here in the U.S., in most experts' opinions.
It can be tied to a specific place: New Orleans.  Also, most foreign countries
regard it as exotic and intriguing.  Ironically, they seem to appreciate it
more than we do-- especially Europe-- which is a shame since the music is
indeed our own.  (Although the music has some Afrocentric influences, the soun
ds of the Carribean are closer to traditional African music)

It will be likely that our century will be best remembered for global music
exchange.  So many cultures, so many instruments, so many musicians, and so
many styles have transcended genres.

response 8 of 56:

Jul 4 20:43 UTC 1997

Re: a while back (working with a terminal program that won't scroll)
See?  I don't know what I would have picked off hand for '67's song, but Light
My Fire would not have been it.  

response 10 of 56:

Dec 7 21:33 UTC 1999

I'd disagree that C&W is not uniquely American.  .

response 12 of 56:

Dec 15 22:00 UTC 1999

  Good point.  American music hasn't ever been a homogenous, unified thing.
  It's always consisted of many separate movements which sometimes move in
  parallel, sometimes collide, sometimes comingle..

response 14 of 56:

Dec 18 03:10 UTC 1999

  Based on what I remember my sisters and older brother listening to during
  that time period, disco might as well have not existed (depending on your
  definition, I guess..  I'm still not exactly sure what counts as disco..)

response 16 of 56:

Dec 23 20:41 UTC 1999

A musicologist who was quoted for an MTV documentary on music in the 
1990s pointed out that even definable trends generally are observed in 
half-decades, and not full ones.  Remember how different pop music was 
in the early '90s?

Believe me, attaching dates to ANY musical style is a big headache.  
Musicologists of the standard Eurocentric styles (Medieval, Renaissance, 
Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern, and Post-Modern) disagree all the 
time.  For example, I would say Debussy was the lone Impressionist 
composer of his day although he is often lumped with many of his 
contemporaries in either the Late Romantic period or the early 20th 
century.  Many composers bridge styles, and one could assume that music 
changed in a more fluid manner than the historians suggest.  Mozart, 
Schubert, and Beethoven all foreshadowed the Romantic period, and the 
last of the three composers illustrated the change most strongly; 
Beethoven is included in both the Classical and Romantic periods by some 
musicologists.

I've noticed that even nostalgia can't be pinned down to a decade.  The 
movie _Grease_ came out in 1978 (the peak of the disco era), although I 
remember '50s nostalgia more during the first half of the '80s.  Then it 
was '60s nostalgia, and some have bounced back and forth between '60s 
and '70s retro ever since.  And then swing and jive came into 
popularity, which recalls the 1940's..

response 18 of 56:

Dec 23 23:05 UTC 1999

...not to mention the fact that nostalgia isn't usually too careful about
getting times and dates right.  I remember hearing a rant somewhere about the
dance, the music, and the clothing from the swing revival coming from three
different decades, but I don't remember it clearly enough to repeat it...

response 20 of 56:

Jun 13 00:31 UTC 2000

"Too Drunk To Fuck"  DKs

response 22 of 56:

Jun 13 11:58 UTC 2000

Re #20: That was my runner-up

response 24 of 56:

Jun 13 19:04 UTC 2000

  re #23:  "how can a song released in the first half of the century.."?

  You're absolutely right.  If you examine the results of any popular poll
  taken to find the best song, movie, etc., of some fixed time period
  (a century, say, or a decade) you will clearly find, time after time,
  poll after poll, that the very best songs, movies, etc. of the period 
  are overwhelmingly weighted (75% or more) to works created during the
  final 10-15% of the time period in question. 

  By this reasoning, "Rhapsody in Blue" is a horrible choice, because most
  of the people alive today to vote on the best work couldn't even hum a
  few bars.  The only sensible choice for work of the century, therefore,
  is Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On", at least until another few years
  have passed and many of us breathe a huge sigh of relief as it slips from
  the collective planetary memory.

response 26 of 56:

Jun 13 20:29 UTC 2000

heh

response 28 of 56:

Jun 13 22:29 UTC 2000

Reading back, I see that, indeed, there is a tendency to exchange "best" and
"sum up" with grand abandon in this item... so to clarify, I'm talking about
the tune that is most REPRESENTATIVE of the changes in music over the course
of the century.

There would be no real way to indicate the "best" song or artistic piece of
any time period; I ignored that part of the discussion because it's silly and
pointless.

My criteria for "most representative":
-- Cultural ubiquity. In addition to "The Simpsons," obvious candidates
include The Jeopardy Theme, The National Geographic Theme, The Theme to Jaws,
Star Wars, and The Girl from Ipanema (which has become so ubiquitous that
nearly EVERYBODY knows the tune, but few people know the name) (Think
elevators).
-- Relevance to other entertainment. Multimedia became a major issue in the
20th C.; the relationship between music and other forms of entertainment has
oscillated in the past, from a time when ballets and symphonies were firmly
wedded, to a time when travelling minstrels were on the edges of
entertainment. So a trait of the 20th C. would be incorporation of music with
other forms of entertainment. Note that most of the ubiquitous tunes are TV
or movie themes; this century saw the creation of the jingle, as well, which
are terminally perky.
-- Pop-py. Popular music has always been the most common form of music, and
tastes change constantly. No single piece could characterize the musical
trends of the entire century, which shifted from jazz and swing to R&R, C&W,
and so forth, but at least The Simpsons theme captures a few of the major
highlights, and Lisa's jazz jam allows for the incorporation of just about
any popular style you'd care to come up with (except, perhaps, folk).
-- Lack of historical depth. This is where the rift between "best" and "most
representative" is most obvious. "Good" music is typically heavily laden with
historical depth, but -- as the flourishing of pop music, ever fickle, and
the meandering of classical music demonstrates -- the 20th C. didn't care much
for depth. Even at the height of industrial groups like NIN and Marilyn
Manson, recent forebears like Gary Numan and Brian Eno didn't get more than
occasional "oh yeahs" from fans... grunge was hopelessly American Bland, but
if it didn't bear the Seattle mark, it wasn't grunge -- even if it sounded
IDENTICAL to grunge, and had been released only a few years prior... Paul
Simon sang that "Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts," and
furthermore, that generation fails to see the roots. I'll admit that my own
blues collection, for instance, consists of Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jonny
Lang, a pair of young punks with talent but no roots.

A second candidate for "most representative" comes to me from this discussion:
Kid Rock's "Cowboy." Here we have American C&W combined with rap/hip-hop in
an act that represents 20th C. Pop Music Trends at their finest: A white guy
singing black music and outselling just about any black rap artist (KR's
"Devil Without a Cause" is now 8x Platinum). Both Kid Rock and Eminem were
mentored to varying degrees by black rappers (KR boasts of "touring with Ice
Cube," while Eminem's link to Dr Dre is famous), and yet both outsell their
black predecessors (further irony comes from the fact that Detroit, known for
its sizable black community, has managed to turn out three of the best-selling
white rap groups -- ICP being the third -- and no significant black rappers;
the black musicians instead developping a musical style (techno) that was to
be usurped and identifed primarily with white Europeans, except among the fan
base).

Adding the black-by-white to the bizarre fusion of C&W to heavy metal and rap,
the instant ubiquity and equally instant amnesia of "Cowboy," its overall
milquetoast blandness, its TV tie-in (hey, the video features Gary Coleman
in a gunfight with Joe C.), the sideshow mentality of the band (so far as
having a resident midget, something even hopelessly glam Bowie, Manson, and
Monster Magnet didn't even stopp to), and the absence of historical depth (not
only is KR's retrospective arrogantly albeit humorously entitled "History of
Rock", but he re-recorded many of the tracks because he couldn't find the tape
masters!), "Cowboy" provides ample competition for "The Simpsons" as "most
representative of 20th C. music."

But hey, I like Kid Rock, and Danny Elfman for that matter. And yeah, I know
their music is crap, artistically speaking, but it's GOOD crap. 

And therein lies yet another way in which they represent the century. Lots
of good crap.