I often get asked because I spend so much time writing about music of the 60s and 70s if I listen to modern rock music and if I do, who?
Well I don’t just live in the past, contrary to some assumptions. I do listen to up-to-date music but it’s just that I rarely buy any. Perhaps you’re the same. I listen to Planet Rock a lot and enjoy Joanne Shaw Taylor, Samantha Fish, Beth Hart, Bonamassa obviously and the Tedeschi Trucks Band and many more.
I’ve bought albums by all of them and have enjoyed them but somehow they lack the status in my life that records used to have when I was younger and I inevitably compare the experiences. When I was 16, l records were almost holy relics. I would just hold them and just look at them, absorbing all the info. I don't really do that any more. Partly because I’m not a teenager and partly because modern albums with their photoshopped covers all tend to have a similar vibe. They share commonly used fonts and even colour shades, They’re rarely as interesting or creative as they once were. It’s easy to imagine them on a computer screen. I’m aware this might sound very ‘in my day’ish and I don’t want it to. It’s just that from 1965 to 1976 was rock’s golden era, I think that’s just objectively true and it must be intimidating to try to record anything of similar quality.
Also, this is just an impression, but I think it largely holds true that there’s just less culture and stories around bands, less individuality in general. Everything is so neatly ordered now. Festivals were once countercultural events but are now brought to you by Budweiser. Tours are sponsored by insurance companies.
There’s just less grist to the mill. I must say that a lot of music sounds like slightly cliched reworking of 40 to 50 year-ago music. That’s inevitable I suppose. But these are the reasons it’s all less engaging, I think. Still enjoyable but there’s less to really get your teeth into somehow.
There’s also the fact that we’ve got 60 years of music we can listen to, why spend time with stuff that’s just OK when you can listen to a work of genius from 45 years ago? We never had that luxury as kids because it was all still relatively new. I remember laughing at footage of The Shadows from 1961 back when I was 15 in 1976 and thinking how old it was, as they took a bow after every number. That’s like thinking something from 2011 is old! But it really did seem from a different distant era.
In the mid-70s you could embrace the whole music scene. It wasn’t so vast that it was just about possible, certainly for UK artists. But it’s now so vast, that’s impossible. It’s easy to miss something in the endless blizzard of releases. This profusion makes it all less special, I think.
So while I haven’t cut myself off from new music, its ever harder to be really impressed by anything.
photo
Skyerise
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