I’ve been in a bit of a 60’s music mood ever since rocking out to The 1910 Fruitgum Company on Wednesday. What I find so difficult to believe is that for a 10 year period tons of bands produced tons of really great music! And then the 70’s hit and music shifted but there was still some pretty good stuff. The 80’s saw some great music but right around 1992 it stopped. Sure there were a few good songs produced but nothing that matches the old stuff. Did we just run out of songs? Does someone need to invent some new chords or notes or something? Is the fault of this dearth cause by my generation, those born in the 70’s? Maybe our brains really are totally rotted out from all those I Dream of Jeannie reruns and we are just incapable of coming up with anything…good?
Found this video of the Association on Youtube. They actually played LIVE! No lip syncing as far as I can tell. Good stuff!
Good music stopped in or around ’92? Donna, for the love of Jay-Z, you need to expand your horizons. I felt nearly the same way as I packed my black t-shirts and converse hightops when grunge had finally ran it’s course. There would never be as good a music as the early Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and even dare I say it….Nirvana. I was convinced this was so, and I spent 10 years without looking at much else.
Now, with the luxury of hindsight, I am able to go back and look at what I might have missed. There is some INCREDIBLE music out there from the last 15 years. Find your sound…and start digging. Let itunes genius feature take you places you thought you would never go. It worked to revive me from the grain-belt rock, post grunge rut I was stuck in (though I love it still).
Grab a bottle of 3 buck Chuck, set itunes to recommend music for you, and surf away. When the bottle is nearly gone, set your heading for ANYTHING by Yume Bitsu, and let Adam Forkner and his crew show you what you have been missing.
Wrap your mind around this — in the 60s, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Tony Bennett, The Beatles, The Four Seasons, Englebert Humperdinck, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Supremes, and Jimmy Hendrix were all superstars. People who trumpet “diversity” as if it were invented 10 years ago have no clue what they’re talking about. Does anyone remember something called a “variety show”? One episode — any episode — of the Ed Sullivan Show had more “diversity” than anything you see on TV today. When I listen to sounds from my radio today I’d swear they were programmed by a machine. It’s as if the heart and soul of human emotion has been sucked out of the entertainment industry. Cynicism and skepticism make for good intellectual discussions but make for lousy entertainment.
The Association (along with The Vogues and The Lettermen) is a great example of a group that expressed tenderness and pathos and longing…. qualities that are out of style today. So sad.
This middle aged guy thinks that Sugar Ray was one of the last groups that wrote songs worth listening to….
although I’ll admit that some of Coldplay’s stuff is very nice. Finding anything worth listening to is like panning for gold….hard work these days.
Oh, and there’s another refuge for the over 40 crowd…it’s called classical music. After I reached the age of 35 (when senility starts settling in) I discovered the incredible beauty in Ravel, Rachmaninov, Faure, Satie, and Debussy compositions —- and that’s what I l listen to mostly now. And I discovered John Rutter music. Peace out.
Love the Association! Great band!
BD-
Were you a fan of Sugar Ray from the very beginning? If you were, you must be die hard because it would be hard to stick with a band through such a radical genre shift as they had. The more popular stuff was catchy, but I always felt they were whoring it out for the man after the abrupt change.
I would hardly say I was a fan of Sugar Ray from “the beginning”….it’s probably fair to say that I’ve never really been a true “fan”. I pan for gold on the radio dial and every now and then a few golden flakes show up in the pan. I started tuning out the music scene back around the late 90s when Eminem and rap and all that non-musical stuff became pre-eminent and MTV decided to become non-musical as well. I just know a few of Sugar Ray’s catchier tunes (“Every Morning” for instance is full of infectious musical hooks) and was impressed because they sounded like a throwback to a different era. If that group tried to serve a new and broadier audience, well, that’s the way the music game is played. As an age barometer, let me just say that I don’t get the musical styles of Lady Gaga or Katy Perry or Christina Aguilera…all I see are young women going over the top in projecting sensuality…which is entertaining and pleasing visually but not musically.