Timlessness of Music

You might find this interesting.

Interesting question.

I think you have to draw a distinction between bands whose music actually speaks to people and continues to do so over a period, and bands who just jump on the bandwagon (sorry) because a particular sound is in vogue at some point in time. Apart from My Chemical Romance, how many emo bands can you name? How many Bay Area Thrash apart from Metallica? How many punk bands, or do you only know the likes of Green Day and Good Charlotte?

At the same time, I wonder if (for example) Nirvana would now be considered any good if Kurt Cobain hadn't pulled the trigger at a distance from which even he couldn't miss. I wonder if Jimi Hendrix would be considered a groundbreaking guitarist today if he was still recording, or if we'd think of him as some sad old man who should have retired years ago. There is no doubt that dying is a good career move for some people - Presley, Jackson, Morrison and Joplin amongst others - who we still speak about in revered tones, but not for others - nobody asks me to teach Smells Like Teen Spirit in lessons any more.

So, yes, there are some bands turning out music today that will last. It won't be a band's whole output that gets remembered in 30 years' time like we remember the work of The Beatles now; it'll be individual songs - Californication, Everlong, Man On The Moon, Creep, and so on.

A :-)

I think there are several things going on here at once.

First, as people age their tastes get more or less set in stone. It is the rare adult who is continuing to experiment with new musical genres, and who continues to explore new bands. This means that as we age we tend to not see the really good music that is around us.

Second, as we look back to the past we see the half-dozen hits a band had and consider the band as a whole to be great. But no one recalls that those half dozen hits came over the course of 10 LPs. We tend to forget how much of the music we grew up with is, well, forgettable.

Third, the music industry has changed greatly. It is at the same time more controlling of airwaves and less controlling over who gets recorded than it was back then. This means we hear much less variety and at the same time there's a real dilution of the talent pool. Producers aren't able to coerce the really talented people together like they were before, but they are able to limit what we hear to only those bands they green light. Toss in the media monopoly of radio stations and our exposure is very limited.

I think there are several things going on here at once.

First, as people age their tastes get more or less set in stone. It is the rare adult who is continuing to experiment with new musical genres, and who continues to explore new bands. This means that as we age we tend to not see the really good music that is around us.

Second, as we look back to the past we see the half-dozen hits a band had and consider the band as a whole to be great. But no one recalls that those half dozen hits came over the course of 10 LPs. We tend to forget how much of the music we grew up with is, well, forgettable.

Third, the music industry has changed greatly. It is at the same time more controlling of airwaves and less controlling over who gets recorded than it was back then. This means we hear much less variety and at the same time there's a real dilution of the talent pool. Producers aren't able to coerce the really talented people together like they were before, but they are able to limit what we hear to only those bands they green light. Toss in the media monopoly of radio stations and our exposure is very limited.

And I think you bring up my points:

If adults aren't continuing to re-invent their taste, and the media is controlling whats put out there, so if all that's put out there is top 20 and more current stuff then how are decades of music still getting into the kids heads, and almost nothing from the past 15-20 years getting in the top 10 of any list?

It just seems that when this generation grows older, that the music still being inducted will be from the past decades, and not 90's and more with a few exceptions.

Even with the amount of albums being released early on, I think that their fans didn't get burn out...the bands knew how to keep things a bit fresh and different, so each album was a different experience. And even the bands that stand out today...like Metallica, they've had how many albums? About the amount that was released earlier. And I know I'm in the minority, but I was very happy that they tried to change their image a bit, and try going in a slightly different direction.

The "test of time" is a funny thing... it takes a long time to set in.

If I ask a random musician who the greatest baroque composer was, the most likely answer is "Bach". If I asked the same question two hundred years ago, I would have gotten the same answer... but they'd be arguing about which Bach was better, and J.S. wouldn't have been part of the argument.

That's always puzzled me. By the early 1800s, the Bachs involved (J.S., J.C., and C.P.E.) had been dead for a while - the last of the bunch left us in the 1790s. So how could a listener of 200 years ago come up with a different composer than we would today in answer to the same question? I've been puzzling about that for years. My current thinking is that "standing the test of time" depends on several things that aren't directly related to their music:

1. Timing. Each era or genre in music, even a short one (e.g. disco) generates hundreds of composers, and longer eras have tens of thousands. The ones who are remembered fall into two groups: they're the ones who defined the genre by being there first (or at least very early on) - or they defined the height of the art. Of the thousands of punk music bands, the Sex Pistols are remembered today because they were in early, not because they were the best example.

2. An academic champion. The composers who are remembered as defining the height of their art are identified a long time after - maybe 75-100 years after they're gone. We keep them around because their works best illustrate the contrast between the music they wrote and that of other eras. We learn about them in music history classes... which means some academic made the decision that this composer was important, and they had the power to get others to study the works (in the case of J.S. Bach, the champion was Felix Mendelssohn).

3. Wide accessibility after the fact. If you aren't exposed to the music 100 years from now, you can't consider it "great", no matter how good the music might objectively be. Here's where popularity during your time plays a role - if you sell a lot of records, there's a much better chance some will survive to be heard. Stephen Foster is considered a great 19th century songwriter because millions of copies of his tunes were printed. Others might have been just as good or better (James Bland, Samuel Francis Smith, etc), but didn't get quite as much distribution.

I think that last one is an essential factor for longevity. And I think the composers of today who will still be listened to 100 years from now aren't any of the ones the average guy today will mention. Here's why:

What do you know about the music of the 1930s, before the "big band" era? Probably very little. But let me name some tunes: Easter Parade, Let's Call the Whole Thing Off, Cheek to Cheek, I Got Rhythm, Summertime.... chances are really good you know one or more of those, and I only named five. They've got something in common: all were in musicals, and all those musicals were adapted to films. So you can be exposed to the music without actively deciding to go hear something written in 1935.

100 years from now, my money is on John Williams to make the cut. He was at the cutting edge of creating film music that works as stand-alone compositions, academics will love him for taking opera composition techniques into the movies, and the "Star Wars" films are going to be seen by new viewers for a long time, so he'll keep getting new exposure. Folks like the Beatles are going to end up like Stephen Foster - they'll get a brief mention in the textbooks, and people will be familiar with one or two songs (kinda like Pachelbel today - name something he did other than the Canon in D). Most other folks will be footnotes at best, no matter what we think of them today.

And I think you bring up my points:

If adults aren't continuing to re-invent their taste, and the media is controlling whats put out there, so if all that's put out there is top 20 and more current stuff then how are decades of music still getting into the kids heads, and almost nothing from the past 15-20 years getting in the top 10 of any list?

First, lists are meaningless. If someone were to ask me the 20 best guitar riffs of all time, I'd bet only a handful of people on this board would recognize all 20 of the artists I'd name, let alone the specific riff. But every artist I'd name would, I assure you, be an exceedingly influential musician whose impact is still being felt today. Does the obscurity of my list mean the riffs aren't as good as someone who sticks to songs that happen to be on the spin list of the local oldies station? Certainly not. And in 50 years it may well be that my views are shown to be closer to the mark, or further away, but timelessness is not something easily identified while in close proximity to the artist.

Second, when I was learning to play the guitar I learned a lot of songs from decades past because it was good music. The first song I really went after was Johnny B. Goode. That wasn't exactly current at the time. Music that is decades old is easier to see as being exemplary in some fashion. Moreover, as music ages it appears in more venues. It gets more time on the radio, it might show up in a movie, it gets covered by other bands, etc. Exposure is a big part of what makes people interested in a song, and when talking about large scale popularity (which is not really the same as being a timeless piece of music, btw) it's essential.
It just seems that when this generation grows older, that the music still being inducted will be from the past decades, and not 90's and more with a few exceptions.

Old folks have been saying that for a long time ;)

100 years from now, my money is on John Williams to make the cut . . . Most other folks will be footnotes at best, no matter what we think of them today.

With the ludicrous changes in copyright protections accruing to corporations rather than individuals, I doubt that. I don't mean that Williams won't be considered a true luminary, but rather that folks like the Beatles and Stones will be completely unknown. My guess is that they'll be more like Foster, Ellington or Strayhorn. People might not be able to name a song that Billy Strayhorn wrote, but everyone knows his music none-the-less. Heck, Queen Latifah covered "Lush Life."

First, lists are meaningless. If someone were to ask me the 20 best guitar riffs of all time, I'd bet only a handful of people on this board would recognize all 20 of the artists I'd name, let alone the specific riff. But every artist I'd name would, I assure you, be an exceedingly influential musician whose impact is still being felt today

If that were true, then I seriously doubt only a handful of people would know them.
but rather that folks like the Beatles and Stones will be completely unknown.
As long as there are video games....they will be known...which kind of brings me to another thing which was discussed in another topic in which older music is gaining a comeback due to the popularity of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

If that were true, then I seriously doubt only a handful of people would know them.

Oh, they'd know the names, but most would have no idea what they did that was important.
but rather that folks like the Beatles and Stones will be completely unknown.
As long as there are video games....they will be known...which kind of brings me to another thing which was discussed in another topic in which older music is gaining a comeback due to the popularity of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

That was Noteboat that said that, not me. But to speak to the question: Can you tell me who Fritz Kreisler was without looking him up?

What's popular this decade and next says little about what will be 30, 40 or more years down the road. The best known performer of their day one decade is next decade's obscure trivia question.

Hmm I don't know if I agree or disagree with what everyone has posted but I have my own opinion. I do agree with KP that as adults you pretty much get set in your ways and as our lives change as we grew older and for must of us we aren't spending the time searching for new music/songs as we did when we were young. Part of the reason I think is that,, new bands are usually but not always made up of young/younger people. As a middle aged listener you don't relate to what/who these guys are and don't live in the world they are expressing in their songs. So you stick to your classic rock and tell everyone including your kids that they don't make music like they used to.

To me timeless music is just a matter of public opinion. If it is well liked it will continue to be played somewhere, the more that it is liked the longer it will be played so one hit wonders although cool for awhile eventually fade out unless you buy the Time-Life CD set.

It has nothing to do with how "good" the music is whatever that even means. There is no way to rate music.

And no one artists complete works will be timeless, no matter how great they are they invariably will write some not so great music .

I'm just curious why anyone would want to keep people named Tim out of music? :D

I think having narrow age gaps between parent and children helps spread music between generations. My mom was about 22 years older than my and she still listened to rock n' roll. She introduced me to the Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Motown, etc. I'm only 19 years older than my oldest son, so we have a lot of cross sectional music tastes. I introduced him to all of the stuff my mom shared with me, along with Guns n' Roses, Van Halen, Rush, Pearl Jam, Dream Theater and the stuff of my generation. He keeps me up to date on the newer bands. Although I still find new stuff sometimes that he's never heard of.

The "test of time" is a funny thing... it takes a long time to set in.

Here's a scholarly look at the Beatles from the year 3000:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z2vU8M6CYI
:)

I would like to thank all of you above . . . for setting up that video . . . linked to by Boxboy. :lol:
I fell for it . . hook, line and sinker.

LOL....wow that was great!!!