Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Rick Beato" channel.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that the recording industry hadn't completely consolidated. There was a lot more room for some experimentation, especially in the '60s. Now, all the music that I hear is pretty much the same, I have no idea who did any of it and have a hard time identifying that it was different groups.
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I'd wager this is more common now than it was when I was a kid. Towards my teenaged years we got a sound card and could hear something more sophisticated than the simple speakers that could mostly just beep. Before that it was 8-bit, at best, and it mostly didn't sound so great. I remember some of the games though, from the midish '90s could allow you to put a CD into the drive and listen to that as you played.
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I think it's partially survivorship bias. The '60s had a massive amount of diversity in terms of the types of songs and types of artists that were releasing music. A lot of them were writing their own stuff and there were a significant number of labels out there. So, while there were a bunch of one hit wonders, the ones that stood the test of time had a lot of competition. The Beatles didn't show up and dominate things with no competition, they had to duke it out with the Beach Boys riding on the back of Brian Wilson's song writing. These days though, the industry execs have a tight rein on all of it and aren't willing to allow the sort of experimentation and competition that might lead to groups that people might want to listen to in 20 years ago. There's only been a bit over a century of recorded music, there's still plenty of space for new music to be recorded that people might like just as much. The industry is just too afraid to give up the control over it.
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That's been my opinion for a while. There's so much music, even if the music were as good as in the past, you'd still have issues with any band getting enough mindshare to become s shared experience. There probably are better artists now than in the past, but hardly any of them get enough exposure to really resonate the way that groups like the Beatles, Eagles, Nirvana and the like did. People of those generations may not all have liked those groups, but chances are that the songs still bring up personal memories for them. I'd be shocked if there are any groups that manage a similar level of impact now. And that's whether or not they've got any artistic merit.
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@thomastimlin1724 A lot of that has to do with the consolidation of the media. Also, you shouldn't underrestimate how much of an influence the Looney Tunes had in terms of making children aware of classical music back in the '80s when the shows managed to find their way onto TV.
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I bought The Man Who Sold the World because I loved the Nirvana cover. And the whole album pretty much blew my mind. It's just such a great bit of work.
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Sort of, but don't underestimate how many people first really connected with their music via Wayne's World.
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That's more or less what I was going to post. He was an incredible player, but he was also capable of doing some pretty impressive stunts that would likely get him enough attention to get somewhere. I have no idea what sort of music it would sound like, because he would arguably be even further out there today than he was back then. But, I think with his combination of charisma, talent and showmanship that he'd likely make it. He just likely wouldn't be as well known just because of the way the music industry has fragmented over the interceding decades.
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@JamesJoyce12 Don't forget about Schwarzenegger's next film. He'll be Bach.
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That's mostly due to the recording techniques being relatively primitive and how hard it is to preserve the music. There were some absolutely amazing artists back then. I was fortunate enough to have my eyes opened to it by an old-school Jazz musician that had actively played with, and met, many of the greats from the previous decades. Once you get into it, there is some amazing stuff. It's just a shame that it can be so hard to come by in quality recordings.
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You probably shouldn't have been. If you go on any video of music from the '50s, '60s, '70s or even sometimes into the '90s, you'll see a bunch of kids posting about how cool the music and wishing the modern stuff was as good. I don't think it's an accident, there was so much diversity of sound in the '60s in particular that there's something for just about everybody.
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@johnharrison6522 I definitely got Zep and Beatles because, duh, but I wasn't really thinking about anybody from the '80s or more recently. It's hard to say just because The Police and Nirvana haven't had as much time. But, then again, they also aren't actively touring as far as I can tell.
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@strqrt70 It blew my mind hearing the origins for some of the William's Star Wars themes being decades old by the time Star Wars was actually made.
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@stevegottenbass Yes, Gershwin and Berlin in particular have the added benefit of having their music added to movies that still retain relevance. Also, they wrote a bunch of standards that everybody records in order to have a sense of where they are in comparison to artists from other generations and as a way of learning the craft.
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Yes, and IIRC, they hold the record for most #2 records without ever achieving a #1.
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@bobbynoe1 IIRC, he was also sued for sounding too much like himself.
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@NJGuy1973 But, Freddie Mercury was the only one that was still active in any meaningful way. Elvis was already well past being relevant and MJ hadn't released much of anything notable in years.
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@jdenino6022 I saw The Who a few months before the Pandemic when they played Seattle. It was awesome that they weren't just doing what they had, they redid things to be accompanied by the symphony. It's a shame, but completely expected, that there aren't going to be any more tours for them. But, I wasn't expecting there to be any more after that due to legal issues and hearing loss.
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They shouldn't have gone after Napster. I don't think that it's a particular coincidence that they had their best year ever when Napster was fully operating and then they shut it down and the record sales more or less fell off a cliff. Of the albums that I have in my collection, probably half of them came from that year or two when file sharing was a thing before they started to hammer the people doing it. There was a massive catalog of stuff to test out and it made it super easy to find groups because if there was something that you wanted, then it was likely to be in a collection with other things that might also be of interest.
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@Salmagundiii Yes, my guess is that it's ultimately going to be whatever groups recorded the most standards and were able to get into the most movies that people still listen to. Especially anybody that manages their way into the Christmas Canon. Getting in there ensures that you'll be listened to forever. I was kind of surprised that nobody has mentioned Bing Crosby as he's been the best selling vocalist ever, with outright sales that are competitive with the number of times some of these songs have been played. And he's recorded Christmas canon songs, been incorporated in movies that retain popular appeal many decades later as well.
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TBH, I think the most likely answer is going to be whatever artists created the most standards or were associated with the most popular movies/musicals. Part of what keeps folks in the public's mind for so long is when they are the one that has a bunch of standards. You hear about this song by so and so, and it turns out that it's been recorded by a bunch of people and listen to some of them. It doesn't take very many people doing that for different songs for an artist to remain relevant.
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Have you heard any of the music lately? It's not necessarily bad, it just all sounds more or less the same. I'm not sure how you'd manage to attract a following the way they did back then. Even though Randy Newman and Harry Nillson wrote most of the biggest hits of the late '60s and early '70s, there was far more diversity of sound then than now. Oddly enough, it's largely still the case that most of the music today, at least as far as the hits go, is written by a small number of writers, they simply do not have the same level of talent or dedication to the artform that was the case previously. As long as it's a hit, that's good enough, even though it probably won't be something that anybody really yearns for the way that they do the older stuff.
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@levindeed He probably wasn't innocent though. Just google the stuff that was undeniably found in his residence after he died. He had a bunch of stuff that makes no sense being there if he hadn't done it.
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Yep, I think that the kids today see the same things in the old stuff that Gen X did. My parents are Boomers and so I heard a lot of music from the '50s through the mid-70s when they were around. I also heard more recent stuff, but it doesn't seem weird to me at all to listen to older music, good music, the really good stuff, has a way of remaining worth listening to well past the era during which it was written. It's just that it's only been in recent decades when there was the kind of access we have now to older music.
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@JHimminy So David Hasselhoff still has a chance!
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