Of course, not everyone will agree with my assessment of "great music". For example, another group I think of as being great is ELO, at least in their early years. Fan-TAS-tic stuff, a true fusion of classical and rock and roll. But then the years went by, and they became more and more pop. A disease that seems to afflict them all.
Except Floyd. My God, that was a group (IMHO) that not only turned out epochal work, but never went crap/commercial. Their stuff was (and is! They haven't lost their edge, mostly) breath taking. And while I'm certainly no Beetles fan, even I, a non-musician, can appreciate the raw talent in that group.
Where is all the talent like that today?
Moedumba - erm, Madonna made her fame on conical breastpieces and questionable choices of sperm donors (a blonde Jerry Springer?).
Feces music, or Crap, or Rap, or whatever you call that toneless garbage, is little more than stomach noises and brutish, boring threats, as evinced by the number of them proudly displaying their rap sheets & bullet wounds.
Metal is just hoarse screaming and taking a hammer to guitar strings.
This is supposed to be music?
Maybe I'm just getting to be an old fart, gumming my metamucil as I complain about my digestion. But God, it sure did seem like there used to be a lot better music out there. Or is it the record company execs figure that the 'Mercan public wants crap, so let them eat crap! They only hire tone-deaf talent scouts, and they bring back new "talent" that doesn't even know how to tune a guitar, and the "publicity machine" springs into action to promote them far beyond their natural abilities (Green Day springs to mind
Now, to be sure, there are oasis of talent in the barren desert of modern musical entertainment (U2 and their bastard stepchildren Coldplay, Thomas Dolby, Nirvana, Telepop Musik, Enya), but where is all the true talent? What the hell happened to The Hooters? It really shocked me when I learned the guys from Guns n' Roses had been trained in classical music. Did they take a cold, hard look at the 'Mercan music scene and decide the most money to be made was in heavy metal? Or was that really the music they wanted to play? Is this trash really what the people of America really want to hear? Am I, again, out of step?
For now, I survive by listening to smooth jazz (which my jazz live instructor sneeringly refered to as "elevator music"
*Sob!*
*Goes off to blow his nose*