pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

nobody listens to the pre-war music that was most popular anymore.

idk I recently busted out a Fred Astaire collection of his hits and my kids loved it

"Everyone who cared about it is gone."

feel free to listen to it. its everywhere.

in the uk in the early 80s -- before rockism or poptimism were named or had become dreary cliches themselves -- there was genuinely a push by musicians and writers to readdress a lot of this kind of music, pre-60s and "lost" 60s: to treat the "rock era" as a very narrow limited myth that needed to be overthrown or pushed past and to reassess and rediscover exactly this kind of stuff, and to but a big fucking question mark under the sanctioned die-off that the 60s had then become (late 70s/early 80s being quite a low point for the salience of the 60s

it didn't take hold for many reasons -- one very big one i suspect was the young musicians touristing their way thru these sounds really weren't good enough as musicians to get across in their own recording what they were hearing and loving… ppl could replicate psych and garage and nuggets punk but not tijuana brass (at least not in the UK)

there was a mini-retrojazz boom then of course

fred astaire was not one of the most popular musical artists of the pre-war era. irish tenors you've never heard were. tons of stuff that nobody really wants to revisit other than scholars.

so... light opera? my impression was that astaire was huge but idk what metrics there are to measure by,

Elijah Wald's book How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll is in large part a history of this kind of music. The Beatles don't even figure into the book until the last few chapters; most of it is a history of popular music starting in the 1920s. It made me want to read (and maybe even write!) a whole biography of Mitch Miller.

fred astaire was a huge movie star. and i'm sure he sold a lot of records but not like caruso sold records.

Millions of waltzes and fox trots sold in the 20s. Fred Waring was a god in the 20s. When was the last time someone listened to Fred Waring?

Late addition to the upthread roundup of good 60s country full-lengths: The Gosdin Brothers, 'Sounds of Goodbye'

it's okay though. that's just the way the world works. out with the old and in with the new. that's how plants work too.

A quick googling makes it seem as if this was the most popular song of the thirties:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3__g11HEvaI

This stuff is definitely out of favor. Nice afternoon radio stuff. But the reaction was probably harshest against uncool sixties music, perhaps because the boomer generation just got a lot more cultural influence than usual? Because of their, you know, boomerness.

Mitch Miller!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dY9gtYeHhk

my mentor at the wire, richard cook, who was a music polymath and one of the forces behind the push i'm talking about -- wrote a thing on van morrison in the mid-80s which talked abt one of those irish tenors scott mentions, john mccormack

(cook was the mind behind the penguin guides to jazz: like scott, he ran a record shop -- or anyway a regular weekly stall -- and collected 78s, he knew a ton abt music hall and the weird byways of pre-rock pop in the uk)

this is how people will be talking about John Mayer in 2077

genres like exotica still have their followers, it's just more of a niche audience thing and of course influence on bands

actually looking a bit more carefully, the van morrison piece was 1991 not mid-80s -- published under one of cook's pen names, mike fish, at a time when he writing abt two thirds of the wire single-handed

what about shit like The Grass Roots and Fifth Dimension that were selling way more records than the Doors or Jefferson Airplane, they are all forgotten largely as well

there is tons of stuff that was popular in every decade that nobody plays anymore. no big deal. its still history. and you can always listen to it. but the audience for mitch miller and lots of 40s and 50s and 60s stuff is no longer with us or not listening to much these days...

this is how people will be talking about John Mayer in 2077

I often wonder if these kinds of prognostications are true. Imagine Dragons, Taylor Swift, Gaga, Xtina - what will future generations find particularly irrelevant and why

The second half of that Mitch vid is a minstrel show, speaking of music that time has passed by.

I know it's just the "natural way of things" or whatever scott, I still find it interesting what gets carried forward vs. what gets plowed over.

i played a george shearing quintet album with string choir today. sounded nice. beautiful copy. you can't give his records away. i no longer take ella fitzgerald or oscar peterson records at my store. or joan baez records for that matter. impossible to sell.

this is the first record i "owned" (i mean it was my mum and dad's but for me to listen to)

https://images-eu.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51OJ1pDShwL._SR600%2C315_PIWhiteStrip%2CBottomLeft%2C0%2C35_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

the greatest value for your dollar record-wise - in my opinion - is 50s jazz that isn't blue note/prestige/bop/etc. so cheap and so good. just thousands of 50s jazz records that nobody cares about or listens to other than old jazzbos who make up about .00001% of the population. lots of great big band and vocal jazz and studio jazz records. i listen to a lot of shorty rogers records.

Herb Alpert has some real jams

hey i got yr back on this nomar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5w1RfbVJ6E

imo The Monkees don't belong in that list, they have some jams and are still relevant as an influence. they have a secret garage/punk/psych connection.

I only mentioned them because they were gigantic and also not on the pfork list

Some of the most popular music today is stuff like this, at leat in 'mitteleuropa' (which Denmark doesn't really belong to, but a bit):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR1-3gYXsfE

This freaks me out. Shitty versions of fake greek film songs, and all these people lose their shit. But it's functional, it's reliving the dream of the Habsburg Empire. A lot of music is basically functional, and when the function stops being necessary, the music goes out the window.

Or something like the Pappy O'Daniel Flour Bands that was in O Brother Where Out Thou? Guy made a band to sell flour, became a giant radio star in Texas, turned that into becoming Governor and Senator. But who listens to this stuff anymore?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2RlFA8tSq0

I mean, the Coen version is not this.

catchy!

andre rieu has loads of adverts for his latest release here in the UK every xmas, he must sell shitloads

Pitchfork and the rock crit establishment they represent is falling in relevance and what they choose to remember or ignore for any given time is not really worth a whole lot. Grass Roots LPs will still be around in 20 years, the Pitchfork website most probably not.

catchy!

― Οὖτις, 24. august 2017 23:35 (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it's kinda good, isn't it? This is from his old band, after he fired them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKJfBgZOCo

Less bibley.

. Grass Roots LPs will still be around in 20 years, the Pitchfork website most probably not.

Earth will not.

whether something will be around in 20 years or not isn't a particularly good metric of its usefulness to a discussion, is it? legit q, I'm more sympathetic to "the test of time" than I remain 100% convinced that "relevance" in the sense it's used re: pop culture/music isn't a good or useful idea

*than I used to be, but I remain, etc

my uncle had a radio show in north carolina with stuff like pappy o daniel. had an entire episode devoted acutally. so him i guess xxxp

the test of time remains bad, pay attention only to the test of space

i agree w/the test of space, what will the bulbous headed creatures of Kepler 10c listen to when they conquer us?

"relevance" in the sense it's used re: pop culture/music isn't a good or useful idea

Totally agree. The question "Relevant to whom?" always seems to be answered "me [the writer] and my friends." This is why I say critics should never use the word "we" (as in, "Why We Love Bruce Springsteen").

guys I only referenced Pfork because this *is a thread about Pfork* not because I am convinced of their significance as universal arbiters of taste or whatever. I was just interested in how certain things that were huge in the 60s are totally absent from their 60s list and why that is, and how it's reflective of larger cultural patterns in terms of what gets memorialized and sort of carried forward to the subsequent generations vs. what gets abandoned.

thought this was p clear but

kepler 10c smash:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7dgRxpx6XY

it was clear shakey

fwiw i don't think its indicative of anything culturally novel and this has always happened in all artforms. often the hugely popular stuff gets forgotten for the game changers nobody appreciated at the time.

also its a different market. if instead of Conde Nast Pitchfork was bought by AARP those Mitch Miller and Andy Williams albums would be at the top

think you are off-base about whose running AARP these days (hint: baby boomers)

Roll With It and Deja Vu would top their decade lists.

seriously baby boomers love the beatles & joy division, those are the two biggest boomer bands

fwiw i don't think its indicative of anything culturally novel and this has always happened in all artforms. often the hugely popular stuff gets forgotten for the game changers nobody appreciated at the time.

this is not really true re: music imo, really it only applies to the 20th century, ie post-recording technology. Folk music traditions didn't operate that way, for ex.

Having media of the past archived and widely available is relatively novel. Certainly the age we're currently living in, where 80s music can seem as contemporary to the current generation of youth as something released yesterday (something a millenial actually said to me a little while ago btw), is novel.

the associated mass production and mass availability has changed what it means to be popular vs. enduring

Who likes Roll With It? I'm sure even Winwood prefers Back In The High Life. Winwood also prefers Closer to Unknown Pleasures, but only when he is feeling down.

yes i def got that AARP line wrong. Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are on the cover these days. i guess i can look forward to reading about Nirvana when i retire.

Folk music traditions didn't operate that way, for ex.

folk traditions are a lot less decentralized and imo less susceptible to list-type rankings. fwiw the whole 60s folk rock explosion was based on reissues of esoteric recordings the Harry Smith Folk Anthology. this was all stuff lost to time that most people hadn't heard of until that point.

the age we're currently living in, where 80s music can seem as contemporary to the current generation of youth as something released yesterday (something a millenial actually said to me a little while ago btw), is novel.

are you saying things from the past feeling similar or in the same spirit as things from the future? i think all art can have that affect to some degree. certainly i have identified with movie characters or characters from a book before. this is part of what music and art is about. true Classics stand the test of time. you cannot rationalize their place on a list, they only answer to time. if people continue to connect to it, even if it is just one person, then the music lives on. album charts and sales are noise in the equation, what matters is longevity. some old songs still have a lot of appeal.

personally i value those 60s recordings even more because they were done live for the most part. they are real performances compared to what we hear coming out today. digital recording has made us lazy. it is easy to punch line, to do a take part-by-part, to copy parts of a song around, to do a million takes without having to wind back the tape. in the 60s everyone had to be able to play through a song for the entire length. there was a basic level of performance comprehension that is no longer required. certainly it is still accessible but as a rule it's easier to computer that shit up. imo something has been fundamentally lost from that mass level of craft.