A better thread title would be "Punk music sucks donkey balls. Do you agree?"
As a bunch of others have said, how can you gauge 50+ years of music based on the same, tired 30 songs? How can you cover everything from Cream to David Bowie, Y&T to Mayhem, Cactus to Tesla, and KISS to Allman Brothers in one blanket statement? Up until around Nirvana, maybe a bit before, popular music was about excellent musicians showing excellent skills and musicianship. Over the past 20 years or so it has transformed into something that's solely about marketing and overproduction. You can't seriously tell me that you think Green Day are better musicians than Peter Green.
You know what's a good way to see the quality of the musician (and maybe the audience as well)? Watch a show live. Does every song sound EXACTLY the same as the recorded track? Do breaks, fills, and solos sound as if they were just playing along to the album? Does the audience go crazy when they hear the exact same solo they've heard hundreds of times in their cars blasting from the P.A.? Or does every song feature improvisation and musical creativity, and does the audience go wild when something awesome is being improvised before their eyes? The Who, Led Zeppelin, Cream, all those bands' shows were never the same twice. Their set lists might've been the same night after night, but the songs themselves would vary greatly every time they were performed. That's not the case with the music that's popular today.
A great example is the Warped Tour. What a fucking joke: a tour that was originally conceived as a way to "stick it to the man" and to showcase unsigned underground bands has become a corporate sponsorship juggernaut that features big label bands and charges unknowns hefty fees to be on the tour for a few days. But, I digress. I've worked about 6 Warped Tours before. Of the literally hundreds of bands that I've heard while there I haven't been able to tell the difference between one and the other, or between one SONG and the next. No creativity and no talent.
Music today serves less as a means of expression than as a means for rich people to make more money.
As a bunch of others have said, how can you gauge 50+ years of music based on the same, tired 30 songs? How can you cover everything from Cream to David Bowie, Y&T to Mayhem, Cactus to Tesla, and KISS to Allman Brothers in one blanket statement? Up until around Nirvana, maybe a bit before, popular music was about excellent musicians showing excellent skills and musicianship. Over the past 20 years or so it has transformed into something that's solely about marketing and overproduction. You can't seriously tell me that you think Green Day are better musicians than Peter Green.
You know what's a good way to see the quality of the musician (and maybe the audience as well)? Watch a show live. Does every song sound EXACTLY the same as the recorded track? Do breaks, fills, and solos sound as if they were just playing along to the album? Does the audience go crazy when they hear the exact same solo they've heard hundreds of times in their cars blasting from the P.A.? Or does every song feature improvisation and musical creativity, and does the audience go wild when something awesome is being improvised before their eyes? The Who, Led Zeppelin, Cream, all those bands' shows were never the same twice. Their set lists might've been the same night after night, but the songs themselves would vary greatly every time they were performed. That's not the case with the music that's popular today.
A great example is the Warped Tour. What a fucking joke: a tour that was originally conceived as a way to "stick it to the man" and to showcase unsigned underground bands has become a corporate sponsorship juggernaut that features big label bands and charges unknowns hefty fees to be on the tour for a few days. But, I digress. I've worked about 6 Warped Tours before. Of the literally hundreds of bands that I've heard while there I haven't been able to tell the difference between one and the other, or between one SONG and the next. No creativity and no talent.
Music today serves less as a means of expression than as a means for rich people to make more money.
