Originally Posted By: MarioD
I think that the answer to that question and statement will be directly proportional to the age of the person answering. YMMV




There's the old joke about a kid being in a record store saying "I didn't know Paul McCartney was in another band before Wings." That seems to fit here.

Now factor in how much more present music is in 2022 than that 50s when we were kids. Spotify, Pandora, iHeart Radio, music stations on your TV provider, 150+ stations streaming 24/7 on Sirius/XM...

Factor in the jump in the amount of listening when kids start driving around 16 and hear the radio the whole time. Then to that add in that we didn't have satellite radio and we just had the few stations that weren't talk radio to choose from. I remember how we thought it was so cool that we could get CKLW from Detroit even though they played exactly what our WMMS and WIXY played. Remember how cool it was when FM became available and there were "underground" programs with deep dive album cuts? Here it was Doc Nemo who did a show at 10pm Sunday night that opened up with Seger's "Heavy Music". That was the only place we could hear Hendrix, Cream, Spencer Davis and the like.

So, point here is this. I am 70. "My" music came from the late 50s, the 60s and just nosed into the 70s. A kid who is 18 now was born in 2002/2003. That's 40 years after that 16 year old kid in Cleveland laid in bed with his earphone plugged in every Sunday night at 10pm. Unless that kid born in 2002/2003 had parents who played music all day because TV, with the 3 channels available, was "a fad" in the late 50s. For perspective, when I was home of a leave during my Army years in like late 1970, my parents still had a 14 inch black and white TV. I went out and bought them a 21 inch color TV so I could watch the last televised Browns game before going back. That kid born in 2002/2003 had 200 channels of cable and high end video games to distract him. Their primary entertainment was NOT music. Also factor in that the instruments of the time when my age group was young were one step above when the cavemen had when they strung a piece of a plant onto a bowed stick when compared to even what I played in the 80s. And now? With so much music of today being an 8 bar loop that repeats for 3:34 with somebody speaking bad beat poetry (ask your parents about the beatnik coffee-house artsy-fartsy types) the level of the music performance has declined badly. The SHOWS are way better with the dancing, the lights, the explosions... In older days bands stood by their mic and played and sang. (I remember reading an interview with George Harrison saying "We used to munch cheese rolls and buns on stage between songs. Those were the wild days." Wild? Iggy Pop once stabbed himself on stage. Ozzy bit the head off a bat. Alice Cooper used to use snakes and chain saws as props. Marilyn Manson was Alice Cooper on steroids. Contrast that to The Eagles, who did nothing more than stand by their mics and sing those beautiful harmonies.)

So yes, Mr Mario has it right. It is generational. I suggest it is also cultural. Different times in society are different levels of accepting. Listen to the lyrics in rap music that the people are perfectly fine with. Now if you are not of a certain age, ask your parents or grandparents about All In The Family and Sanford and Son on TYV in the 70s. Ask if the think those shows would be aired today in the snowflake society where everybody is so sensitive.