Comments on Dept of "Stop Me If You Think That You've Heard This One Before"

david brooks really could've rewritten history better to agree with their point (that point being 'i don't understand pop culture and it has passed me by'). i don't think this integration of music really existed in the 70's and 80's, at least not on a widely accepted level. the rolling stones mined black music, which was not widely accepted at first. by the late 70's, they were making disco crossover singles - which was arguably the lowest point of their recording career (even in comparison to that 'love is strong' phase). u2's music, in the 80's, was dead ahead rock with perhaps only a sustain petal dial broken off at 11 during 'joshua tree' as a stylistic change. springsteen has always been springsteen - name one foreign influence in any of his music, i dare anyone.

as far as the stones getting airplay in current times - nickleback are the biggest rock band by default, if anyone partially as charismatic or talented as the stones were making music now, they'd have NO problem being the top dogs of rock.

David Brooks is enough of a disingenuous moron when he writes about things he actually sort of knows about, but this is ludicrous. Does he actually say there are no new bands with the longevity of the Stones? How in the world would we know whether a new band was going to have the longevity of an old (oh, so very old) band that's been around for over 40 years? Do you think everyone knew the Stones were going to be the shit forever in 1967?

God I hate David Brooks.

Oh, I just read the whole thing, and it's worse than I thought. He of course has to cite Sasha F-J, and concludes:

"It’s considered inappropriate or even immoral for white musicians to appropriate African-American styles."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Moron.

NYT is the last bastion for all things to do with youth culture. I always turn to the Times for all matters concerning haberdashery.

I thought Rock and Roll died in the 80s (certainly) and late 70s, was it reborn in the 90s?

I hated listening to the radio, and now I don't have to. I can listen to what I want wherever, and that's a problem for anyone other than the record companies? We didn't all love the same music, the payola was such that we had to listen to the same stuff non-stop.

Some old fart with more sense wrote this same article a year ago (pitchfork?). Some balls to say that, just because you don't like it, it's dead.

This is a great post and generally a great reply to Elton John's "I hate the internet and home recording" rant as well as the much repeated "file sharing killed the music industry" line. The listener is the ultimate beneficiary and the people making these arguments and writing these articles clearly don't care one bit about that.

From the excerpt, it appears the author argues, in the past, musicians drew on a wide range of influences and the result was a monolith: rock. But today, the influences informing song writing are narrow, yet the net result is an increase in variety.

To the extent that any song writer draws from a shallow pool of influence, I agree that fact will appear in the resulting song. But the author's quarrel appears to lie with song writers failing to seek out, or at least be effected by, a wide range of influences.

So, assuming "fragmentation" has occurred, wouldn't that tend to broaden the potential pool of influences from which song writers may draw? And wouldn't monolithic artistic output tend to reduce the number of potential influences?

This is really an op-ed about marketing. Obviously there is more variety of music available now to listeners than ever before, including every record ever made up to this point. A teenager today who thought the blues was cool could skip the Stones and go straight to the source. It's just as easy to download Howlin' Wolf onto an iPod as the Stones.

The real complaint here seems to be that with the end of the era when record labels and radio stations were cultural gatekeepers that determined what music the public had access to, it's much harder for them to enjoy blockbuster sales like they did back when they had a virtual monopoly on music distribution.

As to the absence of new acts with the staying power of the Stones/U2/Metallica, I've been hearing this song since the early 90's. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the labels themselves and their abandonment of long-term strategies once practiced by their A&R departments.

Back in the day, the labels cultivated their artists over the course of many years, grooming them for superstardom. Springsteen's early career is a good example of this. This model was abandoned roughly, oh say a year or two before the first reports of the death of the superstar began to surface. Years and years of slash-and-burn agriculture and the yields start dropping.

Eric, this may be your best Line Out post yet. And not just for the last line (although that helps a lot!)

David Brooks is less than a year older than I am, and while I love loads of old music and I believe it's a good thing to know much about the history of music, I hardly share the views he's expressing in that article. Shit, it was great in my day AND it's great NOW. Whatever year it is, you just have to know where to look.

I really don't give a damn if I'm one of 39 Americans who likes, oh, Kemialliset Ystävät, although I will champion them in print or in your ear if I get the chance. But, ultimately, who cares if millions of bland motherfuckers don't share my enthusiasms? Fragmentation is fine with me. The masses usually have crap taste, anyhow, and are generally ineducable/apathetic.

The gatekeepers--mostly baby boomer music critics, whoever's programming commercial radio and running the major labels--have gotten progressively more shit-brained and conservative.

However, it's never been easier to ignore the traditional gatekeepers and blaze your own trail. The catch is, there's way more great music being made now than any one person can consume and digest, unless one possesses unlimited time and resources with which to do so. There's also way more lousy and mediocre music around now clogging the portals; as we are mostly our own gatekeepers, we have our work cut out for us.

Also, "Smell Yo Dick" is hilarious.