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Funk is ending up like the Blues

#303
rd2rk said:
You're absolutely right about macho rock stars, and there's nothing inherently wrong with sexy women (or men) on stage or in videos. But sexploitation IS a thing and with few exceptions, it's more of a thing in funk/soul/pop (including here Madonna-esque male sexploitation) than in rock. If that's your thing, cool, I'm not voting for Jerry Falwell to lead a crusade to ban it. I mentioned it in the context of comparing "genuine funk" to the characterization of Vulfpeck as "quantized and sterilized".

Seriously, how often do you see a rock band (or blues or jazz or country) having a dozen erotically clad foxes (male or female) jumping around on stage? It happens (think David Lee Roth), but it's not NEARLY as common.
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I think what you're talking about here is pop/R&B/hip-hop from the '80s to the present. It doesn't sound much to me like true soul/funk artists and shows, especially '60s/'70s true soul/funk artists and shows.
 
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#306
FilterFunk said:
I think what you're talking about here is pop/R&B/hip-hop from the '80s to the present. It doesn't sound much to me like true soul/funk artists and shows, especially '60s/'70s true soul/funk artists and shows.
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You could be right about that. In a later post I listed some funk shows I'd been to that didn't have the distracting "foxey sideshow". They were all '60s/70s.
 
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#307
Dr. Cheese said:


Vulfpeck is the future of Funk. Young Black kids are totally into Hip Hop, frankly most White kids are into Hip Hop too. Even country acts are being heavily influenced by Rap these days. Funk is being produced by music school “nerds” like Vulfpeck (I love them, but they do come off as music department nerds.) Of course, musicianship is very healthy in the Black Church, Black Church bassists can certainly get funky, but Gospel is not Funk, funk is just one of many flavors comprising current Urban Gospel. I am not complaining, I was blessed to have grown up during the heyday of Funk, and just like the Big Band and Jump Blues that my parents grew up listening to gave way to R&B, Funk was not going last forever. It is just a sign of my aging that I am seeing what happened to my parent’s music, happen to my music.
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man what happend to music :( :eek: im kinda worried the way things are going :crying:
 
#309
It's funny, I was born in the early 70s but was never exposed to any funk until relatively recently. It just wasn't ever a thing around here. Now I'm hearing the early funk and the new funk at the same time without any of the historical context, and I have to say I'm not hearing a great degradation over time. Sure it's different, but to me not obviously worse.

Maybe I'm just not getting it, that's cool. But I suspect there's more than a little nostalgia going on. Just like people of my generation consider the original Star Wars movies to be obviously much better than any of the later ones, but kids who've seen them all around the same age don't see much difference.

We've also got the benefit of the historical filter. I can probably name five or six modern funk bands that are active right now and compare them against an equal number of classic funk acts and say the old bands were better. But that's cherry picking from the best of hundreds of bands across decades, and discarding thousands that sucked and have been justly forgotten.

In any genre of music today you're not just competing against your contemporaries; you're competing against the best of the best across a century of recorded music. It's a wonder we don't all give up immediately.
 
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#310
Altitude said:
Before I move on from this thread having only posted in it as an anti-Vulfpeck curmudgeon, I want to turn everyone on to the horn-funk band Ripe, out of Boston. They sound like a horn funk band ought to my ears and are touring right now.

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That was very cool! I really enjoyed it!

There's a 4-tune EP on Amazon called Hey Hello...correct?
 
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#312
Gianni "Orlandez" Orlati said:
Allow me to post what truly was and is a badass funk tune (I may say jazz-funk, but there’s very little jazz in it):



Put now together a band such as this one and the funk will shine again ... :bassist:

PS: ah, uh... er.. I forgot... the bass on this tune didn’t not cost 25k dollars of its era!!!
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Funky noodling at a high level. But still shy of “The Funk”. No lyrics no message.
 
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