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In the 70s we had rock gods...

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#221
StatesideRambler said:
OK, I'll play, too.
Your points are popular but most are utterly out of context. People at that time made a lot of their own entertainment and live shows by paid musicians were special occasions, not the weekly or daily fare we're now accustomed to. The recording industry then worked nothing like it does today so comparison is not really doable.

e.g.
While the price of a concert ticket was [numerically] low compared to now, so was our take home pay so "cheap" doesn't apply. You should judge ticket prices as a multiple of take home pay, i.e. how many hours do you work to buy that ticket? Illustration: in 1967 ticket tiers that year were $4.50, $3.50 and $2.50, which was up a dollar from the year before. (In 1968 they went up another dollar.) We in the grocery store had to work just under four hours to buy a $4.50 concert ticket, assuming the price included tax and fees, which it normally did back then. How many hours do we work today to buy that same tenth row ticket?

e.g.
"Lavish" is a word not associated with record company support of any rock act in the 60s and 70s. All of the "massive promotions and huge recording budgets" was only for already-successful bands and it was paid for out of record sales so overspending came out of the bands' share before it was doled out to them. It's an advance against sales.
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*Out of context? We've discussed current industry conditions on this forum so many times that I found it unnecessary to keep toggling back and forth between then and now in my post. Also, it was late.

*"The recording industry then worked nothing like it does today"--well yes, that's really the point of my post as well as many others' responses to the OP, who is outright making a comparison between then and now.

*Ticket prices have gone up well past the pace of inflation, IMO, and I've done the math before. Let's do it now. You say folks had to work four hours back then to get a ticket to a top-tier show. Minimum wage is $7.25 federally now, but (going down by population in the 10 biggest states) it's $11 in CA, $7.25 in TX, $8.25 in FL, $10.40 in NY, $7.25 in PA, $8.25 in IL, $7.25 in OH, $7.25 in GA, $7.25 in NC, and $9.25 in MI. Let's call it $9 on average. Four hours gets you $36. You need at least twice that just to get the highest, very back row seat in a top-tier arena show now. So yes, they are much more expensive now.

*I'll stick with the word "lavish". If indeed the money was always paid out of record sales, then that's a fair point. But record companies aren't putting much money up in advance for as many artists now, IMO. Steely Dan is a good example--while they ultimately sold a ton of records, they weren't megastars at the time they recorded Aja (where the recording process is widely documented to have been long and quite expensive). At that time, they'd had three singles in the top 11 (Do It Again, Rikki Don't Lose That Number, Reelin' in the Years) spread over five albums; one other barely cracked the top 40. Today, that doesn't get you the support that only a select few now get.
 
#222
two fingers said:
He's a perfect example. He's a sad old man trying to relive the 60s singing (kind of) to thousands of sad old men trying to relive the 60s. Nothing "rock" about that. There are more orthotic shoes at a Stones concert than at a Dr.Scholls warehouse. Likely 80% of the audience had to grab a nap before to make sure they were awake at the end. Coffee likely sells more than beer.
:roflmao:
Click to expand...

Lemme get this straight:

If you're old you don't get to listen to the music of your youth?

Young people are the only people allowed to enjoy rock?

The Rolling Stones never released a song after 1969?

Creative people have to stop working when their original fans retire?

This is what you're saying. Am I right?
 
#223
In the 70's, this was my rock god.
Fred-Flintstone-Playing-Guitar.jpg



Time goes on.
 
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#224
Rock "Gods" are created by hype, amount of albums bought by the stores and radio stations that play their dumb tune 50 times a day because they have to.

Bassists like Squire, Lee, Pastorius etc, are one and done. There's no band or virtuosos that will ever match the greatness that the progressive rock and jazz artists of the 70's did.

If commercial, pop rock bar band stuff is your thing, then you'll never run out of "great" bands because the definition of "great" is pretty stretched out these days. Everything is "amazing" now.


Here.. here's your "Rock God" world now...

WT eff, was that?

Go play that stuff in the bars as much as you want. It pretty much is the entire demographic.
That's your rock "god" world now.
Pathetic.





Hey... they are considered rock "GODS"... so....

Rock on...:bored:
 
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#226
4001 said:
Who is the next great band or artist that will be as important to musical greatness that can compare to this...
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I'm liking Buke & Gasse. Their musical Jack-In-the-Box grows on ya. (and a duet has much lower overhead) Maybe it's the age of the rock Godess. Musical creativity and achievement goes on, just not the industry. Of course there'll never be the kind of promotion for chancy real artists that happened before music industry consolidation, when every loss wasn't accounted for because of how much money was around (lots). Every cost if quadrupled now (as it should be to account for the true cost to the environment) so what we have is a mopping up action, a slow shutting down as resources dry up...or float away... But musical creativity can't be stopped and new venues are always popping up. "Do it yourself" has some potential these days.
 
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#227
socialleper said:
You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a doom\stoner band that is trying so hard to sound like they are from the 70s that it hurts. However, there are still bands in that genre that are doing their own thing, as well as in other sub-genres.
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Music is a funny thing. When Bach wrote music in the "old style", the style he was writing in was already 200 to 250 years old in the 1700s.

Today, "old" is anything that is older than 30 years. What a high-speed world we live in...

I don't know what's so bad about writing in old styles (not that you explicitly said that, but that's my impression reading this thread in general), the great composers like Mozart, Beethoven, especially Brahms in his early years did it all the damn time. What has changed that it is now frowned upon? Must be Wagner's fault. Damn you Wagner and your Zukunftsmusik!!
 
#229
Max Blasto said:
Lemme get this straight:

If you're old you don't get to listen to the music of your youth?

Young people are the only people allowed to enjoy rock?

The Rolling Stones never released a song after 1969?

Creative people have to stop working when their original fans retire?

This is what you're saying. Am I right?
Click to expand...
They all change their minds when they get closer to that age. Without fail, except for Grace Slick. Meanwhile, there are plenty of 70+ entertainers who will eat these young guys for lunch.
 
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#232
two fingers said:
He's a perfect example. He's a sad old man trying to relive the 60s singing (kind of) to thousands of sad old men trying to relive the 60s. Nothing "rock" about that. There are more orthotic shoes at a Stones concert than at a Dr.Scholls warehouse. Likely 80% of the audience had to grab a nap before to make sure they were awake at the end. Coffee likely sells more than beer.
:roflmao:
Click to expand...


Couple of thoughts:

1. The Stones had major albums through 1989, and have continued to record and tour (successfully).

2. If you think their audiences are made up of sad old men, you haven't been to a Stones' show. People of both sexes and all ages going nuts. Mick may no longer snort away the GDP of a medium sized nation, but is in better shape than 97% of us, and has had more models than any of us.

3. In 1969, rock stars played to teens. Today everybody listens to rock. A friend of mine recently celebrated his 69th birthday with his girlfriend taking him to a Clapton show. He had a great time, and shared the audience with people of all ages.
 
#233
JimmyM said:
Meanwhile, there are plenty of 70+ entertainers who will eat these young guys for lunch.
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And vice versa. There have been more than a few faded stars that performed at award shows or something and clearly shouldn't have. Or modern artists that can smoke classic icons but no one wants to say anything because of BS reverence.
Again, there are no gods. We make them for our own psychological needs. Because we want something to worship, not because they are that extraordinary.
 
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#235
Were they really Gods? No, we know they were just musicians with differing levels of talent and different goals for their output.

But the difference is in how revered they were back then. IMO, the multitude of options trying to grab your attention with the internet, youtube, streaming, etc all are part of the reason that groups don't inspire the same longevity with their fans. I also believe there is a "homogeneous" nature to the acts that are popular now. Katie Perry sounds alot like Taylor Swift so one quickly replaces the other, or Foo Fighters sounds like Green Day in many ways so fans jump ship much quicker. Back in my teen days our favorite radio station would play Abba followed by KISS followed by 10CC. There was more variety.

Or maybe I'm just old. :cool:
 
#236
WI Short Scaler said:
Were they really Gods? No, we know they were just musicians with differing levels of talent and different goals for their output.

But the difference is in how revered they were back then. IMO, the multitude of options trying to grab your attention with the internet, youtube, streaming, etc all are part of the reason that groups don't inspire the same longevity with their fans. I also believe there is a "homogeneous" nature to the acts that are popular now. Katie Perry sounds alot like Taylor Swift so one quickly replaces the other, or Foo Fighters sounds like Green Day in many ways so fans jump ship much quicker. Back in my teen days our favorite radio station would play Abba followed by KISS followed by 10CC. There was more variety.

Or maybe I'm just old. :cool:
Click to expand...

You're just old (as am I). Any time anything is popular, it's copied.
 
#239
Greta Van Fleet is a group of smart young kids. They, like movie and TV producers, have discovered that the only way to really make money is to sell nostalgia. Give them exactly what they had back in high school, when they were awesome man, and older people will throw money at them. I've brought it up before on TB, but the last GVF concert in St Louis was a sold out show full of middle aged people buying t-shirts and spending money while yammering on about how THESE kids finally "get it." Yeah they get how to separate you from your money. No more rock gods? Oh well. They were a little silly even in their heyday anyway.
 
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