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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | <drewmacdonald@ca.rr.com> |
| Subject | Re: All Things Must Pass (or else they'll create intestinal |
| Date | Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:01:53 -0700 |
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I'm sure others are getting as tired of this thread as I am, but I've been waiting in vain for someone to make this point:
It makes no sense to compare the "quality" of today's best pop music to that of the Sixties, nor even to hold the later work of McCartney, Lennon, Dylan, Wilson, etc. up against their earlier stuff.
That music is as much a product of THAT PARTICULAR MOMENT IN HISTORY as it is the product of its makers. Technological breakthroughs in recording and mass-distribution techniques arrived just as the huge swell of baby boomers were hitting record- and ticket-buying age. Combine that with the perception that the old "rules" of society (regarding civil rights, drug use, class distinctions, military duty, etc.) were not worth following, the time was ripe for a group of talented artists to assume similar freedoms regarding the pop music they could make.
In other words, they knocked down the walls and were justly rewarded for it as the multitudes rushed out into the new land. We love those guys not just because of the "quality" of their work, but because they were the first to till those fields.
It's talent AND timing that makes the rock gods.
Art is inextricable from its environment.
Paul McCartney will never make music as "good" as the stuff he did in 1965, not because he's lost his muse, but because IT'S NOT 1965!
-- Drew
np: Pop Levi - THE RETURN TO FORM BLACK MAGIC PARTY
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