Talk Elections

I know there are those of you on the forum who object to the idea of personalized generations with unique identities as a pop-sociological construct, and it is. But the marketing experts who create the economy believe in the concept: consequentially it is real as long as they do.

Nine Inch Nails are on tour again. I'm far more excited to see Trent Reznor, who turns fifty this year, than I am to see any band with members my own age - and half of his - in it.

We may be remembered for tremendous strides in technology, and in politics. But I cannot think of a twentysomething or thirtysomething writer or director or visual artist of today who will be long remembered. And our music - acoustic rock with whispered, waif-like vocals, or overproduced EDM - is bilge.

LE WRONG GENERATION?

Just one back. If I could, I'd have been born about 1974.

Heh. For once you have a point on culture, though I am not the type who whines about "being born in the wrong generation."

Where is this generation's Bob Dylan? He/She is out there somewhere.

There are lots of wannabe Millie Bob Dylans, to the extent sh**tty jangly indie rock dominates the white teenaged middle-class musical scene. What is sorely missing are the wannabe Jim Morrisons. Music has gotten incredibly tame, even since 2000.

1. Subjective opinions and tastes of a single individual can in no way measure the entire objective cultural value of an entire generation's creative output, to whatever extent such a thing can be objectively measured

2. To a large extent, cultural endeavors are largely if not entirely subjective and therefore their value only exists insofar as any normative consensus exists among society at large (which again, a single individual's thoughts have no direct relationship with)

3. You're disregarding entire genres with your broad generalizations; for example our generation has produced a lot of great hip hop (not like top forty stuff necessarily)

4. Trent Reznor's cultural output does not match the norms of the "marketing experts who create the economy" and he only became commercially successful in the mainstream because of the widespread fame he received on a largely underground scene. It is shortsighted to assume there aren't people out there in our generation who won't be following a similar path, or to assume that younger popstars who have been thrust into greatness by the recording industry are in any way representative of our generation as a whole

5. If there is any accuracy to your assessment I'd posit that it's only because the increasingly oligarchic nature of mainstream media prohibits easy access to artists who can't be trusted by their financiers to be conventionally commercially successful so those who don't sound like everyone else are forced into niche fandoms that can be brought together by the internet



tl;dr your argument parallels that whole "DAE le 90's? Ima 90's kid and everything today sucks" thing, plz reconsider your viewpoint

Of course my opinion is subjective. You spent three paragraphs pointing out the obvious.

And I'm not quite a 90s kid - I was born in 1989, making me a bit too young to have caught music at its edgiest. And it's not like there isn't loud and fast Millie music - it's just incredibly stupid. Like Five Finger Death Punch.

i actually would agree with you but honestly the only nine inch nails album i can tolerate is ghosts thats about it. its just boring pseudo industrial

my theory is that we're probably going to have to wait at least another 10 years before the current era of cultural blandness and stagnation wears itself out. if nothing else because by then a substantial amount of adults will exist that don't remember the 20th century

There has to be one of them who can actually write a song like him out there instead of just poorly singing nonsense that they think is like Dylan.

NIN's new material is certainly bland EDM, and TReznor is probably partly to blame for the deluge of boring beep-blip-bloop muzak. But my first love is Broken. "Last" hits like a shotgun blast to the ballsack.

i have found myself getting a lot more into grind core but even stuff like that is still largely dominated by people born in the '70s, at least in terms of the people heading the actual bands (trap them, modern life is war, etc.).

in any case nin was always looked down on as hot topic mall goth type stuff by most of the industrial scene even when they were comparatively better than now. i'm actually almost annoyed at typing this because its such a predictable opinion to go with. its fun to play contrarian but sometimes, well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kqYD1gkgZs

That said, I wish industrial would make a comeback, and I don't care whether it's as Foetus/Coil/:wumpscut: weirdness or as Big Black/Ministry/Marilyn Manson rock. The youth is thirsty for ironic angst. And I sh**t on that garbage the industry tried selling us on in 2011-12, with the bass drops.

Sure, NIN were mallgoth f****try. Manson even moreso. That's probably why I like them (well, that and the sheer work that the latter put into everything on his records save the music itself).

no chemlab or skinny puppy or pig face? good call on foetus underrated band

as far as big names go in industrial or 'industrial rock' (as in stuff that at least appeared on mtv once) the only one i can think of that doesn't totally suck is ministry. as far as i can tell industrial rock is basically synonymous with ass at this point though

I read an article a few months ago that posited that American popular culture more or less hasn't gone anywhere since the early '90s - everything that has come since then has been derivative repackaging of earlier artistic innovations.

It suggested that the Silent Generation may be the last generation to "not get" the culture and vernacular that emerged after they left young adulthood. Compare the archetypal '60s/'70s family where the Archie Bunker-esque father yells at the TV and can't understand why his kids dress like danged hippies and listen to weird music to the more common scenario of modern families where mom and her daughter share each others' clothes all the time and a parent will hear a Top 40 hit on the radio and remark that it sounds quite similar to a song that was popular when they were young.

The cultural awareness gap between someone born in 1995 and 1975 is marginal. The gap between someone born in 1955 and 1935 is a veritable chasm.

tbh silents and x-ers both strike me as much more imaginative than people born sometime after the early 80s. let's not forget that most of the pioneers of pop culture in the 60s and 70s were actually part of the former group. that said obviously its a bit early to write us off

If you can stand industrial metal, check out The Kovenant. "New World Order" is a delightful bit of totalitarian cheese.

What I've described in the past as 'femme singer-songwriter' material can be quite good these days, but I understand if it's not what you're looking for or relevant to your interests. I don't mean that in a snide way--it's genuinely not for everyone. But, just off the top of my head, some of Vienna Teng's angrier/crueler/more cynical work might be worth a look for at least some of the posters ahead of me.

Do you wish for your very own personal Leni Riefenstahl to solve this problem? Or is that how you see your own future, Einzige?

You've only got so many notes in the scale, and so many instruments in common use- after enough decades of searching for new combinations, it starts to get hard.  There's a reason Schoenberg and Cage did what they did... and with its more limited harmonic palette, it's no big surprise that pop music might start to run out of new sounds after awhile.

And honestly being derivative isn't necessarily always a bad thing, so long as the original influences are solid.

I think that as a result of the internet and globalization in general that everything has become so accessible that nothing feels new anymore. Mainstream music has therefore become blander because it needs to appeal to the broadest audience to be competitive. It's easier to ignore it when your entertainment options are so vast, immediately met, and the option of cosying into niches is easier.

If anything within our generation there has been an absolute explosion of cultural output because of the new ease of finding an audience, ease of creating with newer technologies, and ease of buying formerly expensive tools that shut out everyday people from creating. Because there is so much it's difficult to find things that really stand out.

The last time I remember hearing a song that made me stop and think "I have never heard anything like this" was the first time I heard dubstep. And that's already feeling old and played.

I guess the takeaway is that even though within our generation there doesn't seem to be any outstanding breakthrough artist or new genre, we are still shaping the way people people will consume and find art  for the foreseeable future. And isn't that a little bit exciting?

More than the 90s, to be honest.



...but yea, it's no surprise that Meurwhatever is "le wrong generation."

This, more than anything else, is the important takeaway of this generation. We've basically seen, if not the death of, then at least the severe decline in influence of the mono-culture. When we think of past decades, there is often a few large distinguishing things that encompassed all of pop culture. Tye-dye, grunge rock, bell bottoms, flannel, pong, disco, whatever.

These broad cultural touchstones don't really exist in the same way today; everything's too decentralized now. People don't watch the same 6 o'clock news channel, they watch their network of choice. People don't read the paper, they follow their own collection of websites. YouTube videos instead of mainstream television, indie flicks over the summer blockbuster. I've spent the last several days watching Summer Games Done Quick. It appeals to such a subculture of a subculture of a subculture, and you're not going not going to see most people on the street have even the slightest clue what that is or why it exists, but people in that group live and breathe it.

Subcultures have always existed, obviously, but the ease with which the internet has allowed them to come into being and thrive on the support of a tiny group of instantly-connected individuals mostly just means that the "millennial generation's" cultural contribution will be that you can now easily create your own instead.

They will eventually.  Give us time.

Of course our current time seems boring, we're living in it.

Slightly off-topic, but I genuinely get a kick out of the fact that in 50 years' time my grandchildren will be coming up to me and asking how it was like to live through the height of the "same sex marriage movement" just like how I asked my grandparents how it was like to live during the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s.  Just like my grandparents did me, I won't have anything especially insightful to say and my grandchildren will think that I'm either a bigot who has yet to change his ways or that I spent the better-part of my young adulthood under a rock.       

just come up with good stories so it sounds like you're on the right side of history

I wouldn't be surprised if their schoolbooks had pictures of Southern Baptists spraying gays with firehoses LOL

"I supported it from the word go in Massachusetts in 2003.  I never had a problem with those gay people."

kids wince at the use of the outdated term "gay," chalk it down to grandpa Mikado's homophobia.

Modern art, music, film etc are no more inane and empty than their counterparts in the past. People produce crap now, as they did in the past. This fake nostalgia for a time people have not experienced is ridiculous.

If only people weren't so STUPID nowadays we might be able to revive the 1960s, where all my favorites bands ejaculated sonic tidal waves of soulful artistic mastery on an audience so enlightened, intelligent and receptive that the #1 single of 1969 was a cartoon (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9nE2spOw_o)

This thread (ignoring who it was started by, lol) completely seems to ignore that we recently just ended (or are at the tail end of) what has been dubbed the "New Golden Age" of television - where the medium's ability of storytelling and artistic integrity grew leaps and bounds and evolved the medium to an extent that we've never seen before, causing the influence of television to surpass that of film.

Film is another important landmark to note, as the films of the mid-2000s saw a revival of artistry and auteurism that wasn't seen in the industry since the 1970s.


Also, this.

The fact that so many books still name the Beatles "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success: the Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worth of being saved.

I agree with your general point, the pioneering acts from the 40's/50's except Elvis are being forgotten everyday. Folks like Big Joe Turner, Bill Haley, Louis Jordan and Fats Domino built the genre and most people today wouldn't have any clue who they are or their importance. Yet through my own research and self exploration in the music of the last decade, The Beatles are still imo the most important act in rock music and their sales/popularity is only part of their equation. They synthesized all the music that came before them into something new and almost everyone to come after them were influenced by the Beatles or an act that was influenced by The Beatles. 

How le edgy of you.  Also, Beethoven was in fact rock-star popular by the standards of his day.  He wasn't as financially successful as a Salieri because he didn't have a patron or write much of what was the most lucrative genre (opera), and he was a bit of a spendthrift... but to call him some forgotten non-commercial gem who was picked up by later generations who rediscovered his genius is, well, 100 percent wrong.  Mozart's situation was very similar- he probably made more money but was even worse at keeping it.

Now, J.S. Bach, he was considered kind of stuffy and provincial in his day, and was forgotten, and had to be reintroduced to the public by Mendelssohn, so he might actually be a plausible example.  But part of the reason he was forgotten was that everything Baroque was more or less forgotten, and a lot of the great active composers of that time still knew he was a whiz at counterpoint, and worth studying for that.  Perhaps you could make an analogy to Robert Johnson or something (though of course Bach was far more prolific, among other traits).

And, if rock critics care so much about album sales, why do they love the Velvet Underground but not the Eagles?  There's a lot more to the Beatles hagiography than commercial success, and deservedly so.

Musicians have been incredibly productive in their 20's, and I think it's fair to argue that millenials haven't matched the output of previous generations, at least so far.

But I don't think you can extend the argument beyond music. The oldest millenial is in their mid-30's, and imo most creative people don't really get a chance to shine until they've spent their 20's and 30's gaining experience and working in lower-level positions.

Another note, if we assume that the Strauss-Howe cyclical generations/turnings theory holds any water then we really shouldn't be surprised that our current popular cultural hasn't produced anything of real substance.

The analogous point in the previous cycle to where we are today would probably be the later 1930s, and I don't remember anything of especial cultural merit being produced during that time (at least not in the United States).  Popular culture then, like today, seemed rather kitsch and juvenile.  Of course, this would make sense, as then (much like today) artists and musicians were approached with a certain level of skepticism by the general public for not channelling the fullness of their efforts into propelling the society-wide institutional reorganization.

Just some more food for thought. 

Wizard of Oz
Snow White and the 7 Dwarves

The Hobbit
Brave New World
Grapes of Wrath
Of Mice and Men
As I Lay Dying

Batman and Superman comics

Can this thread f off already?

Yeah, 1939 is often considered the greatest year in Hollywood ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_in_film

This is it. People used to watch the same TV shows, the same news, TV was a big thing and unless you had 80s style cable, your options were limited.

Also, movies in theaters took a long time to be released onto VHS or even Betamax and many people didn't even own a VCR. My family got a VCR in '90 or '91 I believe. My father told me he remembers watching "Romancing the Stone" on a Betamax tape around 1985 or so.

But I often fall for what I call the "2000 curse". Even to this day, when someone references "...twenty years ago..." my mind immediately thinks the year 1980 or so. However, twenty years ago would actually be the Summer of 1994. So in my mind perhaps our pop culture of the "good old days" is more recent than it even is.

Check out this NBC promo from 1985:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8NMtQabci0

The next day, a Friday, people could be at work and would be discussing President Reagan's address, or something funny that happened on Cheers or who Johnny Carson had on that night's show.

Now, you no longer have that. You have someone who doesn't watch TV, then someone who only watches reality TV. Even current hit shows average no more than 20 million viewers. Back in the day, even mediocre shows averaged more viewers than that. Our threads are being separated.

But I do get the impression that younger people today just don't care. I remember a newsstory from an Iowa TV station in 1980 of a younger woman in her early twenties being asked what she thought about Ambassador Bush, who was running for President. She said something like, "I hadn't heard him before, but I was impressed..." yada yada yada.

Now imagine today, asking a younger woman in her early twenties about Ambassador Huntsman and what she thought about him running for President. Chances are, she would look at you and have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

In other words, the newer age of technology and the new huge wealth of information age has given people so much data, that they will pick and choose their own interests. While this could be nice, it may also create a lack of knowledge in subjects that are important.

I've heard John Fullbright's quite good.

Also mods please lock.

This thread is a good example of why Einzgie/Mint types are not to be taken seriously. It is no coincidence they are our two self-proclaimed fascists.

brand a generation of millions as a single buzzword "millennial" so they can be analyzed like products and wonder why they're disillusioned
— lord crunkington III (@postcrunk) June 10, 2014 (http://"https://twitter.com/postcrunk/statuses/476155056224358400")