Universal Monster Army

I knew it was awful, but now I have scientific proof! Some shocking (though not surprising) facts!

https://youtu.be/oVME_l4IwII

This guy's videos are always informative and entertaining.

Excellent,  Mike. This guy echoes all of my complaints about modern "music". I can't believe how wimpy music has gotten. Our youth simply don't like anything in the least bit challenging. Grannies love all this Justin Beaverlake crap.

Pretty good piece, there.  I think that, currently, there is a Shotgun Effect of Talent, where kajillions of pellet-like artists go blasting out and hope to hit multiple playlists.  I suspect that, eventually, this will be honed down back to a Tin Pan Alley Effect, where a select few have been settled on and thus fill up single playlists that are massively shared.

That used to be Radio.  Tune into the city's favorite AM station in the '60s, and you and your friends were assured of hearing the same songs, able to like or dislike them, share your favorites in malt-shops and burger drive-in's, and go to school the next day and ask about hearing That New One.  And someone would surely respond.

Today's Playlist Mentality is basically "Every Listener Is An Island" with their playlist isolated from everyone else.  Until someone shares one.  Then probably shares about 100 too many and finally I cut them off and only pretend to accept downloads or invites.  And I'm back to my own playlist.  On that island.

I think the simplistic argument presented in this YouTube video misses other issues: just about every popular album has unfavorite songs, too.  The songs handed to Ringo during the first half of Beatles recordings were simply terrible choices - until he did the most excellent ACT NATURALLY with George's fantastic guitar work - which was merely modeled after the Bakersfield Buck Owens style.  But there are plenty of clunkers on sooo many albums. 

It's just that the Hits were played ad nauseum over a town's Top 40 radio and 'everyone' agreed this was A Hit.  There is no consensus like that now because there is no dependency on any single Top 40 Radio.  Or Radio, at all. 

This is not the musicians' fault.  This is entirely the labels' and distributors' fault.  THEY created this monster.

I think the music world would be far better off using the KAZAA model of music distribution: where Counts are public and available, not Apple/AndroidPlay where all accounting ripoffs mimic record-sales ripoffs against the artists.  Except now, the A-PLAY facilities require almost no capital expense on the distributor's part - they don't hafta pay for vinyl or CD-petrochemical blanks, or liner notes, or freight and shipping.  Maybe pay a photog for an "album cover".  Or maybe they'll create a half-million-dollar video when all I ever wanna do is just seem them play the song.  Live.  With great audio fidelity.

The demise of the record industry is THEIR creation, this is what THEY asked for.  I'm just glad that so many musicians are still out there, entertaining anyone who wants to sit and listen. 

This decades music satisfies the masses. Popular music= Sheep.
Formulaic.....no imagination. Like Hollywood's cookie-cutter crap.

One of the Fathers of thrash and kick ass metal. It has been a 20 year argument on Metallica selling out.
This just proves the point. Sucking up to the corporate god.

https://networthpost.org/james-hetfield-net-worth/ (https://networthpost.org/james-hetfield-net-worth/)

I've seen this video before. He explains it very well. Unfortunately for me I am un-brainwashable when it comes to being force fed braindead pop music. The shrill screeching of Katie Perry and her ilk becomes more infuriating every time I hear it!

Quote from: Wicked Lester on June 08, 2018, 10:28:47 PM
One of the Fathers of thrash and kick ass metal. It has been a 20 year argument on Metallica selling out.
This just proves the point. Sucking up to the corporate god.

https://networthpost.org/james-hetfield-net-worth/ (https://networthpost.org/james-hetfield-net-worth/)

At least Metallica made their bones through hard work and talent. I don't care for their last few albums but I can forgive them for their awesome back catalogue! I hated the so-called 'Nu-metal' scene of the late 90s/2000 with its endless stream of same sounding bands.

Quote from: marsattacks666 on June 08, 2018, 09:58:50 PM
This decades music satisfies the masses. Popular music= Sheep.
Formulaic.....no imagination. Like Hollywood's cookie-cutter crap.

I know that top 40 music is generally sh*t. That said, things have gotten worse. At least you would get an occasional "You Really Got Me", "Honky Tonk Women", "Like a Rolling Stone", etc. When's the last time anyone here listened to a current hit song from start to finish?  You really have to dumb yourself down to get through Katy Perry, the two (or three) Justins, Drake, Chris Brown, etc.  I don't care how old it makes me, I'm so glad I lived through MY era.

Back around 20 years ago we in the Chi-Town area had a radio station called the Blaze.
Nothing BUT hard rock and heavy metal. AC/DC Metallica Alice Cooper  Motley Crue and even the occasional Slayer . Only lasted a few years and I believe for lack of ad sponsers bit the dust.
What is it about metal,especially the the various styles like Doom,Death,Speed etc that people just don't get.
Take a band like Therion. Metal to the core but also have full orchestra and opera  singers. Smokes ANTHING that comes out of sugar coated pop drivel.

Yeah,you are going to need a lyric sheet to get thru this . AAND a knowledge of archaic occult. Still kills almost anything out there in sheepsville.

! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxibDN4aB2o&list=PLsNMeflYTj4318zztE05QNBG7wzmDoS9S#)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNh5JyZdMn4&index=2&list=PLsNMeflYTj4318zztE05QNBG7wzmDoS9S (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNh5JyZdMn4&index=2&list=PLsNMeflYTj4318zztE05QNBG7wzmDoS9S)

Nothing short of brilliant .

I want to continue the argument about radio's demise being linked to the perception of 'no good modern music'. 

There's the opening lyrics to FUN FUN FUN...

Well she got her daddy's car
And she cruised through the hamburger stand now
Seems she forgot all about the library
Like she told her old man now
And with the radio blasting
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now

Please correct my before-my-times lack-of-memory... this scenario seems to suggest that kids went to a hang-out spot, had windows open, tops down and radios were probably tuned into the same station, everyone listening to the same songs.  OR if there were competing stations, cars were probably organized one Station 1 in this parking area, Station 2 in that, etc.

This is the Shared Experience I think of, and without Shared Experiences involving the same music being played at the same time, same place with the same people, there is no communal 'bonding' with that music.  It's "everyone's an island", isolated into their room, their car, their world with that one song.  No sharing at all. 

No "Remember Friday night's a Al's, listening to music, eating burgers, drinking cokes?"

Is this a correct scenario?  Was it common?  (I never had any of this until I settled down and Hubby knew these places to frequent.  I would have loved these, as a teenager.  They are still cool places, too.)

WOW! Good deep thinking on this but ,at least in my experience you may be over reaching.
I was born in 1960. I had a couple friends that had the "hot Rods". A typical Friday but usually Saturday night consisted of dropping acid or snorting some sort of Angel Dust doing a couple bongs  and cranking our cassette decks to Black Sabbath,Pink Floyd, Aerosmith etc. Even back then it was very rare to turn on the radio. Why bother listening to commercial crap when you have a case of your faves.?

Quote from: Wicked Lester on June 10, 2018, 12:49:01 PM
WOW! Good deep thinking on this but ,at least in my experience you may be over reaching.
I was born in 1960. I had a couple friends that had the "hot Rods". A typical Friday but usually Saturday night consisted of dropping acid or snorting some sort of Angel Dust doing a couple bongs  and cranking our cassette decks to Black Sabbath,Pink Floyd, Aerosmith etc. Even back then it was very rare to turn on the radio. Why bother listening to commercial crap when you have a case of your faves.?

Exactly. Radio was mostly a vast wasteland. I got my music by going to the local record store and checking out what real music fans were listening to. That, and hang out at clubs like the Whisky or The Roxy checking out new bands.

I'm pretty sure that the whole "modern Music" thing is about " commercial rock and pop"
Probably only a fraction of listeners even listen to REAL music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5NQ3Eo9aGs&list=PLU0ENUEGdZWRYiVGwFKqK6pTWx84FIfcA&index=4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5NQ3Eo9aGs&list=PLU0ENUEGdZWRYiVGwFKqK6pTWx84FIfcA&index=4)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBpDom4QWHE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBpDom4QWHE)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvIW2dVv8GU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvIW2dVv8GU)

Almost all commercial music,pop,rock,rap etc sucks corporate ass.

Open your eyes,ears and intelligence. You will be most amazed at what you have been missing.

The Automatons who do listen to the f*****g, s*** music that is being produced today. Young kids are being brainwash in to listening to this pop-garbage. Even Mothers and Father subject their children to listen such trash. Just like today's Hollywood trash.....errrrrr, films.

It took a long time, but the beginning of the end of great music can be traced directly to MTV. That's when people decided making videos was more important, and beneficial than learning how to play a musical instrument. Sad but true.

JP

I think the filming of singers and performers went on long before MTV so I don't agree with your "beginning of end" value.   Maybe "end of the end" because just about every hit song since the late '80s had to include some kind of tres expensive music video.

Elvis has articles from his '50s performances that decry his 'videos'... but so does Frank Sinatra's 1930s filmed shows, too.  But for the most part, filmed performances were heralded as highlights of films and shorts in theaters.  Radio's continued success for three more decades (into 1970) and a couple of decades of homogenized decay seem to be blamed on TV - not just about any one show. 

Also consider that popular shows like Ed Sullivan felt a need to stock their shows with top musical acts, although Ed faced the doubled-edged sword of Beatles in-person issues vs. mere Beatles videos.

While movies were the beginning of 'musical performances', those performances certainly couldn't happen as quick as putting out new songs on the radio, several a year.  TV The Industry was responsible for putting out more, more, more. And more quickly.  What year did THE MONKEES start weekly shows?  "1966" according to IMDB.  OK.  But there were other shows (something called "Shindig" 1964 and "Hulabuloo" 1965) and probably several others.  The Dick Clark American Bandstand - did he only start with Top 10 songs and dancing?  When did his show sponsor those lip-sync'd performances?  Anyone have an idea? 

On the BBC, there were TOP OF THE POPS and others of that era as well. 

MTV seemed to draw that noose tight around Radio's neck, though.  VH1 and the Euro offerings all seemed to jump on and even carry on when MTV caved and went into 'special programming'.  Gag. 

How do you feel the Performer Idol/Got Talent shows fit into this?  While not technically videos, these all make powerful visual demands on performers.   However, all of these performers still make their big-bucks doing live-shows (er, so called "live" shows).   (No mention of the horrible fate of Christine Grimmie, by the way.)

Don't forget the early "video" (16mm film) jukeboxes.

https://www.cultofmac.com/326640/kitschy-scopitone-jukebox-brought-the-jams-before-mtv/ (https://www.cultofmac.com/326640/kitschy-scopitone-jukebox-brought-the-jams-before-mtv/)

MTV certainly changed the music industry but I think the rise in popularity of video games in the early 80s may have had a detrimental effect as well. Even worse was the rise of music executives who expected a hit single right out of the gate instead of nurturing an artist and letting them grow. It also seemed harder for up and coming bands to find a place to play and develop their craft in front of an audience.

Quote from: ChristineBCW on August 16, 2018, 07:10:46 PM
I think the filming of singers and performers went on long before MTV so I don't agree with your "beginning of end" value.   Maybe "end of the end" because just about every hit song since the late '80s had to include some kind of tres expensive music video.

Elvis has articles from his '50s performances that decry his 'videos'... but so does Frank Sinatra's 1930s filmed shows, too.  But for the most part, filmed performances were heralded as highlights of films and shorts in theaters.  Radio's continued success for three more decades (into 1970) and a couple of decades of homogenized decay seem to be blamed on TV - not just about any one show. 

Also consider that popular shows like Ed Sullivan felt a need to stock their shows with top musical acts, although Ed faced the doubled-edged sword of Beatles in-person issues vs. mere Beatles videos.

While movies were the beginning of 'musical performances', those performances certainly couldn't happen as quick as putting out new songs on the radio, several a year.  TV The Industry was responsible for putting out more, more, more. And more quickly.  What year did THE MONKEES start weekly shows?  "1966" according to IMDB.  OK.  But there were other shows (something called "Shindig" 1964 and "Hulabuloo" 1965) and probably several others.  The Dick Clark American Bandstand - did he only start with Top 10 songs and dancing?  When did his show sponsor those lip-sync'd performances?  Anyone have an idea? 

On the BBC, there were TOP OF THE POPS and others of that era as well. 

MTV seemed to draw that noose tight around Radio's neck, though.  VH1 and the Euro offerings all seemed to jump on and even carry on when MTV caved and went into 'special programming'.  Gag. 

How do you feel the Performer Idol/Got Talent shows fit into this?  While not technically videos, these all make powerful visual demands on performers.   However, all of these performers still make their big-bucks doing live-shows (er, so called "live" shows).   (No mention of the horrible fate of Christine Grimmie, by the way.)

Yes, there were earlier videos, but it was always secondary to the music. MTV was the first medium solely dedicated to the making and promotion of music videos. Like I said, it took a long time, but the downward spiral was officially underway. You can disagree with me if you'd like, but there are many people who feel there is a definite connection. So, I'm going to politely disagree with your disagreement of me. LOL

JP

I think the early success of sh*tbags like Madonna,  began that long downward spiral (definitely aided by MTV).

Quote from: Mord on June 06, 2018, 11:42:31 PMGrannies love all this Justin Beaverlake crap.

Do they?

???

Quote from: Mike Scott on August 16, 2018, 07:23:23 PM
Don't forget the early "video" (16mm film) jukeboxes.

https://www.cultofmac.com/326640/kitschy-scopitone-jukebox-brought-the-jams-before-mtv/ (https://www.cultofmac.com/326640/kitschy-scopitone-jukebox-brought-the-jams-before-mtv/)

A lot of good music was released on video for Scopitone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah-tui1ubnU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah-tui1ubnU)

Tell Him - Exciters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ah-tui1ubnU)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCKY-Mv230o (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCKY-Mv230o)

Nothing But a Heartache - Flirtations (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCKY-Mv230o)

8)

I know I'm painting with a very broad brush here, but it seems to me that not just music but everything has become far too similar in the last few decades. The corporate world has taken the "mom and pop" variety out of most things we use, eat, listen to, drive, watch, etc. ad infinitum...

People can't even be different anymore without somebody with a chip on their shoulder taking offense to some perceived slight. I like different, and I liked everything a lot more back when there was more different and people were more generally okay with it.

Sorry about the million-shades-of-gray philosophical spacing out.

Quote from: horrorhunter on August 17, 2018, 01:08:54 PM
I know I'm painting with a very broad brush here, but it seems to me that not just music but everything has become far too similar in the last few decades. The corporate world has taken the "mom and pop" variety out of most things we use, eat, listen to, drive, watch, etc. ad infinitum...

People can't even be different anymore without somebody with a chip on their shoulder taking offense to some perceived slight. I like different, and I liked everything a lot more back when there was more different and people were more generally okay with it.

Sorry about the million-shades-of-gray philosophical spacing out.

You hit the nail right on the head.

Quote from: Mord on August 16, 2018, 11:36:10 PM
I think the early success of sh*tbags like Madonna,  began that long downward spiral (definitely aided by MTV).

I gotta admit that I actually like a fair amount of her early stuff. My wife was a huge fan but you can only take so much.
Mr Owl,how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop. Sometimes too many.

As far as commercial media goes,I think this pretty much says it all. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPr6Q2IYFs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPr6Q2IYFs)

I remember a time when Metal, Goth, Punk....or when Alternative music was an UNDERGROUND medium. Now, it has become way more commercial, stagnant and pedestrian.

The local music scene which I am involved in, has become so cookie-cutter. Most of the local bands sound the same. It's aweful. Lack of originality.

Quote from: marsattacks666 on August 30, 2018, 09:50:07 AM
I remember a time when Metal, Goth, Punk....or when Alternative music was an UNDERGROUND medium. Now, it has become way more commercial, stagnant and pedestrian.

The local music scene which I am involved in, has become so cookie-cutter. Most of the local bands sound the same. It's aweful. Lack of originality.

Yeah, it's like the Movie-Remake-itis the Hollywood think-tanks  ::) have suffered from for decades.

Quote from: horrorhunter on August 17, 2018, 01:08:54 PM
I know I'm painting with a very broad brush here, but it seems to me that not just music but everything has become far too similar in the last few decades. The corporate world has taken the "mom and pop" variety out of most things we use, eat, listen to, drive, watch, etc. ad infinitum...

People can't even be different anymore without somebody with a chip on their shoulder taking offense to some perceived slight. I like different, and I liked everything a lot more back when there was more different and people were more generally okay with it.

Sorry about the million-shades-of-gray philosophical spacing out.

I think you are almost right on the spot. Personally I believe that society as a whole is being dumbed down. Look at everything modern industrial societies do as a whole. It's all a diversion from what the governments and underbelly of control give us.

Go to a Starbucks and spend $5 on a mooka chinko double blah blah latte. Immersed in what you are doing on your phones which are insanely advanced. Hell,I was playing a game called Toy Blast. It is more advanced than any killer game in the arcades of 20-30 years ago on a little 3" screen.
Look at the famous(ly crapty) boy bands. Not a real band but a corporate creation to again pacify the masses with yet another diversion on society.

Most people are sheep. Thats one of the reasons I spend 2-4 hrs on any Saturday for alternate choices.
Ok,ramble over. Just woke up from a nap.

If you think we have it BAD. Check out this Russian band . Talk about being brainwashed.  :o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1hxX7-92kE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1hxX7-92kE)

For whatever reason I have watched this....mind altering abomination 4 X now and all I can say is.. Wheres a shotgun when you need one  u6juu

Here's a very good article on the subject:

Is Pop Music Fake? - The New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/is-pop-music-fake)

Quote from: The New YorkerAlmost all the music you hear on Top Forty radio these days is made on machines. You may hear a real guitar once in a while, but an actual drum sound is pretty rare.

Quote from: New YorkerBut was it just the whiskey talking, or was Grohl onto something? The gist of the backlash against his comments was that in extolling the playing of an instrument over the programming of a computer, Grohl was privileging rock over dance, electronica, and hip-hop.

"Privileging"? So sneering at recordings done by computers is politically incorrect these days? Expecting groups to play their own instruments is somehow "elitist"? Such criticism is too "hurtful" to certain groups?

::)

And a quickie:

Science Proves: Pop Music Has Actually Gotten Worse - Smithsonian.com (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/science-proves-pop-music-has-actually-gotten-worse-8173368/)

:)

And another one:

Yup, it really does all sound the same. (http://scicurious.scientopia.org/2012/08/13/yup-it-really-does-all-sound-the-same-the-evolution-of-modern-pop-music/)

:(

Quote from: Mord on August 16, 2018, 11:36:10 PM
I think the early success of sh*tbags like Madonna,  began that long downward spiral (definitely aided by MTV).

Mord, I can understand your view point on Madonna. My late wife and I back in the mid 80-'s would do a bong and beer or two on a Friday after work and have a great time reveling in the work week done. Commercial,absolutely. In that period I was also into very diverse bans ranging from Dead Kennedy's to Black Flag to early death metal. I used to be almost Fascist and Nazi like in my musical appreciation. So to get to my point across,anyone that actually reads this thread please bear with me and please listen to my points on how music can have a HUGE impact on your life and entire belief system.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKAFyFj3onU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKAFyFj3onU)       The System- Their Corrupting Ways. BTDT,Wife lost her job and with a lot of searching moved 15 miles farther north from my job. I f&*%ing hate the system. The day we signed our papers for our townhousw we were literally 24 hrs from getting kicked out of our house/ foreclosure. BASTARDS!

Quote from: Wicked Lester on August 31, 2018, 02:26:39 PMLook at the famous(ly crapty) boy bands. Not a real band but a corporate creation to again pacify the masses with yet another diversion on society.

"Pacify the masses with yet another diversion on society"? Oh come on!  :o

Don't be silly. Boy bands were created (and will continue to be created) for one reason and one reason only. To make money. That's what it's all about. No need to saddle the phenomenon with any kind of more complex sociological baggage. There's no conspiracy here; it's simply about the money.

And don't misunderstand. I'm not condemning that single underlying motivation. It's what fills supermarket aisles and makes the world go round. Remove that motivation and you get empty store shelves like in every Marxist backwater you care to name.

C:)

Quote from: ChristineBCW on June 07, 2018, 08:19:45 AM
Pretty good piece, there.  I think that, currently, there is a Shotgun Effect of Talent, where kajillions of pellet-like artists go blasting out and hope to hit multiple playlists.  I suspect that, eventually, this will be honed down back to a Tin Pan Alley Effect, where a select few have been settled on and thus fill up single playlists that are massively shared.

That used to be Radio.  Tune into the city's favorite AM station in the '60s, and you and your friends were assured of hearing the same songs, able to like or dislike them, share your favorites in malt-shops and burger drive-in's, and go to school the next day and ask about hearing That New One.  And someone would surely respond.

Today's Playlist Mentality is basically "Every Listener Is An Island" with their playlist isolated from everyone else.  Until someone shares one.  Then probably shares about 100 too many and finally I cut them off and only pretend to accept downloads or invites.  And I'm back to my own playlist.  On that island.

I think the simplistic argument presented in this YouTube video misses other issues: just about every popular album has unfavorite songs, too.  The songs handed to Ringo during the first half of Beatles recordings were simply terrible choices - until he did the most excellent ACT NATURALLY with George's fantastic guitar work - which was merely modeled after the Bakersfield Buck Owens style.  But there are plenty of clunkers on sooo many albums. 

It's just that the Hits were played ad nauseum over a town's Top 40 radio and 'everyone' agreed this was A Hit.  There is no consensus like that now because there is no dependency on any single Top 40 Radio.  Or Radio, at all. 

This is not the musicians' fault.  This is entirely the labels' and distributors' fault.  THEY created this monster.

I think the music world would be far better off using the KAZAA model of music distribution: where Counts are public and available, not Apple/AndroidPlay where all accounting ripoffs mimic record-sales ripoffs against the artists.  Except now, the A-PLAY facilities require almost no capital expense on the distributor's part - they don't hafta pay for vinyl or CD-petrochemical blanks, or liner notes, or freight and shipping.  Maybe pay a photog for an "album cover".  Or maybe they'll create a half-million-dollar video when all I ever wanna do is just seem them play the song.  Live.  With great audio fidelity.

The demise of the record industry is THEIR creation, this is what THEY asked for.  I'm just glad that so many musicians are still out there, entertaining anyone who wants to sit and listen.

Okay, but none of what you say addresses the point of the Youtube video. The video doesn't deal with whether a few "top forty" tunes are universally popular or whether thousands of tunes have a niche market following; it deals with the increasing homogenization/sameness of pop music these days across both many artists' individual catalogues as well as across artists. There's been a dramatic decrease in timbral diversity in pop music over the last fifty+ years. Moreover present day pop hits all tend to feature the "millennial whoop" sound pattern which is not at all surprising since the majority of pop hits these days are written by one of two fellows, Max Martin or Lukasz Gottwald.

???

Quote from: Mike Scott on August 16, 2018, 07:23:23 PM
Don't forget the early "video" (16mm film) jukeboxes.

https://www.cultofmac.com/326640/kitschy-scopitone-jukebox-brought-the-jams-before-mtv/ (https://www.cultofmac.com/326640/kitschy-scopitone-jukebox-brought-the-jams-before-mtv/)

Quote from: David Pierini...there were about 715 (Scopitone) machines in the U.S. (by the late sixties).

(Bob) Orlowsky said there are a number of reasons why the machines never captured nothing more than a passing fascination in the U.S. Tone-def executives failed to see the cultural revolution unfolding. Rather than play a part in the rebellious spirit of rock and roll, Scopitone tried to appeal to mostly middle-aged white men.

"Scopitone was on the wrong side of the cultural divide," Orlowsky said. "They placed their money on men and standards and acts that were going rapidly out of fashion."

My recollection of the Scopitone machines was consistent with Orlowsky's observations. I knew of two in London, Ontario in the 1971-72 period, one in the men's beverage room at the York Hotel near the train station and the other in the men's beverage room at the Oxford House. (Prior to 1971 I was below legal drinking age to enter such establishments.) As the name "men's beverage room" suggests, it's where men went to drink, typically Labatt's IPA on draft at twenty cents for a seven ounce glass. The Scopitone machines in these rooms had basically no songs to tempt a young rock music fan, and the only selection that I can recall that received any play was one where a topless black woman was shown for perhaps twenty seconds, which is why my buddies and I referred to it as the Porno-Vu machine. But like I say, these were men's beverage rooms where hard core drinkers as opposed to rock fans congregated so the selections in the Scopitone machine and really the only one that got any play weren't at all surprising in retrospect. The machines were gone by about 1973. They were replaced by other electronic games and then pinball machines.









:)

There was a similar machine in the 80s. I cannot remember the name of the company or how long the video machine lasted. But, during the 80s. a
Video jukebox were in many arcades.

Quote from: ChristineBCW on June 10, 2018, 09:37:50 AMI want to continue the argument about radio's demise being linked to the perception of 'no good modern music'. 

There's the opening lyrics to FUN FUN FUN...

Well she got her daddy's car
And she cruised through the hamburger stand now
Seems she forgot all about the library
Like she told her old man now
And with the radio blasting
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now

Please correct my before-my-times lack-of-memory... this scenario seems to suggest that kids went to a hang-out spot, had windows open, tops down and radios were probably tuned into the same station, everyone listening to the same songs.  OR if there were competing stations, cars were probably organized one Station 1 in this parking area, Station 2 in that, etc.

This is the Shared Experience I think of, and without Shared Experiences involving the same music being played at the same time, same place with the same people, there is no communal 'bonding' with that music.

CHLO in St. Thomas just south of London was throughout the early and mid-sixties the only Top 40 station in the immediate London, Ontario area and got therefore the bulk of the teen demographic. CHLO didn't get any competition until CJBK arrived on the London scene in 1967 with a top forty format. As a result, yes, young people in London and area all listened to the same top forty recordings. But!!! The top forty hits were all very different from each other. There was no sameness to the sound. The hits featured nothing akin to the present day "millennial whoop". And the point of the opening video of this thread and the other links I posted is not that everybody today listens to the same tracks, it's that there is less variety, more sameness, in all pop music these days.

Interesting though that it was the launch of DJ Thomas Aquinas' thirty minute progressive rock show on a middle-of-the-road station, CFPL in London, in 1968 that really helped to spur the expansion of my musical horizons. Here are some of the tracks that I remember hearing on Aquinas' show for the first time thus serving as my introduction to that specific band:

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun - Pink Floyd
Piece of My Heart - Big Brother & the Holding Company
Paper Sun(?) - Traffic
A Song for Jeffrey - Jethro Tull
Communication Breakdown - Led Zeppelin (unless I'd already heard Good Times Bad Times on another station)
Jingo Rock - Santana
The Court of the Crimson King - King Crimson
Hear Me Calling - Ten Years After
1984 - Spirit
Sonny Boy Williamson - Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper
Rondo '69 (or else America) - The Nice
Better By You, Better Than Me - Spooky Tooth
The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown) - Fleetwood Mac

My impressionable young mind was of course ripe to be exposed to more complex and sophisticated forms of rock music and I soaked it all up like a sponge. I clearly wasn't the only listener doting on his program because it was soon expanded to an hour. 

Quote from: ChristineBCW on June 10, 2018, 09:37:50 AMNo "Remember Friday night's a Al's, listening to music, eating burgers, drinking cokes?"

Is this a correct scenario?  Was it common?  (I never had any of this until I settled down and Hubby knew these places to frequent.  I would have loved these, as a teenager.  They are still cool places, too.)

I remember no such places that functioned as hangouts for teens in London from 1965 onward. In grade school we just hung out out on the street and played in backyards and in neighbourhood parks. By the time I was in high school the area park was where many teens hung out. Quite simply it cost money, which was naturally scarce, to "hang out" in diners. Sure on occasion we'd hit Harvey's or A & W, but we'd eat and go. There was no place to "hang out". Granted that my older brother-in-law still fondly remembers the Parkside Dairy Bar on Dundas Street in East London but I suspect that it wasn't actually a hangout. Teenagers bought their hot dogs and ice cream sodas or milkshakes, consumed them at the counter and then left. Similarly the Whistle Stop Drive-In with its famous foot longs on the edge of my immediate neighbourhood had a loyal though often older clientele, but I don't recall it being a hang-out.

In fact I very clearly remember wondering whether places like the Pop's Chock'lit Shoppe featured in Archie comics were common in the States because I wasn't aware of such an equivalent in my part of town. I sort of wondered whether it might be a California thing because I encountered nothing like Pop's in Detroit. The Elias Bros. Big Boy Restaurants in Detroit were very cool, but I don't think they were  hang-outs. Like I say, hanging out in restaurants cost money.

:)

Here are a couple more good Scopitone reels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g35iqw0EUsc&t=74s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g35iqw0EUsc&t=74s)

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes - Bobby Vee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfYiusSAGR4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfYiusSAGR4)

Calendar Girl - Neil Sedaka

8)

Another way of putting the issue/situation:

Quote from: It's All Noise - The New YorkerWe live in the loudest of times. It all began about twenty years ago, when new digital technologies started to radically alter the way music was made, refined, and shared. It suddenly became fairly easy to endow songs with a more aggressive presence: with a click of the mouse, you just made it all—especially the quiet parts—louder. Since then, there's been a debate over the effects of the "loudness wars" on our ability to appreciate nuance, particularly the dynamic range between loud and soft that, in the parlance of audiophiles, gives music the room to "breathe." As musicians from Iggy Pop to Christina Aguilera began making their music as thunderous as possible, our standards and preferences gradually changed. Loudness has won. We have come to crave music that is garish, punchy, and, according to the anti-loudness partisans, poorly engineered. But now that we listen to music everywhere—often in a semi-distracted state, across a range of devices and settings—it should come as no surprise that artists want their music to come pre-coated with a glossy immediacy. First impressions matter. Why not insure that you can't be ignored?

Think of how many contemporary pop hits sound as if they were being belted from within a jet engine. The quiet parts of a Taylor Swift song buzz more boldly than the brashest moments of a heavy-metal album from the nineteen-eighties. The imperfections that resulted when artists pushed their recordings past peak levels have given way, in pop music, to new techniques, textures, and tastes. It's just how music sounds now, from the noisy, self-conscious revolt of Kanye West's "Yeezus" and the distorted crunch that occurs when a pop song hits the chorus to the way that MP3s gleam with a pre-formatted sizzle.

:-\

Hep, I saw a note about so many of today's songs written by two names, but I don't think this is a correct complaint about this era - I seem to remember "the Brill Building" was named quite a few times.  And boy bands... nothing new there, either.  There have been 'put up' singers for decades, maybe forever.  Brian Wilson fairly eviscerated his group into little more than a Boy Band standing on stages while their albums were assembled using sessions musicians. 

Quote from: ChristineBCW on February 25, 2019, 08:10:02 PMAnd boy bands... nothing new there, either.  There have been 'put up' singers for decades, maybe forever.  Brian Wilson fairly eviscerated his group into little more than a Boy Band standing on stages while their albums were assembled using sessions musicians.

Truth. Boy bands have been around at least since the Monkees. In fact a few years ago on a classic rock forum I posed the question of whether the Beatles were initially naught but a boy band.

BUT, that's a red herring. The focus of the articles is that modern music all sounds the same (awful) because of compression and/or lack of variety in three ways:

1. Tonal/frequency range. There's not as much range these days between the highest and the lowest notes in pop hit recordings.

2. Lack of dynamic range. It's all LOUD, as opposed to soft, soft, LOUD or soft, soft, soft, LOUD. This phenomenon has come to be termed the "Loudness Wars". And these loudness wars have also decreased the tonal range of pre-existing recordings because in order to get extra loudness throughout an entire recorded piece, the tonal range must be concentrated/compressed into the mid range frequencies. The way this is done is by clipping the extreme high and low notes from the recording. That's right, notes are clipped and presto, we're left with a LOUD but lossy recording.

3. Drummers with as wide a variety of drum beats and styles as the human imagination permits have been replaced in recording studios by drum machines operated by recording engineers. Sorry, but if you rely on the imagination of recording engineers, variety is the last thing you're going to get.

:(

 Well put, Hep.  The most annoying trend for me, is the reliance on auto-tune. If a song features that, I automatically tune out.

Nevermind.