There's always going to be bands that get bigger and bands that don't. That's literally exactly how it's always worked.

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Favorite bands:

Melvins
The Jesus Lizard
Cows
Big Business
R***man
Minutemen
Flight
Minor Threat
Big Black
Shellac
Karp
Scratch Acid
Wipers
Pixies

+1

The nostalgia for the '70s is baffling to me. And '70s music fans are the most arrogant fans on the planet ("Best music ever recorded, period, and if you disagree I'm fiddin to knock every tooth down your throat.") They tend to be elitists and look down upon just about every other genre and era in music. I just never got much into generic '70s arena rock (Bad Company, CCR, Free, Foghat, The Band, BTO and stuff like that.) '70s music sounds dirty and unholy to me. I'm a child of the '90s (born in '73 so my musical sweet spot hit a little later for me, after I was out of high school.) When I was in high school itself, I was a pop metalhead, I loved Motley Crue and Poison and Warrant and stuff like that. But in the early '90s I developed a taste for Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Tool, and other bands like that. Those are the bands who speak to me. They are our "classic rock" bands to me and those who came of age at about the same time. And these are the bands that I've listened to for years, and I probably won't outgrow them. One day I think the radio operators will agree, and '90s alternative rock will be considered the same way as classic rock is today. I did grow up in the '80s as well, and I love classic '80s metal like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate, and others. Not much since 1997 or so has been good, at least from new artists. This dubstep craze is silly. It's just several artists playing the same song. It will end soon and will be forgotten as it is just a fad.

Oh.... believe me.. the 70's had more than it's share of commercially driven, hook induced untunes. But so did the 60's, as well as the 50's. Every decade has it's share of music that leaves people wondering as to who came up with this fodder.
In the sixties I was too young to do anything but listen in, most definitely formative but I was also fortunate to be living in europe in the early 60's, classical ruled in my family and I'm forever grateful for it. For me the first musical moment and I was perhaps 9 or 10 years old, I was walking in the streets of Grenoble on a snowy winter day ( skiing weekend with my aunt and uncle ) from the outdoor speakers Petula Clark's hit Downtown was blaring. Bear in mind that at this time I could not understand english but the melody and the structure of this pop song got me. Now back to the 70's were the formative years for me as I was now stateside and all thru junior high and high school I remember searching for just about every kind of music I could find.

Bugo, I'm not sure any fan from any other decade is any less passionate about their own personal decade of musical discovery... You are mentioning a few 70's bands that were actually quite good, but you had to dig in and dismiss the songs aimed at the radio's top 40.
Foghat was a band that formed from a split of members of Savoy Brown. Very much Blues Boogie, forget the songs Slow Ride and the other radio hits they had. Look up some of their early covers of classic Blues tunes and you'll find a very different Foghat.
Bad Company came out of members of Free and Mott the Hoople. A good band which once again the hits did not highlight their best work, ( but that is true of any band, what is pushed out to gain airplay and mass appeal is generic and designed to appeal to a broad base )
CCR i was not a fan but they were more late 60's than 70's but were very much a precursor to bands like The Eagles. I do like some of their material and cannot be dismissed as fodder.
The Band, well they deserve a look into their history as Dylan's back-up band and then as a formative era band. ( no puns intended )
BTO formed from parts of the Guess Who, I would prefer to be strapped down forced to listen to 24 hours of the J.C. Superstar soundtrack then any BTO tune.

Too bad you missed the early 80's, there were a lot of bands worth discovering from both sides of the pond. Bebop Deluxe, Divinyls, Scitti Polliti, The Clash, Cars, Dire Straits....
As for the 90's I still enjoy bands like Motley Crue, Poison, they are the court jesters of their period. Pearl Jam is the quintesential band of their era, Nirvana...Hmm...I like some of their tunes, but their idiotic front man's antics turned me off. I must add that I also never cared for The Who either or for that matter any band that foolishly believes that smashing their equipment on stage night after night is part of a musical statement. It is rudely dismissing all the kids who work really hard at buying their own guitars and drums...

I disagree with the generalization that not much has been happening in the last few years.
Because of the media age and now the techno age , just about anyone can sequence random notes, sound patterns and call it music....Well a primate can bang on a trash can top but that doesn't elevate them to a Paganini or Sainz level of musicianship...
You just have to go and search, I would have been ecstatic to have the ability of a G4 Mac, an I-Pad when I was in High School, just to be able to click and search would have saved many days, weeks of searching store to store.

Each decade has it's disadvantages but the Positives far outweigh the negatives...

Now where did i leave those Rosenrot and Reise Reise CD's....

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"C'est parti mon Kiki "

Hi Floyd: just on a point of fact, for most of modern music history the money was in record sales, not shows. I well recall Mick Jagger in the '70s saying that they only played gigs to promote the latest record: the shows made peanuts or actually lost money but the record sales made millions.

To an extent that was a band by band thing. John Entwhistle said The Who made more from touring than from record sales, whereas others such as Pink Floyd, Queen and later U2 had such expensive stage shows they were only ever loss-leaders for the record sales.

That only changed somewhere in the mid-'90s when record sales started dropping through the floor. Nowadays the big cash is in selling out stadiums and arenas - but it wasn't always so, even for the bands that could fill those venues.

That ain't necessarily a good or bad thing. But it was the reality till recently.

It's revealing that the young'ns on this Forum don't even realise that for most of music history someone could have two or three hit singles and potentially make enough money to retire. It's only for the last couple of decades that it hasn't been that way. Which brings us to:


I guess most of us couldn't care less whether a top act today is making a six figure income or an eight digit one, as in the past. A few hundred K is more than enough for 'em. They don't starve.

However, fogeyish though it is of me there is something I miss about the days when we all knew and cared who was in the charts and an album might sell in the tens of millions rather than the tens of thousands. Sometimes (not always) it can be good that a large percentage of the population share an experience in common, and it was nice when that was a musical experience. I doubt it ever will be again.

I happen to like Joe Bonamassa for one, but though he works very hard and is one of the leading players today I don't believe I've ever met a non-guitarist who's even heard of him. I think it's a bit of a pity when we've all become quite as fragmented and segregated as that.

Cheers - C

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What I'm saying is that it will eventually flip. I guess it's like an hour glass. Pop, rap, etc, are on the top right now. When their sand gets low, people will get tired of it, when it runs out, the music industry will flip it. Notice how in the 80s EVERYBODY had a band. It'l start out small, build up to that, then crash.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

I just want to make one more point about the internet and the ability of new bands to emerge as stars from putting their music online.
The biggest music sensation to come out of the internet/youtube era is Justin Beiber. After 15 years of internet music, the one breakout star has been a 15 year old boy who appeals to 12 year old girls. Without the music industry backing bands, its nearly impossible to break out. There is just far too much competition on the internet for rock bands. Your only chance is if you can appeal to tweens.

Justin Bieber definitely isn't the only person to have had success because of the internet.
Most of The Arctic Monkeys' early success was because of their music being shared online. Their fourth album came out about a year ago and they are probably one of the biggest bands in the world today.
Current UK indie-press darlings Tribes have also garnered popularity as a result of internet exposure.

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Rated "M" for meaty.

You know I'm gonna go out on a limb and make all the old school rockers and blues lovers really mad here. But My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West, released in 2010, is one of the best albums of all time.



No I'm not joking.

So much wrong, so few words.

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Favorite bands:

Melvins
The Jesus Lizard
Cows
Big Business
R***man
Minutemen
Flight
Minor Threat
Big Black
Shellac
Karp
Scratch Acid
Wipers
Pixies

Don't bash Disco Duck..

_________________
Why buy an American made guitar if it was built by machines made in China?

You heard the man.

_________________
1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic