It's only Rock N Roll but I like it

I have seen on my time line here recently a couple of comments about the fact that the music we grew up with was the best.  My wife and I totally agree. The music from the 1960s up to the 1980s was altogether different than the music that you hear today. The innocence that the music had and even the adult themes were more subliminal than spoken.  The groups and the singers from the bands from our era had their own specific individual sound, even the songs on their album’s had their own individual sound, not like the songs of today that have all the computerized echo and special effects mastered into them for these newer artists that can’t hold a tune.  I once saw a video of various artists singing Happy Birthday and the absolute worst one of them all was Justin Bieber. He couldn’t carry the tune.  I don’t mean to pick on any one individual artist of today, but very few of them don’t use all of the enhancements that modern recording provides in their music that our generation of artists were not able to use because it didn’t exist.  The computer age seems to have brought forth a generation of singers that are not of the caliber of our generation’s singers because the computer wasn’t around to make them sound good, they sounded great on their own. 

Now, you take a band like the Beatles, every single person, John, Paul George and Ringo have all been award winning vocalists.  I can’t believe that the kids of today think that some of these artists they listen to wrote some of the greatest songs to ever hit the radio when it was the artists of our day that wrote them.  I have seen some pretty good covers of songs that came from our era and a few really good songs from today’s artists, but when you try to listen to their albums there’s only one song on their whole albut that’s worth its weight and who’s going to pay for 10 songs when you’re only getting one that is worth listening too.  Yes, I’m an old fuddy duddy, but my bands are better than theirs.  Pick up an old album from the 1960s to the 1970s and you would be hard pressed to find only one song that you liked. Most of the albums had 10 great songs on them.  

 All of these “make a star” shows that are on television have only produced a couple of artists that can stand the test of time and I must admit those artists are pretty good but where are the rest of them.  A group like Sawyer Brown which was an extremely good group who won Star Search but is no longer around today. It’s almost impossible in this day and age for a group or any individual to make it in the industry as the Beatles and other groups did in the early sixties.  They developed their craft for several years before they hit it big and/or found the right producer to ever even get noticed.  The people at the top of the music industry are using these young people up so fast that it’s impossible for them to last. Yes I am blaming the way the record industry is run today on the lack of great talent and using what good talent they have up too quickly and they’re getting burned completely up before their time.  Even country music is now so homogenized and synthesized that it’s not funny.

Like Elvis once said in Jailhouse Rock, “I don’t sound like nobody”. I know everyone’s trying to find the next Alabama or the next Reba McEntire, but they seem to all sound exactly the same. The female artists sound like one another, not like in our day when you could’ve heard Dolly Parton who sounds like no one else I’ve ever heard or Linda Ronstadt who just received an award from the President a United States. It also has been said that our music is good and the younger generation’s music is bad. I personally cannot agree with that argument because the younger generation’s is just not music, most of it.  The groups from our day played music that is still in major demand today, just listen to Slacker, or Jango or Pandora.  I wonder where all the music of today will be 60 years from now when they really do let the dogs out, woof, woof, woof.  Not that I really care what happens to their music, excuse me, their talking on a record. 

I always thought that the music would get better in the future but it has digressed rather than bringing a lovely art form to a higher level.  Names like Elvis Presley,  the Everly Brothers, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Monkeys, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Mama’s and the Papas, the Righteous Brothers, Donovan, Cat Stevens, the Grateful Dead, Elton John, BJ Thomas, Barry Manilow and so, so many more names will live in the annals of rock history, it is impossible to name them all here. 

I want to know who it was that decided rap should be included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I guess that’s what we get for allowing a city that’s only claim to rock and roll fame was that a DJ from there supposedly coined the phrase rock and roll which, if the truth be told, was lifted from black artists in the 1930’s and 1940’s.  This brings me to my pet peeve, even though there can be made a substantial argument against Memphis, Tennessee being the birthplace of rock and roll, but without the blues and rhythm and blues which were definitely born from the Delta area that ran from Mississippi all the way up into Memphis, Tennessee and the acceptance of a young swivel hipped white boy from Tupelo, Mississippi recording his brand of music on the Sun label in Memphis, Tennessee, there would have been no rock and roll as we know it.  Whether you like that fact or not, it is absolutely a fact and whoever it was that decided that Cleveland was the rock and roll capital of the United States should be tarred and feathered and run out of the country on a rail while they play Johnny B. Goode.  I personally give the early rhythm and blues black artists the credit for starting a style of music that was blended with gospel and country music to become what we know as rock and roll.  And yes, Memphis really is the Home of Rock and Roll.