Quote:
Originally Posted by darklord700
Rock existed but 50 years if you start counting from the Beatles. If you started out in the 90s, all the 80s stuff should be current to you and you only needed to go back 20 years in the 70s and 60s which you mentioned there weren't that many to catch up on the "classics".
If you started out now, you would need to catch up on classics like Nirvana Peal Jam or even go transatlantic to Blur/Radioheads/Smiths/Joy Division ... which is a huge undertaking in comparison.
It is inevitable you witness this. If you look at classical music which spans a few centuries, eventually, something less important will just die and be forgotten and only the Beethovan/Bach/Mozart remain.
So I predict the Stones/Beatles/Pink Floyd/Clapton will remain relevant in 100 years but the lesser acts like Police/Dire Straits/Pearl Jam/Soundgarden that were once creme of the crop of their generation will fall into obscurity.
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I disagree with many of your points, although the basic point that there's just so much more music is obviously true. It's not even just a factor of time, it's simply that there is insanely more music coming out these days than there used to be. (Also btw I'm from Finland, so the nationality of music outside of Finland has never had much significance here, English or American is equally foreign
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As to classics in general, first I'd like to say that I'm guessing Clapton has all but fallen into obscurity already in the under thirty crowd, and the Stones are so much more about the phenomenon than the music that I think they'll be gone surprisingly fast after they stop touring. But that's kind of besides the point. Also, surprisingly many people NOW have only a very vague idea that there was a band called the Beatles.
Most importantly, I think the whole idea of "classics" in the traditional sense is going away to some extent. To start with there are already too many classics for it to mean much, and more are coming every day. It's not just that time has brought more of them, but also more bands and artists have come back from obscurity through re-releases and some have even reached classic status in some genre.
Also, kids don't identify themselves as strongly through music. Everyone listens to different things, mostly depending on the context. Listening to a genre is not a personal statement as much as it used to be, it's mostly just music, and genrecrossing is so common that it doesn't even mean anything anymore. (There's plenty of studies on this subject actually.) This lessens the personal significance of classics (as classics tend to be more or less genre speficic), and through that the cultural need for classics.
Music is also becoming more detached from time. As a part of the digital revolution in music, it doesn't really matter anymore when music was made, everything is equally available and equally current.
In the last century music was still a scarce resource. When bands went out of style they were gone; after their albums made the rounds in the "used" bins, most bands were gone for good. That has changed. Bands long gone have had their albums re-released, they have new fanpages and new fans, and they're on Spotify and Pirate Bay.
To put it bluntly; in the digital age, everything that was, is, and will forever be. So it used to be that music history moved forward simply because what was available kept changing. Now the amount of music available just keeps expanding. It used to be that "classic" meant a very concrete thing: availability. Now it's just a label you either attach to something or you don't.
I'd also like to add here that were only seeing the beginning of the digital revolution in culture, but I think it's clear it will radically change the way culture is seen and consumed. Music has already been touched by it, and books, movies and television will all follow. (Only thing that's slowing it is old people making laws and running companies and courts, who have no idea what's happening and completely fail to wrap their heads around it all.)
It's already clear that the television is something very different these days than what it used to be and in a decade I think the traditional concept of television will be pretty much gone, as shows will no longer be "aired", but instead they will be "released".
I just bought my first television (I've had TV's before, but none that I have bought myself), and I think it might very well also by my last.