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  1. (Note from Collie: This comment is reprinted from the original posting, with my replies in blockquotes)

    Lord Jeasus woman, Agh!

    LOL! No, David, don’t hold back… tell us what you really think! ;)

    <Commence rant mode>

    Try, “Have the <expletive deleted> swine who run the big music companies and popular radio slipped even farther into the gutter since 1995?” That’s what you are really measuring here.

    Heh, you caught me. ;) I admit, this Firestarter is a very tongue-in-cheek one, written mostly to be silly and light-hearted.

    Pop music has been complete trash since the mid-1980’s; they haven’t let anything good on the radio since The Art of Noise. That 1978 to 1983 punk rock/New Wave explosion of kewlness was mostly driven by MTV for the tiny short period it was independent, and in Canada by CFNY in Toronto. Everything dumped upon us by mainstream music since about 1987 has been derivative, formulaic crap that I pretty much can’t stand, notable only for its ever increasing level of sexual expliticity (I declare expliticity to be a word, the same way disrespect is a verb). Then there’s rap, which I’ve heard described as the new Culture of Death for black kids.

    Ah, I remember MTV… back when they actually played music occasionally! *sigh* I miss that. ;-p

    Hmm… I’ve heard the rap/hiphop genre referred to as the new protest song genre. I even had a very fun anthropology course on “Pop Culture” which let us examine some of the lyrics for the really early rap and hiphop. I can see, in some of those pieces, a bit of originality and often-naughty humor… but I think rap has the same problem now that pop music has: it’s big money, so the truly original have been either bought out or overwhelmed with over-hyped garbage. Sure went fast, too. Profane, thoughtless rage sells, apparently.

    Take a look at those two lists. The 1995 one is mostly boy bands and “entertainers” who never had an origional thought in their lives; in 2005 you’ve got the same exact thing plus 50 Cent and Snoop Doggie Dog for God sakes. The guy is a friggin’ convict! Looks like he belongs in an orange suit chained to 12 more drug addicts just like him, picking up garbage in the highway median. In fact, that’s what he was doing a few years ago before he got his record contract.

    Personally, from the P.O.V. of a cranky 48 year old white guy who lived for music as a kid, the whole thing is an attack on my integrity as a human being. Music has gotten so bad I don’t even own a proper home stereo system, and I used to work in the development lab of the best speaker company in Canada. Had the ultimate audio gear on the planet at my disposal, haven’t seen the need to spend a dime on any since I left the company. Nothing worth playing.

    Well, I still love a lot of the classical pieces I heard repeatedly as a kid. When I can’t stand the garbage on the conglomerate-owned pop channels, I can still listen to classical. In context, it too had its crazy and eccentric geniuses, its well-paid purveyors of the boring same-old same-old, its occasional heart-wrenching bursts of artistic brilliance — and best of all, only the greatest stuff has survived over the years!

    I only listen in the car, and then I only listen to CD’s which are all instrumental dance, trance, or techno. It’s the only genre that exhibits any originality. Given the repetetive nature of Techno, that’s a pretty scary concept. I’m switching over to MP3s these days, just to be able to download something original from kids in their basements with a synthesizer and a bit of imagination. If you get them before they go commercial they haven’t had all the life smashed out of them.

    I think I have to agree here. The RIAA is, IMNSHO, shooting itself in the foot. Every impartial study I’ve ever read of “piracy” (in both music and writing) shows the artists gain by allowing free downloads. Poor college students may be satisfied with a crappy quality free recording, but the average workaday people with money aren’t. They go out and buy better renditions — and then they also try out other works by the artist. So-called piracy actually measurably drives sales up.

    Almost everything on radio is Britney/ Christina/ Jessica/ Biansay/ flavour of the week stripper crooning some perverted lyric, or boy band type doing same. Plus rap, which is just plain radio porno. Hell, porno movies have better sound tracks.

    </end rant mode>

    The Ever So Cranky David

    P.S. Does this mean I’m old?

    Heehee! I couldn’t possibly say — I’m too busy being crotchety myself on other subjects as well! ;)

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