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Julie Moriarty
06-11-2014, 10:35 PM
Yesterday my SO hooked into a Doobie Brothers greatest hits thing on YouTube. This song came on and the headphones came off and I was asked if I had ever heard the song. It was "I Cheat The Hangman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7EZv5GsGzs)." The song took me back and sent goosebumps down my spine. The guitars, the keyboards, the brass, the vocals, everything blended so beautifully.

Maybe it's just me, but the music back then just seemed... well... music.

David G Baker
06-11-2014, 10:48 PM
It all depends on your generation. My music came from the mid 50's thru the mid 70's but I really enjoy most music from Classic to Country. Haven't found any Rap that I enjoy but I am not exposed to it. I am sure that I like some of the Doobie Brothers music but I can't think of any titles right now. I am going to Youtube and listen to a few.

Bruce Page
06-11-2014, 11:33 PM
The Doobie Brothers were masters at Album Music. You bought their album for one song and fell in love with the rest. I had just moved to northern New Mexico from SoCal when Stampede was released. It’s one of my all time favorites.


Thanks, it brought back lots of memories!

Greg Peterson
06-11-2014, 11:35 PM
I once heard a musician say that you have a lifetime to write your first album, and nine months to write your second album. Most of those one hit wonders of the 60's and 70's were the culmination of a lifetimes experience, distilled into two and a half to three minutes. Hits of the 70's ran the gamut from folk, to rock, to pop, country, disco and everything in between. It was a no holds barred era when the music had dynamics and melodies.

Today's music, at least the top 100, is all formula with little difference from one to the next.

Heck, in the 70's we had song's like 'Popcorn', Convoy, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Crocodile Rock, Love will keep us together, Uncle Albert, Sister Mary Elephant, Ear ache my eye.......

Sigh. No variety these days. The performers can generally sing and dance well, but they seem artificial, calculated and premeditated.

Ken Fitzgerald
06-12-2014, 1:02 AM
The 50's through the early 80's was a fantastic time to be alive and listening to music. As stated from folk music, though the British Invasion, though bands like Chicago, The Ides of March, all the Motown Greats....Rare Earth.....The Bee Gees......Santana.........The Buckinghams .....3 Dog Night..... The 4 Seasons..... The Beach Boys..... The Rolling Stones..... The Animals..... The Spenser Davis Group......Jay and the Americans...... There were some excellent Broadway musicals from that 60's too!

I had been playing bass guitar and singing in a band for a year when the Beatles led the British Invasion into this country. What a breath of fresh air! No offense to Chuck Berry but you can only play Johnny B. Goode so many times in one evening before you want to vomit! So much of the Bobby Vinton, Bobby Vee type music required more sounds than a typical 4 piece band of teens could produce.

As you are probably aware, on July 8th, 2010, I awoke deaf. After a lot of work on my part rehabbing my hearing in the implanted ear, I am not only listening to and enjoying music again, I am buying CDs of music from that era. Far from being perfect, some of the music is fairly accurate and some of it is distorted. Every night when I remove my hardware, I reenter the world of the deaf, am reminded of what it's like and am ever so grateful for what I have regained!

My fetish is bass guitar. If I could die and reincarnate as someone else I would want to come back with James Jamerson's bass playing skills! I have a Fender Power Jazz Bass sitting 3 feet from me and can't hear the bottom bass notes now with my cochlear implant. I was in Spokane this afternoon, getting new software loaded on my CI and having it remapped (similar to adjusting a stereo equalizer) and I remarked I was thinking of selling my bass as I cannot hear the bottom notes. That's not unusual for those of us with CIs to lose the ability to hear the low frequencies.

But...the 60's into the early 80's for music? What a beautiful time to be alive and listening.

Greg Peterson
06-12-2014, 1:17 AM
Yet another area of agreement, Ken. What is this world coming to?

Is there any potential for getting the CI to register lower frequencies, or is it more to do with the grey matter interface?

James Jamerson, good taste. Duck Dunn was another. John Deacon (Millionaire Waltz is amazing), Tony Levine.

So many great bass players.

Ken Fitzgerald
06-12-2014, 1:52 AM
The frequencies that you hear with a normal functioning are relative to the physical position within the cochlea where they are sensed. High Frequencies are sensed near the base of the cochlea and low frequencies are sensed near the small apex. The coaxial cable from the CI implant computer which is inserted into the cochlea, is actually made up of several concentric cables (16 in my case) each terminating with an element that contacts the nerve in the cochlea at different places. In theory, in the case of the brand I have which has 16 elements, I should only hear 16 frequencies but it's actually broader than that. Those who do retain bass frequency hearing were lucky enough to have that as residual hearing but typically, when the cable is inserted into the cochlea, it destroys the "hairs" lining the cochlea and the element doesnt' get to the apex.

The brand I have, I waited for 10 months to regain FDA approval and return to the US market from a self-imposed recall. They had 2 internal implants fail in such a way as to cause the CI recipient to experience pain, though the pain could be stopped by removing the sound processor (which looks like a hearing aid). This brand is made in the US, by company bought by a global Swiss corporation. This particular brand's design has the ability to apply bias to one or more or none of the elements simultaneously using different polarities and amplitudes. Thus, it can effectively stimulate a larger area than just where the element makes contact. In clinical trials they were able to produce a much wider spectrum of frequencies to be heard. The software to do this is still under development and will require FDA approval before be implemented outside clinical trials. Those CI-borgs who were involved with the clinical trials said music was greatly improved with that new software.

I also chose this brand ( only 3 are FDA approved for use in the US) because at the time I chose it, it was only using about 28% of the implanted computer's capability. That means future upgrades without futher surgery. There is no battery powering the internal implant. The battery powered soundprocessor which looks similar to a hearing aid but has a cable with a large disc at the end, works similar to a HA but the last thing it does is modulate a radio signal. The round disc is an antenna/coil with a rare earth magnet in it. The implant under the scalp has an antenna and a rare earth magnet, so the disk is held to the scalp by the two magnets. The radio signal is transmitted through the scalp, is received by the implant processor where it strips off the RF and converts it to a DC voltage to power the processor. The incoming digital signal, now missing it's RF component, goes to the CPU of the implant which outputs signals to the 16 channels driving individual biases to the elements contacting the nerve.

In short, no I will probably not regain low frequency hearing in that ear. I do have another ear that I wear a HA on. I can't function with just the HA, I tried for 10 months. While it's a candidate for implanting, I have held off. Someday, we might be able to regrow the hairs that line the cochlea. If that would happen, that ear might be a candidate. There has been talk about this potential for a decade now.

Rich Engelhardt
06-12-2014, 6:48 AM
LOL!

Every generation is going to say their music was the best. Talking 'bout my generation....(apologies to the Who :D ) - we thought we were out to change the world with our world changing songs.

Little did we know that, back in 427 BC a fellow by the name of Plato had this to say about music when he wrote a little book called - The Republic.

"This is the point to which, above all, the attention of our rulers should be directed, –that music and gymnastic be preserved in their original form, and no innovation made. They must do their utmost to maintain them intact. And when any one says that mankind most regard, “The newest song which the singers have,” they will be afraid that he may be praising, not new songs, but a new kind of song; and this ought not to be praised, or conceived to be the meaning of the poet; for any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to be prohibited. So Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him; he says that when modes of music change, of the State always change with them."

:D :D

My dad and I used to argue about music every time we got in the car.
He called "my music" a lot of noise and nonsense and that the lyrics were stupid - when you could make them out.

I countered with "and boop boop diddum diddum whatum chew" isn't nonsense ? :D
Where I really got him though was when I pointed out that 90% or better of "his" Easy Listening stuff was just "my music" done over and the lyrics stripped out.

:D

David Weaver
06-12-2014, 7:16 AM
Classic rock and progressive metal (which is in some ways a follow-on of Kansas and other more progressive classic rock).

Jim Matthews
06-12-2014, 7:28 AM
Rock and Roll is meant to be played by young people.

If you're taking Geritol, you're no longer a rocker.
Remember that the output of most musicians (Van Morrison excepted)
drops off at the same rate as mathematicians, as it emanates
from the same focal centers of the brain.

There are still great blues players out there,
but they're emulators, not innovators.

The problem with today's crop is the reliance on
pitch correction and splicing in the mix.

Features that make music memorable are lost under too much polish.

There haven't been real rockers on the radio since the Ramones.

Paul McGaha
06-12-2014, 7:36 AM
Classic rock the best? Well, to me it is.

To this today classic rock and old Motown music are pretty much all I listen to.

Just listen to country music a little, Willie and Waylon kind of stuff.

We raised our kids on classic rock music. Our youngest kids are in their 30's now and it is kind of pleasing for Frannie and me to see at least a couple of the kids seem to prefer classic rock music. They seem to agree with our tastes.

PHM

PS: The Doobie Brother's - "The Captain and me" was one of my 1st albums, a very good album.

Val Kosmider
06-12-2014, 7:54 AM
I give you Jessica: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfM6nRVBvGs

Or a little Layla: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th3ycKQV_4k

Bill Edwards(2)
06-12-2014, 7:57 AM
Rock and Roll is meant to be played by young people.

If you're taking Geritol, you're no longer a rocker.
Remember that the output of most musicians (Van Morrison excepted)
drops off at the same rate as mathematicians, as it emanates
from the same focal centers of the brain.

There are still great blues players out there,
but they're emulators, not innovators.

The problem with today's crop is the reliance on
pitch correction and splicing in the mix.

Features that make music memorable are lost under too much polish.

There haven't been real rockers on the radio since the Ramones.

Obviously you have not seen a recent George Thorogood concert. :D

Julie Moriarty
06-12-2014, 8:16 AM
When I wrote this last night I oversimplified by using the term classic rock. The image in my mind was much broader, more along the lines of music performed by people playing instruments. Last year I saw Joe Walsh (he was playing at something called "Ribfest") and he talked about the heavy infusion of computer software in today's music and mentioned Pro Tools as an example of music being so processed it loses it's soul. He said if they had Pro Tools when the Eagles were recording Hotel California, they would still be in the studio. That really stuck with me.

In 1965 I was playing bass in a garage band. The band dissolved once we got into high school and over the next several decades I barely played at all. I recently started making guitars and have a couple in the house now. I can't play much but when I pick up one of those guitars I feel a connection with music that had I lost over the years. I can't imagine ever feeling that connection with music created on a computer.

Ken Fitzgerald
06-12-2014, 9:36 AM
"Best rock music"? As someone else said, most will believe it's that which is developed by their generation........but in the end it's subjective. It is just a matter of personal opinion. There is no one measurement or standard for "best" rock music.

Curt Harms
06-12-2014, 9:46 AM
IMO MTV and VH1 changed the pop music biz. When radio was the primary way to listen to music, a band had to sound good - how they looked was less important. Today it sure seems like looks, choreography and autotune/other processing software trump musical skill.

Duane Meadows
06-12-2014, 10:02 AM
"Best rock music"? As someone else said, most will believe it's that which is developed by their generation........but in the end it's subjective. It is just a matter of personal opinion. There is no one measurement or standard for "best" rock music.

Or "best" much of anything else for that matter!

Mike Henderson
06-12-2014, 11:42 AM
No offense to Chuck Berry but you can only play Johnny B. Goode so many times in one evening before you want to vomit!
That reminds me of a sign in a bar in New Orleans (where I grew up).

It said:

Requests $5.00
Saints $10.00

Now this was lots of years ago, when $5 or $10 was a lot of money. The band was so sick of playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" that if you wanted to hear it, you had to pay extra.

Mike

paul cottingham
06-12-2014, 12:09 PM
Love classic rock. Lots of bands few have heard of, Velvet Underground, Graham Parker, and the like. But I am also a fan of punk, (love playing it, too; bass player) and Seattle grunge. A strange, eclectic collection.

Shawn Pixley
06-12-2014, 12:10 PM
As Curt rightly stated, the way we access music today is fundamentally different than in the past. Radio is mostly hip-hop, lantino, or top 40 these days. Often centrally programed and sent through various stations domestically. There are a few college radio stations that play broad spectrum / indie types of bands. I stream one from San Diego that I like.

But, there is a wide range of indie music being created and played today. But it is not on the radio. Generally, the music is streamed via the internet.

Maybe you'd be surprised to know:
1.) There is a large following of Neo Progressive rock (Prog). They have taken and built upon the prog / album oriented rock of the 70's early 80's. Older progressive rock bands are touring again (King Crimson, etc...). The new Prog bands include Blackfield, Mercury Tree, Steven Wilson, etc... My wife is very big into the Prog scene. Me, not so much
2.) There are a number of very talented Indie / Alternative bands that are producing some really good music these days. You could check out - The National, the Killers, Pelican, A Place to Bury Strangers, the Joy Formidable, Them Crokked Vultures, We are Augustines, etc...
3.) Metal, there are 5-6 sub-genres of metal out there: math rock, speed metal, deathmetal, doom metal, etc... Again, not really my cup of tee but there is a lot out there.
4.) Roots / Folk Rock revival, stripped - there are some people doing some very nice work these days. Artists like the Decemberists, Nico Case, Trampled by Turtles, etc... Some of this is really, really good.
5.) Industrial Rock - there seems to be a continuing genre out there.
6.) Techno - the techno scene didn't really die but a lot of it was incorporated into hip-hop.

You will not find much of the above on the radio or featured in iTunes. I find that I get exposed to new music in 3 to 5 ways:
1.) Stream an artist you like on Pandora. They will suggest other bands you might like. Some you will like some you may not.
2.) Listen to your family. Both my wife and son have turned me onto some new bands. I have turned them on as well.
3.) There are online communities for music in the same way SMC is a community for wood working community. These can give you a much broader exposure to music.
4.) college and other indie radio stations often stream their programming. You no longer have to tune into a station within 30 miles of you.
5.) iTunes - if you burn some of your CD's to iTunes, their Genius function will suggest similar music. Again a bit of hit and miss here, but you can find bands that you otherwise might have missed.

Shawn Pixley
06-12-2014, 12:14 PM
Love classic rock. But I am also a fan of punk, (love playing it, too; bass player) and Seattle grunge.

Paul,

Good to know there are a few of us out there. Most of my work was done in the Seattle alternative and grunge scene. My band was there in the begining. I've been debating whether I should re-mix / re-do some tracks. Unfortunately, sometimes we were rushed in the studio and It really didn't turn out the way it should. I am primarily a guitarist, but can pay bass if the situation calls for it.

Keep playing!

Bruce Page
06-12-2014, 12:22 PM
Obviously you have not seen a recent George Thorogood concert. :D
I went to a George Thorogood and the Destroyers concert once. It was the worst concert I’ve ever been to. The music was good but it was so loud I thought my ears were going to start bleeding. I couldn’t wait to get out of the building.
Too much of a good thing?

Pat Barry
06-12-2014, 12:38 PM
I went to a George Thorogood and the Destroyers concert once. It was the worst concert I’ve ever been to. The music was good but it was so loud I thought my ears were going to start bleeding. I couldn’t wait to get out of the building.
Too much of a good thing?
I don't think its possible to be too loud at a rock concert. If anything, louder is better. I want to feel it.

By the way - I still think of the liner notes for one of my favorite old bands "made loud to be played loud". They hit the nail on the head with that statement.

Pat Barry
06-12-2014, 12:43 PM
1.) Stream an artist you like on Pandora. They will suggest other bands you might like. Some you will like some you may not..
I tried and gave up on Pandora because of their strange progression of 'suggestions'. I quit maybe 4 years ago. Have they improved? I couldn't figure out how they could take me from Led Zep or Queen or Rush or whoever to things I never heard of. I wanted a chnnel for a particular band and to listent to that exclusively. Does Pandora give you that option now?

Phil Stone
06-12-2014, 12:58 PM
Wow, a lot of bass-playing woodworkers! I'm currently gigging in a band that covers some less overplayed but excellent music from the 50s through the present. It makes me want a Sawstop, if you catch my drift.

Paul McGaha
06-12-2014, 1:26 PM
Rock and Roll is meant to be played by young people.

If you're taking Geritol, you're no longer a rocker.
Remember that the output of most musicians (Van Morrison excepted)
drops off at the same rate as mathematicians, as it emanates
from the same focal centers of the brain.

There are still great blues players out there,
but they're emulators, not innovators.

The problem with today's crop is the reliance on
pitch correction and splicing in the mix.

Features that make music memorable are lost under too much polish.

There haven't been real rockers on the radio since the Ramones.

Some very good Van Morrison for you Jim:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXTSlETlShg

PHM

Andrew Pitonyak
06-12-2014, 1:29 PM
part of it may also be how they chose to mix the music.... This two minute video illustrates this very well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

Jim Rimmer
06-12-2014, 1:41 PM
I don't claim to know much about how modern music is created/recorded. I'm sure there's a lot of very sophisticated electronics that makes things sound the way they do. I just think back to my youth and the earl rock and rollers. Budd Holley put the drums in a cardboard box on one song to get the sound he wanted. On another I believe they recorded in a stairwell to create the reverb he was after. A little more creative when you didn't have the modern technology.

Shawn Pixley
06-12-2014, 2:51 PM
I don't think its possible to be too loud at a rock concert. If anything, louder is better. I want to feel it.

By the way - I still think of the liner notes for one of my favorite old bands "made loud to be played loud". They hit the nail on the head with that statement.

I disagree as to whether something can be too loud. When I saw the Ramones in a small club (capacity 330-400), they still used their stadium sound system. A sound system designed to be loud for 50,000 people is incredibly loud in a small place like that. You'd feel it. You'd feel it the next day too, maybe the day after that.

My wife has tinitus from the concerts. We still go to concerts often but now use good ear protection. Our household probably sees 200 concerts per year.

Brian Ashton
06-12-2014, 2:55 PM
I used to think ones music sense developed with what they were exposed to in their formative years. And for the most part that's true when people pound their chests about what is the best music - the passion of music.

But! Once I had heard mid to late 60s Fleetwood Mac, when Greeny was at the helm, much before my formative years and I never had the opportunity to hear it play even in those influential years... But when I did hear Need Your Love So Bad by Greeny it resonated with every part of my being. It was like the music I had always being waiting for to hear , but didn't know what it was or where to look for it. I was hooked in about 30 seconds. And every once in awhile I dig up another gem, such as Sonny Boy William's Bring It on Home or Bob Dylans Things Have Changed. Each time there's a resonance with every part of my being. I wonder if we're in our infinite mysterious ways somehow tuned to certain types of music, it's as if my brain waves and cells instantly align with the beat, rhythm and lyrics like iron files to a magnet.

It seems to go even further than the young mans angst we all have when we hit puberty and can identify with certain songs. I can remember a number of ages I went through where certain songs appealed to the sense because of what I was going through at the time... Like U2's Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For in my early 20s and Lynard Skynards Simple Man in my late teens... The lyrics appealed to my emotions but they didn't drive deep into my soul like those other songs. Hard to describe really. Probably not making a great deal of sense either am I.

Daniel Greening
06-12-2014, 3:02 PM
I'm an early 80s baby and I definitely think classic rock is the best! Love all the music which my Dad introduced me to!

Kev Williams
06-12-2014, 3:48 PM
Back in 1981 I spent nearly 5 grand for my stereo system. Bob Carver's 1st year C-2000 Sonic Holography Autocorrelator preamp, a pair of his "cube" amps (500w in mono mode), a nice Dual turntable, top notch Harmon Cardon metal tape deck, pair of Dahlquist DQ-10 5-way speakers, which sat on top of a pair of Realistic Mach 2 speakers, and behind me for the time delay was a pair of studio monitor speakers (forget the brand). I could sit anyone down in "the chair", have them close their eyes, play any song of their choice, then ask them to point to the speakers- or ANY speaker. No one could. When set up properly sound would come from virtually everywhere, the sides, behind walls, the ceiling... I learned to appreciate "good" music with that system. Yanni, Andreas Vollenweider, Manheim Steamroller, I even appreciate some good Mozart... But good ol' rock is what I listened to most. And while I must admit that the "if it's too loud you're too old" cliche is somewhat true as I approach 60 (Nazareth and April Wine come to mind, sadly ;) ) , at this moment Alice Cooper's "Brutal Planet" is in my car's CD player, and I have several White Zombie CD's I listen to regularly. I also love KMFDM, Nightwish and Nickelback. I love POUNDING music, if not so much just LOUD music.

As for new stuff, I don't listen to much, but I gotta tell ya, I can listen to Icona Pop all day, that's just plain some catchy stuff... :)

Charles Wiggins
06-12-2014, 5:27 PM
Yesterday my SO hooked into a Doobie Brothers greatest hits thing on YouTube. This song came on and the headphones came off and I was asked if I had ever heard the song. It was "I Cheat The Hangman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7EZv5GsGzs)." The song took me back and sent goosebumps down my spine. The guitars, the keyboards, the brass, the vocals, everything blended so beautifully.

Maybe it's just me, but the music back then just seemed... well... music.

Of course it's a matter of taste, but I think classic rock is better than most of what is coming out now. Part of that is that back then, you had to actually be a musician and producing an album was actually work, so you didn't have every joe-blo and his cousin doing it. Today so much can be done digitally by one person that making music can be more a function of programming than musicianship. We all know the real test is what they sound like live, even then, these days with Auto Tune you can't really judge someone "live."

Michael Weber
06-12-2014, 5:33 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJNgEZyEeh8

Paul McGaha
06-12-2014, 5:51 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJNgEZyEeh8

Completely agree with you Michael.

PHM

Bruce Darrow
06-12-2014, 6:32 PM
I still listen to and enjoy the rock of my high school/college "formative" years - I digitized all my albums, and this stuff regularly comes up on my pod, which is always in shuffle mode. And while I, perhaps naturally, think it far superior to what came after (with a few notable exceptions) my taste has morphed to what was laid down before "my time" - stuff from the 20's up through the 50's. What really lights my fire these days is a good modern recording, by a contemporary artist (preferably w/an acoustic string band), of a 30's swing tune. Rockabilly, jazz, jump blues, country, jug, doo wop, R&B, rock 'n roll, folk, gospel and other genres from their "heydays" all resonate far more for me these days than even MY classic rock. Call it "roots" or whatever you want, I find the melodies, harmonies, rhythms and lyrics far more interesting......but then, despite what is popular on the radio these days (and even then, come to think of it), I'm the only person I've ever met who has ANY taste in music......

Garth Almgren
06-12-2014, 9:28 PM
I'm with you Daniel - born in 1980, and most of my favorite music is from before I was born.

Michael Weber
06-12-2014, 9:54 PM
I love some of the big band stuff too. I think "In the Mood" is one of the best tunes ever.

Moses Yoder
06-13-2014, 4:17 AM
Currently "Knock Three Times" is the best song ever made. In the past it has been "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits, currently a close second. I honestly do not believe music was better back then, I think it is just that I feel it was better. Aaron Neville is still doing some good stuff today, an amazing voice. Just looking through my "Favorite Favorites" on Spotify I see Jason Mraz, Big & Rich, Pink, Jerrod Niemann, Celtic Thunder, Lorde, Shaggy, Enya, Josh Turner, those are the current active musicians. I have lots of classic rock too but there is still some good music being made today.

David Weaver
06-13-2014, 7:52 AM
There's still an extremely strong music scene around nashville with some of, or more probably the most polished non-classical musicians ever. There's still talent around, tons of it, but it gets relegated either to something like the nashville scene or as session musicians (laying background musical tracks for simple pop music or in country music, etc) or as both. Folks like this guy - darrell scott (who is more songwriter than blazing session musician, but he's good and has serious ability to be a one man source of nice sounds and meaningful lyrics at the same time).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svS6MwQ5mBY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVlIzr5qfAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j57fvO4C9Mo (playing something of paul simon's)


And anyone who has ever seen Alison Krauss and Union Station live, I don't know if I have ever seen a better band of any kind. They are SUPER pro live.

When I was in high school in the early 1990s, I was in a led zeppelin cover band (we had paid gigs, not just playing for fun in someone's basement). We were completely immersed in the 1970s, but that was popular in the 1990s before grunge took hold (and to me, grunge was a real change from the groove and thoughtful songwriting of the 1960s and 70s to brainless music all the way around). When we started to get more requests to play nirvana and bands like Live who had nothing going on musically in their music, I quit. I didn't catch too much of the mainstream music in the 1980s, but you can start on youtube on something like money for nothing or tears for fears mad world and go from there and really have some flashbacks. For those of us who were kids in the 1980s, just looking at the pictures in the background, and the cars, and realizing it was 30 years ago really puts you in an instant mindset of those times.

I remember early computers, the politics of the time and the patriotism that some folks had, and the others that hated the political direction, but I don't remember the kind of narcissism that we have now on an individual level. If you talked, nobody heard it, anyway, there were no blogs, etc.

To me, the end of music starts with new kids on the block type stuff on the pop side and then grunge on the rock side. Even when you had pop stuff like michael jackson, people forget how talented michael jackson was.

It's nice sometimes to go back and look at the various musicians live now that you can dial them up on youtube whenever you want. You can really tell who was excellent live (and from the 80s kid perspective, Dire Straits, Mr. Big, Extreme, Slaughter - those last three may be a bit corny for the folks who didn't grow up in 80s hair music, but they were not hard on a pitch sensitive ear live and they could move their their music with ease), and who wasn't (I won't say, no need to cut down bands). With the really good bands and musicians, something always seems to be missing when you hear them live first, and then hear their records. With overproduced junk, something is missing when you hear the supposed musicians live.

I'll say this much, too, we are lucky to live in a country where expression via music has been relatively free, so we can hear what the creativity of people can provide to us.

Stan Calow
06-13-2014, 6:57 PM
Its the connection that comes from what you are listening to in your dating years. Music & romance & coming of age etc, makes it a bigger part of you than what you listen to now. I can appreciate well-made new music, but it doesn't affect me the way an old '70s hit does. Yep, Doobie Bros was my first real concert.

Chris Padilla
06-13-2014, 7:06 PM
I graduated high school in the late 80s so I identify with a lot of the hair-metal groups of that era. It seems strange to me that Motley Crue and Poison are now considered classic rock!!! Blah!!!!

However, I'm a huge huge HUGE 70s fan and like most everything from that time. Led Zeppelin is my all-time favorite but there was so much good music from this time that attempting a list is difficult. Queen, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Lynrd Skynrd, AC/DC, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and all the solo'ing are a few.

Still, I can listen to Led Zeppelin forever and all the reissues are things I can't get enough of.

Bruce Page
06-13-2014, 8:01 PM
Ah, a Led Head. That explains a lot. ;)