I’ve just stumbled upon this magnificent thread for the first time. I’ve read through the first 15 and the last 15 pages and will certainly be revisiting the thread to explore more of your ideas. Great stuff!
As a listener who loves the Futurists, the Dadaists, Discordian-inspired musics, and the rich and diverse history of electronic sound, from wire recorder musique concrete to the advent of magnetic tape and onward, I am predisposed to prefer music in a socio-cultural and historical context. Music from the first and second centuries is still stirring and awe-inspiring today, so I believe I hold my expectations of music to somewhat of a high standard.
All of that said, I see straight away that many who reject contemporary music as a whole do so from the perspective that commercial/pop music is representative of its time. This is the fundamental flaw in such a dismissive stance. Whereas pop reached its peak in the age of MTV and the era of radio, mass media has since dwindled in cultural relevance with the democratization of music technology - both in its production and its consumption.
The internet and the age of digital piracy opened listeners up a significantly greater history of recorded sound, both commercial Library of Congress recordings and independent private releases. Accessibility today is immeasurably greater than ever before, creating an environment of better-educated and more discerning listening tastes.
At the same time, digital distribution rendered major labels and media conglomerates (the former gatekeepers to the public consciousness) antiquated and irrelevant dinosaurs of a rapidly dying industry. Those living in the present and witnessing the formulaic, one-dimensional, manufactured product that is pop are beholden to the stark contrast of artistic value and non-value between “real” artists and the saccharine charade which desperately permeates all facets of mass media but falls on deaf ears.
I think we haven’t seen a John Peel, a Stockhausen, or a Cobain in recent decades because the channels which would have broadcast them as cultural giants have now disseminated into millions of more intricate tributaries of cultural waters. You are no longer bombarded by news of which artist to worship in a post-television-and-radio cord-cut culture, so you’re left to discover great music on your own. There just isn’t the uniform cultural identity with a spokesperson or hero the way their was in the era of rock. But it’s most certainly out there.
Go and discover it.
