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Remember when popular music was an important part of our lives?


Road Runner

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Popular music was never an important part of my life.

 

I haven't cared for pop music since 4th grade, but I always knew the songs and performers.

Last weekend I watched the Mtv Video Music Awards with a friend, I had heard of some of the performers, but only heard a couple of the songs.

Pop music has never been my thing, but today's pop music is fucking terrible. 

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Popular music was never an important part of my life.

Music always has been, but never popular music. There's a few good ones on that list, but when that stuff was on the radio, I was listening to Grand Funk, Black Sabbath, Savoy Brown, Humble Pie....

I was speaking of it's importance in general terms and in reference to the "general" population.  Many songs on this list you may not like, but it IS amazing how prolific and populous the pop music culture was in those days and is no more. 

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Today I gave someone a Birthday card for his 60th birthday. It featured all the top hits for 1955 and not only did I remember the but I remembered all the words. Unchained Melody; Rose Marie; Softly Softly; Cherry pink and Apple blossom white. It brought back memories as at that time I was sixteen and it was a good time to be young with plenty of jobs and lots of cheap entertainment on offer. Out dancing almost every night with pretty young girls wearing summer dresses and high heels and the world was full of promise.

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 how prolific and populous the pop music culture was in those days and is no more. 

"Prolific" and "populous" are both quantitative. There is every bit as much popular music today, as there was then, if not more, and while subjective, the "good" to "shit" ratio remains the same. 

There is more music than ever these days and so many more ways to access it.

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I haven't cared for pop music since 4th grade, but I always knew the songs and performers.

Heh. That's about the same time frame for me. When I was in 5th grade, we had a party in class and everyone brought records in. I couldn't understand why Bobby Sherman and the Partridge Family got played, while my Grand Funk Railroad and Black Sabbath stuff didn't. It was a bit of an epiphany. 

I was vindicated later on, in HS, when people started coming up to me and asking me to recommend stuff.....

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Heh. That's about the same time frame for me. When I was in 5th grade, we had a party in class and everyone brought records in. I couldn't understand why Bobby Sherman and the Partridge Family got played, while my Grand Funk Railroad and Black Sabbath stuff didn't. It was a bit of an epiphany. 

I was vindicated later on, in HS, when people started coming up to me and asking me to recommend stuff.....

I'm glad I had older brothers to help me along.

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Popular music was never an important part of my life.

Music always has been, but never popular music. There's a few good ones on that list, but when that stuff was on the radio, I was listening to Grand Funk, Black Sabbath, Savoy Brown, Humble Pie....

Twenty years after they were at their peak, this was one of my anthems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0l36nEvCc

And I sang this to my wife at our wedding:

 

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Other bit of trivia as I read the list:

"My Ding-A-Ling" was sadly, Chuck Berry's only #1 single.  What a sad commentary on the tastes of people --of all of his hits...

Saw America in concert with our local symphony orchestra and saw them do Horse With No Name while dating WoLW --not a bad tune but overall, not really my band (or hers).  The outdoor picnic part of the concert was nice, though.

 

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1972...in high school, and I can recall almost every one of those songs. Driving to McDonalds in the big....huge....1967 Ford Country Squire wagon, blue with wood grain on the side. 390 cubic inches of gas guzzling power. And a AM radio. WLS and WCFL. Route 53 Drive-in and Cuba Rd. for the spills and chills.

Ahhh the memories.

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The only bands I like that get mainstream exposure are Foo Fighters, and Jack White. 

Foos I can take or leave -but Grohl is a cool mofo. Jack White is hit-and-miss with me, but he's always interesting. He never takes the "safe" route and doesn't make "White Stripes 2015". And I've never heard one of his songs and said "huh....who's this?"

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When I was about 9 my mother bought an FM radio, "they play nice music"

That is what the music of our youth has become,

I don't recognize bands, songs, or even genres.

Every generation has to carve out their own place in history, and their own sound track. 

my dad got a car that had an FM radio, in '73 (I think). When I heard tracks from Dark Side Of The Moon on the radio I was stunned. I knew I'd found a home. It lasted about 10 years and then they just became Claer Channel corporate whores, playing the same, "safe" shit, over and over, so we parted company. Today, they're still playing the same songs, under the "Classic Rock" banner. (Saves on having to catalog new stuff, I guess). 

I am on the hunt for new music, all the time, and have had pretty good success finding it. I like to revisit the past, not live there. I don't care about genre or age of the music. I just listen and go "I like it/I don't like it". It's easier and less risk involved now than ever before. Gone are the days when you bought an album based on one track and found out the rest sucked.

My son is the same way - it's been interesting to see what older stuff he's picked up - and I've gotten tipped to new stuff that he likes.

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I remember listening to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album on a drive up to Wisconsin. Volume was loud, nobody was talking, and everybody was just listening to the music. It was a good ride and that album remains one of my favorites of that era. 

I was into Grunge music when it was popular and every so often I buy new music now and like it....the latest Of Monsters and Men album is pretty good as is the Decemberists album "Hazards of Love," btw. But, mostly I just stick my music library on shuffle and listen to that...or I make a pandora playlist of Chicago, or Janes Addiction and see what comes up. Pandora and those streaming apps are wonderful, but I haven't turned on a radio to listen to pop music in at least over a decade, probably two. 

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I remember listening to Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album on a drive up to Wisconsin.

The day I bought "Animals", I brought it home, put my headphones on and laid down on the bed to listen to it. About 1/2 way through the second side, I dozed off.....and woke up to the sounds of sheep. There was a good :30 or so where I lay there going "what.....the......?"

Still makes me laugh when I hear it.

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1972 I was 12. None of the music I listened to is on that list. Deep purple, Peter frampton, Santana, Thin Lizzy, led Zeppelin, UFO. To name a few.

Shit. Damned shame we didn't know each other - we could have split the cost of our record collections!

(Although trading Frampton Comes Alive for Wish You Were Here was the best trade I ever made....)

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... the Decemberists album "Hazards of Love"

Great album - my favorite of theirs. :)

When I was a kid in the 80s I listened to Casey Kasem's countdown religiously - hearing the latest and greatest was important.  But somewhere around '87 or '88 it went off the tracks and I jumped into "classic rock".  Eventually those same songs wore out though... nowadays I still listen to a lot of new music but I would never call it popular.  I know I've said it before - there's good stuff out there; it's just not as easy to find as it used to be. 

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Nope. A high school friend won the collection from a local FM station.  He hated the Beatles, I asked him what he wanted and that is what he chose.  :)

Who needs lyrics like "Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been" when you can have "Now you're messin' with a son of a bitch"?

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Mine was a couple of Nazareth albums for a complete Beatles collection. :)  

how could you toss aside "Hair of the Dog" for "She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah..."?

Edited by F_in Ray Of Sunshine
This is what I get for not scrolling down before posting.
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LOL, I believe I'm beginning to understand where the popular music haters are coming from. Would now be a bad time to mention that I was a huge fan of ONJ in the early 70s when she was into country? Then stopped listing to her when she got to be more pop during the Xanadu and Grease time frame .:D 

 

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