Which decade had the worst music?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


'Shot by Both Sides' is more typical of Magazine for me, and when they cut that Dave Formula was not yet the keyboard player.

I'd say it was typical of early Magazine certainly- but then 'Spiral Scratch' & 'Real Life' are different from 'Correct Use of Soap'.

The Stranglers' keyboard sound would have happily graced an awful lot of prog-rock groups records with no jarring effect I think. Given the age of Cornwell & Jet Black this is not too surprising.


And no, I don't have any Numan or Tubeway Army.


I do have Thomas Leer & Robert Rental, The Normal, Throbbing Gristle, the Cabs, Suicide, B.E.F. & the Human League, Cluster, La Dusseldorf, Clock Dva....

[MRT144]

all the dates and people in those quotes are from the 80s? when i said electronic music was really pushed into the limelight? influences doesnt = the music itself. are you dense?

and why do you have such a broad definition of electronic music?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by MRT144


stfu. if you want to get technical then why use kraftwerk? im saying electronic music was birthed in whole in the 80s, not just inseminated. introduced to the masses and was accepted by the masses.

Electronic music was born in the 1960s, but really became a genre in the 1970s with its own bin at the record store and everything. Tangerine Dream comes to mind as a band which inhabited that bin solely.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
It's worth pointing out too that the early 80's and late 80's had characteristics of the 70's and 90's respectively. So, for example, Husker Du, Throwing Muses and Pixies (the most influential bands of their genre in their era) were actually going in the late 80's, but it was the following decade that they came to fruition, so-to-speak.

Husker Du was very good as well as influential in the mid-80s. By the 90s I thought they had broken up. But I agree that there were a lot of great bands in the 80s which didn't manage to crack into the popular consciousness during that decade, if ever. I'd add the Butthole Surfers to your list above. There was even some decent music in the 1980s that was popular, like the Police, the Talking Heads, the B-52s etc. It's just as you say, that the average popular music was so abominable that the 80s sucked it hard.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by MRT144
all the dates and people in those quotes are from the 80s? when i said electronic music was really pushed into the limelight? influences doesnt = the music itself. are you dense?

No, but I'd say you're giving us a pretty good definition of dense yourself.

If

electronic music was really pushed into the limelight

only in the 1980s, then what the hell where Tangerine Dream doing having a hit in 7 countries with 'Phaedra' in 1974, you great maroon!


And what on earth do you think Eno was doing in 1972 with those early synthesizers, echo and delay systems and samples ?

Only having hits with Roxy Music, is all.


I know it's not your fault you weren't born in the 60s, but honestly, chum, some of us who were have been exposed to a lot more music, and a lot more ELECTRONIC music since then.

and why do you have such a broad definition of electronic music?

What, you mean like 'music created on electronic instruments might just be electronic music' ?



A better question might be why is your definition so depressingly limited... and you've already provided the answer.


I'll quote Robert Moog again. Hint, MRT144 - he invented something important in the development of electronic music from the 60s onwards:

How did you get interested in electronic music?

I learned to play the piano as a child, because my mother wanted me to. But what I really wanted to do was fool around with electronics as my father did. When I was 14 I built an electronic instrument, a theremin, from a do-it-yourself magazine article. Then in 1961 I wrote an article about how to build a transistor theremin. Along with the article I offered a kit of parts. I sold over a thousand of those kits, and it occurred to me that this was an interesting and rewarding way of making a living. So rather than go and work as an industrial scientist for Bell Labs or IBM, I decided go into business designing and making electronic kits for people.

How did that lead to the Moog synthesiser?

By 1964 I had learned quite a lot about what sorts of sounds could be made electronically. Around that time I met Herbert Deutsch, a composer who was interested in making new sounds electronically. The circuit I came up with when I started working with him became the basis for the Moog.

What were those early instruments like?

A Moog covers three and a half octaves, 44 notes. You play it one note at a time like a solo instrument; in terms of traditional performance you cannot play chords on it. From 1964 through 1970, the only instruments we made were large modular ones designed for use in studios. These were the instruments on which the Moog records of the late 60s were made. At the same time we began to get a lot of enquiries about smaller instruments from working musicians who wanted to carry it to recording sessions or a gig. We designed the Minimoog in response to that.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg18524921.400

Here's Brian Eno on a very important single of the 70s employing electronics & vocal. Intriguingly, it sounds not too far removed from the kind of vocals on Inner City's album, 'Paradise' :

"I really like Public Enemy, and I think that Donna Summer's `I Feel Love' is one of the best songs of the last ten years. It has a mechanical, Teutonic beat with that luxurious voice. Other people wouldn't think of putting such opposites together. They'd make something that sounds like Depeche Mode."

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V110/N44/eno.44a.html

Now this is the theremin. It's an electronic instrument :

The output was a monophonic continuous tone modulated by the performer. The timbre of the instrument was fixed and resembled a violin string sound. The sound was produced directly by the heterodyning combination of two radio-frequency oscillators: one operating at a fixed frequency of 170,000 Hz, the other with a variable frequency between 168,000 and 170,000 Hz. the frequency of the second oscillator being determined by the proximity of the musician's hand to the pitch antenna. The difference of the fixed and variable radio frequencies results in an audible beat frequency between 0 and 2,000 Hz. The audible sound came from the oscillators, later models adding an amplifier and large triangular loudspeaker.

http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/theremin/index.html

It doesn't sound like a cowbell, or a triangle, or a piano. Rumour has it, it's even been used in the creation of popular electronic music! And it's been around since before even your parents were born....


In fact, you have only to look at the rise of the 12" single and 12" remixes in the mid-to-late 70s to see the incredible growth in popularity of electronic music, especially music with a distinctive repetitive beat, like Kraftwerk's- Blondie, sounding very different from their early days on 'Heart of Glass', Sparks reinventing themselves with 'Beat The Clock', the Human League anticipating Lo-Fi by almost two decades on 'The Dignity of Labour, Pts I-IV', and of course M and 'Pop Muzik', P.I.L. & 'Death Disco' and 'Memories' and 'Metal Box', Prince Far I and Lee Perry's dub experimentation, and of course the sound of the disco on Bohannon's 'Let's Start The Dance', Lamont Dozier's 'Going Back To My Roots', Chic's 'Everybody Dance'-

Bohannon: Let's Start The Dance (Mercury, 1978)

Chic: Everybody Dance (Atlantic, 1978)

Lamont Dozier: Going Back To My Roots, (1977)

Dub:

Lynford Anderson at Dynamic sounds was one, creating bizarre, effects-laden tunes such as The Engineers’ “Noisy Village” (1968), one of the weirdest pieces of music ever committed to vinyl, including ducks quacking and a pianist obsessively playing the same thing repeatedly. Soon, producers such as Lee Perry and Bunny Lee were encouraging Anderson to do something outlandish on their instrumental tracks, resulting in records such as The Upsetters’ “Clint Eastwood” (1969), which was very close to dub.

When King Tubby’s little acetate-cutting studio in the ghetto area of Waterhouse, Kingston 11, began to be used for mixing in the early 1970s, the proprietor’s wizardry at electronics allied to his knowledge of what could be done with sound soon made it the heart of the dub business. Tubby used repeat echoes and EQ to make a mix unique, and producers such as Bunny Lee, Carlton Pitterson and Lee Perry all used his facilities. Meanwhile, over at Randy’s Studio 17 on North Parade, engineer Errol Thompson was another pioneer, creating the brilliant “Java Java Dub” album for Clive Chin’s Impact label. Soon Channel One, Joe Gibbs and Lee Perry’s Black Ark studios would open, all offering their own mighty brand of dub.

While there had been records using repeat echoes before – Curtis Mayfield’s “(Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Gonna Go”, from 1970, is one example – dub stripped the music back to its elements, before adding the echoes and effects, creating a sparse, deeply psychedelic reggae.

http://www.unionsquaremusic.co.uk/title.php?ALBUM_ID=53&LABEL_ID=3

Sparks: Beat The Clock

Label: Virgin Records (UK)
Catalog#: VS 270-12
Format: 12"
Country: UK
Released: 1979
Genre: Electronic
Style: Synth-pop, Disco
Notes: Pressed as a limited edition picture disc.


Public Image Limited & 'Metal Box':

NME, 24th November 1979

.... 'Careering': extreme; Discotic, washed with malevolent synthesizing and shattered by electronic gunfire.

'Socialist': Telex and / or Kraftwerk spin-dried. Stuttering drums gibbering mini-moogs.

'Radio 4': a soft, deep-piled rug of neo-classical synth orchestration. A groaning parody of BBC boredom. Levene's idea apparently, and funny as in ha, ha. Very.

etc...

http://www.fodderstompf.com/ARCHIVES/REVIEWS%202/mbnme79.html

Blondie & 'Heart of Glass':

Debbie’s previous form has included some work as a Playboy bunny, an ill-timed folk career, a spell as a beautician and a dalliance with heroin. She began to get noticed in the cool circles when she sang with an act called The Stilettos. Back then, they had included some dance tunes in their trashy repertoire, and when Blondie grew out of this experience, they were still kicking around a song that mocked the glitterball lifestyle. The track resurfaced during the sessions for ‘Parallel Lines’, and by now it was called ‘Heart of Glass’.

The band claimed that this was never a cynical cop-out. They weren’t really jumping on the disco bandwagon. And when you look back to the vinyl copy of the album, ‘Heart Of Glass’ is snuck away on track four of the second side. It was never marked out as a big single. “We did it as a novelty item,” Chris Stein insisted later, “we wanted to put some diversity on the album.”

Whatever, ‘Heart Of Glass’, with its bouncing, electronic effects and Debbie’s fantastically sulky vocals, became the band’s first UK number one.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/atl/classic/parallellines.shtml

and

By 1979, rockers had declared an all-out war on disco. “Disco Sucks” became a rallying cry, as punk bands — resentful of disco’s perceived soullessness and wary of the gay and black subcultures that embraced it — cranked out singles with titles like “Kill the Bee Gees” and “Disco Zombies.” That summer, a mob of rock & roll hardliners bombed and burned disco records at the White Sox’s Comiskey Park at a “Disco Demolition Night,” filling the Chicago sky with the smoke of obliterated Village People LPs.

So the disco haters got a shock when a punk group topped the charts the week of April 28 with a shimmering dance number built around the pitter-patter of a drum machine and Kraftwerk-inspired synthesizers. Blondie were bigger disco fans than doctrinaire new wavers were supposed to be. Still, they didn’t expect “Heart of Glass” to be their breakthrough — and they almost didn’t record it at all.

“Everyone in the States was like, ‘Blondie’s gone disco,’” drummer Clem Burke remembers. Actually, they’d been there all along, at least in part: “We all used to hang out at Club 82 in New York, which was essentially a gay disco. And in the early days, we used to play songs like ‘Lady Marmalade’ and ‘I Feel Love.’”

The first recording of “Heart of Glass,” then known simply as “The Disco Song” or “Once I Had a Love,” was a demo they cut in 1975 that sounds almost nothing like the familiar version. “It wasn’t very developed at first,” Stein admits. The riff and shuffling rhythm owe a lot to “Rock the Boat” and Shirley & Company’s “Shame, Shame, Shame” — another disco hit Blondie covered onstage early on.

http://www.blender.com/guide/articles.aspx?id=1858

HEART OF GLASS - 03/02/1979
4 weeks at #1 - 12 weeks on chart

Quite 'popular', I'd say....


As was this woman's work, for 'Dr. Who' and on other scores:

Delia found other fields where the directors were less inhibited - film, theatre, 'happenings' and original electronic music events, as well as pop music and avant garde psychedelia. To do this she encouraged the establishment of Unit Delta Plus, Kaleidophon and Electrophon, private electronic music studios where she worked with Peter Zinovieff [composer and inventor], David Vorhaus and Brian Hodgson.

Delia's works from the 60s and 70s continue to be used on radio and TV some 30 years later, and her music has given her legendary status with releases in Sweden and Japan.

She is also constantly mentioned, credited and covered by bands from Add n to (x) and Sonic Boom to Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers.

A recent Guardian article called her 'the unsung heroine of British electronic music', probably because of the way her infectious enthusiasm subtly cross-pollinated the minds of many creative people. She had exploratory encounters with Paul McCartney, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Martin, Pink Floyd, Brian Jones, Anthony Newley, Ringo Starr and Harry Nilsson.

http://www.delia-derbyshire.org/

You should listen to her electronic music. You might even like it....

[MRT144]

youre just repeating yourself.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by MRT144
youre just repeating yourself.

Says the man who chanted 80s 80s 80s like it was some kind of mantra.

the 80s introduced electronic music.

MRT144

And as we've comprehensively seen, no, they didn't.


Look, sonny, you can do the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and going 'la la la' all you like, but your contention that electronic music was introduced or popular only from the 1980s onwards has been shown to be the bunkum it is, by chart positioning and record sales from the 70s and even quotes from the music stars, d.j.s and record producers of 80s' music, who all acknowledge the formative influence of popular electronic music from the 1970s on their work.

Cabaret Voltaire made some of the most original and uncompromising electronic music of the 70's and 80's. Fuelled by a fascination with the possiblities of sound recording, and an even stronger desire to annoy people, Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk and Chris Watson defined the sound of electro-pop, with classic tracks like Nag Nag Nag, Do The Mussolini and Control Addict.

http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/music_specials/s1397325.htm

Here's some sound advice:

[MRT144]

molly if itll shut you up and stop wasting your time and effort ill admit to this.

electronic dance music. youre never going to convince me that the 70s were when electronic music broke through in America but certainly it was the 80s where edm did.

and furthermore youve been nothing but a pedant ******* that would rather try to make people look inferior to you rather than actually strive for an improved understanding of what people mean. instead of suggesting alternate meanings and views of what introduced could have meant, you wrapped your tiny mind around a factual arguement, not a semantical one. andevery attempt i made to clarify the language was met with arguement ad naseum like some poor autistic that just hits his head against the door wondering why it wont open.

youre not only intellectually dishonest, youre also incapable of engaging in intellectual exploration of an idea because you refuse to let go of your own dogmatic beliefs on any issue. rather than clarify you pat yourself on the back for being "right" when all you have really have done is indulged yourself.

so this leads me to believe youre either an ass, a gentile, or a broken man who gets his sole pleasure in life from trying to put others down.

if you want to believe that electronic music had a huge breakthrough in the 70s then lets try and explore why you think that. citing articles does nothing to further the arguement. you are parroting what others believe without actually applying yourself.

ive raised the point that in the 80s it broke through to all music, created new forms of music, and was accepted by artists and listeners everywhere. its when most americans became aware of it and participated in it.

i suspect there is not only an age issue but a nationality issue at play here. you have to realize that the american music landscape is different from europes and englands. and our perception and role in the world of music is very egocentric. while europe embraced much of it, you also didnt have a severe backlash to disco which was a forerunner to electronic dance music. you guys took it, and ran with it.

as for age, the fact you were there gives you some sense of authority which prevents you from looking at this objectively, and actually makes you downright impossible to dialogue with. I have the benefit of not experiencing it in person, but look at historical documents, what other people say, and all manner of evidence that doesnt cloud my objectivity.

so ill leave you with this. I misspoke about introduced/born, and your idea of what electronic music is. I should have said widely accepted (i.e. not limited to a few chart toppers) and electronic dance music. youre still a pedant ******* and always will be. but im sure youll drink to that.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by Sikander


Electronic music was born in the 1960s, but really became a genre in the 1970s with its own bin at the record store and everything. Tangerine Dream comes to mind as a band which inhabited that bin solely.

which was my point. do 20 odd artists really make a genre? do a few #1s really mean mainstream?

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Sikander
Husker Du was very good as well as influential in the mid-80s. By the 90s I thought they had broken up. But I agree that there were a lot of great bands in the 80s which didn't manage to crack into the popular consciousness during that decade, if ever. I'd add the Butthole Surfers to your list above. There was even some decent music in the 1980s that was popular, like the Police, the Talking Heads, the B-52s etc. It's just as you say, that the average popular music was so abominable that the 80s sucked it hard.

You're right about Husker Du. Bob Mould formed Sugar in the early 90's (after a couple of questionable solo albums) which refined the punky-pop side of Husker Du, and Copper Blue (92-93 I think) is a benchmark album for me. I see Bob's career as growing up in the mid-to-late eighties and peaking in the nineties. Husker Du influenced the grunge bands, but also Frank Black's Pixies, who in turn influenced just about everybody since.

So Husker Du were an eighties band, but their influence came to meet the wider public in the nineties. The same is even true of Pixies, and even more for the Throwing Muses who formed in 1981, but their best album imo (Limbo) was I think some 14 years later.

There are parallels with the debate on the heritage of Electronic music here. What gets born in one decade can hit the big time in another. What defines 'birth' is subject to some discussion, as we have seen.

I'd be strongly inclined to lump the late eighties in with the nineties, when it comes to Indie-guitar stuff. I was in a band that formed in 1988 that played loud, fast guitar music, and people told us we were dated, because everyone else was using synths and drum samples. We stuck to our guns, and within a few years loud thrashy guitars were back - and in fact had been back for some time in the States, but the primative state of UK guitar music compared to the more advanced US sound is another subject.

[Cort Haus]

And of course REM were a great US guitar band from the eighties that went mega in the nineties.

[Addled Platypus]

and what of music that trancends time, and keeps on influencing

"Jimi Hendrix"

[Cort Haus]

Jimi is one of the reasons why that those people who voted for the 60's as worst decade are being silly.

[Drake Tungsten]

youve been nothing but a pedant ******* that would rather try to make people look inferior to you

I hope you weren't surprised by this.

[MRT144]

i believe in people and the power to change