A comment left against this Guardian review suggested that late 1960s was an unrepeatable golden age of music. Some conversations I’ve had with people a few years older or younger than me in the bar before gigs makes me question such thoughts. I came of age at the end of the 1970s, missing the likes of Gabriel-era Genesis, or Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple in their prime. People old enough to see those acts the first time around talk of the bands they themselves missed, like Jimi Hendrix or Cream. And people just a little younger than me regret not having been around for Pink Floyd performing The Wall, the heyday of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Thin Lizzy with Phil Lynott, Rory Gallagher, or Iron Maiden fronted by Paul Di’Anno.
Just like it’s often said that the golden age of science-fiction is 12, the golden age of popular music is the era for which you were born five years too late.
We mythologise the past too much. It’s true that some genres rose and fell, peaking at particular times, and if you’re a big fan of that genre it’s going to colour things. And it’s probably true the early 70s were a good time for coherent albums, while the singles charts were far more interesting in the early 80s than they had been a few years earlier. But the “year when rock died” always seems to whatever time the writer married, had kids and got boring. It’s easy to paint any era of popular music as a golden age by cherry-picking the best stuff, ignoring the fact that much of it was way off the mainstream radar at the time, while ignoring all the popular but ephemeral dross which was so forgettable nobody can actually remember any of it.
There is so much great music around today that’s just a mouse click away, in every genre you can possibly imagine, that you can make a strong argument that we’re living in golden age today. So what if a lot of the mainstream is formulaic sausage-factory stuff that won’t pass the test of time? It was just the same in 1967, 1973, 1977 or 1985.
I make the same comments about movies. If I had to shrug off the last decade or so of filmmaking, that would mean doing without some of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had with a movie: “Oldboy”, “Irreversible”, “Requiem for a Dream”, “Children of Men”, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “Gojoe”, “Izo”, “Nobody Knows”, “Mind Game”, etc. That a lot of these are not mainstream commercial productions is a big part of why, but there you go.
I think it applies to most media (What proportion of best-selling novels from 50 years ago are still in print?)
In music at least, there’s always a lot that never saw commercial success in its day because it was too far ahead of its time. Is that also true of film?
I think that’s even more true of movies in some ways, at least in part because of the costs involved to make and distribute the average film.
For a fun experiment, go dig up the bestseller lists from 50 years ago. Be surprised at how many of the #1 items are either trivia questions or have vanished completely from public consciousness.
Certainly valid points, Tim, but I’m reminded of your post in honour of Black Sabbath’s first album a little while ago where you challenged us to think of anything nearly as radical that’s emerged in the last decade or so. My point is, that while great music is still being made, a lot of the genre defining and defying stuff has been done. I’m wondering how much more new ground there is to explore, at least from a rock point of view. We’ve all heard the heavy riff, the twin attack, etc.
The counter to that is that today’s really groundbreaking and innovative music probably isn’t on our radar screens. It’s probably music we find as strange and alienating to us as Jimi Hendrix must have sounded to fans of fifties crooners.
Really nice post. I am in complete agreement with both of these (seemingly mutually exclusive) statements:
“the golden age of popular music is the era for which you were born five years too late”
and:
“There is so much great music around today that’s just a mouse click away, in every genre you can possibly imagine, that you can make a strong argument that we’re living in golden age today. So what if a lot of the mainstream is formulaic sausage-factory stuff that won’t pass the test of time? It was just the same in 1967, 1973, 1977 or 1985.”
“The counter to that is that today’s really groundbreaking and innovative music probably isn’t on our radar screens. It’s probably music we find as strange and alienating to us as Jimi Hendrix must have sounded to fans of fifties crooners.”
Fair point.
As in the joke:
1st Alien: Have the people of Earth received our message?
2nd Alien: Yes, but they’re calling it “Dubstep” and are dancing to it
If you laugh at that, it proves my point
I identify with that 5 years too late bit — my favourite band of all time is the Clash, but they never all played together at a show I could get to (I’ve seen most of the members with other projects since then).
I wonder if there’s some way to find out what kind of music/media/etc. is going to be popular with different age cohorts (seems to take less than a generation…maybe a decade?) As a father of teenagers, I certainly get exposed to stuff that I see absolutely no appeal in that is still very popular.