Write a controversial opinion

[alohadave]

wasn't everyone obsessed with big band swing music for a minute in the late 1990s??

That Gap commercial, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies (again with the daddies with you).

 

[Baztrachian]

That Gap commercial, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Cherry Poppin' Daddies (again with the daddies with you).

 

[Britva415]

Speaking as an older one of the X'ers but by no means a Boomer, this whole "Classic Rock" thing we've been talking about is the absolute opposite of the swing-music revival we've been talking about. Young kids today know lots of classic-rock, all the way from the late 60's through the mid 80's, because it's not eclectic. It's everywhere. Why is it on the PA at the theme park at all? Because the place is full of Boomers and X'ers. Their kids and grandkids know these tunes from grocery stores, car radios, restaurants, TV and movies, their grampy's boombox in the yard, their nana's ringtone, etc etc etc etc etc.

It (kind of but not really) floors me when I go home to the town I grew up in and I tune to the same radio stations I tuned to in high school. The same stations are playing the same songs today that they did 50 years ago. The same was true 15 years ago when the songs were 35 years old, or 30 years ago when the songs were 20 years old. The playlist never changed at all.

Well, that isn't quite true. Bands like Nirvana, the Chili's, Bush, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam and Green Day and other later bands are part of the "classic rock" mix, now, but, all that means is that they're "classic" and won't stop being played, just like those rock bands who formed earlier. They aren't displacing or distanced from the pervasive 70s/80s arena-rock acts which they were mocking, protesting and giving the finger to, instead, they have (maybe ironically, maybe not) been getting lumped in with them for decades now because they rock.

The oldest songs from the classic-rock era music might dry up and blow away when the Boomers and X'ers are dead and gone, but this is a totally different phenomenon than people who went way out of their way in the 90's to play 50 year old music and find like-minded people to dance to it with. There was definitely not an unbroken tradition of swing-dance music which continued from the 40s to the 90s. At that time, the WW2 veterans were not dead and gone but their "classic" swing-band music was not suffusing the culture like classic rock has done and continues to do.

 

[SkyBubble]

Birds are just miniature flying dinosaurs.

 

[SkyBubble]

I'll throw some logs on the fire. HP Lovecraft is way overrated as a writer. He has some cool, macabre ideas, but his writing style was antiquated even by his day, turgid and wordy. He didn't employ dialogue that well, or often enough. He overused the odd device of a story within a story, i.e., the main character, who experienced something horrific, would narrate the story to another person, who narrated it to the reader. This created a sense of distance between the reader and the action, which dilutes the immediacy and the horror. It also tips off the reader that the main character survived, so it's a spoiler.

I had never read Lovecraft until a few years ago, but I'd heard for years about Chthulu and the man's impact on horror, and I was disappointed.

And yet there's an award named after him.

 

[SimonDoom]

wasn't everyone obsessed with big band swing music for a minute in the late 1990s??

I saw the movie Swingers. That was pretty much the limit of my obsession with that fad.

 

[SkyBubble]

a man and woman who fall in love with each other after unwittingly drinking a love potion.

It wasn't this one, was it?

 

[SkyBubble]

There was definitely not an unbroken tradition of swing-dance music which continued from the 40s to the 90s. At that time, the WW2 veterans were not dead and gone but their "classic" swing-band music was not suffusing the culture like classic rock has done and continues to do.

But it definitely had its outposts. People still know who Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman are.

 

[MelissaBaby]

.

Nope. Pop. Fucking fantastic. Most honest song writer I've ever heard. Her mix of personal, politics, pulse of the culture, is just kinda mind blowing. And that voice.... Oh that voice. Not gonna lie though. It's best to listen to her work as a whole rather than individual songs.

I think that the next time a male writer starts a thread about how to write a female POV, I'm going to suggest they listen to some Lana Del Rey.

 

[SkyBubble]

Somehow the 2006 movie version Tristran + Isolde (yes, with an actual addition sign) managed to be superior to the opera just because the two lovers actually fell in love.

It's fair to say, that Richard Wagner, for all he was a dab hand with the old chords, had no idea how romance worked.

The Ring Cycle has a man who has literally never seen a woman before meet a woman (well, valkyrie) who is cursed to fall in love with the first man she sees. Then he is tricked into drinking a potion to forget his love for her. Fourteen and a half hours and who in the hell cares (except that the last forty minutes of Das Valkyrie is probably longest continuous stretch of pure musical magic ever written)

Still better than Lohengrin which may be the single most sexist story ever told not involving Alf Garnett.

The Ring Cycle is great. All fourteen and a half hours. And Ride of the Valkyrie is one of the great pieces of music.

 

[SkyBubble]

Also: a lot of what people think of as "bad music" is actually "music made for people other than me".

At least it's music, with discernable melody, harmony, and rhythm.

Then there's rap. It has only one of those. Someone left the c off the front.

 

[SkyBubble]

Coke is over rated. Pepsi is better.

Completely disagree.

 

[SkyBubble]

There were definitely people getting off on jazz from the 20's.

And if you shift just a little later, Clapton did an album (in 95?) covering Robert Johnson songs from the mid 30's.

Linda Ronstadt did an album of standards called What's New. She got pilloried for it on Saturday Night Live.

 

[SkyBubble]

Broadway is a higher art form than Hollywood.

And its music is underrated these days.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

Broadway is a higher art form than Hollywood.

And its music is underrated these days.

What do you mean by ‘Hollywood’ - just films in general or specifically American films made by the major studios based in LA?

 

[SkyBubble]

I mean generally the movies being put out today. Most of them are lowbrow entertainment, and often not done well.

Furthermore, in the movies, you can do take after take. On stage, you get one chance. Get it right. Eight times a week.

 

[Statius]

oh yeah, you guys are still around aren't you?

*runs away*

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

I mean generally the movies being put out today. Most of them are lowbrow entertainment, and often not done well.

Furthermore, in the movies, you can do take after take. On stage, you get one chance. Get it right. Eight times a week.

If you take the very lowest quality film and compare it with the very best of Broadway then you might have a conversation.

Take the best of Broadway though and compare it to Anatomy of a Fall, Burning or Toni Erdmann - just to name 3 pretty decent movies from recent years - then you’re going to struggle.

There’s even a film in American theaters right now, One Battle After Another, which blows away anything that Broadway is doing right now.

 

[SkyBubble]

I wouldn't say that. Live theatre requires so many skills. Yes, there's some mediocrity on Broadway, but live theatre is simply a higher art form.

 

[PennyThompson]

There’s even a film in American theaters right now, One Battle After Another, which blows away anything that Broadway is doing right now.

omg One Battle deserves its own thread, best movie i've seen in several years

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

omg One Battle deserves its own thread, best movie i've seen in several years

It’s very good, isn’t!

I saw it with a packed cinema, not a free seat in the house, and there was whooping and cheering and applause at the end. Phenomenal experience. Seriously fun.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

I wouldn't say that. Live theatre requires so many skills. Yes, there's some mediocrity on Broadway, but live theatre is simply a higher art form.

There have been many filmmakers in cinema history who have treated film as filmed theater - making use of the live, documentary qualities.

 

[PennyThompson]

It’s very good, isn’t!

I saw it with a packed cinema, not a free seat in the house, and there was whooping and cheering and applause at the end. Phenomenal experience. Seriously fun.

"American Girl" playing during the credits made me ugly cry

 

[Actingup]

That's a fair point about about certain eras getting to sweep up all of the low-hanging fruit when a new kind of music gets developed. But 60s rock isn't the only new genre that got to do this, there was all kinds of innovative stuff happening in 1970's punk, 1980's rap, 2000's electronica, 2010's bedroom-and-laptop music... you never know what's coming next until it happens!

For that reason, I like to maintain some optimism despite the difficulties faced by the creative arts. I think that we'll find that there's still scope for innovation and (particularly) subversion. Music might be travelling underground in interesting ways. I also believe that authenticity will be more and more valued. I saw a stage musical last night in a small venue that was sung and played by five musicians with a wonderful assortment of instruments - nothing prerecorded. It was wonderful, hilarious, moving, and sold out. I saw something similar on an opera stage several months ago, and the reaction was similar - everybody left the show gushing and flushed with excitement (plot bunnies! settle down!).

Regarding the different decades and forms... I think that quality often finds a way, even in a three minute pop song. There are masterpieces of the form that still thrill me. The Turtles 'Happy Together' (1967), as a random example, is so beautifully constructed and harmonised that it's difficult to imagine it not being a hit in any decade. Some of Taylor's famous bridges could have supported the D-Day landings had they been around at the time. And if you follow Eurovision with its mandatory 3 minute songs and live vocals, there is almost always something that is genuinely exciting even if most of the songs are formulatic.

So... I have hope.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

"American Girl" playing during the credits made me ugly cry

I liked the whole ‘what time is it?’ conceit. 60s radicals but kind of today and then it skips forward 16 years but nothing has really changed (that was a real oof moment). And he can never answer the question. Just a perpetual fight against it all.