Flipping between the two, I have come to a realization that modern secular music is horrible, really horrible. Watching Joe Cocker sing "With a little help from my friends" at Woodstock was simply unbelievable, or the Grateful Dead go on one of their long guitar instrumentals, it's really something. Far better than any of the junk we have today. I mean, in 40 years, what, are people gonna look back at Justin Timberlake and say, "boy, he sure was a great musician.", or say of Britney Spears, "what a talented artist!"? Or maybe they'll admire how our cursing and womanizing rap music is so, um, censored.
Somehow I don't think so!
But it's not just pop music. Even the rock we have today is junk. Metallica, Disturbed, System of a Down, Slipknot: too many bands are concerned about the bad boy image. Hard, ear-shattering, angry, rebellious, mean & nasty rock. That's nice and all, problem is, that falls utterly short of the music of the 60s and 70s, so much more of which was seemingly concerned more about experimenting with different sounds and styles than it was about impressing you with their hardcore rock image.
It makes me wonder if music has seen its heyday. Were the 60s and 70s a musical pinnacle, the climax of rock and popular music, thus everything beyond then is slowly getting worse and worse? Or are we just in a temporary musical drought? Or am I being too critical and there actually are equals to the great bands of the 60s and 70s?
Sure, the Woodstock people got it wrong culturally. Maybe they had some base ideas that worked (the downsides of commercialism, the loving of all people, to name some), but on the whole, the bits about free sex, rampant drug use, and no absolute moral system really didn't work out too well. But while culturally things didn't work out for them, they at least had some really, really good music that has no equal today. No one touches the Beatles, or comes near to the Stones. All we've got to show for ourselves today is pretty boy bands, slutty girl solos, gansta rap, and angry trying-to-look-and-sound-demonic rock bands. Ugh.