Weekly > Features
The Decline Of Music!
I only write about things that I care enough to write about so this article sees a little deviation from the usual “Why I love” column. In fact if you wanted to make it a bit more of a dramatic title it could be “Why I don’t love parts of the music industry as much as I did”, doesn’t really roll off the tongue though does it?
However I think it does encompass everything I am about to rant on about now though. You see music is great and always will be but there are certain parts of the music biz that just aren’t as good as they used to be and I am going to try and outline them here.
The Charts
I get a warm fuzzy glow when I think about the late eighties/early nineties period when the charts actually meant something. You see back then you had to sell records, not downloads. An act had success because the buying public had actually got off their backsides, gone into their local record shop in town and bought that artists album or single.
I used to actually celebrate when a band I loved broke into the top twenty for the first time as that was seen as major success. These days if you don’t get Top 5 on downloads alone you are dropped like a hot potato from your record label the next week. I used to tape the charts, keep a record of the Top Ten’s and look forward to that 3 hours on a Sunday with Bruno Brookes or Mark Goodier as they ran down the latest standings, broken up briefly by my Sunday dinner! It was an enjoyable ritual. The general attention span of kids these days (man that comment dated me didn’t it) means that no one listens to the charts anymore and no one cares. And they mean diddly squat. Sad really.
Music Press
Many aspects of the music press have declined over the last few years. One of the biggest events was the folding (or merging depending on your view) of the Melody Maker with the NME. The Melody Maker was the only real and relevant competition that the NME had at that time when it came to incisive music journalism and letting you know what was out there and what you should really be listening to. It was also in my opinion the superior of the two publications over a sustained period. Inevitably when the name Melody Maker ceased to exist I feel NME lowered its game and the weekly issue just doesen’t hold my attention as much as it used to. It lives on its former glories a little too much for my liking these days.
To a lesser, perhaps more fun degree a lot of the music magazines for the younger generation died a death too. Not many people remember Number One magazine but quite a few more will recall the recently defunct but still legendary Smash Hits. This magazine had a unique irony in that it printed song lyrics for you to peruse. However during the era I was buying the mag Acid House was all the rage so you had half a page quoting a one liner like “This is acieeeeeeeeeeeed” and then repeat to fade!
Although not exactly cutting edge journalism these magazines played their role and although again I feel lucky they were around when I was a kid I don’t think they would hold the attention of many youngsters now, there are too many easily accessible alternatives. In their day though they were a must buy.
Music TV
Because of MTV one, two, Base, Dave +1 (maybe not the last one) we have constant music TV. If you want you can have it 24 hours a day. You can also access music through Sky Plus and Virgin Media straight onto your TV. But because it is so readily available it doesn’t have that sense of occasion about it anymore.
The old guard music TV programmes are long since gone- only Jules Holland has managed to stay the pace and he does make a valued contribution I am led to believe, although in all honesty I only tend to watch when he invites his mates round for his annual Hootenanny.
But the classics are long gone. Just shy of 20 years ago (can it really be that long?) ITV had the Chart Show. With its dated roller coaster opening credits and its every three week showing of the Rock, Indie and Dance charts it filled a niche. It had “Exclusive” videos and at the time they genuinely were! I remember nearly vomiting on my TV when one of that weeks exclusives was “One Love” by the Stone Roses. I had heard they were making a new single and here it was ready to be seen for the first time ever. Nowadays I would have seen the video before they had even made it.
Weblinks
Add to favouritesIt was always enjoyable trying to guess which song they would play in the Top 10 as the only played about three but that was part of the fun making the predictions. The highlight though was the Indie Chart. Because back then the indie chart tended to mean that the band had not actually sold any singles so therefore they couldn’t afford to make a video and what you tended to get was the song playing while some swirling colours or people moving in slow motion danced across your screen…slowly. Spacemen 3, Tom Verlaine, Dinosaur Jnr and The Pixies were perennial favourites. Although what the Pixies were doing in there I have no idea, they were successful!
And then there was the daddy of them all Top of the Pops. I would be lying if I said it was much lamented because it declined so badly in its last decade, with numerous failed revamps, that it definitely had seen better days and the axe was inevitable. But for some many years in the seventies and eighties it was flagship and again seeing a band on there was an event. Some of my favourite performances over the years were 808 State, James and The KLF but the great thing about this programme is everyone will remember a particular performance.
Again Top of the Pops is an anacronysm now- it was shown to not work in the modern age as they flogged this dead horse for long enough. But for a long time it was king.
So there a three factors there as to why I don’t think the music industry is quite as good as it was. My views probably stem from a slightly rose tinted glasses view as all the above played a part in my musical education. Nowadays it seems people are spoiled with all the easy access they have to videos, downloads, interviews, blogs, etc etc. However maybe I was the spoilt one as it’s never been quite the same since.
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Comment Permalink | Kev said:
Used to love The Chart Show, still got some old video tapes with bits taped off of there, great days!
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