Quote:
Originally Posted by Baby Lee
I certainly hope you don't view 'younger' people who say that the Beatles are the 'greatest' [leaving aside the issue of what influence means] as universally, or even preponderantly, unaware of other bands of history. I STILL know 10x more about the late 60s, early 70s, than I do the past 10 years. I've been fervently musically engaged from about 83 on.
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The way I see it, to divide up younger generations of music-listeners there are 2 main groups. Those who are well-versed and well-listened in the rich history of what I will call "modern music" (beginning roughly in the mid 50's) and those who simply pick out a big name i.e. the Beatles and say they're the greatest ever.
The former category is increasingly diminishing as high school and college aged kids ignore the influences in favor of "popular music" of today. That is not to say there is not a large audience who still appreciate "classic rock." Almost without exception, those who are musicians themselves pay homage to their influences and acknowledge them as invaluable. For example, I was watching an old rerun of Bonaroo (or some other music festival) on the Paladia network on DirecTV in which they showed the end of a Katy Perry concert. Imagine my surprise when the outro came along, the band played none other than the intro to Rush's Cygnus X-1, definitely one of their more obscure early pieces. I would almost guarantee no one in the audience knew that the piece the band was playing was anything more than some random riff.
But overall, if those who appreciate music and have listened to many different bands and come to the conclusion that, in their opinion, the Beatles are "the greatest of all time," I have no problem with that. It's when they haven't listened to anything but saw the movie "Across the Universe" and made that decision that irks me. (I ran into someone a while back who thought those were all original pieces from the movie, and when showed the originals, opined that the remakes were all superior)
Its only through discussion and the exchange of ideas, such as here, where we can begin to educate younger audiences on where their modern music comes from.