Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2012 May 24

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May 24

Docmikebradley book opinion

am i the only one here that thinks this book (http://www.docmikebradley.com/my_book_01.html) is pure anal spewage? Abbey1997 811-a (talk) 05:36, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I added to your title to make it more useful. StuRat (talk) 06:01, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

It looks like a reasonable book to me. What's your complaint about it ? StuRat (talk) 06:00, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

As noted at the top of this page, the reference desk does not answer requests for opinions. RudolfRed (talk) 06:27, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

There's always been a market for books that explain why today's young generation is worse than any that came before. Harrassed parents are glad to buy these and learn that it's not their fault, it's just that today's kids... (rolls eyes). There were books like this when I was a teenager three decades ago, and there will be books like this three decades from now. --Xuxl (talk) 10:22, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I renamed this section to something less sensational and more useful. --Dweller (talk) 11:27, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm all for renaming it to make the title describe the actual question (I did this myself), but when you remove the original title, this makes it difficult to find the question. StuRat (talk) 16:24, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

sturat, im not crazy. my dads crazy, if he knew about this book, hed try to bomb the guys house. the fact that you think its "reasonable" tells me your a lunatic. and xuxl, by "(rolls eyes)", did you mean you dont think "its just kids today"? sorry, i couldnt understand. p.s.: i wont ask for opinons. Abbey1997 811-a (talk) 23:49, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

You got it. It's well-documented that parents and teachers always think that today's kids are worse than anything that came before, but there is never any real evidence to support this except for a few anecdotes that do not prove anything. The book seems to fit straight into that line of thinking, under a veneer of sociology and psychology. --Xuxl (talk) 07:41, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I bet your dad'll remember a song that used to be on the radio which was a dialogue between two groups: the parents singing "Oh what's the matter with kids today" and the kids singing "Oh what's the matter with folks today". It was ever thus. (I just wish I could remember who did the song so I could post a link for you) --TammyMoet (talk) 09:28, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

That sounds a bit like the song Kids from Bye Bye Birdie (musical), though no doubt there are many examples. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 10:03, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Why can't they be like we were,

Perfect in every way!

Oh what's the matter with kids today? -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 01:44, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

America: A Tribute to Heroes

Why does the image on the front cover only have 48 stars? Ballchef (talk) 07:24, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

There haven't been any American heroes since 1959? HiLo48 (talk) 08:04, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

The album is from the 9/11 benefit. Maybe no one from Alaska or Hawaii donated? Ballchef (talk) 08:22, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

The cover looks a lot like Jasper Johns' iconic Flag, painted in 1954/55. ---Sluzzelin talk 08:39, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

So it does. Seems an odd choice though Ballchef (talk) 09:10, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

This confirms it's the Johns painting, which came courtesy of MoMA. I guess it was the New York connection that mattered most under the circumstances. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 10:34, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

do you know who is the best motivational rapper in africa

i have performed numerous research on this question but to no avail, i have unsuccessfully arived at a good conclusion, well i know of african good rappers like, sarkodie, the black, Lakotai, Ben Sharpa, Keko, M.I, and Pro Kid. well i got this information from African hip hop... dont know if its a good resource... though thanks. Alex whitehl (talk) 15:56, 24 May 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alex whitehl (talk • contribs) 15:53, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Category:Rappers by nationality should give you a place to start. If you are looking for rappers from the continent of Africa, choose countries in that category from Africa, and go from there. --Jayron32 18:02, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Was music better, in general, a couple of decades ago?

Or is this just survivorship bias? Seems to be there was astoundingly good, even meaningful music from late 50s through to early 80s, then great but not particularly good music after that, and it keeps on diminishing...

Could be my own bias of course. What's reality?

Define "better". Music keeps selling, so it clearly still has subjective appeal. What sort of objective appeal are you after? That is the question, really. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 23:39, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it's not reasonable to have a definition of better. As every year comes online, there are more editors, so that kind of thing would bias newer editors. Better, I'm after critics' opinions, and the opinions of 'pedians that have lived through a good portion of music. Egg Centric 23:44, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

It's a subjective question, but it seems hard to disagree that the quality of popular music continues to go downhill. That someone can make millions of dollars by singing "fuck you" ad nauseaum seems to support that. (Just my opinion, of course.) Joefromrandb (talk) 00:20, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

And others think Fuck You is a great song. It is entirely opinion. I profess a preference for '70s Classic Rock, with a generous helping of Singer-songwriter music, but I still follow modern Billboard chart hits. While I prefer older music, I can still hear a lot of pretty impressive songs that while not my cup of tea are still pretty creative. Pop is not the wasteland people think it is if they listen closely with an open ear. Is music worse now than before? Every generation says the same thing when what they like isn't cool anymore. Mingmingla (talk) 00:31, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

But I can't go around randomly saying Fuck You here on Wikipedia. Songs with titles whose words are simply unacceptable in a mainstream place like this would have to be seen as some sort of special case. HiLo48 (talk) 00:41, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

That's why the radio-friendly version of this song is "Forget You". Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 01:13, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Why not? (That is...if you're talking about the song itself.) Bad words make songs worse? There were some edgy lyrics in some classic rock that now seem laughably tame. --Onorem♠Dil 01:47, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that to most generations the music they encounter when they are going through the teenage, pushing-the-envelope years remain important. But I suspect some objectivity could be applied to originality. The late 1950s and 1960s certainly provided that. Not sure what really original creations have occurred this century. HiLo48 (talk) 00:29, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I can accept that for some folk but for me it's totally different. And I'm kind of extreme in that I know two people in HUGELY succesful REAL groups, as well as a few more pop idol type fake things. Egg Centric 00:41, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand how this is relevant. One Direction is both real and huge, but so is Radiohead. Which point are you trying to make? Mingmingla (talk) 15:26, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

That doesn't really tell us what really original creations have occurred this century. HiLo48 (talk) 00:44, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

(ec) Some critics might see and bemoan postmodern patterns such as heightened eclecticism or polystylism, decrease in originality (as well as decrease in the relevance of originality), etc. Where these critics might draw the fuzzy line (early 1980s, in your case) is a different question, and depends, of course, on the period and circumstance in which they grew up. If you want someone to give a slightly more meaningful reply, it might help listing some of the astoundingly good, even meaningful music until the early 1980s, and some of the later examples you don't consider particularly good. Personally, I happen to be an eclectic listener and, in general, don't find the music after 1985 (or before 1955) to be worse than that of your favourite period. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:30, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

The teenage years HiLo48 refers to might be important. Is there any research to the "meme" that you like music from puberty better than all other music? Joepnl (talk) 01:13, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Whenever I encounter this proposition, I don't think of survivorship bias so much as I think of selection bias and cherry picking. It's easy for me to sit back, draw on a joint and declare the '70s the most awesome ever because of such heroic acts as Steely Dan and Parliament, but I'm also conveniently forgetting "My Ding-a-ling" and Having Fun with Elvis on Stage. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 01:31, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Every era features a) good music b) shitty music and c) popular music. Category c) has a truly random and unconnectd correlation to a) and b). That is, every era has songs which are awesome and popular and has songs which are awesome and unknown. Musical taste is truly subjective, but there are some really (IMHO) interesting musical developments going on right now. Personally, I find some of the neo soul stuff to be intriguing, and interesting mix of edgy lyrics and classic forms (c.f. the aforementioned "Fuck You" and songs like "The Walk" from Meyer Hawthorne). I've been groving on an interesting mix of stuff lately, though a lot of it is derivative of earlier forms, I still find it quite enjoyable and well done. Dawes has a really good feel of a great 70s singer-songwriter ("Time Spent In Los Angeles" sounds like it should've been a Jackson Browne song). The Head and the Heart has a song called "Down in the Valley" which I find entrancing. The Decemberists has revived a sort of "nerd rock" that was popular with 1980s bands like They Might Be Giants, Devo, and Dead Milkmen, but with a folky twist. Modern traditionalist string bands like Mumford and Sons, The Avett Brothers, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Old Crow Medicine Show, Chatham County Line etc. have also had my ear for some years: acoustic musicianship can't be covered up by studio tricks, so I appreciate the skill it takes for an acoustic band to be as tight as those bands are. If you ever get a chance to hear Donna the Buffalo, a zydeco-revival band, live and in person, don't give that up. --Jayron32 01:52, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

As an aside, anyone know who that gorgeous brunette is in the video for "The Walk"? Joefromrandb (talk) 03:44, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

You can always find people that think music was better in some mythical "before now" era. The decline of musical standard was a hot topic when I was younger in the 60s and 70s. I expect that this same discussion was had in the 1600s on in coffeehouses. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 06:59, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I think there's a degree of nostalgia attached to music, and I'll give you a personal example. During the 1980s I remember thinking the pop music of the UK was almost uniformly terrible, and nothing matched up to the glorious rock music of the 1970s. Now I find myself listening to Absolute Radio 80s and thinking how wonderful the music actually was. I can only assume it's more nostalgia for my lost youth. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:22, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Every generation tends to be fond of the music that was popular when they were in their youth. I've got an old record ca.1920 in which the father of the house is complaining about "modern" songs like "Shine on Harvest Moon", and wants to hear an "old time" tune instead. Also, during the 1960s, "nostalgic" music was Big Band. Now it's Disco, or even post-Disco. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:29, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I've been thinking that part of the issue is that people's tastes often broaden as they mature. Teenagers tend to be ONLY interested in current new music. As they age, the continue to like a lot of what they liked then, but develop additional interest in maybe classical, or jazz, or whatever, or maybe all of the above. So current new music becomes a smaller subset of all the music a person likes, and has to be very good to gain attention. HiLo48 (talk) 04:11, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Another factor is that only good stuff gets replayed endlessly and the dross gets forgotten about. I might remind those enamoured of British 1970s music of Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep - it beggars belief that this rubbish sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Alansplodge (talk) 14:47, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Not entirely forgotten about. They tend to crawl through the archives and revive old stuff, because it's almost all still there. It's a bit like how nothing that ever gets into Wikipedia is ever truly lost. No matter how swiftly it may get reverted, once it's been added in it's permanently on the record. As for why some tunes succeed and others get consigned to the archives almost immediately, all we can say is that some people like them and there's no accounting for taste. Some tunes seem to catch on despite lacking anything so much as even resembling musical merit. That's true of all genres, not just popular music. In the last few days I've three times on radio heard "Villanelle", the opening song from Les nuits d'été by Hector Berlioz, one of his most popular works. Three times I've come close to vomiting due its utter awfulness and banality and outright unpleasantness (I had to listen to "Villanelle" to get to the remainder of the piece, which is quite good). It's been recorded many times and is a permanent fixture in the repertoire, but not even the greatest singers can make it sound any good to my ear. Search me how it ever achieved its status. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 21:44, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Maybe it's "better than it sounds", to borrow a Mark Twain-ism. So, if a song makes you nauseous, does it still qualify as "art"? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:01, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Best answer I can give to that is to ask you to listen to this recent chat between Margaret Throsby and Steve Reich, where he made the point that one should never judge the greatness of a piece of music or its composer on whether you happen to like it or not. Reich used Arnold Schoenberg as an example; he said he has never liked any of Schoenberg's music, but he is still, in his opinion, indisputably a great composer. That's worth thinking about, in these deeply shallow days where the reigning philosophy tends to be more like "If I like something, that means it's amazing, fantastic, great, etc; and if I don't like something, that means it's shit". -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 07:24, 29 May 2012 (UTC)