Has Pop Culture Truly hit a New Low?

[Unchainme]

I'm just getting so sick of it, Music is like 98% Hip-Pop people who can't even sing or play guitar if there life depended on it. I mean there considering Crack dealer who just happen to know how rhyme musicians now, Ok-ay moving along now, Now TV lets see what has happened to it, Pointless Reality Shows staring some spoiled talentless bitch Thats starting to defintly overstay its welcome,

Sorry I'm just fed up with having to listen and watch this shit, We need like a Woodstock-esque revival to clear these talentless hacks, Anyone with Me?

[Cathedral]

You know how they say that once you hit bottom the only way is up?

Pop Culture is the exception to that rule.
It just started digging to go lower.

With any luck Pop Culture will keep digging and resurface in China.

[Soul Reaper]

or Australia....

[Nitro Express]

I'm looking to the reality shows filmed in prisons where they make the inmates fight each other in gladitorial type fights.

[Rikk]

I can say I partly agree...but I think, frankly, popular music (for example) or popular movies (another example) have almost always been in the doghouse with a few exceptional times. Seriously...the early 80s were a horrible time for music. REO SPEEDWAGON, JOURNEY, STYX...any number of horrible bands and horrible fashions. There are exceptions...THE POLICE, VAN HALEN...but most of the really good stuff didn't come out of pop culture. Heck, THE PIXIES was among the best things the 80s had to offer and they weren't a speck on the horizon of pop culture. While the masses were listening to TINA TURNER's commercial crap, a select few were listening to BLACK FLAG.

Same with the 70s...so much schlock with some really good exceptions. And the 60s. People only remember the legendary bands. They don't remember crap like NANCY SINATRA or ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK that oversaturated the marketplace with shit.

That said...it's hard to find some truly legendary bands in this day and age. But I can say that I do think QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE is fucking awesome and SYSTEM OF A DOWN is good and MARS VOLTA rocks.

[Nitro Express]

Yeah during every downturn in pop culture you can find something good. The worst for me was the late 70's. Disco. I hated that crap more than anything but out of that period came Van Halen and Van Halen copycats were all the hair bands of the 80's.

People seem to think the late 60's was pure uncommercial music but they forget the Monkee's came out in 1967. A bunch of actors who couldn't play their instruments but because the TV show was so popular, they made an album and went on tour (after taking a crash course on their instruments of course). Jimi Hendrix was actually a warm up act on the Monkees tour. So much for uncommercial purity.

I thought the 90's was a shitty musical decade. The 80's for me was a huge feast of everything. Reggae, metal, punk, new wave, pop, blues, classic rock. You could find anything you wanted in the 80's. If you remember MTV played a little bit of everything. You would have a Ska band like Madness or UB40 after an Ironmaden video. Those were the days.

[jero]

Originally posted by Nitro Express
I'm looking to the reality shows filmed in prisons where they make the inmates fight each other in gladitorial type fights.

That would be #1, just a great format!!!!!

[Terry]

Originally posted by Rikk
I can say I partly agree...but I think, frankly, popular music (for example) or popular movies (another example) have almost always been in the doghouse with a few exceptional times. Seriously...the early 80s were a horrible time for music. REO SPEEDWAGON, JOURNEY, STYX...any number of horrible bands and horrible fashions. There are exceptions...THE POLICE, VAN HALEN...but most of the really good stuff didn't come out of pop culture. Heck, THE PIXIES was among the best things the 80s had to offer and they weren't a speck on the horizon of pop culture. While the masses were listening to TINA TURNER's commercial crap, a select few were listening to BLACK FLAG.

Same with the 70s...so much schlock with some really good exceptions. And the 60s. People only remember the legendary bands. They don't remember crap like NANCY SINATRA or ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK that oversaturated the marketplace with shit.

That said...it's hard to find some truly legendary bands in this day and age. But I can say that I do think QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE is fucking awesome and SYSTEM OF A DOWN is good and MARS VOLTA rocks.

There's always been a lot of insubstantial fluff out there, regardless of the era.

But I'd agree in that the stuff I'm seeing and hearing these days does seem to lack a timeless quality to it. The shows on tv (and not just reality tv but programs using the traditional sitcom format) just have a lack of substance....these reality shows on the whole tend to reward people who can display the worst traits of human behavior....it's like there's a premium placed on being an asshole...most of the music I'm hearing via MTV/VH1/ClearChannel stations is formulaic and utterly forgettable....and I've lost count of the number of movies I've seen in the last 8 years or so that had me shaking my head in disgust as I walked out of the theater. Am hoping the ticket slump at the box offices this year will wake up Hollywood; the sheer amount of remakes, old tv shows turned into feature length films and a total lack of originality combined with a slew of young actors and actresses with zero emotive talent and a knack solely for knowing which side is their most camera-friendly....fuckin' depressing. Where are the DeNiros, Brandos, Pacinos of this generation? Slim fuckin' pickings.

Don't know if it's because I'm getting older and having a misplaced nostalgia about happenings twenty years ago, but even fuckin' REO Speedwagon used melodies in their songwriting. These rap songs I'm hearing just seem to be one drum machine track after another, supplimented with heavy bass emphasis, and lyrics that seem to have nothing to say other than that some guy is a bad-ass who likes to shoot guns and fuck a lot of women. It's beyond boring. Wasn't crazy about NWA or Public Enemy back in the day, but that stuff had a degree of talent and insight attached to it. The amount of music 'artists' out there who are making it based on image...too many musical commercial success stories making it on the visual image, rather than what's on the disc.

[ashstralia]

Originally posted by Soul Reaper
or Australia....

yeah, even though the commercial (that's the key word) top 40 crap will
always appeal to the lowest common denominator, the are some really good
ROCK BANDS just in my local area alone.

fucking cashed up 10 year olds buying 5 new ringtones a week!!??! wtf?

people, it's all cyclical. just as sure as summer follows spring,
when the good music comes around again (and it will)
the record companies will be on it like white on rice.

[Soul Reaper]

Originally posted by Rikk
SYSTEM OF A DOWN is good

you like SOAD?

I thought everyone here hated it....

....I have all their albums....a guilty pleasure, for my part

[Dirty Duck]

I hear ya brother! Every fucking day when I get home from work I flip through the (so called) music channels and all it ever is..is fucking hip hip. I respect all types of music...but enough is enough. Talent is so scarce today that before you know it....ahhh forget it...I'm gettin depressed. I'm going home and crankin some Old School VH...

[Dirty Duck]

Here's my rap:

This is Dirty Duck..coming through with not much luck

Rock is dead? Fuck you hip hop heads..

Scratch your records while I spin mine..

When the Ducks in the house I waste no time..

I hate sammy and I hate Rap too

To all my Diamond Dave Homies

Got nothing but love for ya..sammy fans..FUCK YOU..

How was that?

[Mr. Vengeance]

I'd rather listen to Journey or Styx anyday compared to this hip-hop shit, and American Idol bullshit! How sad is it that the Stones album debuted on the Canadian album charts at #1. One week later it dropped to #8 behind shit like Kanye West and Hilary Duff. God knows where it will be this week.

Too much horseshit music, because these idiot kids are just bombarded with the whole pop-tart, Fake Idol garbage.

[fret_buzz_blues]

It's the fuckin' media! The kids want to be "cool" and stuff, so they think that if they stuff their brains with shit like MTV, they'll be popular. It's quite sad to witness this...I, at least, don't fall for shit like that...

[Soul Reaper]

flavour of the month bands....the kids lap that stuff up....