• Graphy@lemmy.world
    911·
    1 month ago

    Ugly people make music all the time.

    You really gonna tell me Ed Sheeran is good looking? Post Malone?

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
    89·
    1 month ago

    Pop is just as manufactured and fake as it always was, with the exceptional trend setter or two doing their own thing, but what’s just below the surface is always just as good as it always was.

    As a fan of hardcore, electronica, folk, metal, and all of the genres that fall under them, I still get new bands. I still get new releases. I get cheap as fuck concerts and still get cool merch and awesome vinyls. I have zero to complain about. Hell, Primus, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer just made an album together, in 2024.

    Anyone who says music sucks now doesn’t really listen to that much music to start with. Music is just fine, man. Maybe look a little deeper than the pudding skin.

      • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
        4·
        1 month ago

        I have had a 50/50 success rates. The ones who are bad are REALLY bad. To make up for it, they crank the gain, volume, and distortion to 11 and just annihilate everyone’s eardrums.

    • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 month ago

      Exactly. I wish these types of posts would change “music these days” to “pop these days” because that’s what they’re talking about.

      It’s debatable when pop actually began but pop as we know it really codified in the 80s with dawn of MTV and acts like Madonna and Michael Jackson. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Queen, etc were popular but I wouldn’t classify any of this as Pop. Pop has always been pretty people because it was by its nature tied to a visual medium.

      People need to stop using Pop as a stand in for all music. We have more access to music than ever before and a lot of the music I listen to regularly, I have no idea what they look like.

    • Bone@lemmy.world
      47·
      1 month ago

      I hear you and agree with much of that. I am a fan of multiple genres as well. But, as far as it goes for jazz, jazz is dead. Anyone still attempting to play it is often a sad version of what was once great in the 50s/60s/70s. So while there’s plenty of music in other genres I like, always more to find from those time periods, as well as still enjoying the classics, it’s a little upsetting good jazz is dead, modern jazz is trash, and people who think they know jazz these days actually refer to some other genre, like rock. Somewhat sad.

        • Bone@lemmy.world
          31·
          1 month ago

          I have not. Thank you.

          I definitely don’t know where to look these days. I believe I was previously recommended SmallsLIVE, also on YT, but admittedly haven’t spent much time there. https://youtube.com/@smallslive?si=b4mxAHP1xqxv7QNm

          I’ve also been listening to Avishai Cohen, a bassist, for the past many years, who has modern things and may still be active. Jazz is just not mainstream in any way anymore. And most people don’t know what it is.

      • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        1 month ago

        Jazz, to me, a layman to the genre comes off as anything from Miles Davis and Duke Ellington to soundtracks composed for animes, to progressive epics that span twenty minutes and spin into a free form improv that’s somewhere between art and math.

        But aside from it being a flavor other things come in, like a jazzy rock band, Mars Volta or a jazzy metal band, like Opeth, or a jazzy singer, like Michael Buble, I don’t know jazz.

        I don’t think as a normal person that I’m exposed to pure “jazz”, whatever it dilutes into, but I’m fascinated by the chance that there might be something I’m missing that you might mention.

        • Bone@lemmy.world
          21·
          1 month ago

          I suppose I don’t know a ton. My earliest entry was that of Buddy Rich, the drummer. As a drummer, I wanted to relate. Play fast and all. Haha. Though my playing has all but ceased (the stomach drum and desk drum will always live on!), my love for his often high tempo pieces lives on. He played songs I believe others played as well. His versions were just more upbeat!

          I’ll give you an example of a group I didn’t like all that much and that was the Glen Miller Orchestra. Even as a jazz fan I can hear the style of jazz people refer to when they talk about “music to put you to sleep.”

          But BR was just the beginning. It sounds like you know more than most believe it or not. Miles is great and I think I have more to discover there even.

          The latest artist I found, new to me, also from the 50s/60s I believe, is Bill Evans, a pianist. It was a YouTube comment I came across that mentioned Evans to now be their “piano daddy” and from what I’m hearing, I’d have to agree. 😁 But, again, I only know so much. (Talk as if I know it all though…)

          • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            1 month ago

            Buddy Rich was good for his time and influential and all that, but the instrument has evolved so far since then.

            Check out Matt Gartska and a band called Animals as Leaders for a great modern jazz drummer.

            • Bone@lemmy.world
              2·
              1 month ago

              The first song that came up for me on YT by him was Physical Education. There’s a lot of rock in there. He reminds me somewhat of a Dave Weckl or Carter Beauford even. Some of the instrument’s evolution I’m not interested in.

              Google classifies Animals as Leaders as a progressive metal band…

              • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                2·
                1 month ago

                Gartska’s main band is a progressive metal band but the drummer is a jazz drummer through and through. Just look up some of his workshops and playthroughs if you just want to see simply good drumming. Most progressive metal is basically heavy jazz.

                I understand its different strokes for different folks and all, and appreciate you giving them a chance and responding.

      • A Phlaming Phoenix@lemm.ee
        6·
        1 month ago

        Awful take. Last weekend I saw Mike Dillon with Phunkadelick playing with Brian Haas on the Rhodes organ. They played a wild punk-jazz show that is one of the best shows I’ve ever attended. There was a mosh pit at a jazz concert where a primary instrument was a vibraphone.

        In recent years, I’ve greatly enjoyed things like AKU!'s album Blind Fury (drum/trumpet/baritone sax trio) and Ambrose Akinmusire’s Origami Harvest. A lot of modern jazz is blending in electronic influences, like Sungazer. Maybe you don’t like these things, but I can’t imagine calling jazz dead.

        • Bone@lemmy.world
          11·
          1 month ago

          I’m not sure that’s jazz anymore, but maybe I have more to learn. I wouldn’t go to a jazz concert with a mosh pit. The two don’t go together.

          • A Phlaming Phoenix@lemm.ee
            5·
            1 month ago

            Isn’t the core of jazz improvisation and breaking the “rules” of music? If that’s what they’re doing, why would we disqualify it as jazz? A lot of folks had this opinion of Miles Davis doing jazz fusion in the 70s on Bitches Brew and Live/Evil with his squeaky, borderline abusive trumpeting, or of Herbie Hancock doing weird space synth stuff on Sextant and funk fusion on Headhunters. I don’t see how what you’re saying isn’t just gatekeeping that’s not really in the spirit of jazz.

  • synae[he/him]@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    721·
    1 month ago

    Yea that’s why metal fuckin rules. We got the ugliest guys ever altogether in one room and said “what you got?” and they became legends

    And for anyone that might say that doesn’t happen anymore, I ask: how many open mic nights or $20 shows have you been to lately? The scene is doing great in my area, but it doesn’t happen by magic. Ya gotta support it, spread the word, bring your friends.

    • arefx@lemmy.ml
      22·
      1 month ago

      More of a hardcore guy myself but we’re equally as ugly so I stand in solidarity

    • Mbourgon everywhere@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 month ago

      Yeah, no kidding. I just bought tickets for a $15 show that has multiple bands and included a overseas band. I mentioned to them that they should’ve upped the prices to $20.

      Also: Sturgeon‘s law still applies: “90% of everything is crap“. Music is so amazingly easy to make these days you can do it on your phone (and I believe a Grammy nominated/winning album did so). Which means that there are literally thousands of albums every year, And so there will be a lot of crap. But between Bandcamp and Spotify and SoundCloud (and so on, even self-hosting), this is the freaking plutonium age if you like new music. There is literally so much that you can’t possibly keep up with it, even in sub genres. And there are some amazing gems coming out daily

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      7·
      1 month ago

      Most of my favorite artists are beautiful tho… Mikael Akerfeldt, Alexi Laiho (RIP), Devin Townsend, Shagrath…

  • Mac@mander.xyz
    712·
    1 month ago

    “Ugly” people still make music but apparently you don’t listen to it. Shameful, tbh.

    • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
      12·
      1 month ago

      I am convinced that producers go out with a company checkbook and standard boilerplate, find acts that have good songs, then buy the rights to those songs.

      They then give the songs to larger pop artists and never credit the original artist because there is no need. They likely pay well for a decent song.

      • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
        13·
        1 month ago

        They do.
        It’s extremely rare that people like Taylor Swift get as big as she is from writing her own songs.

        There are actual classes you can take on how to write pop songs, taught by people who made pop artists big.

      • Grilipper54@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        1 month ago

        One of the biggest examples of this for me was " even if it breaks your heart". I was pretty happy hearing a pop country song with decent lyrics, to find out it was written by Will Hoge and Eli Young Band bought the rights.

    • Bone@lemmy.world
      52·
      1 month ago

      Nah, generally yes, but this particular follow up is hilarious. When ugly people made it haha

    • macrocarpa@lemmy.world
      31·
      1 month ago

      tbh we are all just snapshots of ourselves at different stage of the same cycle. The Simpsons did a whole thing about lolapalooza which starts with homer looking for his favourite artists in a record store, and the record store dude, and being directed to the oldies section.

      The bands that feature in that episode are the smashing pumpkins, soundgarden , cypress Hill and Peter Frampton, all of whom appear in Spotify old school lists

      • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 month ago

        Oh sure, everything new becomes old eventually, that’s just how time works. I’m more poking fun at those who let their nostalgia determine what is worthwhile.

    • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      1 month ago

      I had a luthier tell me how much was much better before the record. How artists would perform live and have to do their best in these performances.

      Once records came around all the artists sold out and it has been downhill from there.

      “Ok, can I have my guitar back, please…”

    • reddig33@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 month ago

      Why is it that most manufactured pop from before you were born still sounds good, but most manufactured pop after your 40s sounds irritating as fuck? Like, I could dig some “Charleston” from the 1920s but Ashley Simpson is barf-o-rama.