People who bemoan the state of current music strike me as music's equivalent of hard right social conservatives. "This thing isn't the same as how I remember things being a few decades ago, so I'm going to complain about the fact that things have changed rather than embrace the natural change and progression that occurs as part of any healthy culture."
Rock fans who bemoan the fact that rock music isn't as popular or isn't made the same way as it was in the Seventies. Rock music is supposed to be disruptive, and it's supposed to be morphing into new shapes and forms. The idea that rock music needs to sound like Zeppelin or the Stones is just conservatism, which is the antithesis of rock. If musicians want to stick an electronic beat and a dubstep drop behind their guitar riffs, then fair fucking play to them. I'd rather they do that than try and ape Led Zeppelin IV some more.
Then there are the Blues Fascists like Jack White, who think that the Blues gave us everything, and anything that isn't recorded on a fifty year old slice of analogue tape through a second hand vintage Fender amp is some kind of sacrilege. "Oh it doesn't sound the same as it did in the old days." No shit, modern technology sounds different to vacuum tubes and tape. I'd rather have modern technology, and its ability to give us everything from a new Tim Hecker album to an Infected Mushroom record, than an outdated technology that makes everything sound drier and scratchier than a camel skin blanket.
There is more amazing music being made currently than at any other time in history. Right now I'm listening to Glitch Mob at work. In a bit, I might put on Wild Light by 65daysofstatic, or maybe a bit of God Is An Astronaut. I'll go home and listen to a Steven Wilson solo album, or perhaps put on the Orchestrion album by Pat Metheny. I can listen to Sigur Ros' most recent album, and reminisce about the amazing gig of theirs I saw last year at the Eden project, or I can go for something completely different like Tim Hecker, Warpaint or Cunninlynguists. Chromeo and Daft Punk are lighting up the pop charts with music that is actually well constructed and musical, Tool have got another album on the way, and Aesop Rock is still writing and touring.
If the only thing you have to say about modern music is "Blurgh, it's shit compared to what we used to get in the old days" then may I politely ask you to grow up, and stop acting like music's version of Bill O'Reilley. There is so much great music out there to be discovered that there is no excuse for acting as if stuff like Katy Perry defines all modern music.
