• Welcome to The Audio Annex! If you have any trouble logging in or signing up, please contact 'admin - at - theaudioannex.com'. Enjoy!
  • HTTPS (secure web browser connection) has been enabled - just add "https://" to the start of the URL in your address bar, e.g. "https://theaudioannex.com/forum/"
  • Congratulations! If you're seeing this notice, it means you're connected to the new server. Go ahead and post as usual, enjoy!
  • I've just upgraded the forum software to Xenforo 2.0. Please let me know if you have any problems with it. I'm still working on installing styles... coming soon.

Are we in the golden age of music?

Xgm3

Xgm3

Active Member
I was thinking about this the other day since we have a lot of different ways to listen. All the devices we have now to stream music and so many options to listen to different types of genre's. I think maybe we're are at that point or have been for awhile for enjoying music. How do you feel about this?
 
For those who are patient enough to look for what they want, this is the most amazing period in music.
 
I vividly remember shopping, for hours sometimes, at my local record store - for actual records. This is even before Tower Records became the mega store. Absolutely nothing which exists today is even remotely comparable in enjoyment and involvement to that. Yes, I didn't have immediate access to zillions of tracks all at that instant, but everybody did have the Schwann record catalog, and I could order whatever I wanted which the record shop didn't have already, and eagerly anticipate going back in a few days to pick up my new disc.

Sure, there are a very few small independent record stores around, but its too bad most people here will never be able to experience how it actually was in the "real" golden age.
 
Last edited:
rammisframmis said:
I vividly remember shopping, for hours sometimes, at my local record store - for actual records. This is even before Tower Records became the mega store. Absolutely nothing which exists today is even remotely comparable in enjoyment and involvement to that. Yes, I didn't have immediate access to zillions of tracks all at that instant, but everybody did have the Schwann record catalog, and I could order whatever I wanted which the record shop didn't have already, and eagerly anticipate going back in a few days to pick up my new disc.

Sure, there are a very few small independent record stores around, but its too bad most people here will never be able to experience how it actually was in the "real" golden age.
Click to expand...

Loved shopping at the "Record Store". The youth of America will never know the joy. That being said, the youth of America are not interested in the same activities that we took joy in. We had an educational seminar today at lunch on generations in the workplace and it was very interesting. I see no joy in collecting a billion mp3's with no album art, liner notes etc...
 
^ and when you got home you played that recorded over and over again and followed the liner-notes, and listened to every instrument.................

This was a time that we have no more.................I guess because we choose it to be that way.
 
Randy said:
I see no joy in collecting a billion mp3's with no album art, liner notes etc...
Click to expand...

Me either. But Im reminded of a Billy Joel lyric; "The good old days weren't always so good and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems". Because I do enjoy being able to access lots and lots of music that I'd never have even heard with the old model. I do enjoy not being tied to a single machine in one room of my house to listen to music. I do enjoy being able to que up anything want instantly instead of thumbing through stacks of cardboard and plastic.
 
heeman said:
^ and when you got home you played that recorded over and over again and followed the liner-notes, and listened to every instrument.................

This was a time that we have no more.................I guess because we choose it to be that way.
Click to expand...
I remember those times, but I'm also enthused all to hell, being able to buy a bluray concert of virtually any band, watching it over and over, even being able to choose different cameras/angles, while not paying through the nose to Ticketscalper, fighting traffic and parking, and having a young person puke on your shoes. Tom nailed it, there's good and bad in both the present, and the past.
In some ways its the Golden Age for musicians! Anyone can make a professional-level record in their basement (with some homework and a few bucks) and make it available to anyone in the world. With that, of course, comes the 98% of it being noise. Tom's observation applies here, too.

The only real complaint I have, right now, is that disks STILL have those miserable, &%*$ing "anti-piracy" tabs on them that are so difficult to remove, ARGH!!!
 
When I was in high school, I worked in the record department of a department store that was sort of like a Best Buy with large housewares and sporting goods departments.We still had a lot of vinyl, we had tons of cassette tapes and a rapidly expanding selection of CD's. I was working there when the Beatles catalog first came out on CD. I worked at another record store one summer in college. The first job was great, because I could play pretty much anything. The second job sucked, because it was a corporate store with the same promo disc playing the same ten songs over and over and over all day.
 
I just read an article in my local paper yesterday that is apropos of this topic. HMV (started in Great Britain I believe), which is a record store chain is going out of business but was bought out by another record store called Sunrise. Sunrise incidentily went out of business in my local mall years ago? Strange times!!
 
rammisframmis said:
I vividly remember shopping, for hours sometimes, at my local record store - for actual records. This is even before Tower Records became the mega store. Absolutely nothing which exists today is even remotely comparable in enjoyment and involvement to that. Yes, I didn't have immediate access to zillions of tracks all at that instant, but everybody did have the Schwann record catalog, and I could order whatever I wanted which the record shop didn't have already, and eagerly anticipate going back in a few days to pick up my new disc.

Sure, there are a very few small independent record stores around, but its too bad most people here will never be able to experience how it actually was in the "real" golden age.
Click to expand...
For years I had the same joy.

Before I could drive (pre 1967) I would ride 3 miles on my bike to get to the local record store in the small city whee I lived and can remember several times when I got in hot water with my parents for being late because I was looking at and occasionally buying records.

In college (1970-74) the town where I was (Athens, Ohio) had several record stores and the small amount of discretionary income went into music. Then in the late '70's and early 80's two friends and I would hit the good local record store on Friday afternoons and buy alot of albums (and then CD's) and spend Friday night sitting around listening, reading the liners and having a great time. One of those friends had invested in a linear tracking Technics turntable and a high end Nackamichi tape deck and we would open an album (clean it with a Discwasher) play it one time while recording a cassette of it and then put the album back in the jacket to only occasionally be played again.

When CD's became the norm I discovered a CD store about 15 miles from me and would spend hours on a Saturday morning buying CD's. They had a HUGE inventory but if they didn't have a CD they would order anything you wanted. When the owner decided to sell I seriously considered buying the store but didn't have access to the funds/credit needed to do that.

Those times were some of the best of my life because not only did I discover and enjoy so much music I had a readily accessible community of friends I could share and enjoy the music with.

To get to the original question I think we may be in the golden age of accessibility to music but do not feel we are in the golden age of music itself. Being the old fart I am I consider the mid 60's to late 70's the golden age of music for me.
 
Since the dawn of time everyone always says that the times in which they came of age were the "golden years".

What a silly notion.
 
Towen7 said:
Since the dawn of time everyone always says that the times in which they came of age were the "golden years".

What a silly notion.
Click to expand...

I imagine for them (us, me) it was. Untainted by all the cynicism, frustration and tribulations of life we view it thru a different lens than other times.
 
Botch said:
I remember those times, but I'm also enthused all to hell, being able to buy a bluray concert of virtually any band, watching it over and over, even being able to choose different cameras/angles, while not paying through the nose to Ticketscalper, fighting traffic and parking, and having a young person puke on your shoes. Tom nailed it, there's good and bad in both the present, and the past.
In some ways its the Golden Age for musicians! Anyone can make a professional-level record in their basement (with some homework and a few bucks) and make it available to anyone in the world. With that, of course, comes the 98% of it being noise. Tom's observation applies here, too.

The only real complaint I have, right now, is that disks STILL have those miserable, &%*$ing "anti-piracy" tabs on them that are so difficult to remove, ARGH!!!
Click to expand...


Botch, you hit on some great things.............

I will never forget seen a Phil Collins concert on VHS back in the 80's on my friends 35" Sony.....................WOW was that the bomb! Thought it was the best thing in the world.

Look at where we are now................. Home Theaters, Surround Sound, Unlimited Supply of Concerts on a disc, not Laser Disc's.

Good Thread!!
 
Towen7 said:
Since the dawn of time everyone always says that the times in which they came of age were the "golden years".

What a silly notion.
Click to expand...
Not silly at all. I can see and appreciate many of periods way before my time which are generally acknowledged as the "golden age" of some style, music, technology or whatever. There were many golden ages which have nothing to do with the coming of age of the people who lived at the time.
 
rammisframmis said:
Not silly at all. I can see and appreciate many of periods way before my time which are generally acknowledged as the "golden age" of some style, music, technology or whatever. There were many golden ages which have nothing to do with the coming of age of the people who lived at the time.
Click to expand...

The point was that for most people and for most things they comment about their youth and how it was better then. Your own commentary was about how you shopped for music. But okay, you win. Not every single golden age was when you were a young man.

You old farts can go back to reminiscing and I'll stay off your lawn.
 
I think this is (and from what most are commenting about) the golden age of music access. Unfortunately I don't think the actual music itself is better now.
With all the post production and gadgetry like auto tuners, drum machines, etc. I think it is far too easy for talentless individuals to become relevant in the music that is being produced and consumed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top