1980 marked the end of their ‘concept’ album period… ‘hemispheres’ being the last of that style. but that’s what distinguished the prog rockers from the ordinary rock bands. whole sides of an album were dedicated to developing one major theme through a series of parts and stages. ordinary rock bands would fill album sides with individual songs, because they were too dumb to put something together longer than four minutes. see what i mean? it was a glimpse of what was to come in a music industry ruled by capitalist production quotas that needed to establish efficient formulas that could be quickly and easily produced. this is why the 70s was the end of a major epoche of musical creativity. why the 80s began as a period in which new technologies were used in a creative manner - the spirit of the 70s wasn’t yet fully ruined by the capitalist modes of production - but then quickly lost momentum as we approached the 90s, the last living era of music. today, we don’t find any ‘artists’, but zombies, the walking dead, who on account of the creative elements being now exhausted, only repeat and recreate all the formulas that are demanded by the market. same shit, different song. artists are now obnoxious caricatures of the machines that make the music through them. to sell it it has to be trendy. to be trendy, a face has to be put to it. put taylor swift here, dr. dre there. one for the middle class white college kids, another for the lower class black minorities. next we need something for the white middle class kids that sympathize with the spirit of hip-hop. let’s give em 21 pilots or something like that. etc., etc.
but you better get a good look at these guys because they are a breed that’ll never exist again on planet earf. real, cool super-dork musicians with no pretention or false bravado whatsoever. pure artists that lived, worked and journeyed to reach the fountain of lamneth not yet poisoned by late stage capitalism.
Now… I’m very fussy about my classical music, as I can’t tolerate too much going on in one piece, so rarely (if ever) listen to it for pleasure… but as I was going through a Tibetan Horn search on YouTube, it led me onto Meditation videos and onto this:
Pretty. I listened to him since forever, and like wine, it get’s better and better with age. If there is a music heaven6, I’m hightailing to there for sure.