Name a classic al***.

Jono

Or



Jono

Jon,


Here's a few we knocked up a while ago. just scroll down to ROTF's post.


http://forums.naim-audio.com/e...85/m/6002998117/p/12


And here is a personal favorite.. WARNING contains content that might open your mind.




Dean......

quote:

In a recent interview in Record Collector John Lydon cited Sir Keith Emerson as a great bloke.

I think I'd be more impressed/surprised if Sir KE said JL was a good bloke, if he'd even heard of him.

Bat Out Of Hell was a classic album, the follow ups weren't

Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks
The Clash: London Calling
Leonard Cohen: Songs of
Radiohead: The Bends
Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks
Van Morrison: Astral Weeks
The Smiths: The Queen is Dead
Lou Reed: Transformer
Velvet Underground: Velvet Underground & Nico
Neil Young: Harvest
Sparks: Kimono My House
Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures
Joni Mitchel: Blue
Nirvana: Nevermind
Beach Boys: Pet Sounds

As I typed this stuff and obviously I could have gone on a fair bit, I realised that this is a bit like one of those greatest singles/LPs of all time lists where everyone, as far as I can tell, just lists the most famous albums/songs that they know. I always want people to forget about that stuff and just put down the music they actually play and love the most. So, I'm a big fan of Leonard Cohen and critically probably Songs of... is the best LP but it isn't the one I play the most these days - I play Recent Songs which musically (and arrangement-wise) I'd say is superior. Same with: The Smiths - The Queen is Dead gets the acclaim but I always put on Strangeways Here we Come instead; re: Joni Mitchell I like Clouds better than Blue; I play Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young more often than Harvest, and so on.

Just a thought:

quote:

Originally posted by Huwge:
I'm having trouble with the concept of Swan Lake being a classic album, is it just because of the genre?

Tchaikovsky's done some great albums!

Rich

Surely classic means tested by time and still of interest to new generations.

Surely no popular recorded music yet falls into this category?

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Surely classic means tested by time and still of interest to new generations.

Surely no popular recorded music yet falls into this category?

ATB from George

Wrong. Again.

In what way?

The only people interested in the old pop recordings of the fifties and sixties are those who were there!

This is simply reliving a lost youth - not a definition of classic status!

You are the one who is wrong.

No one here will ever live to see what is classic pop music, because by defrinition we would have to outlive another generation to be sure.

That is called the judgement of time.

It is why we can call Beethoven's Missa Solemnis a classic and Cherubini's Masses pieces simply of their time - unheard today except on rare and swiftly deleted reecordings.

I think you will find I am right on this. Indeed I would not even guarantee with absolute certainty what the next generations view of the Beatles might be ... Classic or simply a footnote in pop music history. No one knows yet!

I never start a discussion with a trenchant position when I am wrong ...

quote:

Originally posted by Sir Crispin Cupcake:


Tchaikovsky's done some great albums!

Oh sure, I loved his early stuff, you know, from the 60's and early 70's. Then he went disco. That's where I cashed in my chips.

Your definitions are wrong , moulded by outdated conceptions.
We don't have to wait until someone digs it up in the back of a museum shelf to see the value.

Influences of all the music that has gone before, are to be seen as elements of the now "classic" albums.

Please will you give what your definition of classic is and what use it might be considering it has clearly been dumbed down?

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by avole:
At the very least I'd expect Never Mind the Bollocks on everyone's list. Sure, it killed progressive rock, but was that really a bad thing?
.

A myth put around by the media, mostly the NME. Bands like Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd had some of their biggest selling albums after The Sex Pistols came on the scene.

The media had something new to write about, and so did so. The real achievement of punk was to cater for an audience who had been neglected before, and that was a very good thing which brought out much new talent.

The rhetoric about killing off what went before was to quote a word from The Sex Pistols album 'Bollocks', and a rather sad and infantile aspect to some bands.

A few who had liked prog wanted something new, and took to punk, but many continued to enjoy the music they loved.

Both movements flowered for a time, and then some bands continued to perform as part of a more eclectic music culture. The Sex Pistols and Yes have both toured over the last couple of years, and their fans will no doubt have enjoyed their concerts, and there will be a few fans who went to both tours.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by GFFJ:
The only people interested in the old pop recordings of the fifties and sixties are those who were there!/QUOTE]

I do get the drift of what you are saying George and perhaps the issue is around how long we have to wait to know whether a piece of music will still be listened to enthusiatically post-issue. Obviously Mozart & Beethoven etc have managed to stay in our consciousness for several hundered years and we have no way of knowing if anyone who recorded material over the last 60 years or so will achieve that feat.

However, I was born in 1966 and I do buy and listen to music that was recorded and popular long before I was throwing my dummy out of the pram - I like Roy Orbison; Aretha Franklin; Johnny Cash; Marleen Dietricht; The Weavers and so on & I have friend who likes Buddy Holly and other old timers...

I guess all we can ever say is that some albums seem to be lasting better than others, whether or not it is the best that last longest in the public imagination is another question......

quote:

I do get the drift of what you are saying George and perhaps the issue is around how long we have to wait to know whether a piece of music will still be listened to enthusiatically post-issue.

80 to 100 years. If it can survive that long it begins to apporach classic status. Before then it may as worthy as if had classic status, but it is simply still popular or fashionable at that point.

Why should we devalue words like classic, or genius with over-use?

ATB from George

I don't agree with that at all George...it's completely arbitary...and we're generally (imo) far too reverential of art just because it's old.

Art should judged on it's merits (imo) not whether it still shifts units some years on.

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Surely no popular recorded music yet falls into this category?

New generations are constantly discovering classics from the 50's, 60's etc George and are most definately classics. Equally, jazz has wealth of classics.

Relative to the above very few people (imo) are discovering what has traditionally been called 'the classics'. In this context, what many consider to be 'the classics' - such as Dickens, are possibly not classics at all...and have been severely overatted as an artistic medium. They have become a dumbed down 'traditionalist' item of novel historic value.

quote:

Originally posted by Mat Cork:
I don't agree with that at all George...it's completely arbitary...and we're generally (imo) far too reverential of art just because it's old.

Art should judged on it's merits (imo) not whether it still shifts units some years on.

Dear Mat,

I am going to stick to music here rather than spread the issue to literature as well even though you throw that in as a possible enlargemnent of the debate.

You yourself make the point that one cannot possibly call the pop music of the fifties classic except in the inverted commas sense, which you do apply in your second post. A true classic has no need of these inverted commas ...

The reason you make the point so very clearly if possibly inadvertently about the fifties music not yet being called classic is that in the main the popular music of the '20s, '30s, and '40s has completely all but disappeared in terms of having any sort of popularity today.

To take the 100 year rule the popular music of the Edwardian era is not known at all to anyone but accademics in University Music Departments. Why do you assume that in the 2050s anyone will still be interested in the popular music of the 1950s, when even in the 2010s the popular music of the 1940s has all but become extinct. Vera Lynn aside that is. When was the last thread here on Glenn Miller for example? The reason the music of the 1940s has almost died out is that the generation that first heard has itself almost died out. The music may have had value in its time, but certainly not classic status. Essentially of its time, the music has proven efemeral ...

So really until a piece of music has a continuing interest that completely outlives that generation which heard it as new music, then it simply can only be considered popular or fashionable, but not certainly durable or classic, though of course time may prove it both durable and classic, once the time has passed. This is not an arbitrary time scale - the entire passing of the generation who first knew the music as newly presented.

I suspect that you need to have a look at the BBC Prom Concert series audience to see if the musical classics have a young and vibrant following. I hardly need do more than point you at the evidence on that one.

ATB from George

Concerning the current popularity of the great classical composers; Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, et al :

More people listen to this music now than at the time they were written, by a very large margin.

We'll not agree George (which is no bad thing).

I really don't believe the 'test of time' line is valid. In fact I think it's extremely misleading.

Genre's emerge from time to time. Classical fans like to use the term 'popular' to describe everything other than classical - which is dumbing down of art, jazz fans often describe other music as 'mainstream' which is equally wrong. This is a dumbing down of how music evolves.

I would maintain, for example, that within the Rock genre 'classics' have emerged, as they have in pop, as they have in electronic.

My old hobbyhorse is that in this country, you are reverential of age...to the point where something being old, is often sufficient to being labled 'classic'. As I define matters, for something to be 'classic' it has to be seminal, ground breaking for exceptional in other terms. In the classical field, as I define matters, there are some 'classic' pieces of music...equally there are some trite pieces of work which, if written today would never qualify as in any way 'a classic'. Some modern classical compositons written in recent years, I would clearly suggest are 'classics' - Gorecki's Symphony no.3 for example.

It's all a personal thing, we should all define our own 'classics'. Otherwise, we end up blindly following a genre, journalistic output or sales figures. Taken to it's extreme, in the past (fortunately it's dying out now) we have had university courses studying 'The Classics'. This is incredibly sad, people need to think for themselves.

The Proms? I look on it with disdain George, a celebration of something past, I view 1950's rock n' roll weekends in exactly the same manner.

Dear Mat,

I think it is quite reasonable to dislike music that is aptly labelled classic [if not classical], and that is fair enough.

And classic is not a once an for all label, but rather a distinction which can fall away over time as the music no longer speaks to new generations.

Who shall proclaim with complete certainty that in 300 years the the music of JS Bach will still be avidly enjoyed?

Once Bach falls out of favour then he will slip for a writter of musical classics to a composer of old and dull music that no longer speaks to the current audience.

Good that we can diagree, however, and still consider it a good thing!

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
...It is why we can call Beethoven's Missa Solemnis a classic and Cherubini's Masses pieces simply of their time - unheard today except on rare and swiftly deleted reecordings...

No, that is because to the vast and growing majority of people classical musical is an irrelevance (viz. the decline of R3 as a serious classical station, and the growth of lollipop Classic FM, Katherine Jenkins, Aled Jones, et al. and 'crossover'), and increasingly the classical music that those who can be bothered with it do want to listen to is from composers whose names trip of the tongue. Thus, to make a living, the commercial producers of both recorded music and concerts concentrates on what most sells, the popular names.

EDIT
And I'm not having a pop at classical music here, I write as someone with a respectable classical collection of about 600 LPs and 300 CDs.

And with particular regard to obscure liturgical music, George you might like to make a Sunday trip up to London, to - for example - All Saints' Margaret Street, St Mary's Bourne Street (both Anglican), St James' Spanish Place, Westminster Cathedral (RC) and many others to hear the most wonderful range of liturgical music, live and in context.

Cherubini fell out of favour sixty years before the first gramophone recordings so your example falls, I am sorry to say.

The Missa has never faded, and though very tough on the choir it is regularly performed, not because it is easy to listen to or has a catchy name, but because it remains great music that speaks to succeeding generations.

I think we are living through times of massive cultural change, and I concede that the true classics may indeed become the preserve of a properly educated but much smaller elite in the next generation.

I consider this very sad, but it is essentially led by consumerist capitalistic materialism [and a society fed a diet of advertising breeding the expectation of instant gratification], which itself must eventually destroy the earth [as a habitable place for humankind] as we accelerate our rush to deplete the finte resources we are blessed with in accelerating over population, and even increasing economic activity and rate of consumption [and waste].

ATB from George

George, why do I have at least one Cherubini Mass on LP, on mainstream EMI, not some obscure label either? (Oh, and I've just done a quick search on Amazon 'cherubini mass' and it pulled up 26 results.)

Also I added a bit to my post above.