Sure, before the internet, we made a big deal over Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band turning 20, with every publication on the planet chomping at the bit to run the headline "It Was Twenty Years Ago Today", but, hey, that was The Beatles.
Thing is, it's about to get worse. We're right on the cusp of becoming nostalgic about emo and mall punk simply because that crap is turning 20.
Lest we forget that Christian metal legend Stryper's To Hell With The Devil is turning 30 too!
Since then, the quality has gone down as the frequency has gone up. Just the other day, I found myself in a heated online debate over the artistic merit of Bryan Adams' Reckless album (the one where just about every song was a hit) simply because a friend of a friend had shared an article celebrating the album's 30th anniversary on social media.
Thing is, it's about to get worse. We're right on the cusp of becoming nostalgic about emo and mall punk simply because that crap is turning 20.
Lest we forget that Christian metal legend Stryper's To Hell With The Devil is turning 30 too!
So, has Our Worship of 30+ Year Old Rock Albums Killed Music?
On one hand, many of us are becoming quite nostalgic for those days when our life was still in front of us, but it isn't like we have to go re-buy all those albums. The fact is many of us are still listening to the crap we dug in high school and that we stopped keeping current on music right about the time we had to settle down and join the work-a-day world.
Nothing zaps the will to live quicker than spending 8 hours a day in a beige cubicle. Churning out all those TPS reports also cuts into your "music discovery" time, which is just fine because your record-buying buddies have all moved on to day jobs and yard work.
While most who fall into this category tend to view any album that doesn't have the words "Greatest Hits" in the title with disdain, they do spend hilarious amounts of money going to see the likes of Motley Crue and Ted Nugent in concert so one can see how record labels would be more willing to promote a proven act than an unproven one. Sure, it's lazy as hell, but, as you probably already know, we humans are a lazy lot.
To avoid that trap, you would need a music industry not so beholden to the almighty dollar that all they do is re-release albums that we already own (or have owned at various times in our lives) rather than develop and promote new talent.
That explains the complete lack of new acts capable of headlining at the stadium and arena level while, at the dame time, a 2018 Blondie Parallel Lines 40th Anniversary tour is no doubt already in the works.
Oops, if only the music industry had thought of that thirty years ago.
That explains the complete lack of new acts capable of headlining at the stadium and arena level while, at the dame time, a 2018 Blondie Parallel Lines 40th Anniversary tour is no doubt already in the works.
Oops, if only the music industry had thought of that thirty years ago.