Classic Rock - Was It The Best?

[Julie Moriarty]

Yesterday my SO hooked into a Doobie Brothers greatest hits thing on YouTube. This song came on and the headphones came off and I was asked if I had ever heard the song. It was "I Cheat The Hangman." The song took me back and sent goosebumps down my spine. The guitars, the keyboards, the brass, the vocals, everything blended so beautifully.

Maybe it's just me, but the music back then just seemed... well... music.

[David G Baker]

It all depends on your generation. My music came from the mid 50's thru the mid 70's but I really enjoy most music from Classic to Country. Haven't found any Rap that I enjoy but I am not exposed to it. I am sure that I like some of the Doobie Brothers music but I can't think of any titles right now. I am going to Youtube and listen to a few.

[Bruce Page]

The Doobie Brothers were masters at Album Music. You bought their album for one song and fell in love with the rest. I had just moved to northern New Mexico from SoCal when Stampede was released. It’s one of my all time favorites.


Thanks, it brought back lots of memories!

[Greg Peterson]

I once heard a musician say that you have a lifetime to write your first album, and nine months to write your second album. Most of those one hit wonders of the 60's and 70's were the culmination of a lifetimes experience, distilled into two and a half to three minutes. Hits of the 70's ran the gamut from folk, to rock, to pop, country, disco and everything in between. It was a no holds barred era when the music had dynamics and melodies.

Today's music, at least the top 100, is all formula with little difference from one to the next.

Heck, in the 70's we had song's like 'Popcorn', Convoy, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Crocodile Rock, Love will keep us together, Uncle Albert, Sister Mary Elephant, Ear ache my eye.......

Sigh. No variety these days. The performers can generally sing and dance well, but they seem artificial, calculated and premeditated.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

The 50's through the early 80's was a fantastic time to be alive and listening to music. As stated from folk music, though the British Invasion, though bands like Chicago, The Ides of March, all the Motown Greats....Rare Earth.....The Bee Gees......Santana.........The Buckinghams .....3 Dog Night..... The 4 Seasons..... The Beach Boys..... The Rolling Stones..... The Animals..... The Spenser Davis Group......Jay and the Americans...... There were some excellent Broadway musicals from that 60's too!

I had been playing bass guitar and singing in a band for a year when the Beatles led the British Invasion into this country. What a breath of fresh air! No offense to Chuck Berry but you can only play Johnny B. Goode so many times in one evening before you want to vomit! So much of the Bobby Vinton, Bobby Vee type music required more sounds than a typical 4 piece band of teens could produce.

As you are probably aware, on July 8th, 2010, I awoke deaf. After a lot of work on my part rehabbing my hearing in the implanted ear, I am not only listening to and enjoying music again, I am buying CDs of music from that era. Far from being perfect, some of the music is fairly accurate and some of it is distorted. Every night when I remove my hardware, I reenter the world of the deaf, am reminded of what it's like and am ever so grateful for what I have regained!

My fetish is bass guitar. If I could die and reincarnate as someone else I would want to come back with James Jamerson's bass playing skills! I have a Fender Power Jazz Bass sitting 3 feet from me and can't hear the bottom bass notes now with my cochlear implant. I was in Spokane this afternoon, getting new software loaded on my CI and having it remapped (similar to adjusting a stereo equalizer) and I remarked I was thinking of selling my bass as I cannot hear the bottom notes. That's not unusual for those of us with CIs to lose the ability to hear the low frequencies.

But...the 60's into the early 80's for music? What a beautiful time to be alive and listening.

[Greg Peterson]

Yet another area of agreement, Ken. What is this world coming to?

Is there any potential for getting the CI to register lower frequencies, or is it more to do with the grey matter interface?

James Jamerson, good taste. Duck Dunn was another. John Deacon (Millionaire Waltz is amazing), Tony Levine.

So many great bass players.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

The frequencies that you hear with a normal functioning are relative to the physical position within the cochlea where they are sensed. High Frequencies are sensed near the base of the cochlea and low frequencies are sensed near the small apex. The coaxial cable from the CI implant computer which is inserted into the cochlea, is actually made up of several concentric cables (16 in my case) each terminating with an element that contacts the nerve in the cochlea at different places. In theory, in the case of the brand I have which has 16 elements, I should only hear 16 frequencies but it's actually broader than that. Those who do retain bass frequency hearing were lucky enough to have that as residual hearing but typically, when the cable is inserted into the cochlea, it destroys the "hairs" lining the cochlea and the element doesnt' get to the apex.

The brand I have, I waited for 10 months to regain FDA approval and return to the US market from a self-imposed recall. They had 2 internal implants fail in such a way as to cause the CI recipient to experience pain, though the pain could be stopped by removing the sound processor (which looks like a hearing aid). This brand is made in the US, by company bought by a global Swiss corporation. This particular brand's design has the ability to apply bias to one or more or none of the elements simultaneously using different polarities and amplitudes. Thus, it can effectively stimulate a larger area than just where the element makes contact. In clinical trials they were able to produce a much wider spectrum of frequencies to be heard. The software to do this is still under development and will require FDA approval before be implemented outside clinical trials. Those CI-borgs who were involved with the clinical trials said music was greatly improved with that new software.

I also chose this brand ( only 3 are FDA approved for use in the US) because at the time I chose it, it was only using about 28% of the implanted computer's capability. That means future upgrades without futher surgery. There is no battery powering the internal implant. The battery powered soundprocessor which looks similar to a hearing aid but has a cable with a large disc at the end, works similar to a HA but the last thing it does is modulate a radio signal. The round disc is an antenna/coil with a rare earth magnet in it. The implant under the scalp has an antenna and a rare earth magnet, so the disk is held to the scalp by the two magnets. The radio signal is transmitted through the scalp, is received by the implant processor where it strips off the RF and converts it to a DC voltage to power the processor. The incoming digital signal, now missing it's RF component, goes to the CPU of the implant which outputs signals to the 16 channels driving individual biases to the elements contacting the nerve.

In short, no I will probably not regain low frequency hearing in that ear. I do have another ear that I wear a HA on. I can't function with just the HA, I tried for 10 months. While it's a candidate for implanting, I have held off. Someday, we might be able to regrow the hairs that line the cochlea. If that would happen, that ear might be a candidate. There has been talk about this potential for a decade now.

[Rich Engelhardt]

LOL!

Every generation is going to say their music was the best. Talking 'bout my generation....(apologies to the Who ) - we thought we were out to change the world with our world changing songs.

Little did we know that, back in 427 BC a fellow by the name of Plato had this to say about music when he wrote a little book called - The Republic.

"This is the point to which, above all, the attention of our rulers should be directed, –that music and gymnastic be preserved in their original form, and no innovation made. They must do their utmost to maintain them intact. And when any one says that mankind most regard, “The newest song which the singers have,” they will be afraid that he may be praising, not new songs, but a new kind of song; and this ought not to be praised, or conceived to be the meaning of the poet; for any musical innovation is full of danger to the whole State, and ought to be prohibited. So Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him; he says that when modes of music change, of the State always change with them."



My dad and I used to argue about music every time we got in the car.
He called "my music" a lot of noise and nonsense and that the lyrics were stupid - when you could make them out.

I countered with "and boop boop diddum diddum whatum chew" isn't nonsense ?
Where I really got him though was when I pointed out that 90% or better of "his" Easy Listening stuff was just "my music" done over and the lyrics stripped out.

[David Weaver]

Classic rock and progressive metal (which is in some ways a follow-on of Kansas and other more progressive classic rock).

[Jim Matthews]

Rock and Roll is meant to be played by young people.

If you're taking Geritol, you're no longer a rocker.
Remember that the output of most musicians (Van Morrison excepted)
drops off at the same rate as mathematicians, as it emanates
from the same focal centers of the brain.

There are still great blues players out there,
but they're emulators, not innovators.

The problem with today's crop is the reliance on
pitch correction and splicing in the mix.

Features that make music memorable are lost under too much polish.

There haven't been real rockers on the radio since the Ramones.

[Paul McGaha]

Classic rock the best? Well, to me it is.

To this today classic rock and old Motown music are pretty much all I listen to.

Just listen to country music a little, Willie and Waylon kind of stuff.

We raised our kids on classic rock music. Our youngest kids are in their 30's now and it is kind of pleasing for Frannie and me to see at least a couple of the kids seem to prefer classic rock music. They seem to agree with our tastes.

PHM

PS: The Doobie Brother's - "The Captain and me" was one of my 1st albums, a very good album.

[Val Kosmider]

I give you Jessica: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfM6nRVBvGs

Or a little Layla: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th3ycKQV_4k

[Bill Edwards(2)]

Rock and Roll is meant to be played by young people.

If you're taking Geritol, you're no longer a rocker.
Remember that the output of most musicians (Van Morrison excepted)
drops off at the same rate as mathematicians, as it emanates
from the same focal centers of the brain.

There are still great blues players out there,
but they're emulators, not innovators.

The problem with today's crop is the reliance on
pitch correction and splicing in the mix.

Features that make music memorable are lost under too much polish.

There haven't been real rockers on the radio since the Ramones.

Obviously you have not seen a recent George Thorogood concert.

[Julie Moriarty]

When I wrote this last night I oversimplified by using the term classic rock. The image in my mind was much broader, more along the lines of music performed by people playing instruments. Last year I saw Joe Walsh (he was playing at something called "Ribfest") and he talked about the heavy infusion of computer software in today's music and mentioned Pro Tools as an example of music being so processed it loses it's soul. He said if they had Pro Tools when the Eagles were recording Hotel California, they would still be in the studio. That really stuck with me.

In 1965 I was playing bass in a garage band. The band dissolved once we got into high school and over the next several decades I barely played at all. I recently started making guitars and have a couple in the house now. I can't play much but when I pick up one of those guitars I feel a connection with music that had I lost over the years. I can't imagine ever feeling that connection with music created on a computer.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

"Best rock music"? As someone else said, most will believe it's that which is developed by their generation........but in the end it's subjective. It is just a matter of personal opinion. There is no one measurement or standard for "best" rock music.