Or have I just got lazier? Was it always like this or has music and the way it’s consumed these days affected things? It’s no big deal compared to all the serious shit happening in the world of course but I thought I’d just check because I’ve just skimmed over the Green Man festival line-up and realized I’ve only heard of one band on the bill (The Fall).
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Vincent says
It’s getting older, I think. I’m probably going to this year’s Latitude. Last year had 2 musical acts I’d heard of (Hall and Oates, Billy Bragg). This year I’ll probably know more of the folks in the readings tent.
ivylander says
It also seems that listening has gotten more tribal and genre loyalty more rigid. My (late teens/early 20s) children and their friends seem not to stray much outside the kinds of music they’ve established as their own. (Admittedly, this is unscientific, but it seems to be borne out by the larger culture.) As a result, I suspect, musicians who are well-known within a tight circle of enthusiasts can be invisible to anyone outside that group. The obvious exceptions to this are the Taylor Swifts and John Legends of the world, but they’re not exactly the first acts you’d invite to a festival, I would guess….
johnw says
It’s diversity that does it. You’ll look at another festival and know them all while I’m furrowing my brow. I’ve just had a look at the lineup and it’s by no means chocked full of unknown newcomers. If you listened to (ex-Fall member) Marc Riley’s radio show you would be pretty familiar with at least 11 of the artists. I would say that it’s actually more of a 6Music lineup than the 6Music festival was!
SixDog says
It’s like cricket and boxing. Once household names, now pushed to the margins by lack of terrestrial tv coverage. I couldn’t tell you what a Royal Blood or a War on Drug looked like if he/she poked me in the face with a stick.
If you know where to look, and have access, there’s wider coverage of music (and sports) than ever before, but spread across a huge range of channels and social media considerably diluting their public punch.
Notably the exemptions (the Sheerans, Smiths, Faith’s) still bankrolled by majors with influence and access to the broader mainstream media spectrums.
Baron Harkonnen says
It can`t be age, I`m familiar with at least 75% of the line up and I`m in my 60`s.
Jorrox says
This year at Cambridge Folk Fest, There is an act that is second top of the bill and I’ve never even heard of them. ‘Passenger’ (I have since checked them out).
eddie g says
Weirdly, ‘Passenger’ is someone I have heard of. But only because teenager g played him a lot last summer. Interestingly, I asked her this weekend when was the last time she actually bought a record or CD. She said ‘last Christmas…for you’ (bless her, she bought some Staple Singers LPs). But she admitted she’d ‘never’ actually *bought* a record in her life. I don’t know whether this has got anything to do with it. She’s far more knowledgeable about current music than me however. (But I suppose that’s exactly as it should be). I have to say though that whenever she plays me something on You Tube (something she does a lot and which I quite enjoy) it nearly always reminds me of something that was first done in 1967.
Jorrox says
I’m kinda the same. My girl is 21 (and has been going to CFF for most of these years). She owns nothing apart from a laptop. Not a single CD that I know of. But she’s recently started in on my vinyl!
She said ‘You must have heard Passenger!’ Er, nope.
Harry Tufnell says
We strayed into this territory last year when I asked who the feck (Latitude headliners) Two Door Cinema Club were. Apparently the latest band doing an arena tour are Imagine Dragons – how can they fill an arena when I’ve never heard of them? Even my very music savvy 27 year old nephew had no idea who they were.
Bingo Little says
Imagine Dragons are a pretty big act, and they also have the worst band name I’ve ever heard.
It’s almost as if they’re instructing you what to do in order to distract yourself while they peddle their bland, bland music.
Harry Tufnell says
We’re just turning into our parents aren’t we?
Are Imagine Dragons boys or girls?
eddie g says
Imagine Dragons are one of the bands teenager g played me the other night on You Tube. I told her I thought they were ‘ok’.
I secretly thought they sounded like every pub band I’ve ever seen.
eddie g says
I think the aforementioned fragmentation of ‘markets’ is possibly the reason for this ignorance. That and the BBC’s obsession with ‘new’ artists- often at the expense of artist/bands who are just as ‘new’ but who are now on their second or third album and desperate for the level of attention they got when being ‘Introduced’.
I can’t imagine our 1975 equivalents looking at the bill for a major festival and them not knowing who 75 per cent of the artists were.
Hawkfall says
But our 1975 equivalents would be our parents, right? I can easily imagine my mum and dad looking at the bill for the Reading Festival and wondering who Hawkwind were. And then concluding that whoever they were, they weren’t likely to be as good as Bill Haley or Buddy Holly.
Bingo Little says
They’re dragons, Neil.
Bingo Little says
Genetically modified, hyper intelligent Komodo dragons, come to lay down the funk.
They got their big break supporting label-mates Band of Horses. Toured exclusively zoos and farms for three months before hitting the university circuit. Built from there.
Harry Tufnell says
Surely if they’re laying down the funk they’d be Kokomo Dragons*
*Imaginary ones
moseleymoles says
Wasn’t their first album going to be called Komodo My House? (gets coat..)
Vulpes Vulpes says
By eating the main act?
Bingo Little says
They say they were heavily influenced by the Jesus Lizard.
paulwright says
Imagine Dragons I’ve heard of. Two Door Cinema club, nope. So we went to our local Bingley festival instead, which turned out to be full of people I’d never heard of but are apparently the next big thing (Gorgon City) or are already a big thing (Example) or over the hill (Pet Shop Boys – I’d heard of them) or never quite got over the hill (Shed 7). But yes, it our fault for getting old, not theirs for being less famous. I mean who in 1979 had heard of Joy Division? But now they are everywhere.
Bingo Little says
Not only have I heard of Gorgon City, but I am also currently playing the classic video game from which the name is presumably derived.
Take that, ageing process!
The Good Doctor says
This is only the provisional announcement, more acts to be added
The Good Doctor says
Also in 1975 there were a hell of lot less festival bills to fill than there are today.
I’d also suggest there are loads more modestly successful bands around, it’s easier to achieve a modest level of ‘fame’ via the interweb than it was to get your music on tv or radio in the olden days….therefore unless you’re Steve Lamacq there’s a good chance you’ll have heard of less bands than before, plus the Green Man is a niche festival and does feature lots of relatively unknown acts who might be packing them in in Shoreditch or Brooklyn but nowhere else.
retropath2 says
But there are shedloads of heritage festivals for the likes of us, where not only have you heard of ’em, you are amazed they are still going. Think Cropredy, Guildford, and many more. Passenger may be 2nd on the bill for a Cambridge desperately trying to bring the average age down to, say, my age (58 n/w), but it’s Joan Baez, aged 105, god help us, who’s top.
Zanti Misfit says
Neil above says, “We’re just turning into our parents, aren’t we?”
But I never felt that divide with my folks over music thirty odd years ago. There was always a sort of mutual respect. I liked my dad’s classical and jazz LPs. and he was fascinated/ amused by Gary Numan, Ian Dury, ELO, Madness, Sex Pistols, XTC. I didn’t mind my mum’s penchant for easy listening/ showtunes/ crooners and I used to make her tapes of UB40 and Joe Jackson.
Even when I became a full blown 13 hole boots and braces, black Crombie wearing skinhead, they thought it was quite sweet. after the initial shock.
“You look like a costermonger.”
Hawkfall says
I think you had cool parents Zanti! I can honestly say my Dad was no more interested in my Black Sabbath records than I was in his collection of records by guys wearing kilts with titles like “My Heart is in the Highlands”.
I think the generation gap is smaller these days.
Harry Tufnell says
I can not connect at any level with my dad regarding music, perhaps the only common ground is certain musicals but my interest in those is that I used to appear in them at school, other than that, if it doesn’t crop up on “Sing Something Simple” he’s not interested and it is described as “a bloody racket”. My late mum and I could listen to her Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits but I left the room when Lena Martell was introduced.
I don’t have kids but if I did and they listened to the same music as I do I’d be horrified.
Kaisfatdad says
Things can move very fast these days ( but I suppose they also did back in the days when I read MM and NME). A band can go from being completely unknown to packing out the second largest stage at the Roskilde a Festival in Denmark with kids who know the lyrics to all their songs. Kids who have a lot more time to trawl YouTube than I do!
Sewer Robot says
I think a lot of it’s down to the demise of Top Of The Pops. There’s nothing like being able to put a face to a name, or being subjected to two mutes of something you wouldn’t ordinarily go near to help with “recognition factor”.
My big bruv, who has never been more than “a few tapes for the car” interested in music, spent my youth doing a sort of word association thing: someone would mention Dead Or Alive and he’d say Pete Burns or Visage and he’d know Steve Strange. I Think this was down to TOTP, the Swap Shop couch and, to some extent radio patter.
And whither bands for whom the message is the medium?
Of course you can listen to the KLF as shiny pop, but you lose a lot without the MuMujumbo context.
How do I know my precious indie band is cooler than some tool of the corporate machine if I’m reduced to comparing tunes based on musical merit?
johnw says
Also album sleeves. Downloads mean I have no idea what the creators of some of my favourite records look like. In the old days, most sleeves had a picture of the artist somewhere.
Black Celebration says
A recent trip to Canada and the USA involved many car journeys and listening to local pop stations. The kids knew most of the songs because the same songs are all over the radio here in NZ too.
Worldwide hit songs are nothing new, but I feel that countries used to have more of their own flavour of pop music and occasionally a song or an act will “go global”. It seems now that it is decided for us and we all get the same global playlist.
Even listening to the very conservative Radio 1 in 1979 would have delivered a totally different set of songs to the ones played by an equivalent station in the USA.