# Mental Compromise



## The Deacon (Jan 14, 2018)

Like I've written all over the internet, when you are talking music , nothing is dated. (Well....most nothing.)


Are there artists that sound a bit too dated/embarrassing when you listen to them now, but if you are willing to adjust your mindset and set the controls for say 1967, you can still groove to? (As long as no one is watching?) 


Or must you always compare/weigh something outside of its timespan.



Myself, I don't give a hoot. (And I never play music aloud to others, so....no chagrin.)


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^For me also, no music is dated; it exists outside of time.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

yes I feel there is some stuff I find should be blasted out of existence when it gets superseded, or juat never stood the test of time. Elvis' Heartbreak Hotel period, Cliff Richard, Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies, Kraftwerk, Graham Parker, Elton John, Billy Joel, Run DMC, Duran Duran, 13th Floor Elevators, Pink Floyd, Rod Stewart, Rush, Diana Ross, Sex Pistols, the Jam, the Buzzcocks, the Psychedelic Furs,


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## 38157 (Jul 4, 2014)

Music's a cultural product, and its message does run its course, causing it to become an artefact as opposed to a piece relevant commentary. This is equally true for both instrumental and vocal music (cultural values and priorities still affect how instrumental composition is approached as well as lyric subject matter). Some priorities within the production of Western music have been held for centuries (eg. the exaltation of pitch frequency and duration, with timbre playing a secondary role being used as colour and texture often being little other than an emergent property of combined melody, rhythm and timbre), and as long as there aren't any signals that are extremely specific to one time, some music can survive this effect more than others, although we'll always be looking at it through a contemporary lens whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, recording quality and production techniques will always date music quite poorly, which is why nobody can justifiably like '80s music.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> yes I feel there is some stuff I find should be blasted out of existence when it gets superseded, or juat never stood the test of time. Elvis' Heartbreak Hotel period, Cliff Richard, Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies, Kraftwerk, Graham Parker, Elton John, Billy Joel, Run DMC, Duran Duran, 13th Floor Elevators, Pink Floyd, Rod Stewart, Rush, Diana Ross, Sex Pistols, the Jam, the Buzzcocks, the Psychedelic Furs,


Mmm, but you'd be blasting my adolescent musical experience out of existence (Floyd, Graham Parker, Pistols, Jam, Buzzcocks and yes! the Psychedelic Furs - the LP is in a cupboard not 6 feet from where I'm sitting). I'm not sure I'd want that. It was awkward and a bit embarrassing but I have some perspective on it now and can laugh at myself.

Plus, I actually do think that some of the music does stand the test of time.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

I'm with *Strange Magic* here. When a new era comes along and "dates" the music that preceded it, all that represents is a sort of musical prejudice for the "newer sound." It doesn't make the old music bad. Music may be associated with a date, but it is really without time. I don't listen to _Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient_ and think, "Boy the 1350's were so lame."

The OP mentioned 1967. Well in 1967, I was listening to (for instance) the timeless tune from the Rascals, _How Can I Be Sure_. When I hear it now I don't think it's 1967, or late 60's. I think, my, what a beautiful piece of writing.


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## 38157 (Jul 4, 2014)

Room2201974 said:


> I'm with *Strange Magic* here. When a new era comes along and "dates" the music that preceded it, all that represents is a sort of musical prejudice for the "newer sound." It doesn't make the old music bad. Music may be associated with a date, but it is really without time. I don't listen to _Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient_ and think, "Boy the 1350's were so lame."


I'm not sure the term "dated" necessarily implies a value judgement, though. It's up to you whether you're indifferent to its ageing, or assign a positive or negative value to it, but it's an inescapable fact that the artefact itself reflects completely different things as time passes (regardless of its original intention), and if it has particularly strong ties to an archaic cultural idea, it itself becomes archaic, even if you can still make a positive judgement on its aesthetic.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I always find myself thinking about Old Man Bach, he and his music "dead" these past centuries, whenever this topic comes up. Then I hear again the D minor keyboard concerto.......

There is a rush ("Rush", get it?) in the Non-Classical forum to tell everyone shamefacedly that we used to like Rush, or Billy Joel, or Graham Parker. But we're over it now; we've matured, moved on, moved past. Yet when it comes to Prokofiev, in his grave these almost 70 years...... My mind never worked this way. If I liked it then, I like it now: classical, pop, rock, flamenco, folk, Latin, whatever.


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## 38157 (Jul 4, 2014)

Strange Magic said:


> I always find myself thinking about Old Man Bach, he and his music "dead" these past centuries, whenever this topic comes up. Then I hear again the D minor keyboard concerto.......


Bach's such a great example, because he pre-dates recording technology, and all versions we've heard are either approximations of how we think the music would have been performed back in that time, or are adaptations which don't particularly concern themselves with this laborious task (or they're something in between).

In a way, classical music has the advantage of being slightly less pervious to the phenomenon of ageing due to the lack of recordings from the time of their conception. This, ironically, makes every new interpretation of a classical piece completely and utterly modern (even in "historically-informed" performance, as even that depends on a contemporary view of what a "historically-informed" performance is). As such, a lot of archaic cultural signals are missing (although the general priorities of musical features in the work quite easily betray the time it belongs to).

Conversely, we have literal "sounds" of past decades thanks to recording technology, which makes it much easier to make an initial judgement on what time period a piece came from, just from listening for a second. This makes it easier to quickly make a negative or positive value judgement based on this. This applies to classical recordings as well as popular music recordings, interestingly (there are arguably instances where certain recordings evoke not the era of a piece's composition, but the era of its recording and interpretation), but popular music is more vulnerable to this thanks to the more integral role recording techology and performance plays in its conception, unlike classical music where an instructional score generally is created before any other part of the process begins.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

****** said:


> I'm not sure the term "dated" necessarily implies a value judgement, though. It's up to you whether you're indifferent to its ageing, or assign a positive or negative value to it, but it's an inescapable fact that the artefact itself reflects completely different things as time passes (regardless of its original intention), and if it has particularly strong ties to an archaic cultural idea, it itself becomes archaic, even if you can still make a positive judgement on its aesthetic.


The model for me is that I try to review a song based solely on its ability to work as a function of the fusion between words and music. Dates, eras, and ages; the historical context in which a work is created, do not answer the basic question for me of, "Does it work?". YMMV


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## 38157 (Jul 4, 2014)

Room2201974 said:


> The model for me is that I try to review a song based solely on its ability to work as a function of the fusion between words and music. Dates, eras, and ages; the historical context in which a work is created, do not answer the basic question for me of, "Does it work?". YMMV


That's fair enough, but whether or not we judge a piece to be successful as a composition is slightly different to our reaction to its aesthetic (e.g. I respect Mozart's craftsmanship, but I dislike my experiences of the music we attribute to him), and the latter I feel is more related to the idea of music become "dated" than the former (e.g. I can respect the cultural impact of The Beatles, but on a purely aesthetic level, I struggle to hear their music as much more than a museum-piece of the '60s/'70s - this is both due to the sonic quality of the recordings and the compositional choices, not solely one or the other, and this is because both are specific markers of a particular era).

I think it's easy to see the judgement of something as being "dated" as a criticism, but this isn't necessarily true - I love The Mothers, but culturally we're past all the dadaist stuff they did, and an attempt to recapture it in the present day would be little else other than nostalgia (which is not to say it is wrong to try and recapture it, although in my view, it would be contrived).


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

****** said:


> I'm not sure the term "dated" necessarily implies a value judgement, though. It's up to you whether you're indifferent to its ageing, or assign a positive or negative value to it, but it's an inescapable fact that the artefact itself reflects completely different things as time passes (regardless of its original intention), and if it has particularly strong ties to an archaic cultural idea, it itself becomes archaic, even if you can still make a positive judgement on its aesthetic.


yes to this. There's music that sounds dated in a wonderful way so one can understand immediately that is music of a certain period but and still it's great music and music that sounds dated in a horrible way, and what one can hear more than anything else are certain clichès of the period.
Probably it's the value of the music that makes that difference: if a piece of music is great, it's great even if one can say immediately that the piece was recorded in a certain period. Otherwise the music is not that great, probably there's not much more than the signs of a certain period.

For instance, I generally hate that kind of synth sounds and electronic drums used in the eighties. But then I hear those electronic drums in The ballad of Dorothy Parker (my favorite Prince's song) and while I can certainly say that it's a song made in the eighties I don't care, because the song is great.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Every now and then I remind myself that in music and the arts, something is great if we think it is. If not, then not. _Hamlet_, Act II, Scene II.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Strange Magic said:


> Every now and then I remind myself that in music and the arts, something is great if we think it is. If not, then not. _Hamlet_, Act II, Scene II.


Personally I believe in subjectivity but definitely not in complete subjectivity. Because the history of music and art has been also the history of criticism, and the idea of a review is based on the fact that we are able to share a similar experience listening to the same thing. Otherwise, music magazines and review and even this forum would had not existed.


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## Ludwig Von Chumpsky (Apr 19, 2018)

One word comes to mind...Disco. Talk about dated. But even there some of the artists in that era were just cheap knockoffs, and some were trailblazers. Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, and the song named Gloria (Laura Branigan) are still great songs even though the beat is trite and the electronics kinda hokey.


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## 38157 (Jul 4, 2014)

norman bates said:


> the idea of a review is based on the fact that we are able to share a similar experience listening to the same thing.


On this point, I might personally argue that this is not so much an indication of true objectivity (otherwise the logical final conclusion here is that if lots of people like something, it must be objectively good, and if they dislike it, it must be objectively terrible), but rather it's an indication that the same cultural standards have influenced the subjective preferences of the general population that comprise that culture. Standards by which we judge art are pretty arbitrary, even if they seem like common sense, so all objects must be truly neutral until judged.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

TurnaboutVox said:


> Mmm, but you'd be blasting my adolescent musical experience out of existence (Floyd, Graham Parker, Pistols, Jam, Buzzcocks and yes! the Psychedelic Furs - the LP is in a cupboard not 6 feet from where I'm sitting). I'm not sure I'd want that. It was awkward and a bit embarrassing but I have some perspective on it now and can laugh at myself.
> 
> Plus, I actually do think that some of the music does stand the test of time.


I knew I was stretching it.  There is some good stuff by all those.


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

****** said:


> On this point, I might personally argue that this is not so much an indication of true objectivity (otherwise the logical final conclusion here is that if lots of people like something, it must be objectively good, and if they dislike it, it must be objectively terrible), but rather it's an indication that the same cultural standards have influenced the subjective preferences of the general population that comprise that culture. Standards by which we judge art are pretty arbitrary, even if they seem like common sense, so all objects must be truly neutral until judged.


I don't know, I'm not sure about that. Your idea has certainly a part of truth (culture is certainly an influence) but while I don't want to talk of "true objectivity" I think it's possible there could be something else, something innate. I remember reading some interesting stuff about this, like people listening for the first time western music, or how we perceive the same intervals in the same way, how we perceive certain frequences, how slow and fast rhythm has a similar effect etc.


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## 38157 (Jul 4, 2014)

norman bates said:


> I remember reading some interesting stuff about this, like people listening for the first time western music, or how we perceive the same intervals in the same way, how we perceive certain frequences, how slow and fast rhythm has a similar effect etc.


Be this true or false (and I'm confident it's true to an extent, I've read similar things), mere phenomena have no effect on whether there's anything inherently good or bad about a composition (which is the exploitation of these phenomena, which are neutral until put to use). The judgement of an object I think is completely dependent on the value system the individual (and more widely, culture) develops, which being arbitrary can't really have an inherent meaning. In my view, any claim that there is objectivity is made on the basis that the individual making that claim has mistaken cultural norms as fundamental truth.


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