Then why do people watch horror flicks, for the popcorn?

 

at least in the early days of rock music the people who created the music could also play it live and didn't rely on prerecorded backing tracks and lip-synching. i will never understand how people today can justify paying hundreds of dollars to watch somebody pretend to perform their own music. i'll only charge you five bucks to lip-synch some of todays hits.

 

Thing is, they're not "pretending," they are performing their own music.

The key thing is they are performing [along with] their own music. There are perfectly legit reasons for this:

1. Show lights are so complex and intricate now as to need to be automated. Tracks keep all systems on... track.
   
   
2. Modern pop production is DAW based, and much of it is sound design. "People today" expect the same sound as the record.
   
   
3. Pop artists usually perform with dancers, you know, to "justify paying hundreds of dollars." More is more.
   
   
4. Dancing along while singing is exhausting - you don't see opera or jazz singers do it. Pop singers must, to "justify paying..."
   
   
5. Touring is exhausting - sleeping 4-5 hours in tiny bunks in diesel powered (i.e., noisy, vibrating) buses accumulates sleep debt.
   - There's a reason major artists hire a private chef, trainer, doctor, masseuse 2-3 months before rehearsals and start training for endurance, and losing weight if need be (also, hair colorist for the aging stars, but that's another matter). It's a marathon.
   
   Daily marathons takes a toll on vocal chords, and performance. And pop/rock singers are not the only ones complaining - there's an epidemic of injuries amongst opera singers as well. You see, the repertoire is exceedingly athletic to perform. In the times when they were written though, people traveled by horse carriage. Time zones, jet lag, dehydration didn't factor in. Also, singers were contracted for weeks if not months at theaters and concert halls across European cities. Today, opera singers fly from Italy, Austria, Germany, France, Spain or the UK to Sydney, or Tokyo, or Los Angeles, have a day or two to rehearse, perform a night or two, and right back home, or to the next show they go. The human body was not built to sustain this cadence and abuse.
   
   Unlike opera singers, pop/rock artists can (and most do) rely on their own tracks to supplement or support their own performance - they are singing along, but they don't feel the stress of carrying the whole performance if they're having an off day, moon phase or other physical issue. If they don't feel like hitting that high note, FOH will step in - they can (and most do) sing along, but this allows them to preserve their voice and both mental and physical health. The audience gets what they paid for.

Just think of how cool it'll look and sound on TikTok and Instagram when the audience posts their clips. Everyone is happy. Win-win.

 

Calling 'smooth jazz' "very sophisticated music" is a grand canyon wide stretch. Please.

Miles Davis dropped out of Julliard because, he said: "I could play everything they played, but they couldn't play what I played."

Poogie Bell said recently something similar: "Real jazz cats can play smooth jazz, but the reverse isn't true."

This should be the measure of "very sophisticated music" - can you play Jazz?

Rock is not, Country is not, Rap definitely is not "very sophisticated music," and neither is Smooth Jazz.

Smooth Jazz is a product. Jazz is art. There is a difference.

 

Absolutely!

That's why I mostly listen to Last Exit, rest of the shit is a joke.

 

Please yourself. As someone who rarely listened to it, the musicians who made it are/were highly skilled, technically trained on their respective instruments. While so called smooth jazz went for a more accessible pop approach to appeal to a much wider audience than traditional jazz, to scoff at the musicianship and writing is absurd.
'Jazz' jazz, can be off putting to most [insert jokes about jazz music], even those with more above average tastes.

Just looking at the 'from here to the moon' long list of 'smooth jazz' musicians [most the best on earth] tells me you gotta be one of them jazz snobs

Never listened to Miles early works because I'm just not into the style plus I hate horns.... except for rude saxophones in songs. [Waitresses for example]
Miles fusion/experimental shit sucks. The guys a stuck up asshole who's press went to his head.
"I could play everything they played, but they couldn't play what I played." lol, yeah, sure Miles. Same goes for Poogie, whoever dafuque that is.

 

Last edited: Jan 26, 2026 at 1:31 AM

The only reason I can see that some people might think that what was is better than what is would be because of the tunes that are out there.
There are billions of tunes available now and unfortunately, a substantial number of tunes in the last twenty years have similar grooves, near identical chord patterns with minor variations and many people suggest every tune sounds the same.

The twentieth century music discography indicates a wide variety of tunes that seemed to have their own unique identity. Nowadays the identity factor is limited to much smaller variances and too many tunes that use the same chord structures, near identical loops and samples, many that are of tunes that already exist that have only been processed and some people are stupid enough to call someone else's tune they mashed up their own, and too much to list. A.I. certainly has not helped that differentiation either. So no wonder it all sounds the same to many people.

Better? That is a word that should be used carefully. different? For sure, different times, more people, more accessibility, more available music for the masses at a fingertip and a harder time for many people to find something that is truly unique.

 

I'm 65. It's because they are mentally old/fossilized and cannot grow and evolve. Looking backwards is nostalgia, nice to visit occasionally but wouldn't want to live there. Living in the past, is completely dysfunctional. I see people listening to the same music they grew up with for the rest of their Lives. I think it's a health issue overall...

 

I think it has a lot to do with actual skill and talent. Most people now make digital music on a DAW and they don't jack shit about musicianship or even how to play an instrument, myself included. I think we say this because it took a level of creativity and know how to actually produce great music. These days any and eveyone can become famous just watching youtube videos and sounds from sample packs. Stuff like that wasn't available back then, they have no vsts or computer. They had to actually know to play guitar, piano, organs, drums etc. Music is a lazy mans game now and you could teach a 5 or 6 year old to use a DAW and Vsts. To me most new music sounds like dogshit, I don't even know how these people get a buzz or who finds that shit appealing.

 

Based on the fact that Its easy for us to quote good artists and good songs, but it is quite difficult to remember the bad ones, especially those from the past. Try it for yourself!

 

Nope. Those people will only make junk. It's just when people do this, today you somehow end up hearing it. But you always hear it for free.

 

I think nearly everything I hear these days is junk