Why the 80's did suck!

Isn't everything an over simplification  Any business has to create revenue to pay its costs, if they are providing support to bands then that cash is generated by sales of that and other artists on the payroll. For Virgin one album(thus one artist) funded the entire catalogue for years while others like Island, Chrysalis and Charisma relied on a core of two or three artists to pay for everything else they released. For example the (relative) success of VdGG, The Nice and Lindisfarne in the early 70s (and hit singles by people like Clifford T Ward) payed for Audience and Genesis's early albums, and those VdGG, The Nice and Lindisfarne albums were themselves funded by the earlier success of bands like Atomic Rooster and Steeleye Span (on parent label B&C), who were themselves funded by the success of Desmond Decker and Dave and Ansel Collins (on Trojan). Similar profiles can be produced for all indie labels, even Island in the 70s and Stiff and Factory records in the 80s - one or two big hits fund the non-earning bands - Free, Traffic, Cat Stevens and Jimmy Cliff paying the way for King Crimson, Blodwin Pig and Rennaisance... These guys were business-minded and commercial, (Island was the biggest Indie label of all time) and they were very shrewed, (just look at Branson), unlike Tony Wilson, whose business acumen on Factory Records resulted in some very bizarre practices (like losing money on every copy of Blue Monday ever sold, so the more successful it became the more they lost money) - however in spite of this New Order and Happy Mondays funded just about every other artist on Factory in the 80s, just as Tubeway Army, Gary Numan, Bauhaus and M/A/R/R/S funded everything else released on Beggars Banquet and 4AD.  

Edited by Dean - July 02 2011 at 05:38

^ I've often been puzzled by the perception of artists on indie labels being automatically considered 'purer' than those on majors.
A corner shop wants your money
A supermarket wants your money

Warthur wrote: harmonium.ro wrote: Another way to look at the indie scene that started in the 80s is that in the 70s the same artists wouldn't have needed to become "alternative" to reach the market (a market). Accessible pop and sophisticated experimentalism coexisted. IMO it's all down to the change in paradigm that happened in the industry, not to the creative changes. I think that may be true, but I think that was a change in paradigm at the managing and marketing level rather than at the artistic level. Had the music industry developed the approaches and models they used in the 1980s earlier, they'd have used them earlier.

Didn't I say just that?

harmonium.ro wrote: Another way to look at the indie scene that started in the 80s is that in the 70s the same artists wouldn't have needed to become "alternative" to reach the market (a market). Accessible pop and sophisticated experimentalism coexisted. IMO it's all down to the change in paradigm that happened in the industry, not to the creative changes.

harmonium.ro wrote: Another way to look at the indie scene that started in the 80s is that in the 70s the same artists wouldn't have needed to become "alternative" to something reach the market (a market).

Warthur wrote: If anything, the 80s were great for music *precisely because* you had a market for alternative music developing where small independent labels were more and more able to compete with the big boys.

TODDLER wrote: The worse thing that could have happened was in the mid to late 70's with Rock music. Robin Trower, Boston, Styx, Peter Frampton and many others dived into the "Stadium Rock" genre. Obviously Peter Frampton was improvising blues, a little Ventures Jazz mentality, and beautiful melodic guitar playing in general with HUMBLE PIE. When he conformed as a "Stadium Rock" artist with his "Frampton Comes Alive" he used a voice box, wrote more commercial music etc.....and became almost a David Cassidy of the mid 70's. How or why would Progressive Rock fans take him seriously? If they remembered his diversity on "I Walk On Gilded Splinters" they might re-consider. During that time he was simply wearing a flanel shirt and jeans. Just a regular guy playing nice guitar with  Rock band. Rock music was more "down to earth" then. Bands like Boston and Van Halen were playing a cheap version of Rock. Although I wasn't fond of the hippie movement....Jimi Hendrix, Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, and a host of others were performing in smaller venues for years. For example they played "The Electric Factory" on the east coast.   The idea of Rock bands reaching out and touching somebody for the sake of art began to vanish shortly after "Woodstock" where promoters like Larry Magid came up with the idea to place acts such as these in stadiums and eventually pour the sugar on top of their music.  The idea came to promoters after "Woodstock" turned out to be a financial disaster. They posed the question......"What if we gambled on the idea again and placed all of these bands in big stadiums to play for larger audiences? Maybe we could repair the mistakes that were made with WOODSTOCK and eventually make ten times more profit from Rock music. This is when everything in rock began to go straight to hell. Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones used to dress in fashion but the attitude was different. To me they were the honest "Rock Stars". They experimented with music although it was not Prog......the elements were more dominet than what Robin Trower and Boston would reveal in their music. Rock music just wasn't the same after that. Prog was going strong in the media and the underground prog was truly creative, but Rock Music was now contrived. No one was doing a "Electric Ladyland" or a Magical Mystery Tour and NOT just because the 60's were gone. It had little to do with that aspect. The industry just didn't allow mainstream Rock to be extremely creative. So you had ELP and YES who were creative , but in Rock you had garbage like FOGHAT which was the son of Savoy Brown, SLADE, JO JO GUNNE and tons of bands who were not a representation of how "Rock Music" was once creative before. It just became progressively worse. Humble Pie included a diverse guitarist, harmonica playing, acoustic music, while VAN HALEN featured a simplistic kind of ROCK that was obviously cheap and contrived. Even Deep Purple lost it on "Stormbringer". YUK!

In some ways, Woodstock itself facilitated the making of rock as something too larger than life.  The Beatles-led rock invasion was more about songwriting but Woodstock put the focus on showmanship. It worked because the first movers get to do the most original and creative things so we had a dazzling display of talent in the late 60s and up to the mid 70s. But the well was bound to run dry and it eventually gave way to that boring thing like arena rock.  Thus, some of the seeds for the things that went wrong in the 80s were sown long before and it was more the abundance of talented musicians working in rock (then being the cutting edge music of the time...at least Fripp said so in interviews, don't know about members on this forum) that kept it going.  The holistic approach of the Beatles had already disappeared and once people like Fripp moved from the limelight (or whatever semblance of a limelight he enjoyed), things were bound to get stale.


Edited by rogerthat - June 29 2011 at 20:17

kingcrimsonfan wrote: Polo you have a point I just realized neo prog took place during the 80s hahaha

Polo wrote: CPicard wrote: At last, this thread welcomes its first trolls! I expected them a bit sooner. I'm not trolling, I'm just pissed at the kingcrimsonfan saying creativity ceased in the 80's. We don't need another Walter, do we?

Er, Polo, I wasn't talking about YOU. I was talking about... well, someone else whose name doesn't need any introduction.

At last, this thread welcomes its first trolls! I expected them a bit sooner.