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This is tangentially related-- I was a professional guitar player in the my 20's. When we were kids there were a handful of really great bands in the western United States like The Warlocks, The Cosmonauts, The Shivas, Super 78!, and especially the Brian Jonestown Massacre that thrived off of a huge culture of music enthusiasm that was especially, "tapes and records first. CD's are for the car."

Now outside of a handful of stalwart groups I don't see anybody making, "canonical" rock n' roll music in the, "post Velvet Underground" sense. It's, "correlation vs causation" but I can't help but feel that it was Spotify and streaming that killed this culture. Music became an, "everybody" thing that had no barrier to entry. Music subculture died. Fashion came next. Film has been declining since the 2000's.

I can stand you destroying my country's political culture but should have left it alone. It feels like an Albigensian Crusade.

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I don't think Spotify and streaming killed the music subculture, it's still very much alive but requires more intention to find.

Back in the day how did you find new music? Pre-2000s it was likely MTV/radio for mainstream, or word-of-mouth/local events for niche genres. Nowadays Spotify and streaming services have supplanted the former for mainstream music. Finding new music outside the recommended engines requires a little more effort in knowing where to look. There are a lot of Internet radio programs (shout out to The Lot and Rinse.FM) and smaller record labels that do an amazing job at curating local and diverse sounds.

These days it's never been easier to start your own label or publish a track. Rock-'n'-roll is probably still alive (unfortunately I don't know that modern scene well), but assembling the necessary equipment and people to start a band is a big hurdle requiring practice, space and coordination. So I can see more wanna-be artists opting for pop/electronic having shorter turnarounds to a finished product.

>> I don't think Spotify and streaming killed the music subculture, it's still very much alive but requires more intention to find

No, I think music as a subculture is dead.

When I was a kid in the 80's I would sneak out of the house and go to a hardcore punk show that was put on by kids for kids with no adult involvement whatsoever.

Right now, on a Saturday night, where is there an all-ages music show going on anywhere in the US where the kids in the pit are 14, 15 years old and no adult knows or cares that they're there? There's a culture now, but there's no subculture. Most kids are watched too closely for that to happen now, which is good! Mostly. And subculture doesn't require a credit card and a subscription plan.

How did I find new music? Word of mouth was good, cassette tapes that your friends made you. Going to shows. A little bit from Night Flight. The Decline of Western Civilization. Urgh! A Music War.

Compilation records. American Youth Report, Flipside Vinyl Fanzine, the Mystic record comps, Rat Music For Rat People, the Blasting Concept, Dope, Guns, and Fucking in the Streets, Let Them Eat Jellybeans, maximumrocknroll. Forced Exposure. No New York. Going to record stores "in the city".

"Right now, on a Saturday night, where is there an all-ages music show going on anywhere in the US where the kids in the pit are 14, 15 years old and no adult knows or cares that they're there?"

I used to go to those kinds of shows in my late teens. For what it's worth, I mostly am out of that because a) I like calmer music and b) the kids should have their own space.

But that doesn't mean that I don't run into small all-ages punk shows. There's usually one going on in Durango, CO a couple weekends a month that I have seen. I'm certain that in larger places the same thing is happening even though I don't know about them.

Consider that older folks not knowing about the show is kind of the sine qua non of what you're looking for, so I am no surprised that I, an "older folk", don't know about them.

But I know enough to know they are there. It's easy to find new music if you're looking for it.

Maybe go read or review Hesse's "Journey to the East" if you want a longer version of what I am getting at.

Tell me where the music subculture is living and I'll move there right now. When we were kids it was Austin, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia for the insane IDGAF kids. For awhile it was Paris and maybe parts of Spain. Today I can't think of definitive hub for, "real musicians."

I think self-publishing is the problem. Making music on laptops is neat and everything but where the model in the 1990's was giving the bedroom rock hopeful group eg. Pixies, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Creation Records a million dollar record deal which gave a livelihood to the kids making the music the new model is, "have young artists self-finance their own careers and reward them with exposure when they produce something worthwhile with the hope that maybe their music gets licensed for a film." Touring isn't lucrative for many groups. Many tours are self-financed. Not often mentioned is that musician's a group notoriously deprived of healthcare due to healthcare being tied to traditional employment.

How could we combine the best parts of Johnny Marr's idea of, "being a working musician" while still affording young talented musicians the livelihoods and opportunities presented by the music industry of, "yesteryear?" My feeling always was in expanding the musician's reach into the world of pedagogy and, "play as a means of meaningful research." Delia Derbyshire comes to mind. Brian Eno half comes to mind. There's a better thing but it requires institutions and social democracy-- it requires a society with the social sensitivity to not envy or disdain, "people who make weird noises for a living and get to travel the world." The United States is not that right now unfortunately. The western world is in crisis and needs music but it lacks the scaffolding to create, "great musicians and bands."

As much as the world needs another John Lennon right now much more we need Brian Epsteins that can create John Lennons, Mick Jaggers, and Peter Noones with pen strokes. Where are the Don Kirshners of the world creating product groups like The Monkees and The Archies? I can tolerate greed if we can get another Smiths, Beatles, or another Paul Weller. I can tolerate another Andy Warhol is he'll produce another Lou Reed.

"Tell me where the music subculture is living and I'll move there right now."

How you going to move back to being 20 years old again?

> Tell me where the music subculture is living and I'll move there right now

Berlin

> Tell me where the music subculture is living and I'll move there right now. When we were kids it was Austin, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia for the insane IDGAF kids.

There are still geographical centers for certain genres of music. Austin is still a hub for psych/indie/alt music, New Orleans is where you want to be if bounce is your thing, etc.

But from my perspective, music subculture moved from TV and radio to the internet long ago. I no longer have "120 Minutes" telling me what its creators think is good, but I continue to hear great new music via TikTok and Instagram direct from artists and fans.

> Today I can't think of definitive hub for, "real musicians."

If you had to pick one physical location, that'd probably be Nashville (and not just for country). Other hubs would include L.A., NYC, London, Miami, Atlanta, Austin, and New Orleans.

Give me 5 noteworthy groups from Austin and I'll check them out. Mostly as an expert I don't see anything coming from the, "post Austin Psych Fest wake" that I should care about. Even as someone, "that played that shitty festival" with Joel Gion and all the rest (Black Angels, Loop) it wasn't Glastonbury in 95'; it wasn't anything. Find me a literate person that plays Vox 12-string and I'll form a band with you. I'll wait.

As for your second reply all those places are great but unaffordable for the young hopefuls. That's the filter that keeps the kids locked out. In the 70's moving to New York was, "Suicide" (Get it? If you don't I'd appreciate you'd just upvote this and stop reading. I'll provide a link below.) This is a filter that locks a lot of really talented kids out of the ecosystem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WvG-Z47S60

--so you can pretend to get the reference in my post in your later posts.

There's a lot of great rock made today, it's just not mainstream usually and done with smaller budgets.

They are probably on Bandcamp and sometimes their songs have 500 views on Youtube.

I'm with you and I while like this myth if there was a modern Velvet Underground, "living in the underground" somebody would be trying to make a buck off it. The Alan McGees of the world need fuel for the fire. The closest thing I can find as an, "industry expert" is Jesse Welles who's blown up on Instagram and YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPHafKOd9A4

If you want music like we had in the 20th century we need institutions, producers, entrepreneurs, a literate public, and a positive economic set. We need to pay musicians money to do their jobs. Music isn't a hobby. As the poet once said, "music is proof that there is more to the human than there seems."

Yeesh. "Those darn 40+-something millennials and their differing tastes!"

Rock 'died' because it's been around for 50 years; were the favourite of boomers who ensured it always had air-time; and now they're out to pasture and other music styles reign. My dad was a pro drummer in the 70s and hated everything that wasn't rock or metal. He was incapable of appreciating anything else. Or so he said.

As a kid of the 90s, I could never quite find music that fit me. Sure, I liked some rock and roll, pop, and so on --- but when I was first introduced to techno (Antiloop - Believe, to be specific) at a LAN party I knew I'd found my home: techno and then trance.

But good luck finding Antiloop or the nascent trance on MTV or commercial radio in the 90s. The people who ran those things didn't like it, know about it, listen to it, or felt it had commercial value. So I had to learn about it from randos at a LAN party.

Rock was on the way out in the early 80s, when millennials were barely being born...because disco won.

The 80s were the rise of synthpop, House music (which started from DJs sampling disco a cappellas and mixing them with TR-909 drums and Korg M1 keyboards), Techno and Italo Disco. From there, we got the next evolution, in the form of Eurodance/Eurobeat/Hi-NRG, and Electronic Dance Music as a genre was born. Notably, they all still largely lean in on the foundational traits of Disco: four on the floor drum beats, off-beat bass, heavy focus on syncopation to create groove, chord stabs, etc..

The 80s were also the rise of hip hop and rap, which also grew out of the same DJ culture. If a song doesn't have a four on the floor beat, it's more likely to have a hip hop beat than a rock "backbeat." (e.g. boom bam boom boom bam, like "Rump Shaker" by Wreckx-N-Effect)

I really don't think so. Punk had exploded after the Summer of Hate and in its wake we got Talking Heads, The B-52's, and Blondie at CBGB's. In parallel we have early Joy Division in Manchester which is going to inspire U2 to eventually become the biggest band in the world for the next 20 or something years. Martin Hannett is going to be a key figure in the development of EDM with his use of samplers and, "using the studio as an instrument." Check out the beginning of, "Transmission." He'll later go on to produce The Happy Mondays who are, "the" seminal Manchester dance group in the early 90's in lieu of an army of Stone Roses fans throwing lemons at me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7D5heNRUy0

If you look at how Johnny Rotten was listening to Neu! and X-Ray Spex (as well as The Monkees and Herman Hermits) and what Bowie was doing after he moved to Berlin with Iggy Pop it's not outlandish to say that Electronic Music wouldn't have existed without being preempted by Punk, Glam, and the emergent, "not progressive" guitar music of the 1970's especially in how it paralleled the development of Krautrock. Disco didn't evolve into EDM; Disco gave DJ Kool Herc a set of turntables to invent Hip Hop with. Techno literally came out of, "a certain guy who might be called Gerald" listening to Kraftwerk; Afrika Bammbatta's, "Planet Rock" samples Kraftwerk directly.

"I'm the operator with mine pocket calculator."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSBybJGZoCU

> Disco didn't evolve into EDM

I don't see how you can possibly claim that.

Disco led directly to house, and Italo-disco was hugely influential to techno. US electro developed at the same time as some key Italo tracks like "Robot is Systematic" (1982) and "Spacer Woman" (1983). Italo-disco was played on underground radio in Detroit and Chicago, and is often credited as a core influence. Or just look to Detroit proto-techno track "Share Vari" (1981) which was considered to be Italo-disco in style at the time of its release.

"On and On" (recorded 1983, released 84) is often considered the first Chicago house record, and it was literally a direct attempt to reproduce a disco record using a drum machine and synths.

This isn't to undermine Kraftwerk, which was obviously an enormous direct influence on these producers as well, but my point is they're far from the only influence. Giorgio Moroder should receive the same amount of credit for starters, along with other electronic disco legends such as Marc Cerrone.

My feeling is that without gluing all this music together with emergent gay club culture that the similarities are superficial. House is obviously a take-off of what Disco is trying to achieve on the dance floor but so is Parliament and James Brown ins 70's. We might as well say, "electronic music comes from black music in America" but that can't be right because of Kraftwerk and Delia Derbyshire. It wouldn't be wrong to say that George Harrison is a pioneer because of the Electronic Sound record but it all feels a bit like those blog posts that claim that Ringo Starr invented Breakbeat.

I don't think you're wrong I just think there's a, "more right position." I'm open to a plurality of views. It may be the, "real story" has to be a, "multiple perspectives thing." I'm just taken to the idea my perspective is the best.

Superficial? House is literally the same four-on-the-floor beat originally created in Philly by Earl Young of The Trammps.

Countless early house and techno legends say they listened to disco, sampled disco, made covers of disco songs, played disco in their DJ sets. Some key producers directly overlapped between the synth-heavy forms of disco (Italo-disco, High-NRG, Mutant Disco) and electronic dance music - for example Shep Pettibone, François K, and Material, to name just a few.

I guess believe whatever you want, but everyone else listens to what the people who created electronic dance music actually said and did which puts disco as a direct core ancestor.

Kraftwerk was definitely important, but you're missing Frankie Knuckles and Black Box...

House (from The Warehouse) is as core to EDM as techno (more Kraftwerk), and they were literally remixing disco as well as using disco musical facets. And House and Techno's lines blurred a lot in Europe.

Canonical rock n' roll in the minds of, "the initiated" might include groups like Kraftwerk and Neu! which laid the foundation for most forms of electronic music. It definitely includes the mother of all electronic music Delia Derbyshire (ask Peter Kember!) You might know her from the original Doctor Who theme music. Dig the link below for the arguably the first EDM song ever made. Keep in mind this is pre-synths-- it's all tape manipulation like The Beatles would end up copying on, "Strawberry Fields Forever."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwQIgGQLOQ8

I like all, "genres" and types of music but there's a certain high level of quality that exists in a continuum of music going back a long time. It's hard to define in a formal way. It's there in John Coltrane. It lives sophomorically in The Velvet Underground, Herman's Hermits, and the other, "Bubblegum" groups as well as the Fuzz-Psych-Garage bands that live in the Nuggets compilations like ? And The Mysterians. It's played on Rickenbacker guitars. It has a fuzz pedal and it knows how to use it. It lived on John Peel's radio program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62XRy-jFCm8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQdo8efJtSs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ToJ2mmlkiE

A special one for you the techno fan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zndpi8tNZyQ

Cheerio.

EDIT: Worth noting I'm 34 so don't give me the Grandpa treatment.

In Europe MTV played Trance and Techno in the late 90s/early 2000, but only at night. They even had a music video for Jeff Mills - The Bells.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KevUFO2moZI

> Antiloop

"In my mind" ... what a throwback.

This reads like "I don't like current music, therefore music is dead". Music subculture is alive and well; you probably just don't care for it.

"Whatever redneck I'm on my way to your girlfriend's house."

-Matt Hollywood.

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