Posted by Marty Brooks on July 08, 2008 at 22:02:13:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Why Does New York need 3 rock stations? posted by Harcey Rice on July 08, 2008 at 10:05:35:
I completely disagree with your analysis. The fact is that Oldies music was frequently recorded FAR better than modern music. The style of the music may be different, but the style of Classic Rock is also different than modern music.
Believe me, the musicianship and production on any Motown hit was state of the art. I'd place the musicianship of the Funk Brothers, the studio band who played on almost every Motown hit, ahead of any modern band you can name. Same for the Beach Boys, most Phil Spector recordings and on and on. Listen to Runaround Sue by Dion: that recording is crisper, cleaner and has more life than anything being made today. And there are tons of other examples.
Certainly, multitrack recording came of age during the Classic Rock era. But many of those earlier recordings also sound spectacularly good.
Orson Welles once said that "the enemy of art is the absence of limitations". One of the problems today (IMO) is that big acts take a year to produce a recording. They record in six different studios with three different producers with different backup musicians and then mix it in ProTools using the same special effects as everyone else uses and obsess over it until they take all the life out of it.
In the days when you had two or maybe three tracks and limited overdubbing and low budgets, musicians had to make the performance happen in the studio and it had to happen fast. That gave a vitality to the recordings that you almost never hear today.
So those older recordings may sound different than today's recordings and different from Classic Rock era recordings, but I don't believe they necessarily sound dated. I think those performances will maintain their greatness when today's music is long forgotten.
I grew up listening to the music the subset of which is now considered to be classic rock and it is music that I love. I'm one of those people who switched to FM the minute rock was first heard there. But I still appreciate the music that came before.
You can make the case that there's a bigger audience for Classic Rock than for Oldies, but you can't make the case it's because the music is better or has better production values. You can only make the case that because Oldies are older, the Demo is perceived as less desirable.