swaki said:
slipknot4 said:
I would like to see the new guitar hero games feature songs from the past year instead of giving us older Beatles and Metallica songs.
so true, i realize that the "good ol' days" of music have been glorified, and we all know them from when our parents played them on road trips, but there has been made some good music in the past 10 years!.
but i guess if you want new music dj hero is the one to get, they cant really avoid having new music, though techno and rap isn't my cup of tea.
That's because we're the "lost generation". We saw it coming for decades. Basically our parents (The Baby Boomers) benefitted from so much medical technology and the like that they were able to keep themselves active and healthy without slowing down for an unprecedented amount of time. This of course means that they aren't retiring, and still occupying the same jobs that they were supposed to start retiring from and grooming successors for. Generation X (ie us) wound up not amounting to much, leading to the perception of us as slackers (in a sociological sense rather than a personal one we never had a chance), and the fact that a lack of success has lead to disproportionate numbers of people living with their parents and such for pretty much their entire lives does not help.
The relevency that this has is simply that the Baby Boomers have all the money, so companies (irregardless of the economy) set out to appeal to the Baby Boomers rather than the young generation. All Generation X music is NOT crap, far from it, but it's not liked by the dominant generation who like to be reminded of their youth, and of course see that older music as still being "hip" and continually relevent on some level. In general a music game is likely to make MORE money by appealing to baby boomers who buy "good" music for their kids (or actually themselves to be honest, a lot of them do game), than focusing on new talent.
It's also noteworthy that back during the 1960s a lot of the artists either killed themselves with drugs, committed suicide, or wound up getting themselves into some truely messed up contracts where at one point they asked "where is the money we've been earning?" only to learn they were obligated to perform and pretty much would never see any proceeds from what they were doing. "Grand Funk Railroad" is pretty much the text book example of this.
The end result of course being that 1960s and 70s music tends to be a bit more accessible from a business standpoint, than the works of more savvy artists who have avoided those pitfalls.
On an unrelated note, the fact that a lot of artists have wised up is also part of why you see such a "flavor of the month" approach to bands rather than talents being supported. Old bands who were supported were pretty much slaves even if they din't realize it. There isn't quite the same level of profitability to promoting an artist who actually gets to keep a huge amount of what they make. In such cases it's better to only support them when on an "upswing" and abandon them on a "downswing" because the producers have less of a vested interest in their success.
I'd GUESS some of the music people want, like Stairway to Heaven, has the rights firmly in the hands of the band, and of course they want money. The fact that Jimmy Page is on record as hating the whole Guitar Hero concept also probably has a bit to do with it.
So basically I'd imagine newer music is more difficult to liscence in most cases, and less worthwhile becase it's the boomers who still control most of the money. You won't see a shift until they retire and Generation Y takes over, the music/culture of Generation X remaining kind of "lost" to history.
Of course then again we might not make it that far because right now the Baby Boomers are all still in power, but when they retire Generation X will be in no position to maintain the social security system until Generation Y fully entrenchs themselves. Social Security being a sort of multi-generational promise to support the previous generation with the system (or for the truely pessimistic: a goverment run Ponzi scheme). So really I half expect society to implode long before we ever see a change in the "dominant" musical culture.
Like it or not American entertainment is global entertainment, it's part of what makes our culture so strong. Other cultures have their bands and performers, but the American ones are the ones who are big, and people from around the world come HERE to perform in/with the American industry for a reason. Very similar things can be said about movies. America goes boom, so do a lot of things for a long time.
Being disabled on social security I'm likely to be shot dead trying to steal food as a resulrt of the collapse long before the entertainment industry rattles out it's last gasp though.
