As a retired DJ and fanatical music fan, I'm always on the hunt for new music, anything that I haven't heard before. Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm unashamedly retro in my music tastes. There's a huge goldmine of music in the past that even a prolific listener like myself has never heard, or maybe heard decades ago and has forgotten about.
But recently, I've started to cast my net around and look for modern and relatively recent music that I missed out on, but that I might like. And it's here that I come up against a big problem. I absolutely despise modern commercial chart music. With a vengeance.
The vast bulk of modern "pop" music is formulaic, unimaginative, homogenized garbage, aimed at kiddies, while weirdly, at the same time, flooding TV screens with music videos containing countless hyper-sexualized images of half-naked young women. It's either that, or hyped up karaoke music by bland, boring X-Factor and Britain's Got Talent artists, who get their fifteen minutes of fame (while Simon Cowell and his buddies rake in the millions) singing turgid, unmemorable songs, which are forgotten five minutes after you hear them.
And then there's the ever-present "rap" and "hip-hop", filling the airwaves with obscene, sexist, mysoginistic, homophobic, foul mouthed 18+ lyrics, in which every woman and their daughter are "hos" and "bitches". This tenth-rate garbage by moronic modern-day so-called "rappers" like Kanye West and 50 Cent, is an insult to the genuine socially conscious rap and hip hop of yesteryear from classic artists like Public Enemy and Grandmaster Flash (and his Furious Five).
And what about the dirge-like, virtually unlistenable, so-called "r'n'b" (actually a crap, pop variation of hip-hop), which has the nerve to have appropriated the title "r'n'b" from genuine classic Rhythm and Blues. B. B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and other great blues artists would be turning in their graves (well, at least the ones who are actually dead).
With the exception of the VERY occasional surprise decent song, there is absolutely nothing in the modern commercial charts for older fans or those with more discerning tastes in music.
However, despite my retro tastes, I'm the first to admit that even though the charts are total rubbish, there is some very good modern music out there. You just have to look hard for it, as you won't find any of it in the charts. There are lots of great bands, mostly totally unknown to the general public, and many of which I'm only just beginning to discover myself. Many of these bands and artists are without any recording contracts or links to the big music companies, and are doing their own thing, playing live, recording their own albums, and bypassing the mainstream music industry altogether, dealing directly with the public via the internet, selling their music as digital downloads, CDs, or vinyl albums, as well as other merchandise such as T-shirts, mugs, badges, etc.
I've only just begun to really hunt for good new stuff in recent months. My usual tactic is to haunt Youtube for interesting new music videos, jumping around from link to link to link. When I find anything that I really like, I follow any available links to their home page or wherever they've uploaded their music to, and I take it from there. Other good places to find good new music are Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Mixcloud. And these are only the tip of the iceberg. There are countless other sites out there, and that's before we even start tracking down the websites of individual bands and artists.
So what have I found in my recent travels? I've been on a bit of a retro-surf, garage, blues binge, so most of my recent finds tend to be of those genres. Some of my favourites are the Aqualads, Southern Culture on the Skids, The Swamps, The Caesars, The Taikonauts, Los Straitjackets, and The Nebulas.
I've also recently acquired the first album by The Everlasting Yeah, which should be of great interest to older indie fans, particularly fans of classic late-1980's/early-1990's indie band That Petrol Emotion, grand old favourites of mine. The Everlasting Yeah are basically the entire membership of That Petrol Emotion, minus lead singer Steve Mack. They've put a lot of time and hard work into this new first album, titled "Anima Rising" and I wish them the best of luck with it.
Reviews of "Anima Rising" and other new stuff from some of the above bands to come in future posts.
