Still Too Soon To Know

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Three questions, which I will try and phrase right - all related though.

They're about importance. For once I'm not talking about importance to one's personal listening history, emotional development etc. I'm interested in how we as individuals perceive "music history" and "historical significance" while it's happening.

The question:

1. What moment, or trend or era in music have you felt was most important while it was happening?

2. Have there been any moments you felt at the time were important, which don't seem as important with hindsight.

3. When you first became aware of pop music as something which had a history, what seemed to you the most important things in the previous ten years?

Comments

[koganbot]

1. 1964-1968 rock soul the works (a lot of which I hated and avoided and fled from at the time), the world turned upside down, boys looking like girls, crustaceans having sex with mammals, the Martian invasion, etc. etc. etc.

2. I think No Wave of '78 exists as still-to-be-tapped potential rather than as the refashioning of the infrastructure it seemed at the time. It got absorbed and neutralized too fast as indie-avant pseudo-wildness.

3. Elvis, Chuck, the Girl Groups.

[koganbot]

Interesting that when I think of Importance I tend to overlook things like soft rock, Crosby, Stills & Nash, etc., which were important for taking what had been a convulsion and making it normal and livable. Seems to me that this stuff is important too, but it'll always be outshouted by the hubbub that precedes it.