What Bob Dylan says about modern music (I hope he's not including Pearl Jam)

bigbadbill

Bob Dylan Says Modern Music Is Worthless

Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Aug. 22) - Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Here Now, Are Just a Few of the Worthless Albums Made Since 1986

Dylan, who released eight studio albums in the past two decades, returns with his first recording in five years, "Modern Times," next Tuesday.

Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

Dylan said he does his best to fight technology, but it's a losing battle.

"Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature to it."

norm

Jakob's gonna be pissed.

Cropduster84

sadly he's got a point.

ItsEvolutionBaby74

bigbadbill wrote:

Bob Dylan Says Modern Music Is Worthless

Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Aug. 22) - Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Here Now, Are Just a Few of the Worthless Albums Made Since 1986

Dylan, who released eight studio albums in the past two decades, returns with his first recording in five years, "Modern Times," next Tuesday.

Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

Dylan said he does his best to fight technology, but it's a losing battle.

"Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature to it."

I, frankly dont give a shit. As much as I enjoy, Bob Dylan's music.

intodeep

I can only assume this is more of an attack on the Way records are recorded and not the quality of music.

He goes out of his way to even say the songs on his new album sounded better before they were recorded.

Odd i don't seem to hear the probelm he does.... maybe i'm deaf though..

bigbadbill

Most modern rock bands (pop rock) bands all sound the same. It's like the same lead singer is in each group (whinny voice). But I guess it's popular amongnst all the "Laguna Beach" types.

Jeanwah

Cropduster84 wrote:

sadly he's got a point.

I agree.

LedZepFan

intodeep wrote:

I can only assume this is more of an attack on the Way records are recorded and not the quality of music.

bingo.....i dont really care what Dylan says anyway, hes pretty overrated in my opinion

SVRDhand13

Dylan is the man. And he's write about most music.

red mos

I agree to a point. I believe that Vinyls sound better than cds. I do not know if my saying this has anything to do with what Dylan was talking about. I think his live shows could use better sound. Maybe it was just the show I saw him at, and the venue, but I really wish he had talked to the crowd and been more into it. I thought his Essentials album sounded fantastic, so I don't really know why he is unhappy with the sound. The band has the ability to fix that by mixing and producing. Also, not trying to reem musicians, but alot of them probably have tons of hearing loss (I'm sure Dylan does) and that may be why they all have issues with sound recordings today. I know I'm gonna get reemed, but alot of musicians that have hearing loss, are going to be pissed about the sound. Although I like vinyl better, some remastered albums, and as mentioned earlier Dylan's essential album sound excellent- technology has advanced greatly with recording.

Zoso

I agree with this point!! Dylan is the man and correct with this point. I can't wait to grab Modern Times!

FinsburyParkCarrots

I think he is right, insofar as there is now a lack of sensitive producers, such as Tom Wilson in the sixties. Wilson knew how to make the most of just four or eight studio tracks. Now, there are a lot of producers who have access to digital multitrack recorders and who create this wash of noise, just to fill up tracks for the sake of it. These recordings often lose a lot of the intimate warmth of a lot of older, analogue recordings, by being overdone.

catefrances

production is too slick. that's what i reckon. who wants so called perfection in recording. you've got three and a bit minutes and you'd better fill it up with noise. we don't care with what and we don't care how. just do it, so we can ship it, promote it, sell it and make a profit. the kids need to know what they should be listening to.
i love the crackle of vinyl and the fact that i can 'see the songs'. and that i have to get up off arse and make the effort if i want to hear the album more than once. not just put it on an endless loop.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Yep, and back in the old days, artists really thought about what would make a great end to side one of an LP (say, on Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited", "Ballad of a Thin Man") and a good beginning to side two ("Queen Jane Approximately"). If they could convince their record companies on the aesthetics of a good running order, then they could produce an album as a great, varied piece of work, with two decided moods. With the CD, records became more of an homogenous stodge or blob. Maybe "Ten" was one of the very last LPs, that had a great end of side one ("Jeremy") and a powerful beginning of side two ("Oceans"). Now, there doesn't seem to be as much thought put into the running order of albums; there isn't that sense of an album having two moods that there used to be.

catefrances

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Yep, and back in the old days,............

oh sweetie how old are you? back in the old days. that made me smile. was that like the 70s old man? or perhaps even the mythical 60s?

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Now, there doesn't seem to be as much thought put into the running order of albums; there isn't that sense of an album having two moods that there used to be.

thought? do you think anyone thinks about anything in the corporate music world that goes beyond units shifted and sold?

Pearl Jam and toast

LedZepFan wrote:

bingo.....i dont really care what Dylan says anyway, hes pretty overrated in my opinion

that would make your opinion wrong.



He's talking about the way the songs in modern crap rock are made.. he's 100% right on the dot there. Listen to a modern rock station.. it's just crap guitar distortion with unnoticable bass, generic drums that might as well be played on a keyboard, and vocals turned up higher than nessecary because that's all MTV cares about is the singer.

FinsburyParkCarrots

catefrances wrote:

oh sweetie how old are you? back in the old days. that made me smile. was that like the 70s old man? or perhaps even the mythical 60s?

34. Old enough to say, most of my music collection is vinyl.

catefrances wrote:

thought? do you think anyone thinks about anything in the corporate music world that goes beyond units shifted and sold?

Record companies have always been pretty clueless about artists, but in 1967, Capitol suddenly (yes, that's irony) realised that they should stop messing about with the format of The Beatles' UK Parlophone releases, because sales of Sgt Pepper depended on keeping its intended running order intact. Double albums such as Tommy, by The Who, would have been impossible if record companies didn't twig that running order mattered to the "concept" of an album. (However, saying that, my original Track copies of Tommy and Jimi's Electric Ladyland have side four on the flip of side one; side three on the flip of side two. Whether that was because of limitations in technology, though, I don't know.)

Yet when the format changed, so did the idea of the record. A similar thing happened in the nineteenth century with novels. For most of the century, novels were "three deckers": they were three-volume, huge tomes. With greater literacy and greater disposable income, towards the end of the century, there came a demand for better technology, to produce more small books and magazines for convenient reading. So a lot more shite would be written for the masses, and a lot of publishers dropped their standards - both in small, cheap packaging and lightweight content of product -to keep stuff flooding the marketplace. (The only curiously anomalous difference is that these books were far cheaper than the three-deckers, whereas CDs have always been a rip-off, in spite of being so cheap to manufacture.)

The advent of the CD was a similar event, and the cheaper the technology gets, the cheaper the production of music will get (particularly if people only want Mp3s for their Pod, rather than wav. or FLAC quality recordings).

justam

bigbadbill wrote:

Bob Dylan Says Modern Music Is Worthless

Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Aug. 22) - Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Here Now, Are Just a Few of the Worthless Albums Made Since 1986

Dylan, who released eight studio albums in the past two decades, returns with his first recording in five years, "Modern Times," next Tuesday.

Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

Dylan said he does his best to fight technology, but it's a losing battle.

"Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature to it."

He seems to be commenting upon the reproduction of the sound in the recording...not the music itself.

And, don't you notice that about CD's? They're flat compared to live music or records...somehow the dynamic range and vibrations are compressed...

FinsburyParkCarrots

justam wrote:

He seems to be commenting upon the reproduction of the sound in the recording...not the music itself.

And, don't you notice that about CD's? They're flat compared to live music or records...somehow the dynamic range and vibrations are compressed...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_sound_vs._digital_sound

Even if Wikipedia doesn't approve of the informality of this article, it's better than a lot of geekspeak!

suffragette

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

34. Old enough to say, most of my music collection is vinyl.




Record companies have always been pretty clueless about artists, but in 1967, Capitol suddenly (yes, that's irony) realised that they should stop messing about with the format of The Beatles' UK Parlophone releases, because sales of Sgt Pepper depended on keeping its intended running order intact. Double albums such as Tommy, by The Who, would have been impossible if record companies didn't twig that running order mattered to the "concept" of an album. (However, saying that, my original Track copies of Tommy and Jimi's Electric Ladyland have side four on the flip of side one; side three on the flip of side two. Whether that was because of limitations in technology, though, I don't know.)

Yet when the format changed, so did the idea of the record. A similar thing happened in the nineteenth century with novels. For most of the century, novels were "three deckers": they were three-volume, huge tomes. With greater literacy and greater disposable income, towards the end of the century, there came a demand for better technology, to produce more small books and magazines for convenient reading. So a lot more shite would be written for the masses, and a lot of publishers dropped their standards - both in small, cheap packaging and lightweight content of product -to keep stuff flooding the marketplace. (The only curiously anomalous difference is that these books were far cheaper than the three-deckers, whereas CDs have always been a rip-off, in spite of being so cheap to manufacture.)

The advent of the CD was a similar event, and the cheaper the technology gets, the cheaper the production of music will get (particularly if people only want Mp3s for their Pod, rather than wav. or FLAC quality recordings).

Mr Dickens released most of his stuff in chapter form. Not that I'm comparing him to Dylan or anything.

justam

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_sound_vs._digital_sound

Even if Wikipedia doesn't approve of the informality of this article, it's better than a lot of geekspeak!

Thanks.

FinsburyParkCarrots

suffragette wrote:

Mr Dickens released most of his stuff in chapter form. Not that I'm comparing him to Dylan or anything.

Well, he published his work mainly in two periodicals, in "Number" format, in "All the Year Round" and "Household Words". He was writing in the period of the three-decker, and was unique in his business practice. Dickens died in 1870, and the three-decker novel was still very popular up until the 1880s. (When assembled as novels, Dickens's works were often bigger than most other three-deckers.) Therefore, bringing Dickens into this discussion is irrelevant to the point of my comparative analogy (the explosion of mass-literature in the fin de siecle era of the 1880s and 1890s), which is very pertinent to discussion of how the format and production standards of "the album" have changed, since the introduction of the CD in the 1980s. I'm comparing the production of CDs with the evolution of pulp and bot boiler fiction, or the growth of the magazine and other cheap ephemera.

What I'm saying is topic specific and very relevant to Dylan's remarks. I am providing an analogy to illustrate how and maybe why this phenomenon of a lessening of quality has happened across the culture industry, over the years.

IWishIWasASailor

Dylan overrated?

You probably shouldn't open your mouth ever again. Total shit flows out.

Evacuation Rules

You guys don't realize...Dylan was the KING of the recording studio in the 60's. He would bring a bunch of musicians together, play them a verse and a chorus of a song, set up a bunch of mikes, press the record button, and record a classic version of a song in one or two takes. He was spontaneous, and he got the job done quickly. He didn't spend hours and hours recording like the Beatles did. His records were excellently produced and engineered on 4-Track recorders. That's why the new remasters of "Bringing It All Back Home" and "Blonde On Blonde" sound so good.

His comments about modern recording and mastering techniques are aboslutely correct. The "art" of producing a finished CD is in a sorry, sorry state, with the exception of a few audiophile formats (SACD, DVD-A, heavy vinyl) and labels that specialize in reissues and "restoring" the sound of the original vinyl. I hope there are some changes in the music industry soon in regards to sound quality. The Nirvana box set that was poorly produced by our very own Adam Kaspar is a perfect example of how the recording insustry has no grasp on quality control or preserving sound quality. It's an abomination.

Iron Maiden are also fighting back by releasing their new CD "unmastered". NO shrill EQ, NO compression, NO brick wall mastering!

Evacuation Rules

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

(However, saying that, my original Track copies of Tommy and Jimi's Electric Ladyland have side four on the flip of side one; side three on the flip of side two. Whether that was because of limitations in technology, though, I don't know.)

That was because many record players back in the day had long spindles with a magnetic arm attached that held records in place and acted as an "automatic changer". They would press the double LP's 1/4 and 2/3 so that you could play sides 1/2 in a row, flip them over and play sides 3/4 in a row. See?

LeilaMoonTurtle

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

Kind of what I think of the new pj album.

merkinball

Speaking of SACD's, I wonder how Dylan feels about his albums reissues on SACD, if they sound any better. I love the DVD-Audios I have, they sound much better than cd's to my ears. But I haven't heard the Dylan SACD's as I don't have SACD player.

I think it's partly the format, and as JWBusher put it so well, the production. You don't get that sense of groove so much as you used to on the early Dylan electric albums, where everything was one take, no overdubs or laying down seperate tracks. I suppose its no mistake that a lot of 'classic' artists have had more success going back and recording songs full in a take or two.

For example, the Grateful Deads 'In The Dark' was about the best sounding studio album they put out, and closest to their live sound. And it was essentially recorded live. A lot of their studio albums in the late 70's and early 80's suffered from extreme over production (just try to listen to Go To Heaven).

Or Neil Young, albums like Mirrorball, Greendale, or Living With War being recorded quickly, with minimal production sound a lot better to my ears than some of the 80's stuff he put out (although I've got a soft spot for re*act*or).

merkinball

I just noticed that over on Drudgereport, he's got this story listed as "Bob Dylan says moden music is worthless" while the article it links to is headlined as "Dylan says modern recordings 'atrocious'". Good journalism drudge, doesn't change the tone of the article at all.

Pearl Jam and toast

LeilaMoonTurtle wrote:

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

Kind of what I think of the new pj album.

I hope you mean production-wise.. which i can agree with.

Adam Kaspar worked for Soundgarden, but Pearl Jam needs Brendan O Brien back. It's just not the same.

I like Kaspar's production, but I just don't think it's quite right for Pearl Jam.

Echoes

what a fucking idiot

Echoes

at the best he is completely ignorant