OT: Summer concert season

[roadman65]

Love em or hate em, but the Rolling Stones are touring again.

I know many of my coworkers and even my friends  or present and who I interacted with 30 years ago either think or thought Mick Jagger should retire.   Despite them still being popular over 50 years which is a great accomplishment, still many feel that they are too overrated.

[bugo]

I just saw that Dinosaur Jr. and Primus are playing together at one of the big outdoor stages here this summer. 

I saw them both together at Lollapalooza in 93.  It wasn't until a little later that I really began to appreciate Dinosaur Jr., so I would've liked to see them again.  Unfortunately, a festival of 90s acts sounds kind of depressing to me, like Mid-Life Crisis Fest.

I saw Dinosaur Jr back in 2007 or 2008 at Cain's Ballroom. J Mascis' hair is grey and he looks totally different than he did back in the early days. They put on a good show. Lou Barlow rejoined the band for this tour. He's a hell of a bass player.

As for the '90s package tours, I don't find them depressing at all. I listened to some of the great '90s bands way back when I was in high school. They produced most of the greatest music ever recorded. The reason for a tour like this is simple: contemporary music sucks. There have been maybe a dozen bands that had debut albums after 2000 (really after 1996 or so) that I enjoy. Music has reached a nadir and many of the more popular rock bands are terrible and wouldn't have stood a chance in the '90s. The '90s bands look very appealing compared to '10s bands.

In the '80s and very early '90s pop metal ruled the airwaves and MTV. Everybody loved bands like Whitesnake, Def Leppard, and Poison. There was an unwritten rule that every pop metal album should have at least one power ballad. By 1990 or so, the genre was tired and some of the established pop metal bands put out terrible albums. New bands popped up like Trixter, Firehouse, and Damn Yankees who were awful and wrote songs of questionable quality. These bands had a modicum of success until Nirvana came along and abruptly ended those bands' careers. Nirvana's breakthrough success paved the way for bands like Pearl Jam, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Nine Inch Nails. Nirvana made a lot of bands popular but they ended the careers of so many pop metal bands. These bands fell off the face of the earth when alternative rock took over. Metal music of any kind was suddenly terribly unhip and uncool, and pop metal was the geekiest of them all.

I liked some of the pop metal bands when I was young but when I discovered alternative rock I quit listening to pop metal. The day I heard that Vince Neil was fired from Mötley Crüe was the beginning of the end of pop metal for me. It got worse and worse and I started gravitating to thrash metal bands and classic metal bands like Maiden and Priest and after '92, alternative bands. I fell in love with some of the '90s alternative bands and I still listen to these bands to this day.

Bottom line is that we're at the same place musically that we were at in 1992. It's time for somebody to come along and end some careers and save music for at least 5-10 years.

We need a new Nirvana.

[Roadrunner75]

I just saw that Dinosaur Jr. and Primus are playing together at one of the big outdoor stages here this summer. 

I saw them both together at Lollapalooza in 93.  It wasn't until a little later that I really began to appreciate Dinosaur Jr., so I would've liked to see them again.  Unfortunately, a festival of 90s acts sounds kind of depressing to me, like Mid-Life Crisis Fest.

I saw Dinosaur Jr back in 2007 or 2008 at Cain's Ballroom. J Mascis' hair is grey and he looks totally different than he did back in the early days. They put on a good show. Lou Barlow rejoined the band for this tour. He's a hell of a bass player.

As for the '90s package tours, I don't find them depressing at all. I listened to some of the great '90s bands way back when I was in high school. They produced most of the greatest music ever recorded. The reason for a tour like this is simple: contemporary music sucks. There have been maybe a dozen bands that had debut albums after 2000 (really after 1996 or so) that I enjoy. Music has reached a nadir and many of the more popular rock bands are terrible and wouldn't have stood a chance in the '90s. The '90s bands look very appealing compared to '10s bands.

In the '80s and very early '90s pop metal ruled the airwaves and MTV. Everybody loved bands like Whitesnake, Def Leppard, and Poison. There was an unwritten rule that every pop metal album should have at least one power ballad. By 1990 or so, the genre was tired and some of the established pop metal bands put out terrible albums. New bands popped up like Trixter, Firehouse, and Damn Yankees who were awful and wrote songs of questionable quality. These bands had a modicum of success until Nirvana came along and abruptly ended those bands' careers. Nirvana's breakthrough success paved the way for bands like Pearl Jam, the Smashing Pumpkins, and Nine Inch Nails. Nirvana made a lot of bands popular but they ended the careers of so many pop metal bands. These bands fell off the face of the earth when alternative rock took over. Metal music of any kind was suddenly terribly unhip and uncool, and pop metal was the geekiest of them all.

I liked some of the pop metal bands when I was young but when I discovered alternative rock I quit listening to pop metal. The day I heard that Vince Neil was fired from Mötley Crüe was the beginning of the end of pop metal for me. It got worse and worse and I started gravitating to thrash metal bands and classic metal bands like Maiden and Priest and after '92, alternative bands. I fell in love with some of the '90s alternative bands and I still listen to these bands to this day.

Bottom line is that we're at the same place musically that we were at in 1992. It's time for somebody to come along and end some careers and save music for at least 5-10 years.

We need a new Nirvana.

I agree with all of it, and good analysis.  And while a festival of 90s bands might be depressing to me more for just getting old(er), I probably wouldn't consider a festival of 00/10s acts at all.  I think also I just played that period to death, so I can't take large doses at once.  As for D Jr, I didn't keep up with them after the late 90s and into their second Lou period.  I still will play Without a Sound and the 2 albums before it - mid-period no-Lou DJr I guess.  Didn't much care for the album after Sound, but I think by that point it was pretty much just J Mascis solo.