PMT and Gibson Guitars - Big news and changes

bobliefeld

Because it's people like that fat kid that replaced Bernard Butler that get posters on bedroom walls and guitars in kids hands.

I remember the first time I saw him play, it was like being hit by lightning !!

I knew who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.

Father, I will become a guitarist !

UnclePsychosis

bobliefeld said:

Because it's people like that fat kid that replaced Bernard Butler that get posters on bedroom walls and guitars in kids hands.

I don't care whether kids have guitars in their hands. Or synths. Or turntables. Or drums. 

So long as they have musical heroes and make cool music it doesn't matter. Guitars aren't the be all and end all. 

crunchman

UnclePsychosis said:

bobliefeld said:

Because it's people like that fat kid that replaced Bernard Butler that get posters on bedroom walls and guitars in kids hands.

I don't care whether kids have guitars in their hands. Or synths. Or turntables. Or drums. 

So long as they have musical heroes and make cool music it doesn't matter. Guitars aren't the be all and end all. 

Are you sure you are on the right forum?

bobliefeld

UnclePsychosis said:

bobliefeld said:

Because it's people like that fat kid that replaced Bernard Butler that get posters on bedroom walls and guitars in kids hands.

I don't care whether kids have guitars in their hands. Or synths. Or turntables. Or drums. 

So long as they have musical heroes and make cool music it doesn't matter. Guitars aren't the be all and end all. 

thats fine but this is a discussion about PMT dropping Gibson with a bit of "are they dropping them because guitar music isn't popular?" 

UnclePsychosis

crunchman said:

UnclePsychosis said:

bobliefeld said:

Because it's people like that fat kid that replaced Bernard Butler that get posters on bedroom walls and guitars in kids hands.

I don't care whether kids have guitars in their hands. Or synths. Or turntables. Or drums. 

So long as they have musical heroes and make cool music it doesn't matter. Guitars aren't the be all and end all. 

Are you sure you are on the right forum?

Yes. I'm just not self-obsessed enough to assume that my chosen instrument is the best ;-)

NelsonP

english_bob said:

Strangefan said:

drippycat said:

It'll never die. Not while teenage boys still cotton on to the fact that girls look at them when they play the guitar.

They  don't anymore, that stopped around 
1996, 

Exactly. And without new pop music (it's all pop music) that prominently features guitars it'll be roughly as cool to play the guitar as it is to play the trombone. Girls may still look at you, but it'll be for the wrong reasons, or it'll be the wrong girls.

Its been clinically proven too.....

Wolfetone

Whitecat said:

Bridgehouse said:

Ok, that didn't happen. But still....

I WISH IT DID!!!! 

Buying a reissue of a vintage piece of crap car could become a new hipster fad... if they did a pennyfarthing scrappage scheme, well, game over.

http://www.landrover.com/experiences/news/land-rover-heritage.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/new-deloreans-back-to-the-future-cars-to-be-made-after-33-years-a6839201.html

darthed1981

UnclePsychosis said:

darthed1981 said:

UnclePsychosis said:

Those who like "guitar bands" might just need to look a bit harder for them than they used to in the 90s. Big deal. Some of us have never liked (many) bands that were in the charts. Doesn't matter---mainstream success is not necessary in order to make great music.

No of course it isn't, but you will struggle upthread to find anyone who has said that mainstream success was necessary to make great music.

It is of course also not necessary for music to be guitar based to be great, I've heard that Beethoven was a talented chap for example.

There was a pretty golden period in the mid-late 90s though when great, guitar based music was at the top of the charts, and it was a great time.  Music does culturally and (as society notices) come and go in movements, from Rock and Roll, through the Beatles, Psychedilia, Blues Rock, Prog Rock, Punk, New Wave, Grunge, Britpop - these usually involved commercial success, even if it is just something to react AGAINST, how many great bands of the late 90s spent every interview talking about how they were NOT Britpop.

So sure there is great music across all genres and types of musician, but it isn't rising to the top.  What is rising to the top is IMHO mostly Sierra Hotel India Tango, and this makes the charts pretty grim.  Wouldn't it be nice if those talented people bubbling under while pap makes millionaires actually got the recognition they deserve, and blokes with guitars and a bad attitiude made the 6 O'clock news?

Your whole premise seems to be based on the idea that having guitars makes the music better somehow. My premise is that music is music and I don't give a toss how you make it. 

For me, I'd rather the guys with the killer songs and the bad attitude made the news. Whether or not they play guitar is entirely incidental. 

The idea that we "need" guitars in successful music is just an ego trip by guitar players. 

No, I don't think that.  I agree with you, or in fact I agree with Muddy Waters -  "There are only two types of music, good music and bad music, and only you know which is which..."

I think there are certain fundamental things about the guitar as an instrument I love that contribute to making great music, its kind of why I learnt to play guitar, it's the source of a lot of the music I love and it connects me to it more.  Also the look and feel of electric guitars makes me all tingly, but I won't go there...

I think electronic music done badly (i.e. to save money, ironically one the reasons electric guitars caught on) can make for very bad music. 

I think that there was a period in the mid to late 90s (when I was a teenager and crazy into music) that guitar based music was mainstream and it led to a real renaissance for guitar based music AND for non-guitar based music in the mainstream.

But I don't think music has to feature guitars to be good or great.  Just to clarify.

impmann

darthed1981 said:

No, I don't think that.  I agree with you, or in fact I agree with Muddy Waters -  "There are only two types of music, good music and bad music, and only you know which is which..."

There have been so many musicians attributed to that quote, it could have come from Winston Churchill or Worzel Gummage...

darthed1981

impmann said:

darthed1981 said:

No, I don't think that.  I agree with you, or in fact I agree with Muddy Waters -  "There are only two types of music, good music and bad music, and only you know which is which..."

There have been so many musicians attributed to that quote, it could have come from Winston Churchill or Worzel Gummage...

Both wise men...

RocknRollDave

darthed1981 said:

RocknRollDave said:

darthed1981 said:

I doubt the guitar is under any threat as a musical instrument, it is too fundamental a part in how pop music works.

The discussion here spun off about the likelihood of another guitar-music led movement topping the charts like Britpop did, and I think we all agree that is pretty damn unlikely.

Early 90's, tripe like 2 Unlimited dominating the charts. Who knew a guitar-centric Beatlesy band explosion was just around the corner? The likes of Melody Maker and NME suddenly find that they are competing for coverage of the same music scene with The Sun et al. Anyone who says they saw THAT coming is lying.

So, who knows? Fingers crossed, anyway...

I hope you are correct my friend

Me too. It was a fleeting moment of uncharacteristic optimism when I typed that!

bobliefeld

When i was a kid bands like Depeche Mode (back in the early days when Vince was still in the group!!), Bronski Beat, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Jobriath etc were the "in thing" with all of the lads on my street.  

We'd party to those bands all the time !  We weren't bothered about guitars at all, all we cared about was dancing and looking GOOD.

Music, like most things, it's all cycles.  The music industry can't sell the same thing forever so every ten years they switch up.  In a few years some other lads will be talking about how they miss hearing 808 snares in everything.  

Strangefan

UnclePsychosis said:

crunchman said:

UnclePsychosis said:

bobliefeld said:

Because it's people like that fat kid that replaced Bernard Butler that get posters on bedroom walls and guitars in kids hands.

I don't care whether kids have guitars in their hands. Or synths. Or turntables. Or drums. 

So long as they have musical heroes and make cool music it doesn't matter. Guitars aren't the be all and end all. 

Are you sure you are on the right forum?

Yes. I'm just not self-obsessed enough to assume that my chosen instrument is the best ;-)







Brilliant. 



But we all have to agree bass is the best,   literally no popular genre would sound good without bass. 

Bridgehouse

Strangefan said:

UnclePsychosis said:

crunchman said:

UnclePsychosis said:

bobliefeld said:

Because it's people like that fat kid that replaced Bernard Butler that get posters on bedroom walls and guitars in kids hands.

I don't care whether kids have guitars in their hands. Or synths. Or turntables. Or drums. 

So long as they have musical heroes and make cool music it doesn't matter. Guitars aren't the be all and end all. 

Are you sure you are on the right forum?

Yes. I'm just not self-obsessed enough to assume that my chosen instrument is the best ;-)







Brilliant. 



But we all have to agree bass is the best,   literally no popular genre would sound good without bass. 

I would certainly agree with that..

musteatbrain

I try not to tell people at work I play guitar. A lot are in their early 20s and see it as nerdy or uncool or whatever the term is at the moment. Quite depressing really!

Bridgehouse

musteatbrain said:

I try not to tell people at work I play guitar. A lot are in their early 20s and see it as nerdy or uncool or whatever the term is at the moment. Quite depressing really!

My step son is in his early 20s - he plays guitar as do his mates. They rave about it as its alternative. 

There's a big underground guitar thing going on as mainstream pop is so uncool and meant for teenies..

english_bob

darthed1981 said:

I think that there was a period in the mid to late 90s (when I was a teenager and crazy into music) that guitar based music was mainstream and it led to a real renaissance for guitar based music AND for non-guitar based music in the mainstream.

What I remember of that period (let's say 1995-1999 for argument's sake) was that there was plenty of mainstream guitar-heavy music, but among the forward-looking, innovative stuff (OK Computer was a pretty massive goalpost-mover) there was an awful lot of retro-revival, subpar-Oasis, arse-end-of-Britpop stuff (actually, Oasis spent most of the period being subpar-Oasis), boring second albums by bands who'd made a really good first album, and a strong tendency to try to put pop singers in front of "real" bands to give them credibility (Mark Owen, Natalie Imbruglia etc)

What I also recall clearly is that rock bands were jockeying for position alongside pop, hip-hop and electronic music, and that there was plenty of stuff in all those genres that was innovative and exciting as well as being fun and commercial.

I don't know if guitar-based stuff being mainstream led to the renaissance, or whether the fact that good, catchy, melodic, "commercial" rock music was being made led to it becoming popular. I suspect that the success of bands like Blur and Suede in the early part of the decade sent record companies out looking for similar sounds, which they found. It's hard to work out what's correlation and what's causation, but I suspect that it's a bit of both.
 
I'm certainly not convinced that the presence of good guitar music had any effect on what happened in other genres. My recollection was of a fairly tribal youth culture at the beginning of the period, where the core audience of each genre were fairly loyal, and fairly dismissive of other stuff, and a much more broad-minded culture by the end (or maybe me and my peers just grew up). I remember a lot of interesting stuff that crossed over rock and electronic boundaries, both good (Portishead, Massive Attack's Mezzanine, Sneaker Pimps, Beth Orton) and bad (Republica, Apollo 440). If anything, I'd say that what happened to hip-hop and electronic music during that period had a greater effect on how rock music sounded than vice versa.

I think in order to say whether what happened in the second half of the '90s led to anything you'd need to look further ahead- the bands who grew up on britpop, brit-rock, trip-hop, drum and bass and whatever else was cool then were the bands whose albums came out in the next five years. Post-rock, "Landfill" Indie, Emo, nu-metal, bands who fused electronic and organic elements so seamlessly that the whole "there's always been a dance element to our sound" joke stopped being a thing... For me, rock music took a serious dive in quality around the millennium, and stopped even remotely interesting me for a year or more, when what emerged (Kid A, The Strokes, The White Stripes) looked very little like what was happening before.

And yes, I know this is supposed to be a thread about PMT dropping Gibson, but personally I'd rather be discussing the fortunes of rock music during my lifetime. Far more interesting.

Stuckfast

It's funny, at the time, Britpop and 90s music felt so fresh and exciting after the slow death of 80s pop. But looking back it nearly all feels like third-rate pastiche, and I pretty much never want to listen to any of it.

jeztone2

I think the guitar on the music scene had polarised. I see these incredible musicians on the Metal scene. It's really evolved. Then when my last band was playing around the London Indie scene. Without being too negative. I saw some really terrible guitarists. Either people who were just not very good. Or boil in the bag versions of 90's player's. It didn't strike me that being original was a priority. Yet to me, growing up. The idea of cultivating a playing style was a real ambition. 

darthed1981

english_bob said:

What I remember of that period (let's say 1995-1999 for argument's sake) was that there was plenty of mainstream guitar-heavy music, but among the forward-looking, innovative stuff (OK Computer was a pretty massive goalpost-mover) there was an awful lot of retro-revival, subpar-Oasis, arse-end-of-Britpop stuff (actually, Oasis spent most of the period being subpar-Oasis), boring second albums by bands who'd made a really good first album, and a strong tendency to try to put pop singers in front of "real" bands to give them credibility (Mark Owen, Natalie Imbruglia etc)

What I also recall clearly is that rock bands were jockeying for position alongside pop, hip-hop and electronic music, and that there was plenty of stuff in all those genres that was innovative and exciting as well as being fun and commercial.

I don't know if guitar-based stuff being mainstream led to the renaissance, or whether the fact that good, catchy, melodic, "commercial" rock music was being made led to it becoming popular. I suspect that the success of bands like Blur and Suede in the early part of the decade sent record companies out looking for similar sounds, which they found. It's hard to work out what's correlation and what's causation, but I suspect that it's a bit of both.
 
I'm certainly not convinced that the presence of good guitar music had any effect on what happened in other genres. My recollection was of a fairly tribal youth culture at the beginning of the period, where the core audience of each genre were fairly loyal, and fairly dismissive of other stuff, and a much more broad-minded culture by the end (or maybe me and my peers just grew up). I remember a lot of interesting stuff that crossed over rock and electronic boundaries, both good (Portishead, Massive Attack's Mezzanine, Sneaker Pimps, Beth Orton) and bad (Republica, Apollo 440). If anything, I'd say that what happened to hip-hop and electronic music during that period had a greater effect on how rock music sounded than vice versa.

I think in order to say whether what happened in the second half of the '90s led to anything you'd need to look further ahead- the bands who grew up on britpop, brit-rock, trip-hop, drum and bass and whatever else was cool then were the bands whose albums came out in the next five years. Post-rock, "Landfill" Indie, Emo, nu-metal, bands who fused electronic and organic elements so seamlessly that the whole "there's always been a dance element to our sound" joke stopped being a thing... For me, rock music took a serious dive in quality around the millennium, and stopped even remotely interesting me for a year or more, when what emerged (Kid A, The Strokes, The White Stripes) looked very little like what was happening before.

And yes, I know this is supposed to be a thread about PMT dropping Gibson, but personally I'd rather be discussing the fortunes of rock music during my lifetime. Far more interesting.

Yeah I agree with almost everything you said there, early-Britpop was on a bit of a lightning-in-a-bottle route that was both cause and consequence, and obviously didn't exist in isolation, Suede and Blur came along at the same time, then bang came Oasis with a side of Pulp, and you had Britpop - but it depended on the Smiths and the Stone Roses, and was essentially a reaction to the grunge boom post-Nirvana.

I do remember a really open minded, fun culture around music at the time that was led by the enormous commercial success of Oasis, Radiohead, Blur, Pulp, Manics etc. and there was just a heck of a lot of mainstream quality, as you say this grew out of some very tribal culture, but by the end everyone was open-minded.  It was a good time to love music, band names would fly out in conversation and everyone would smile.

I think there are still a lot of bands out there every bit as good as the Britpop crowd, the problem is that in any random room you will be lucky to find two people who have heard of the same band. 

The great thing about now is if you meet someone who seems cool and they recommend a band you can Spotify them on the way home, thats brilliant, but it is also a diffuse market.

Times change, I'm hoping we do get more genuinely brilliant mainstream music of any kind.  No offense to any massive fans of Ed Sheeran or James Bay, heck the latter actually plays guitar well, but those guys dont do much for me.