2010.04.07 Wednesday

Skeetle bop. Slightly more energy this morning, but still groggy.

For lunch? No gym today, but Taco bell! Haven't gone there in such a long time. After eating it, I can remember why it isn't the diet of choice. I always feel bloated and tired after taco bell, or most fast food in general.

Went home and goofed around for a bit. Then Z came over to catch up on old times. We had a California pizza kitchen pizza, along with some pita chips and hummus. Listened to some vinyl and watched Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.

After that, got into a discussion with Justin about the music industry and the direction things are going. And the rather ambiguous term 'indie' that is quite common in the music scene today. Really, one of the main problems is that the recording industry is hanging on to the big names as much as possible. As Justin pointed out, try and think of a relatively newish band that has gone from nothing to something and is now considered a big name. You probably won't be able to find much. All the hits these days on the radio are older bands releasing sub-par rehashed music. Sure there are some older bands still making great music, but I feel like the recording industry is committing suicide by not taking risks and investing in new names.

For the sake of argument, I'll list the last 20 artists played on 101x, and the year that band had their first charting single:

________A Perfect Circle (2000)
_____Stone Temple Pilots (1992)
_____________Soundgarden (1994)
_______Silversun Pickups (2006)
_______________Everclear (1995)
___________The Offspring (1994)
_________________Nirvana (1990)
_________________Phoenix (2000)
___________Alkaline Trio (2001)
____________________Muse (1999)
__________________Weezer (1994)
___Red Hot Chili Peppers (1989)
____________Modest Mouse (2004)
_______________Metallica (1988)
_________________Toadies (1995)
_______________Radiohead (1992)
Rage Against The Machine (1992)
_______________Pearl Jam (1991)
_________Jimmy Eat World (2001)
________________Chevelle (2000)

What do you think is happening? I only took sample from one radio station. They are supposed to be alternative, and not really a classics station. Obviously something like 93.7 is a classic rock station and they will be playing much older songs. I feel like the only time you get to hear new music on the radio is on the "pop" music stations, and that's mostly because they try to bank as much as possible as quickly as they can, knowing that popularity for pop songs doesn't last that long.