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Posted by: jer Feb 9 2009, 09:24 PM

What makes a classic band, classic?

All my life I've been hearing that:

Led Zeppelin
The Who
The Beatles
Elvis
Jimi Hendrix

etc, are just the greatest thing ever.

Why do you think this is? Do you agree? Why or why not?

Who are the latest classic bands? Are there any?

Posted by: JVM Feb 9 2009, 09:34 PM

Classic means that the music stands as strong in 10, 20, 100 years from the making, as it was when it was first recorded. It is beyond the realm of trendy music. Now, it's very arguable what is classic and what is not, but I think that all of the bands you mentioned are classics. Newer ones are hard to tell because they haven't stood the test of time yet.

To me its about more than just a catchy song that is #1 on the charts, even though a lot of classic bands have those, it's about a song that means something. Innovation, high levels of creativity, etc.

Posted by: berko Feb 10 2009, 12:39 AM

I can agree with JVM about the notion of "classic". Those bands mentioned are above half a century old and we still listen to them. They're classic because their work oozed into the average and general notion of music. They basically create history now and when thinking of modern music their names pop up in everybody's mind. It's hard to trace how this fame evolved for them because it definitely not just their music.

And that's when we arrive to the present situation. The bands you mentioned are basically iconic because they were there creating their own unique stuff when other things were happening as well. The solid body electric guitar was invented, blues origins were transmitted into a whole new type of music. Beatles was basically one of the first bands creating successful "pop" music and was also one of the bands that made the foundation of today's band-formats popular.

What I mean is that today it's much harder to get "classic" because the foundations for modern music we like today (and basically what became a convention as well) have been already settled by these artist. Even though there are plenty of unique stuff (in terms of music, exotic instruments etc.) out there, we don't need to mark new historic periods with iconic figures anymore.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Feb 10 2009, 01:33 AM

Because when you hear that music now, you can see and FEEL that it is good. It is made because it represents something real. You can't do that with a lot of modern music IMO, and that is really a pity.

Posted by: Fsgdjv Feb 10 2009, 02:04 AM

In 50 years they'll talk about how good the music now was and how bad the music in the present is. Thing is, it's mostly the great music that lives on for so many years, there were a lot of bad music back in the 60's and 70's aswell, but that's the music that didn't live on. So I don't think you can say that moderna music is any worse, if that's what you're saying.

And I agree with what's been said on how you define a classic.