What music are you listening to?

[marshlander]

... During the 60s and 70s the bands were making the music, not being controlled or manufactured by the record companies like now with the boy/girl bands. ...

Not strictly true. Artists may have appeared to have more freedom, but that didn't prevent music from being "manufactured". The Brill Building, Tin Pan Alley and Denmark Street are examples from the USA and the UK of what can only be described as music factories (although some of them sounded closer to being music sweat shops :eek: ) where songs and artists were churned out at great speed and the product (whether human or intellectual) was often controlled quite ruthlessly. Violence was not unknown.

The Monkees were my first musical obsession independent of the music of my parents' generation and I saw them perform in London in 1967 (I say "saw" because hearing them was an impossibility). No one can argue they weren't a manufactured boy band. The management and production team put every obstacle in their way to prevent them writing their own songs and performing on their own recordings. When The Monkees finally began to get their own way Don Kirshner resorted to inventing fake bands like The Archies, so he could have complete control over the input and output of a band!

I agree with Rychard though that it is the inventiveness of creative artists who bypass traditional management and, for a while, often manage to produce something fresh and new. No one takes any notice until someone decides there is money to be made. In the 70s practically anyone who could wield a guitar seemed to be signed up at sometime although by the time someone saw punk as a commercial opportunity even the ability to play didn't seem to matter.