I agree with this completely. With all our bitchin' about the record industry - totally justified, by the way - there is a sub culture of American roots music that has grown up marketing itself through internet, social media and the good old fashioned road, recording in small studios, sometimes at home, and distributing through independent labels. While they will never achieve the fame and fortune of the great artists of the 70s, they are managing to make a good living without selling their souls to the major labels. The results can be stunning. As good as the 70s were -- and they were very, very good. Imagine anything like Led Zepplin one charting today, anyone like the young Bob Dylan becoming a household name -- I'm not so sure we don't have a greater abundance top quality, uncompromised music being released today than we did then. There is great music in abundance. It's just gone underground.
Now, if we could just get them all to exit the loudness wars. Let's start with Steve Earle and Springsteen, please.
Tim
And I in turn agree completely too.
The fact is there are a number of working artists, and I DO mean working..as they bust their asses on the road, playing any gig they can get, like Martin
Sexton, Ryan Bingham, Ryan Adams, and even John Hiatt. These guys would not get recognized walking down the street for the most part but they sell out each and
EVERY gig they play and sell a decent amount of records to those in the know.
This is ABSOLUTELY a golden age, not just for roots music, but for contemporary singer songwriters.
Now, as far as the 70's..as glorious as they were..there were many, many iconic and exalted artists who actually never made much money..they did not sell many records,
but their music was immeasurably influential. I have tons of live recordings of Fairport Convention, Gram Parsons, etc, where there maybe 20 people in the audience.
Tim Hardin (what an old soul), Tim Buckley (was he even human?), Nick Drake (could not get arrested), John Martyn (WAY ahead of his time,, Roy Harper(from another planet), Rory Gallagher (what a god!), and many,many others.
There were actually relatively few that made the fortunes that Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, CSN (Y) or Bob Dylan did, or sold out stadiums as they did.
I hear ya on the loudness wars. Man, I love Earle. On bad ass "hard core troubadour". His last one with T Bone, sounds pretty good.
