SP is doing his best to sound like a cranky 30something bitching about how much Kidz today suck. But this struck me:

I was scrolling around iTunes today just listening to some of the new ’alternative’ (never mind the irony that they are all mainstream) artists and it occurred to me that there is very, very little original music therein. Most of it is either a cross of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Green Day and Sarah MacLachlan. I guess when there are but a few companies that dominate the mainstream music publishing business pathbreakers and innovators aren’t marketable. In the past there seemed to be, at least once every decade, a breakthrough band—or town—that changed the calculus. But music today and for the last several years has remained very stale.

I was in the car the other day on a long drive with no CDs, and I wasn’t in the mood for Newz. Skipping around metro area stations (I was near the airport) I was sort of shocked by how much the stations I knew sounded, well, exactly the same as they did over 10 years ago, when I last lived in the area. Not just alike, but really, the same. It was sort of creepy.  Read more