by abstamaria » 24 Feb 2023, 04:19
Musicians usually will have an assessment of music different from the rest of the world. My cousin, who plays jazz guitar professionally in the US, only begrudgingly accepts that there are good songs beyond the standards. Unfortunately, it is aways the broad population that decides which songs will be successful un the market.
On this island where I live, the British invasion was devastating, to the musical genre that preceded it. By 1964 (which the Shadows and the Ventures began with new Burns and Mosrites - and perhaps a different sound), young people here shifted en masse to the Beatles and company. Instrumental guitar music became old hat and no longer exciting. That I became more true and the disparity greater as music progressed rapidly in the later 1960s and 1970s. That was true for me and, I suspect, elsewhere in the world, including probably the UK.
By the mid-1960s, I went on to college, found new interests, and set aside the Shadows. Young people's tastes are fickle, and a new generation of young teenagers awoke to music very different from the Shadows. That became their music, as the Shadows were ours.
Our bass guitarist, who is very talented, was born in 1960. A doctor, she was playing with an all-female band that won an annual music award here. In 2008, When she joined us to play Shadows music, she had some recognition of one or two Shadows melodies, but the rest were completely unfamiliar to her. a 10-year age gap had consigned instrumental music to oblivion for her and probably most of her generation.