Canadian folk music icon Gordon Lightfoot dead at 84

jayelblock · May 2, 2023

I had tickets for his Tucson show on April 13th just a few weeks ago, which was cancelled due to Lightfoot's poor health. It was a bucket list trip.

I still went to Tucson (from Tulsa) and had a good time, but there was a cloud over the visit. Weirdly, this feels like a personal loss.

ghce · May 2, 2023

Larry S
Bit harsh … The stratification of media doesn’t give the singer, songwriter much reach these days. There are some excellent singer songwriters out there. Jason Isbel and Sturgill Simpson are two that blow me away … Still I agree, we’ve lost Cohen, Prine, Bowie, Lightfoot, etc….

Indeed it was meant to be, when your flagship of a generation is Ed Sheeran, I despair, and yes there are some fine singers out there but if there were not you would hardly know it such is there lack of real effect on society.

On the other hand imagine what today's society would look like if those iconic singers and song writers from the 50's thru to the 80's had never occurred our societal mores would look very different than they do today.

Horoticus · May 2, 2023

Let me slip away on you...

Archer · May 2, 2023

ghce
Indeed it was meant to be, when your flagship of a generation is Ed Sheeran, I despair, and yes there are some fine singers out there but if there were not you would hardly know it such is there lack of real effect on society.

On the other hand imagine what today's society would look like if those iconic singers and song writers from the 50's thru to the 80's had never occurred our societal mores would look very different than they do today.

It's an interesting topic. I don't really think the "lack of real effect" has anything to do with the quality of singer/songwriters out there today (because they are out there), it's really an effect of how fractured the delivery of music and other entertainment is today. Almost every radio station (on air or satellite) is a specialty station of some kind that stays in a narrow lane.

The shared experience is largely gone the way things are delivered these days, because everyone is listening to their own silo.

It takes real effort on the part of a listener to seek out and even get exposed to new music, in some ways far more than it did back in the day when you could just turn on the local station and get a larger variety of music. This is the case even though there's more music than ever right at your fingertips. In fact the sheer volume to choose from is why I often select something I'm already familiar with on my streaming service - too much choice.

It's certainly a massive democratization of the music industry in many ways, where lots of small artists can record music on their laptop, but there's no music marketing machine behind them. I'm not sure the iconic singers you revere would do much better in today's world...

ghce · May 2, 2023

Probably right about that. I think you also have to take into account what the world was actually like in the early to middle part of the 20th century and perhaps it was just time for a change and the younger fresh singers caught an audience ready for change, zeitgeist if you like.