The Smiley Smile Message Board

For those of you who feel/think that the music of the 60's is superior to some extent to the music of today, it may be because musicians in those days could go w/o day jobs much easier and generally did, leaving them plenty of time to be creative and write/practice/rehearse.

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...Okay.

well not really ...in the recent issue of wax poetics there is a picture of jazz great Donald Byrd  as a street cleaner in NYC ? Unbelievable !!
also members of Kiss had jobs ...i think Paul Stanley was a taxi cab driver and Simmons taught school.

Do people need to have day jobs nowadays anymore than in the past?  Seems a bit of a sweepiing generalisation.  The music of the 60s was great because a number of factors (social, economic, demographic, whatever) came together at that time to create something NEW and exciting.   

harry nilsson recorded his first album in late night sessions while working at a bank during the days.

I guess i'm just thinking of bands I like, like the Beatles, the Byrds, the Association, Simon and Garfunkel, Steely Dan, Buffalo Springfield, the Velvet Underground, some very popular 70's bands, etc., and I mean before they became popular

Reading The Beatles biography by Bob Spitz, it probably would have been good for the boys to have had real jobs...they had the worst kind of living conditions while in Hamburg in 1960.  I recommend everybody read this book, to see just how much they went through before Beatlemania. 

There are always peaks and valleys in art. Different periods. Right now we're at a low point, the truth is that back in the 60's and 70's there were more talented people making music.

Today, not so much. Musicians today always get annoyed when you bring up the past because they know nothing they do can measure up to it. And they also always use the cop out "IT'S ALL BEEN DONE"

Well guess what? A good song is a good song and its not like the Beatles and the Stones didn't have influences.

Perhaps, but I also theorize that if today's talented people had more time to work on their craft, we might be hearing more good music.

You think Bono has a day job?  Oh, wait, he has!  :lol

Musicians today probably have about as many day jobs as they did then.  I've known people in bands that don't work and don't make anything, just travel around in vans and live off the kindness of strangers.  Then, others do have day jobs of some kind to help make the rent, or do so from time to time.  I'm sure people did it that way in the '60s, too.  It just depends on how much squalor you can allow yourself to live in, or how good of a sponge you are to get support from friends, spouses, or parents.