If I was allowed to pick any era of music history to be living in, I wouldn’t choose any other era. Living in the era of The Who and the Stones and all the founders of rock would have been cool, but my music consumption would have been very much more spread out. I wouldn’t listen to as much music as often as I do now if I only had vinyl and radio; the technology now has made music listening so much easier.
In addition, it has allowed us to use electronics. Electronics were used by bands like the Who (thank goodness, or “Baba O’Riley” wouldn’t exist), but obviously they’ve become much more important now. Bands like School of Seven Bells wouldn’t be able to exist at all if they didn’t have the electronic backbeats and synthetic sounds that compose their tunes. The music that they make is just as (if not more) dreamy and psychedelic than the hippiest sounds coming out of the seventies, and it’s all due to electronics.
The Postal Service is one of the most important bands of our time, and (as I’ve mentioned before) “Such Great Heights” has become iconic. That really wouldn’t exist without electronic beats.
The rise of electronics has also allowed things like this blog to happen; other than being Cameron Crowe, I wouldn’t have been able to do music journalism very easily. People can follow their dreams in a meaningful way much easier now; I love that. On top of that, it’s made recording music easier, which means more bands can get their ideas out there. It means that there’s more music than ever, more people to tell me about it, and more ways to hear it.
So, if I was allowed to go to any period in music history, I wouldn’t change. Nope, I’d stay where I am. Sorry, the Kinks and Fugazi.