> You're young yet. Get back to me in 20 years, tell me
> whether you are listening to REM and U2 or Tony
> Bennett.
I'm probably not qualified to weigh their comparative merits, because I'm unable to understand the appeal of a Tony Bennett or a Frank Sinatra (or anyone else who produced, as Lester Burnham put it in the vastly overrated _American Beauty_, all that "Lawrence Welk shit").
> So, I don't buy it. We are in a trough. I think thsi
> is quite general -- classical music is dead,
> literature is snoozing, visual art is spotty,
> philosophy is living off capital, etc.
> There have been Golden Ages--and aftermaths.
You're right that there are golden ages and aftermaths, but I believe nostalgia often induces us to believe that we've just passed from the former to the latter. Pop music is an illuminating example. Conduct the following thought experiment: swap the temporal locations of the Beatles and U2, the Stones and Nirvana, the Byrds and R.E.M., Pink Floyd and Radiohead. I can imagine that people would still claim that the Beatles were better than U2 (citing the beautiful _In My Life_ alone is enough to clinch that argument). But I think the other contemporary bands I listed would be considered more notable than the analogues (well, sort of analogues) I paired them up with.
BTW, you asked at some point why there are Golden Ages and aftermaths--perhaps the simplest explanation is also correct: inspiration and competition.
-- Luke