So that's part of the Legacy as far as Hughesy is concerned. Sometime in late 1967 the penny dropped. Around the time someone far cooler than I let me know there was a party I might like to attend though I needed to arrive with my records. With a limited budget, you needed to do your homework to figure out what to buy. After a while your interests coagulated, and when they did it was some distance away from the mainstream.
One of the factors at play here was an era when the conventional wisdom about what was commercial was under question. And those, from where I'm sitting, are the eras when things get interesting in a musical sense.
And the conventional wisdom of what constitutes commercial viability is something that has received a lot of thought on the morning walk over the years. Not that I'm particularly interested in commercial music per se. On the other hand, I've often wondered why some of my favourites have enjoyed fairly successful careers while others who I think are just as worthy, remain as marginal figures somewhere over on the sidelines.
And there are aspects of the subject that tie in with my Interesting Times project and will be belaboured over there. But we're looking at the legacy of the sixties and their influence on someone's subsequent listening, so they slot in here as well.
From where I'm sitting, through the first half of the twentieth century the players in what became the entertainment industry were working out the implications and possibilities of recently developed technology. Particularly how to make money out of the new media (recorded sound, radio, film and television).
Possibly, emerging notions of commercial viability were turned on their heads when Louis Armstrong and jazz came up the Mississippi from New Orleans to Chicago and beyond. These new developments were worked into emerging trends in the dance halls and concert, halls and the result was the era of big band swing.
You got a reaction to that with the bebop era. That was a fringe development, the sort of thing that might equate to a career but wasn't going to turn artists or record label owners into millionaires.
Rock 'n' Roll upsets the applecart A Flurry of Post-Beatles Experimentation The Response Across The Pond
Folkies and Folk-Rockers East and West Coasters San Francisco The Tide Recedes (And Flows Back In)