Where has the entertainment gone?

Sharri Scalley: no point in living for the old folks, entertainment is dead.

Adam Momaya: Gordon Lightfoot has been my favorite for over 40 years. Yes, I'm old.Thank goodness for YouTube, Amazon and Barnes & Noble where we can listen/buy any music we like.I refuse to believe that all young people like Rap and Hip Hop. You can't spell crap without rap and it isn't music. It's just noise like when you accidently sit on your cat....Show more

Tamatha Neubaum: Rather than bemoan the ones who have come and gone, keep looking for the stuff you like. It's not entertainment that's dead, IMO, it's your sense of exploration; it's a big world out there, and somewhere under some independent label, or maybe even in some other country, you'll find something you'll enjoy. If you let the radio and mainstream media spoonfeed you your music, of course you're going to be disappointed in the dreck that's popular today.Now, I can see that you and I have different tastes in music! , but I'll give you an example from my perspective: I've always been a "pop music" guy--lively, vivid melodies, artful but plainspoken lyrics. I was raised by my parents on The Beatles, Paul Anka, ABBA, and the Carpenters; I listened to Debbie Gibson, early Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men. I appreciated and listened to a little bit of everything else, but my personal tastes stuck to "pop."But as music changed in the late '90s and swung from the pop I listened to, to grunge and gangster rap, then back to the pop of the Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, I found myself not liking what was on the radio, even though it was on some level similar to the pop I listened to.So at that time I went on an "exploratory" phase. Rather than buy the chart-toppers that I didn't like, I'd go through the bargain bins of independent record stores, picking up CDs by obscure pop artists who never made it to the charts. Most of the songs on the albums were indeed ! subpar, but once in a while, I'd find a gem that I liked, or e! ven an artist that I felt deserved greater recognition (even though they never wound up getting it). I'd compile the songs I liked into mixtapes (and later, CD-Rs), and listened to those instead of the radio. Later on I befriended a Japanese girl who turned me on to J-Pop, and she changed my preconceptions about foreign pop music; I'd always thought that, outside of the west, pop was simply a weak imitation of our pop; but it turns out that while there's a western influence, other countries do put their own unique flavor, musically and lyrically, into their pop music. To me, J-Pop at the time sounded like exactly what I wanted to hear--an evolved form of pop music in a universe where grunge didn't exist and hip-hop was only starting to break through. J-Pop has since evolved into something that isn't to my liking any more, but I really enjoyed it at the time, and still listen to the songs from that time once in a while. I also moved on to K-Pop, which over the years ! has also grown into a world-class pop music industry. So with a mix of international music and some of my own personal obscure favorites, and the rare Top 40 track that comes around once in a while that I do like, I've always been happy with my "music diet."Anyway, my point is, there IS stuff that's good out there, new material that you would like. And the great thing is, the Internet makes things more accessible now--you don't need to browse bargain bins like I did in the '90s--and there are even ways in which the Internet can recommend artists that you might like based on your taste. You just have to be brave and explore what suits your tastes, rather than mourn the state of the mainstream today. In the world of the iPod and the internet, there's absolutely no need to tie yourself down to what everyone else likes....Show more