Psyringe: Well, it is a bit of an exaggeration. But it really felt that way. Back then, I had my treasured tapes of Deep Purple, Slade, or Bob Seger, and when I turned on the radio, I heard Rick Astley, Sandra, and Modern Talking. Arguably, that kind of music is brain- and heartless enough to have been created by zombies, which are undead, so music must have died somewhere in between. ;)
People who are making music themselves, have (and had) probably better access to the hidden gems that also exist in even the darkest of cultural ages.
Leroux: Are you saying Deep Purple, Slade and Bob Seger were pop music in the 70's, in the top 10 single hitlists and you were introduced to them by the radio?
No, what I meant to do was pointing out the contrast between the music that I loved and was listening to (Purple, Slade, Seger) to the abominable dross that was served by the radio stations especially in the second half of the 80s. ;)
I'm not sure if I can explain it, I don't claim I have a particularly evolved taste in music or even to understand much about it. I loved to put one of my worn-out Deep Purple tapes into my rickety cassette player, close my eyes, and let the music take me on a journey, with 30-minute live tracks full of variation. I loved how I could, for example, listen solely to the base guitar and still have an interesting experience. I love how Bob Seger used to put a dozen instruments into a single track, and how I could discover something new even after listening to it for the twentieth time. And then, the market suddenly became dominated with music that consisted of tracks from three instruments which mostly repeated the same four beats over and over, while some powerless voice whined shallow vocals. There just ... was no journey to take with such music, just infinite boredom. When you heard the first 30 seconds of a song, you had heard it all - actually, in some cases (like Modern Talking) you had heard it all for the next half dozen songs to come. There was nothing new to discover, ever. There was no interesting, exciting, varied, wild, musical carpet to sink into with closed eyes.
Sorry for the avalanche of words. I just find it difficult to explain. ;)