Talk:Caroline Era

I like the idea of a culture based alternate history page, there aren't many of them. But this page doesn't get much into what happens next. Sure, I can accept that the seventies trends might be prolonged and even technological advancements post poned for decades. But at some point things will have to change. So at what point, and how?

I probably am more zeroed in to music history than I am other types of history myself. Obviously I'm a pretty big history fane, but there are definately better people to speculate what the political and cultural evolution would look like in other areas.

Here is the thing, music in the mid to late seventies was very much focused on clean production. Of course you had disco, there always is some form of popular dance music and it never stays around for longer than a few years. Rock on the other hand, in the seventies a lot of artists were on record labels, indie music was practically unheard of, and up until the late seventies and onward what we might call indie back than was exclusive to the folk genre.

Now if punk never cuaght on we can assume that the indie movement would be slightly differant, but eventually it would begin to deversivy in other ways. My guess is that instead of punk bands being the first indie rock wave it could have been more industrial(also I imagine synthisizers and drum machines might be more expensive so maybe not) and new wave bands. The heavy metal bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden... they'd exist, they probably would have differant names, be more like seventies rock bands because they never had the punk influance to give them that edge. I mean if you listen to these bands, especially the L.A. thrash metal theme, they really are just sped up blues, while bands from the seventies, Led Zeppelin, Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd had a lot of blues influance themselves. I can't imagine that just because they had all the influances that inspired their kinds of music that Dave Mustiane, Lars Urlich and James Hetfield would simply not become musicians. They'd just be a little tamer in what they ended up creating. But I cannot imagine that these trends would continue indefinately. I mean the Seattle Grunge movement was a huge indie force, you have a number of people involved who's main focus was indie music, Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman of Sub Pop. All the Seattle bands from the popular Nirvana and Pearljam to more quirky and fringe bands like Mudhoney and The Melvins. Would they be more of a Punk force bursting out even more ferociously? Would they sound more like new wave music, which would be the most likely form of indie rock to exist. I'm not sure, because there are a lot of other significant cultural indicators. But once agian, things would have to change and evolve, even if those changes are postponed. Although post poning changes can create other unexpected events.

I want to know what people really think would happen in this world, not just something vague like "The trends from the seventies continue indefinately." What happens ten years down the road? How about fifteen years? What would this world look like today? And I seriously doubt that trands last for as long as thirty years. But what would replace them, and what will we have really lost?

Browbeat 19:50, September 2, 2011 (UTC)