Rock & Roll: Dead?

Love their two albums. So much fun. It was funny to find out they made their first album and fully intended to end the band.

 

I should state that I don't think that music today is "crap." I certainly think that current mainstream country music is utter crap and some of the most horrendous popular music ever made. But a lot of pop music is pretty good. Kanye West is good. Katy Perry is good. The Carly Rae Jepsen song was really good. The Lorde song was incredible. Mumford & Sons is good. Beck is still making great music. Hell, Bob Dylan is still making good music. And so is Tom Petty.

There is good music.

But rock is dead. There isn't very much of it being played, even on rock radio. And it moves the culture needle not a whit, especially with young people.

And popular music in general is largely dead as a major component of youth culture.

 

So from a cause-effect perspective, how much of that could be relative to today's music not inspiring that type of passion? Could it be that today's stuff is more disposable, flavor of the week/month type that doesn't generate the same emotional connection as it did in the past?

 

You're the worst.

 

It's good pop music. It is. It's not my cup of tea, but it's good pop music.

 

I am imagining Dick and his strait-laced lawyer bros discussing Kanye during their 30-minute happy hours.

 

More disposable than this?

 

I'd argue Yeezus was as much industrial as it was hip hop or pop music. It also didn't make half the dent in the public consciousness as his pop stuff.

And that's where a lot of the old guard music fans are wrong as far as judging modern music as tepid. Killer Mike and Kendrick Lamar aren't comforting or lukewarm. They challenge. That's where the heat and the interesting things in music are coming from. This paradox between truly interesting music with social message mixed right in there with profane, disturbing, juvenile stuff makes it hard to digest sometimes and means the most interesting music of this time period can never be mainstream. Never.

 

I'm going to put on my Thin Lizzy Live and Dangerous DVD and run on the treadmill. BRB.

 

I am going to take the contrary, but a caveat first:

-- rock and roll as a sound has been essentially gone since the mid 1960s if you want to be technical. Rock and Roll described a beat and style. That is essentially gone and was replaced by ROCK, which was a testosterone fueled parody. At least according to an interview I read with Joni Mitchell, which I can't find on the interwebs, but damnit she said it and she was right.

-- that being said "rock and roll" has since become the brand for "music of young people," which has been attributed to tons of artists.

-- memories are convenient. People like to say "back in my day, music was awesome, we had (insert band names)," yet they forget that the big sellers were the Osmonds, Harry Nillson, Wham, Petula Clark, Tom Jones, NSync, etc. for the most part. Classic rock stations have cut the super pop stuff from your playlists and allow your mind to think, yeah, back in 1974 I listed to Steve Miller and Lou Reed and Bob Dylan all back to back on the radio. You likely didn't. AM Radio would have had Miller followed by the Osmonds followed by Jackson 5 followed by who the fuck knows.

-- There are some amazing bands out there right now that have a great sound and if look hard enough, you can find and they have been around. The Black Keys, Kings of Leon, Vampire Weekend, Modest Mouse, the Strokes, Apache Relay are just some I like.

-- Now some of you may say, "well, fuck you, get back on your bike, I never heard of those bands," or "fuck you, I know those bands, and they suck," or "fuck you, that's not rock and roll." However, again, how much of rock and roll was rock and roll? If you were "awesome" in the 1970s, you had Zeppelin, The Who, Floyd, Neil Young, etc....and guess what they were all very different. Neil Young didn't sound like Floyd, who did sound like Zeppelin, who didn't sound like you get the idea.... So, yeah, Apache Relay is as much rock and roll to me as most Neil Young in the mid 1970s.

-- Kids change how they appreciate music. Someone mentioned reading liner notes and the like. I did the same thing. That was "cool" in my day and yours. My father in the early 1960s? Rock was for going dancing and getting laid. My mom was late 1960s and music was lets' all turn on a beatles album, smoke something and feel the world change. They didn't understand why I had to blast Nirvana as loud as I could.

-- end of rant, now get of my lawn

 

Green Day: Keeping Their Edge - Matt Doeden - Google Books

 

Saying rock is dead is like saying classical music is dead.

As long as a kid has a guitar, a dream a voice, good looks, a toothy smile and wholesome appearance, he or she can get a Disney sitcom and go on to become a rock star.