Rock & Roll: Dead?

For Dick:

 

Rock and roll died decades ago. Next question.

 

Hey hey, my my, rock & roll will never die:

Neil Young Readies New Album, Tour With Willie Nelson's Sons | Rolling Stone

I can't think of anything more exciting than an album and tour that "takes on the GMO-producing chemical company Monsanto." I just hope it measures up to Greendale as a concept album.

 

Rock and roll used to be rebellious.

But, without George Bush to inspire the angst of folks like Green Day, we're reduced to rebelling against companies that help to feed the world. Kind of sad.

 

Please point out the portions of "American Idiot" that reference George W. Bush. You said Green Day made an album about George W. Bush. Show, don't tell.

 

Don't worry, you still have Ted Nugent. If he's not either dead or in jail, that is.

 

Go ahead and skip this rambling post. Just parsing out my thoughts. I don't have a lot of people around me who love music, so this is a release valve.

It's an interesting discussion because I'm right at the age (30) where the music I love and the music I value is just now starting to become discarded by the youth culture. Someone mentioned Arcade Fire and Kanye West and Radiohead, seminal artists of my generation who have received full-force backlash the last three or four years. So I can only speak as someone who is 30, who is in that bridge generation where rock was still a giant part of my pop culture taste but became mixed with a lot of other influences. The younger generation doesn't even have that little bit of rock in its blood.

It's not that just rock and roll is dull. It's that any music that is staunchly in one category is dull to me now. I listen to rock, but in a playlist surrounded by other types of music. Someone joked that Radiohead killed rock, but's it's kind of true. Once you allowed electronic music and punk and rock and hip hop to stew together, a 4-4 beat, a raspy white guy voice and a gratuitous four-minute guitar solo are boring. Rock hasn't pushed boundaries in years. A band like

Someone mentioned Arcade Fire. I understand how someone weaned on the rock of the 1960s would be completely nonplussed by them. The skill level isn't comparable to a 1960s rock band. But for someone like me, 30 years old, there's a feeling of authenticity. (I know you just rolled your eyes. I know you just stopped reading. I know you think that word has been co-opted and makes me a lame-brained kid you don't ever have to hear out. You can revel in the fact that most 22-year olds feel the same way about that indie rock generation of 1999 to 2010 and are much more comfortable in the pop/hip-hop dominated world). There was a feeling -- much like the feeling many of you baby boomers felt for the rock acts of your generations and Gen Xers felt for that fantastic early 1990s scene-- that there was a movement towards something completely organic and real. Those hopes are dashed and bought out and co-opted. They end faster then you imagine them at the start of the movement.

I also think there's such a rich back catalog of rock music that making new "classic-sounding" rock is kind of a waste of time. I like Raphael Sadiq. He's great. But do I need another album that sounds like a knockoff of a Stevie Wonder album? I like Gary Clark, Jr. But do we really need another bluesy-pop style album that borrows from a dozen other artists? Maybe. I'm just not sure that doing that really makes great, fun art.

I think the current youth culture is amazing in its inclusiveness, its ability embrace anything that works. That doesn't judge something very pop-sounding as inferior but will simultaneously embrace something very heavy sounding at the next turn. But there is something disconcerting when it comes to a movement that also has no standards. It's like music is hashing out what it means to be in a post-post-modern world the same way the culture is. Weird spot to be in .

 

Do you want to argue that it wasn't the perception of the album?

American Idiot could have been a mess; in fact, it is a mess. The plot has characters with names such as St. Jimmy and Whatsername, young rebels who end up on the "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." But the individual tunes are tough and punchy enough to work on their own. You can guess who the "American Idiot" is in the bang-up title tune, as Armstrong rages against the "subliminal mind-fuck America" of the George W. Bush era: "Welcome to a new kind of tension/All across the alien nation."

Green Day American Idiot Album Review | Rolling Stone

The theme of America as a nation of "science denying" idiots, with Bush as the "Idiot in Chief" was strong among the American left for the entire Bush presidency.

American Idiot was celebrated as an anti-Bush album, and was feted at the Grammys as a result.

The theme continued through the years with Charlie Pierce's "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free" serving as a closing stanza.

 

Maybe music is just dead, period, as a cultural behemoth. Movies, too.

Young people I know use restaurants, cooking, and craft beer/wine/cocktails as their cultural currency. And travel.

 

Now I am somewhat skeptical that the album exists.

 

Kids these days.

 

I think music is now a low-volume background soundtrack for most people. They want it to be mildly pleasant, familiar and unobtrusive.