Rock & Roll: Dead?

I weep for the 8-Track.

 

NINE shows for Bon Jovi ...
Between them and The Stones (aged) they are killing it.

 

I don't know what's rock or alternative or whatever. I do know there is a ton of good rock-like music out there today. Pearl Jam is my favorite band and they're still doing good (sometimes great) work. Same goes for Queens of the Stone Age. The Black Keys are outstanding and Gary Clark Jr. is even better. Benjamin Booker is new and good. Volbeat and Five Finger Death Punch are more metal but they write catchy tunes.

I'm going to see Foo Fighters in October. I'm sure I'll enjoy their show, but I'm really going to see Gary Clark Jr. open up for them.

 

There's a lot of guitar music. What is dead is the fascist dictatorship of terrestrial radio and big-money record company marketing.

What about these guys:

 

There's a lot of good guitar-based stuff out there now -- it's just harder to find. Along with some of the stuff already mentioned, The Damnwells put out a terrific album last week. Butch Walker is brilliant. Just saw Ryan Adams a few months ago and he was great.

A lot of this is just fragmentation of the audience -- the web has made it easier to find semi-obscure acts that would struggle to find a mainstream audience. My 17 year old is a guitarist and usually has headphones on when he's not playing. He's a big Metallica fan, but he's also listening to Killswitch Engage, Animals as Leaders, Buckethead, and other goofy current rock stuff that's never going to sit next to a Drake CD at Target.

See, I would seriously consider giving my left nut to hear a Jason Isbell does Big Star album. Jason doing "Ballad of El Goodo" or Thirteen"? Jesus, I may need to start hassling him on Twitter to make this happen.

 

Another diatribe. Feel free to ignore.

The only thing I've tried to promise myself as I age is that even if I don't enjoy the popular music of the time, I try to understand where it comes from. I, probably naively, think that's important. I think what kind of music the culture listens to actually sheds a bit of light on who they are, what kind of world they'll build/destruct, how they'll vote, what they value.

So when I listen to a group like Run the Jewels, who kind of grated my ears upon first listening, I tried to figure where this comes from. It's an actual dismantling of soulful, melodic music. It's anti-music. And the more I listen to it, the more anger I can sense. The more the message crystallizes. In the context of a lot of the social issues and arguments of the day, the music makes more sense. It kind of anticipated some of the cultural showdowns of 2014 and 2015.

In the end, that's more interesting than the Black Keys putting out another 1970-aping stomp-along buttrock song. It's not that I don't enjoy that music. It's that it's not as interesting. I love big, dumb rock songs, but I can't just listen to them over and over and over again. It's boring.

And I enjoy the adaptability of young people. It might've diminshed the role of rock, which I love, but it also opened up so much music that would've never made it mainstream.

 

Delivering a message with "anti-music" is a good way to hide a lack of talent.

"Man, this sucks."

"It's supposed to suck!"

"Yeah, OK."

 

There's probably a Parisian dwarf with nine fingers on his playing hand that Buck knows about, but for my money, this is the best guitar player in the world:

 

Great album and also enjoyed seeing them live.

Some others "rock" bands--albeit many of them that have been around for a while--that have put out good albums over the past few years:

Built to Spill (new album just released)
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
Sleater-Kinney (and, relatedly, Wild Flag and the Corin Tucker Band)
Parquet Courts
Superchunk
Cloud Nothings
Weezer (say what you will, but I like their new album)
Yuck (their first album)
Ty Segall (and his associated acts)
Vampire Weekend (if they count)
Yo La Tengo
Bob Mould

 

he's not my favorite, but the dude can sure play

 

Who's your favorite?

 

Many good points made in this thread, and I haven't read every post so apologies if this is redundant, but kids are too passive and too ready to consume the latest Apple gadget or Nike shoes to really embrace Rock’s (with a capital R, dammit!) counter culturist and rebellious sensibilities. When you’ve got 300 channels of TV, a broadband internet connection, a smart phone that you can pull out every 10 seconds…what’s to be pissed off about?

Musically, things will always be cyclical and what’s old will be new again, blah blah blah. Socially, there’s ubiquitous traces of advertising, propaganda and overly-sanitized corporate bullshit throughout everyone’s everyday life that dominate the culture.