Is It Here to Stay? Rock’n’roll Considered
commentarymagazine.com
commentarymagazine.com
Putting those aside for a minute, the earliest forms of rock were quite rebellious. Rumble by Link Wray, the 1954 instrumental hit that pioneered the distortion and power chord combo, ended up getting banned in many markets because it was thought to incite delinquency. Today, the tune is bland at best.
At this point, I think it's quite hard to rebel culturally. So many different genres have pushed their definition of rebellion so far at this point that it has become exceptionally hard to push the envelope of what is culturally acceptable.
The whole idea of rebellion has become a ... set of inane lifestyle choices. It was, frankly, pretty stupid back in the day, too. But I remember Bob Hope talking about how Kiss' mothers told them to "kiss and make up" on TV.
Ace Frehley - guitar teacher to America.
I read "Been Down So Long.." by Richard Farina when I was like 12 , and it had the observation that the counterculture was just as venal and self-interested ad the Establishment. This is almost without a doubt the most useful idea I've ever been given. And it's from like 1964.
The "rebellious" part became marketing fodder some time in the '70s. This is when music teachers decided to include the "rock" beat in things like jazz programs and choral music in junior high school.
"Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, don't kid yourself." - Frank Zappa.
Other music like Blues is more like narrow genre books, like detective fiction. You know what you'll find in a detective book and where the borders are. Challenge these borders and you're on post-modernist grounds, outside the genre.
Of course, rock used to be rooted in some things, just like sf&f used to be rooted in some things. But it turned out that using the method you can uproot it and tell about anything you want.
It's not like it's being organically and spontaneously created at the Five Spot any more. If it is, it's because somebody decided that's what the "Five Spot" does, and makes that happen by force of will. I suppose a "farmed" version of jazz is what we have, not "free range" jazz. But bebop wasn't sustainable. And people don't drink three-martini lunches any more...
Classical is surprisingly healthy. Well, the performance part is struggling for funding.
There will probably always be something we call "rock" or "rock and roll" but it's probably in its 8th or fifteenth iteration now - these things last about five years, a canon forms for it and that branch solidifies.
I'm old, and I only learned actual rock-and-roll in the 1980s when I played with guys born in the '40s who still knew how. You can hear it in Keef and Charlie of the Stones. There's a hell of a lot of overlap between rock-and-roll and country music for the last 50 years.
"Mirror of Youth" was nice but ...Brubeck much? Damn nice, though. Thanks for the reference.
It is one thing for ... JJ Cale to lead with a drum machine riff because he was being lazy, broke or cheap but trying to present the stuff at that link as somehow the saving of jazz merely serves to reinforce my point.
I am talking about an art form as a living, breathing entity. I didn't kill the [ expletive deleted} thing but something did, and I'm just as disgusted as you are. Miles is to jazz as Eastwood is to the Western. It is going to take real leadership to get it out of the rut.
(It's a big tent. Here are snippets of the current top 50.[1])
Rock is still going extremely strong on it's own, even if it's not at the forefront, it's still strong and going along, doing it's own thing. There is still a great community with it.
EDM, dance, trance whatever is nothing. Just a bunch of people thinking they are cool, taking too many drugs and drinking too much because thats they only way they can enjoy such bad music.
Edit: Although admittedly I didn't read this article. I just clicked the link and it has a picture of the beatles? The beatles are not a rock band, the beatles were a boy band, much like the backstreet boys etc, maybe this form of "rock" is dying, but real rock is still around.
But for a boy band, they had real power in the rhythm section. Those recordings have muscle.
They couldn't tour ( there was no PA as we now know it and they couldn't get over the crowds ) so they pivoted to recording.
Had Crown introduced the DC-300 earlier... who knows? In 1980, it was still racks of DC-300s behind stage with a guy to turn them off to keep them from flaming out...
They are widely acknowledged as one of the most influential rock bands of all time.
at my local cafe there is a dj that always has a bunch of gear out on the table
we would often be working side by side at the cafe for hours and one day i asked what thae were working on
i learned that thae listen to new edm songs posted to soundcloud and the artist union, from a collection of genres, and choose thaer favourite songs, makes mixes, and releases them online with some personal collage work
https://twitter.com/BestEdmMixDaily
the chill mixes are my stuff, but there is also dubstep, future house, trap, and a metal'edm hybrid that the dj is most proud of
I'm sure plenty of people go to these for the music, just like I'm sure plenty went to Woodstock mainly for a big party (before it rained and they found out the acid was bad).
Electronic music is so broad that thinking of it as a genre is like thinking of "music played on instruments" as a genre. EDM will be around forever (the "dance" moniker is redundant since that's just something people to do music- e.g. each of Bach's Orchestral suites movements are based on a dance type), but the stuff in even 50 years will be wildly different to what we have now. Probably. Kind of interesting that house has been around for 30 years now and it's still quite similar and going strong.
(Aside: rock was never as popular as people think. Look at the chart toppers from any given year. You'll be surprised how much you don't recognize and how much was rock)
I really like rock music and I hate pretty much anything that gets radio play today. I'm cool with that though because through the internet, I've discovered dozens of bands and albums that are making albums that I love right now. I see more shows than any of my friends. My friends all like different kinds of music, and they've found their own niches, and they're all happy with that, too.
As a consumer, now is the best time to be listening to music, regardless of genre.
But anyway, I do agree that there will never be another Rock genre in terms of popularity. Music is just way too segmented. Even the power of popularity that will get the masses to listen to a hit only has a fleeting power in the face of choice. Sure I could enjoy this Taylor Swift song since its on the radio every day, but I could also easily turn on Alabama Shakes on Spotify and enjoy that.
That is purely based on your recent experience, and I believe it to be short-sighted.
As an example, Classical Period music was popular roughly between 1730 and 1820. That's 90 years- in comparison, Rock is only about 61 years old.
Rock will no doubt continue to influence future musicians even when it is no longer the predominant form of popular music. But, assuming history repeats itself, which it tends to do, Rock probably won't be the last popular form of music spanning several decades.
And I believe what will replace Rock will be some form of electronic pop.
… and when I re-opened the tab to make some comments on the article itself (which I quite liked) after reading the comments here, it told me I'd reach my limit. Well, never mind. It's a good article; shame it's so hard to read.
Although perhaps the term has just been diluted to meaninglessness.
Kids don't listen to rock and listen to hiphop nowadays? In my mostly white grammar school (and then junior high school) in the early 1980s, LL Cool J, Newcleus, and UTFO had much more cultural relevance than any rock band. By 1986, when Run DMC covered "Walk This Way", they were considered the new sound, Aerosmith was a rock band popular with people then in their 20s.
Rock has not been at the center of the culture for over 30 years. This guy seems out of touch. Even in the mid-1980s, the rockers that I knew listened to 60s-70s rock more than 80s rock. It was already dead. The old core rock demographic was more into heavy metal than rock. The rise of heavy metal, outlaw country, techno and hip hop finished rock off by the 1980s as any kind of cultural center.
I don't get this navel gazing about the 1960s from a half century ago. The 1990s is what affected this youth generation's culture in which the Internet, Snapchat, memes, FPS games and so forth is a heavy influence on the entire youth culture. Back in the early 1990s, very few young people were on the Internet (few old people were on the Internet too).
They heydays of MTV centered on rock bands. (Especially if you include grunge.)
The late 90s also included some hits by Nu-Metal groups; you can decide for yourself if that counts as rock or not.
I do know what you're saying. For those from the suburbs at least, the easiest way to tell a late gen-X from early millenial is whether they are nostalgic about early hip-hop or Pop (Gen X) or alt-rock (Early millenial). I call it the "3rd Bass/Nirvana inflection point"
Smashing Pumpkins, Metallica, and the Foo Fighers I have no excuse for forgetting. Ironically, I was listening to "The Color and The Shape" while typing this in but still forgot the Foo Fighers.
It's more of a niche now than then, (and maybe I'm ignorant of developments outside of the harder rock zone) but there a still big rock bands now; The Black Keys, Godsmack, Tool, Avenged Sevenfold, Chevelle, Disturbed. They may not be Beyonce or T Swift, but they can sell out arenas.
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Rock is not what it was, but it's still huge, and Hip-Hop for all its current popularity, doesn't hold a candle to the absolute dominance that Rock had not that long ago.
And Rock is still underneath the most popular hits. The current 1st position, just as an example, is Closer by The Chainsmokers was - according to its authors - inspired by them listening non-stop to Blink-182.
Hip-Hop big names also constantly sample Rock songs, particularly older ones.