Alrighty, this is a pet theory of mine, poorly defined and ragged on the edges, but stay with me. The theory is that every so many years a “new” rock is created, blows everybody away, lasts a few years, gets overrun with pop and repeat. Like this:
'55 Rock is born (or recognized, or discovered)
Late 50’s and early sixties get the girl groups, Motown, etc.
'63 The Beatles/Stones.
Mid-late 60’s “Listen, what the flower people say”
Very late 60’s early 70’s Zepplin, Hendrix, Ozzy
Late 70’s Disco
Early 80’s Punk/New wave/Rap (stretching here)
Late 80’s M. Bolton, Firehouse, general crap (check the top ten for any week Dec 1990)
'91 Seattle/Grunge
Late 90’s Teen pop.
If any of that kind of holds water and the trend is for the “new” thing every 9 or so years, aren’t we overdue? Do the Vines/Stripes/Other Nu Garage count? Is there a reason that MTV is running 4 hours of Punk’d tonight?
My pet theory is that the cycle’s in rock music revolves around the “complexity” (for lack of a better word) of the music. A complex musical style will come to the fore for about 5-8 years and then a simpler one will supercede it until a more complex one overtakes it. This is just my theory but here’s how it goes. Feel free to rip it to shreds.
Simple: Late 50’s - Late 60’s: Rock 'n Roll
Complex : Late 60’s - mid 70’s : Prog rock
Simple: mid 70’s - early 80’s : Punk
Complex: early 80’s - early 90’s : Stadium Rock, Hair Metal
Simple: early 90’s - mid/late 90’s : Alternative, Grunge
Complex: mid/late 90’s - early 200’s : Nu Metal, Rap Metal
Simple: early 2000’s - now : The “The” bands, Garge rock.
The way I’ve heard it there’s a breakthrough, influential year every 14 years. There was '63 with Beatles and Stones, '77 with Sex Pistols and The Clash, and '91 with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. This would mean the next breakthrough year will be 2005. We’re not probably hearing the next Nirvana yet, or at least it’s hasn’t broken through yet, but we might be hearing the Pixies to the next Nirvana.
Oh, Motown music is fine but I have a Kathy Lee Gifford sweatshop image of Motown. Bunch of people sitting around writing a billion songs a day and keeping 2, taking girls off the street and cleaning them up and putting them in fancy dresses and teaching them to lift their arms at the same time. ugh.
I’ll give it up for Phil (bam bam bam!) Spector too.
Jesus Christ. (looks at watch)
Oh yeah, I’ve also heard that this year’s underground is next year’s mainstream. This would be true in most all cases. So what’s this year’s underground?
Bruce_Daddy, if I go by all the underground bands I’ve heard of, it appears to be more Stabbing Westward/White Stripes punk and emo (the poppier, sadder version of punk). There’s no telling how long rap will be around (unfortunately).
They bring as much as the '70s punk bands did. The Ramones et. al were intentionally trying to emulate 60s style garage rock. Its new context was the innovation, as it is now.
Vixenation: A lot of emo is not a poppier version of punk. It is its own seperate genre - listen to Cursive or Braid sometime.
First of all, I dont consider nu-metal to be the “complex” countercycle to grunge. They are both equally complex, or should I say, non-complex (although both more complex than punk.)
the only way you could claim that nu-metal was more complex than grunge would be to define nu-metal to only include Korn, Tool, and Incubus, while to define Grunge to exclude the Smashing Pumpkins (while you’d still have Nirvana as complex grunge, no getting around that.) But that’s not kosher as it only includes the “hard-core” members of one group while eliminating the “similar” members of the other.
For instance, Disturbed ain’t all that complex.
Second of all, how can emo be underground, when there’s been an emo joke band for around five years now?
push they get from their respective record labels, and that is no different then the amount of pushing that groups like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Guns N’ Roses, KISS, Bon Jovi, Poison, etc. got.
Payton’s Servant - the White Stripes, who kicked it all off, were, and still are on XL, a tiny indie label. They had hardly the money or the desire to go on a huge marketing binge. The Strokes are on a major, but the marketing push only started after they broke into the mainstream; their initial popularity was purely the result of indie word-of-mouth. Same with Nirvana - Nevermind was on Geffen, but it was pretty much ignored by the label until it started making waves around the world.
The Vines are the only “new-rock” band that you list that benefited from a huge marketing push.
As to what new innovation these bands bring to music, I answered that in my first post. Context. Just as the Ramones were innovative by placing 50’s and 60’s garage rock in a new context, thereby making it something different, The Strokes et al place garage rock in a modern context. Punk was not garage rock because the late 70s were not the mid 60s, and the new garage rock is innovative because it takes something old and puts it in a new context. By going “back-to-basics,” these bands highlighted certain things that were missing from the popular music that preceded theirs.
Just as the Ramones were innovative by showing that music could be played by anyone and didn’t need prog-wankery to be good, the White Stripes showed that music could be played by anyone and didn’t need bad white-rapping and self-obsession to be good.
It’s easy to say that they were not innovative if you ignore what was happening around them, but this is dishonest; what was happening around them is an integral part of the way people saw that music.
