Is rock'n'roll going the way of the dodo, like jazz did?

Cafe Society
1

Some of my high school students ask their 45 y.o. teacher if he ever went to a concert with Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Deep Purple, Stones or any other of the big rock acts that came out of the 60’s. Sadly, I haven’t.

It surprises me however, that they have these acts on their iPods, along with Limp Bizkit, Green Day, Oasis. A lot of the kids listen to stuff I listened to as a teenager and some stuff that even their grandparents listened to. Now in a way, I like that they are going back to the roots, but it also makes me a bit sad.
When I started buying records of my own in the 70’s, I didn’t go out and buy Glenn Miller, Sinatra, Burl Ives. I bought the hardest and meanest and loudest rock I could find and there were new acts and new records all the time.
LZ released six albums in six years, Bowie released 9 albums between '71 and '77, Eagles did five between '72 and '76.

Now, being middle aged, I tend to think that much of what’s released as rock music today is very derivative, and I’m sure, those ten years older than me said the same during the 90’s ASF. But when Green Day came back in '04 with American Idiot, the guys were in their 30’s and yet, the kids found them kinda fresh and exciting.

But where are the 18, 19 year old angry kids, hammering away on guitar, bass and drums, trying to set the world on fire and doing something new? Not trying to sound like Green Day, which in turn derived their stuff from The Clash and Ramones, which in turn got their stuff from Iggy & the Stooges, MC5, Vanilla Fudge, Kinks.

The same thing happened to jazz. It imploded and started being interesting only for the immediate family. It’s around, has its audience, but it’s been a long time since it was edgy or dangerous. Now it’s either pastische bands, doing nostalgia stuff or navel gazing musicians who take 2 inute long standards, make them 20 minutes long, where each musician gets a long solo and polite golf type applauses after.

Is this the way rock music is going? Is there nothing new that will make me upset and uneasy and make the high school kids dance or riot in the streets? Is rock music dead.

2

I’m not so sure…although we’ve seen the disappearance of the soul band, there are still tons of rock bands out there, its just that what passes for rock these days is not Zeppelin, Deep Purple type rock, kind of like very early rap bears little resemblance to todays rap.

3

They’re still out there. Check out Arctic Monkeys’ sophomore album, which came out last week.

4

I’ve heard them and they’re good - the closest we’ve been to art rock or progressive rock since '77. It’s not like I’m excited, but at 45, I shouldn’t be.
Thing is, it seems like a very lonely voice, like Steely Dan, Yellow Magic Orchestra or Weather Report tried to do with jazz in the 70’s, which ultimately failed.

5

This came up a little at work today. A coworker mentioned RATT and Motley Crue which I didn’t know he liked before but I do too. We talked about how music was hard and mean up until the early 90’s. Guns N Roses was the bomb and we learned about misery and disaster from our music but also got pumped at the same time. You couldn’t go to a concert without being worshipper of the black arts or see something insane happening on stage.

The whole thing makes me sick. Damed kids these days with their soft little music and bubble gum lyrics. They will never be as hardened as we will but they may have better hearing later on.

6

Not quite right - if you listen to The White Stripes, Wolfmother or countless other “new” rock bands, you can really hear their classic rock influences.

There are a bunch of new bands out there that sound great - the biggest issues, to me, that are leading to the question in the OP are:

  • There is a whole lot more choice out there - with the internet and globalization, folks can access and pick and choose among a MUCH broader array of styles of music. Tuvian throat singers? I bet there are 20 websites out there for 'em.

  • There is no longer a single source to be told “what is cool” - back in the day, you listened to a specific radio station(s) and read specific magazine(s) and watched specific TV show(s). Now with fully random, broad access, it is harder to zero in on what is cool.

  • Rock is mature - for a 40 - 50 year run, rock was an emerging form. You could break through boundaries, because the boundaries were newly-discovered. It is not clear that there is a lot more you can do with the basic rock format, other than find innovative ways to either re-interpret current genres, or combine rock with currently-new genres, like say M.I.A. is doing in her combination of rap, rock, dance/techno and Eastern music genres…

So - no, rock isn’t dead, but it is a mature art form sorted into a much broader spectrum of choices.

WordMan - who just showed a 14-year-old kid how to play Problem Child by AC/DC and jammed on Sunshine of Your Love with my 9-year-old on drums…

7

Yeah but rock isn’t even the ‘music of teenage rebellion’ in the sense that is was when you were growing up, is it? Everyone accepts it and lets it run its course and maybe its still got some of that old nostalgic glow, but listening to rock is absolutely phenomenally normal.

8

How is hip hop not the new rock? It makes parents angry, after all. :slight_smile:

9

Yeah, which is basically saying that rock music will, in time, be like jazz, i.e. safe.

I mean, there are good jazz musicians out there, there are young kids that fall in love with the genre and bring new interpretations, there are people trying to do the old formula with new instruments and sometimes succeding. But it’s really stagnating.
And this is what I’m wondering about rock: will it turn into a negative feedback loop and implode, or is there still some umph to it?

10

True. The “Music That Most Threatens Society” title passed from rock to hip-hop/rap sometime in the 90’s. Unlike the recent past when I was growing up, I haven’t heard too many moral watchdogs attack rock n’ roll for its corrupting influence. It seems all the arrows are now aimed at hip-hop.

11

Rock and roll stopped being dangerous when kids who grew up listening to rock and roll grew up and had kids that listened to rock and roll. Rock and roll pretty much lost the capability to be dangerous and frightening in the 1980s. Remember back when interior secretary James Watt dismissed The Beach Boys as “drug music”? Back in the 80s you still had aging authority figures who grew up before rock. Heck, baby boomers who grew up on early rock could still be shocked by the nihilism of punk and metal and befuddled by new wave. Now those shocking punk and metal rockers are in their 50s.

So rock stopped being dangerous when kids had parents who grew up on rock, but nowadays kids have GRANDPARENTS who grew up on rock. How exactly is rock going to seem dangerous and edgy and rebellious to those kids?

12

There are museums dedicated to rock ‘n’ roll; it’s been dead for a long time. Doesn’t bother me—it’s not my job to worry about what masses of people like or don’t like.

Inside the museums infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo, “This is what salvation must be like after awhile”
But Mona Lisa must’ve had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles …

13

These seems a curious statement to me. What about bands like Mars Volta, Coheed & Cambria, Dream Theatre, even Radiohead from OK Computer onward? They seem to borrow heavily from the art and progressive rock scenes of the late 70s. I would consider the Arcade Fire to be further removed from that kind of music than the people I listed.

As to the OP, I do believe that rock, as an evolving musical is pretty much dead. Hip hop has long displaced it as the music of rebellion, but even there I think rap has at most 10 years to continue to innovate before it plays itself out as a genre. Heck, I think it’s already in its decline, with the late 80s, early-to-mid 90s being its heyday.

14

They’re not on MTV or the radio, that’s where. And they’re hammering away on laptops and samplers just as much as they’re hammering away on guitars, basses, and drums. They’re not accessible and marketable and mainstream because they’re doing something innovative and threatening.

15

Listen to Schanuser’s album Kill All Humans and then tell me prog is dead. I’m pretty sure you can get it on iTunes.

I agree with your general sentiments. I also think hip-hop is on the verge of not being rebellious anymore - radio rap has become as mainstream to the current 18-25 set as Dick Clark was in the 50s. I’m very curious - excited really - to see the new directions that music will go in to push the boundaries.

16

If you’re replying to me specifically, I’m not saying prog is dead. My examples were to refute the notion that art rock and prog rock died in '77. So, in fact, I agree with you that the style is alive.

I am saying that rock in general, as a constantly innovating genre, is on the verge of being played out, i.e. dead.

17

I think you nailed it right there. With the state of digital media and the internet, a lot of artists are abandoning the big labels and taking on production, distribution, advertising, etc, all by themselves. The current lingo is “DIY” - Do It Yourself - and they are purposefully ditching the strong arm of the major labels and commercial radio.

I had the same reaction to the new “hard core” DIY rock as my grandparents did to the rock I grew up with - that is to say, “What’s with all the noise and screaming?? This is music??” (With the exception of a few bands… I’m particularly fond of Killswitch Engage, for instance)

So to answer the OP, it’s not that threatening, in-your-face, riotous rock is gone. They’re just keeping it to themselves.

18

And I, as a 40 year old veteran of punk through modern rock in the 90s, think that’s perfectly AOK. It should die and get out of the way for whatever comes next. Rock and roll should be temporary. It’s nihilistic by its very nature.

Really, complaining about what popular music is now is just making sure that you sound like your parents, or their parents, complaining that times were better when THEY were young. We’re either old or getting old and it’s time to let the kids move on and do their thing.

Or a selection of verse from a relevant song…

They’re not us and that’s exactly right. The marketing schemes in Wal-Mart that encourage the kids to buy Zeppelin and Tull shirts are doing unmitigated violence against those high schoolers who see and buy them.

I swear, sometimes I’d give up my balls to wave my hands and have every record, cassette, CD, reel-to-reel, and music file from before 1991 disappear from the universe forever.

As for RATT and Guns n Roses and such…Just the opening chords of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ would take one of Lemmy’s bass heads and shove it up Axl’s ass until he died. To say that music was ‘harder’ when it was packaged hair metal is ludicrous. Christ, I once heard an interview with Nikki Sixx where he said that the first question he had for Mick Mars when they first met was what type of hair dye he used.

Grr. Get off my lawn.

19

Oh, no, I’m replying to whatever notion that you were replying to that prog is supposedly dead. In other words, agreeing with you.

20

There are some bands out there today making absolutely kick-ass rock n’ roll. Try out:

The Raconteurs
The White Stripes
Buckcherry
Arctic Monkeys

And lots more. It’s just that these bands can’t make a huge impact on the culture any more, because the culture has become so fragmented.