So, why _did_ the music die with Buddy Holly?

Cafe Society
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[QUOTE=blondebear]
All of this makes me wonder about how Mick Jagger’s death will effect people. Or Keith Richards, or Jimmy Page, or Pete Townshend, or Paul McCartney, or Ray Davies. Those will be dark, dark days for me, I can tell you that.
[/QUOTE]

It wouldn’t have the same effect as Holly’s death. Or Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, or John Lennon. When those people died, there was a sense of unfinished business. Those people for the most part, including Lennon, who was coming back after a 5-year hiatus, had their best times yet to come. With Jagger and Richard, Townshend, McCartney, et. al., they are all in their 60s and have left a pretty large volume of work behind. When they die, of course there will be retrospectives, and mourning, but people will look back and say, “They accomplished much.” As George Harrison said, “All things will pass.” I will take their deaths calmly, with the knowledge they lived long and productive lives and were not taken away before their time. And I will play their music and reflect how they touched so many other lives.

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Freddie Mercury

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[QUOTE=spoke-]
Rock and roll has died many deaths and been reborn. At the end of the 50s (when Buddy died and Elvis joined the army). At the end of the 60s (when Janis Joplin died, the Beatles broke up, Hendrix died, Morrison died). Disco killed rock in the 70s before Punk and New Wave revived it.

It died again in the late 80s (at least as far as mainstream radio was concerned), when dance and rap and stupid-ass (IMO) hair metal were dominating the charts. I remember a Rolling Stone cover of the era asked “Can Jesus Jones Save Rock and Roll?” He couldn’t, of course. That took Nirvana and Pearl Jam a couple of years later.

Rock and roll is again dormant, but I wouldn’t dance on its grave if I were you. Ever seen Carrie?
[/QUOTE]

Well, it’s been some time and, despite some occasional subterranean rumbling, I’m still waiting for the hand (with a guitar pick) to burst out of the ground. It’s not that rock n’ roll is completely dead as a popular music genre, it’s just no longer the dominant one. I think since around 1998, hip-hop has ruled the roost.

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Nah, just the commercial roost. Indie’s been doing okay.

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[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]
Nah, just the commercial roost. Indie’s been doing okay.
[/QUOTE]

Do you really believe that? I know it’s what everyone has been saying for years, to the extent that it has become akin to reflexively reciting a truism, but it seems to me that indie has been rather the victim of its own success. Since around 2003-04, when a confluence of cultural events made indie a commercial force in its own right, the music seems to be floundering a little.

What was the last indie rock record that sounded so essential that you needed to tell everyone about it? I mean, sure, they’ve been some good records, but nothing that really captures imaginations the way - well, I guess the last one would have been the Arcade Fire album. Sure, since then we’ve had Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois, but that was just a consolidation of his position - he’d already made himself important with Michigan in 2003. Can you really think of an album from this year that would prompt Natalie Portman to tell Zach Braff that the band would change his life?

It seems that since Modest Mouse shipped platinum and Death Cab For Cutie went gold, indie rock has been kind of flailing around unsure what to do with itself. It’s idols are selling major numbers, so it can’t distinguish itself from the mainstream due to lack of popularity. You can hear this music on MTV2 and The O.C., so it’s not about obscurity. And when mainstream rock acts like The Killers are basically doing the same moves as indie acts, it’s not about the music being that idiosyncratic either. There’s a good chance your favorite band is negotiating for their song to appear in a commercial right now, and who can blame them - C.R.E.A.M. get the money, right? This isn’t like in the late '90s where indie was a dramatic alternative to mainstream rock music, the one refuge from Scott Stapp and Fred Durst. If anything, mainstream acts are more interesting because they’re bringing a bit of flair and excitement back into things - Green Day made an ambitious political rock opera that was willing to aim high even if it meant falling short; My Chemical Romance dress up like goths and have brilliantly stupid ideas like dancing corpses in their videos. If indie rock’s most attractive feature is that it doesn’t want to have any fun, that portends poorly for the genre.

And indie hasn’t been about indie labels for a long time - if your favorite acts aren’t on Interscope now, they will be soon, and places like Sub Pop and Matador are already mini-majors. There isn’t even the clickish aspect to make the genre vital - your little sister can hear a hyped new band on Gilmore Girls at 8 o’clock, and download their album from iTunes at 9.

So… indie might be doing ok, but right now it’s hardly the best kept secret alternative to mainstream dreck that it once was.

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American Pie interpretations.

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So, what you’re saying is that indie isn’t making … no, wait, it is… Hell, Sub-Pop’s been a mini-major since I picked up 200 back in the early 90s.

Face it, man, it’s not about obscurity, it’s about it speaking to you. Indie’s speaking to people enough, and it’s got heart hip-hop doesn’t. It may be whiny, but hell, we’ll see. We’re in a transitional point right now, it started going down with rap-rock, and indie’s a rebuilding stage. Rock isn’t dead by any means, it just is changing with the industry.

Faster than the industry, really. If all the suits can promote is hip-hop, then so what?

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[QUOTE=save that for real estate]
Can you really think of an album from this year that would prompt Natalie Portman to tell Zach Braff that the band would change his life?
[/QUOTE]

Oh crap, what album was that? I forget.

-FrL-

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[QUOTE=save that for real estate]
…it seems to me that indie has been rather the victim of its own success.

…It seems that since Modest Mouse shipped platinum and Death Cab For Cutie went gold, indie rock has been kind of flailing around unsure what to do with itself. It’s idols are selling major numbers, so it can’t distinguish itself from the mainstream due to lack of popularity. You can hear this music on MTV2 and The O.C., so it’s not about obscurity. And when mainstream rock acts like The Killers are basically doing the same moves as indie acts, it’s not about the music being that idiosyncratic either…This isn’t like in the late '90s where indie was a dramatic alternative to mainstream rock music…

…There isn’t even the clickish aspect to make the genre vital - your little sister can hear a hyped new band on Gilmore Girls at 8 o’clock, and download their album from iTunes at 9.

[/QUOTE]

Interesting thread, and I agree with this post. A quote from myself from elsewhere, in a discussion I had about the article “The Long Tail” in Wired Magazine:

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McLean’s failure to point specifically to the meaning of his song is the right move just as it is the right move to be vague about any piece of art. The moment you explain what one piece of art should mean to someone is the moment you degrade it. No matter who you are or what your thoughts are regarding this song (or any art), your interpretation is the correct one. That’s what art is, and all of the great artists understand that letting your audience run wild with your art almost always makes it better than it really is.

How many times have you interpreted something to be so profound only to hear the artist’s interpretation render it lackluster? How many times has an artist created something so basically simple and meaningless to him that went on to inspire a world of people who misread his intentions to the benefit of the art itself?

What if American Pie is just something McLean wrote while under the influence of acid with Disney’s Alice in Wonderland playing on the TV in the background? Suddenly the art isn’t so profound. It hits the airwaves and it is lauded as a tribute to Holly and the country eats it up and the mass interpretation is greater than what he originally envisioned. What should he say when a reporter shoves a mic in his face and asks him what the song really means?

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Holly was changing and growing. he was very young and his best was probably ahead of him.

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[QUOTE=ftg]
Look at what happened to American pop music shortly thereafter. It became the land of “teen idols”. Really crappy music dominated the charts until nearly the British invasion.

[/QUOTE]

One can almost envision an alternate universe where Holly and crew et. al. don’t crash at Clear Lake, and he turns radical rock and roller, headlining at Woodstock
and hitting Hendryx’ guitar with a flamethrower. Or not.

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[QUOTE=Frylock]
Oh crap, what album was that? I forget.

-FrL-
[/QUOTE]

I dunno if this was a joke or not… but if it wasn’t, it was The Shins’ Oh, Inverted World.

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[QUOTE=Common Tater]
One can almost envision an alternate universe where Holly and crew et. al. don’t crash at Clear Lake, and he turns radical rock and roller, headlining at Woodstock and hitting Hendryx’ guitar with a flamethrower. Or not.
[/QUOTE]

More likely he would have returned to his roots and gone country, a la Waylon Jennings and Jerry Lee Lewis and even Ray Charles.

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The book “Soul Music” is, IMHO, an excellent view about Buddy Holly’s role in Rock’n’Roll Music.

I don’t know how much of Holly’s words and life are used in that book, but it reflects his role and even tries to explain why he HAD to die when he died and how he died.

However, it’s a fantasy book, written by a Brit, satirizing any and everybody he lays eyes on. So take it with a rock of salt.

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[QUOTE=John Carter of Mars]

I was 16 the day the music died. I pretty much quit listening to the R & R stations and tuned my radio to country or blues. Hank Locklin, Marty Robbins and Kitty Wells were good on the country side, and Jimmy Reed, Lightnin Hopkins and B.B. King were doing some great blues tunes. The folk music scene was just getting started and there was some good stuff there, when you could find it.
I didn’t intentionally listen to the R & R stations again until The Beatles hit the scene.

spoke- already beat me to it, but I’m gonna include my sig line anyway…rock on!
[/QUOTE]
Holy shit! I just realized something. I started listening to country music in 1959. And Blues. I still knew about Rock, but I changed at that point. Hmmmmmmm? I need to think about this.

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[QUOTE=Common Tater]
One can almost envision an alternate universe where Holly and crew et. al. don’t crash at Clear Lake, and he turns radical rock and roller, headlining at Woodstock
and hitting Hendryx’ guitar with a flamethrower. Or not.
[/QUOTE]

Ahhh, most excellent!

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[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
Anyways, I remember some people saying at the time Buddy died that he was going “pop” (and losing his edge)
[/QUOTE]
You should hear some of the unreleased recordings he made on his own tape recorder in 1959. It’s Buddy unplugged, influenced by the New York folk scene!