What is it about Rock music?

Cafe Society
1

From the Beatles to Nirvana. From Jerry Lee Lewis to NIN. Def Leopard to Led Zeppelin. Foo Fighters to the Sex Pistols, Chuck Berry, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Radio Head, The Cramps, Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, Poison, Van Halen, Guns N Roses, Greenday, U2, Zappa, Joplin, Dylan, Springsteen, Clapton, Petty, Hendrix; and everything in between.

There’s so many sub-genres, and influences. Fleeting-trends and groundbreaking sounds. It can be loud and angry or soft and poetic. Complex and soaring or stripped down and raw. Indie, abstract, progressive, industrial, electonic, organic, folksy, corporate or bubblegum, there’s something for everyone (well, almost).

Is that it, then? Or maybe more of a melting pot of everything that came before and all around at the time? Or a distillation of what certain things we like best about music, on the primal level?

I’m not a musician at all, and yet, I can’t imagine life without rock now that it’s here and continues to evolve.

Am I just being biased, or as a “genre” of music, is rock perhaps the most diverse and complicated (either the true sense of the word, or its simplicity) music we’ve known?

Where will it go from here? Will anything be as huge?

Ok, gonna turn it back up to 11 now…

2

I think that “rock music” is so “diverse and complicated” because it is basically just a blanket term for anything that’s not explicitly something else.

3
4

I think that “rock” died in 1979 and something new was born. They just didn’t give it a new name. You mentioned Chuck Berry and I think that’s “rock & roll”, a different type of music under the generic header of rock. Just like Dixieland and Fusion are both jazz, but different. Rock began in 1966 on my timeline. Jazz is roughly 100 years old and still crawling along. I’d tag that as more diverse and complicated.

On my timeline:
[ul][li]Scottish & African music came together in America and formed the blues.[/li][li]Country split off shortly afterward; the same music but a different name because you couldn’t sell “race music” to white folks.[/li][li]Jazz split off from Blues[/li][li]Jazz and Blues came together again to form R&B[/li][li]R&B and Country came together and formed Rock&Roll[/li][li]Then the British component (recycled American Blues combined with British Skiffle?) created rock[/ul][/li]
Where it went after that is something that I haven’t worked out, but Rock began turning into Country in 1971 and Disco came along in the mid-Seventies and gave us the dance music that passes for Pop today. Punk began in the late Seventies and turned into the Alternative Rock music that we have today. I maintain that “rock” is dead and has been replaced by “alternative”. Once the baby boomers die off they’ll no longer have to be appeased for the loss of their beloved rock and we can finally start a new uber-category.

PS: Zappa is jazz, they couldn’t tell you that because they didn’t want to scare you away.

5

No, that would be Classical.

6

[quote=“Nunzio_Tavulari, post:4, topic:624271”]

On my timeline:
[ul][li]Scottish & African music came together in America and formed the blues.[/li][li]Country split off shortly afterward; the same music but a different name because you couldn’t sell “race music” to white folks.[/li][li]Jazz split off from Blues[/li][li]Jazz and Blues came together again to form R&B[/li][li]R&B and Country came together and formed Rock&Roll[/li][li]Then the British component (recycled American Blues combined with British Skiffle?) created rock[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]

You missed ragtime. Stage One ragtime (ca. 1890s-1905) was mostly black, Southern and Midwestern music; Stage Two ragtime (ca. 1905-1918) was largely Eastern-European influenced (klezmer). *Then *came jazz.

7

I considered that too, but my music history and experience with other genres are limited. It certainly has a long, vast history. Is it as diverse?

That’s not to sat I don’t love Classical, or appreciate it. I just don’t have as fine tuned an ear as an aficionado to see all of the variation, styles, or the different directions it has taken.

Also, I don’t agree that “Rock is Dead.”

Obviously, from Chuck Berry to The White Stripes is a huge, and vast gap. This doesn’t mean that they’re not related, or shouldn’t be seen coming from the same foundation. It’s also largely a matter of taste, but if you believe rock is dead, how would you define it, as a matter of classification?

To me, Rockabilly, Bee-Bop, Folk Rock, Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Industrial, Punk, Classic Rock, Pop Rock, etc., and all of it’s myriad sub-categories are all cousins on the same tree.

8

The more I consider it over time, the more I reach a few conclusions:

  • I think rock is the popular music of the day from about 1955 - 1995.
  • It was popular because technology had made it easy to form groups, record music, and buy and play it.
  • Also, the blues/gospel/country that started rock was best-suited to the emergence of the teenager as a sub-group with their own money and tastes, across a variety of backgrounds, ethnicities, etc.
  • For a while, teenagers united against parents in a kinda-sorta collective way for a variety of Boomer, economic and historical reasons, and rock was the soundtrack

So, ultimately, rock was able to accept influences from most any other kind of music - as long as it resulted in music that was easy to play (this would go in waves, but rock is ultimately a simple music that is hard to master), record and share, dangerous and useful as part of a rebellious statement.

I think that between growing through 2 - 3 generations, we got to a place where most parents, were not *threatened *by the music their kids played. Couple that with the fact that technology has moved on and the new symbols of rebellion are video games and internet - both things parents are less likely to be engaged in as deeply as their kids - and music has returned to its place as an important art and with the internet, it has splintered back out to its branched-out varieties, which are no longer united by the common purpose of being a Voice to a unified sub-group. A few of those varieties are Rock in terms of guitar, backbeat, dangerous and cool - but it isn’t playing the same role it used to…

My $.02

9

People keep declaring rock dead, and it keeps coming back. It was “dead” during the doo wop era. And then it wasn’t. I remember another death notice during the disco era. Then punk came along with three chords and a dream, and rock came back.

Then I remember 1989-90, when there was hardly any rock on the charts and it was so bad that Rolling Stone had a cover asking “Can Jesus Jones Save Rock?” or something like that.

Then Nirvana broke, and rock came back again.

Rock music is always bubbling around in garage bands and in the underground scene, waiting to emerge again.

I’m not clear on the distinctions you are making. Most punk is firmly footed in the primitive forms of rock music. Punk is rock. So is much of the indie stuff which derives from punk.

Wouldn’t you call this rock, for example?

10

But Nirvana was pretty much it - after than, the Internet broke, Video gaming got more sophisticated (and rock benefitted when Guitar Hero went big), and kids looked at rock as cool music, but not their source of unity and rebellion.

Rock music as a style of music will be around for a while. Between oldies tours (now doing complete albums!), tribute bands, and plenty of bands that make new rock, it will be around. But it is no longer an innovative driver of new sounds - nor is it the force for rebellion and change that it was. It is now simply cool music that some folks play and some folks like, alongside other genres.

And that’s cool - I like some of the new rock music I hear, and I sure as hell love playing rock and hanging out with folks who also like it. But it is not the broadly dominant, unifying, taste-making force for danger and cool and hasn’t been for some time.

11

??? They were followed by a flood of alternative bands, and then “alternative” bands in the 90s.

Rock gets counted out and then returns with a vengeance every now and again.

12

I would love for what you are saying to be the case.

After Nirvana, there came a bunch of other bands, but none that have shook things up, hit the big Rock Reset button and signed us up for another 10 years.

Nirvana was like the last gasp of big TV - now, with a bazillion channels, there is a lot of quality out there (many argue that TV is in a Golden Age, with shows like THe Wire, Sopranos, Modern Family, etc.) - but few/none pull the same viewership numbers that MASH did. Nor would I expect them to given how technology has changed how we look at TV, entertainment, etc.

Same with rock music.

13

It’s interesting that the list of artists in the OP reflects no new developments beyond about the year 1992. Since that was 20 years ago one may as well ask, “What happened to rock?”

14

No, that would be Jazz.

15

I could’ve listed my entire iTunes library, which is probably 90% rock.

I buy new music all the time. My current favs are Queens of the Stone Age, White Stripes (now just Jack White), The Format (defunct, but the lead reformed as FUN.) Blink 182, Ben Folds, Ok go, Silversun Pickups, Snow Patrol, just to name a few of the more familiar ones off the top of my head.

Nothing as groundbreaking in sound as previous movements prior yet, but good music is still being made.

It’s funny, because I nearly compared the two in that Classical has structure, complexity and patterns within patterns. Standard and progressive jazz is more improvisational, fluid, rhythmic and colorful. I find Classical far more compelling than Jazz, but even still, Jazz doesn’t seem nearly as huge as Rock, even though they developed around the same time.

It’s hard to compare Classical music sinse it’s been around for hundreds of years, and as already mentioned, technology and the recording industry brought non-orchestral music to the masses – as a consumable.

16

:slight_smile: you’re pickin’ up what I’m layin’ down! Rock is fun.

17

As long as there are rebellious kids who want to stick it to the man and their parents, there will be rock. The sound may change, it may be faster or slower, hard or soft, intellectual or all about sex and parties, there will be rock.

“Rock is dead, they say. LONG LIVE ROCK!” — The Who

18

I’m skeptical that those who say rock is dead, are really just stuck in the era when of the rock they listened to when they came of age.

Then, as music does, it evolved. They didn’t like it, because the new stuff didn’t sound like the old stuff. Happens every generation. Even my dad, the other day, mentioned that rockabilly and (what some consider to be rock), Motown was the best era for rock. Well, hey, we’re from Detroit. Anyhow, I said I think he’s just being nostalgic and can’t relate to today’s music. Which is fine. But it’s not dead so much as it is different. But the spirit is fundamentally the same.

Maybe he should say, “Rock is dead – to me,” instead.

19

Whaddaya want?! It all rocks!

20

:smack:

They formed in the nineties, but how could I overlook Incubus?

(also, I did list Foo Fighters, which debuted in 1995).