Is it finally time to declare the Rock and Roll era over?

[TKoP]

I totally agree that SGM is a modern example innovating with the classic rock and roll lineup and genre, but like so many other great bands pushing that envelope (Think You Scientist, Deerhunter, etc.), the larger audience is not interested in having to work to understand what the fuck is going on when they press play. People who intentionally listen to music, like many of us, those bands are amazing and new, but if that music was played on every rock station / streaming service for a week the world would freak out and revolt.

I see this especially in the sub-genre of Power Pop. Superfans, of which I am one, keep discovering new bands who do a good job of creating new power pop music, all of us fans cannot help saying, "Well, they aren't Jellyfish, are they?" The entire Rock & Roll uber-genre has the same problem. I don't expect any band will light up the world the way the classics did in the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. If you pay attention, the big bands were most prolific in the 70s and completely peaked in the early 80s. Since then the number of lasting artists who might someday be "classic" arriving every year is dwindling rapidly. At this point I cannot think of any over the past 5 to 10 years.

Totally agree... you put what I was trying to say much more eloquently. But i will also say that it is possible for some bad to accidently breakthrough. Think Nirvana -- they were NOT what was popular at the time and it did require something more from the listening public when they broke, but they did nevertheless. Now, will SGM ever be that band? Nope. Never. But maybe something a little farther from the edge.

Now I have to go listen to Think You Scientist and Deerhunter...

 

[Flint]

I was ripped a new one by a guy last night who is around our age and plays electric guitar, specifically the blues (Austin Blues Rock). He vehemently opposed my assertion that Rock is dead, even blues rock.

I told him this story.

About 15 years ago I visited a dear friend and former musical business partner of mine when he got amazing tickets to see Yes perform with a full orchestra in Concorde, CA. The concert was amazing and we loved every minute of it. After the concert we seemed to make the exact same realization at the exact same time and both stated, interrupting each other, we just saw the best Yes cover band ever.

That story infers that the era of Yes was over, but we could relive the excitement of their past influence and artistic value by watching many of the former members recreate their old music on stage. They were covering themselves, which is very different from playing groundbreaking and influential music for the first time on tour. Name any highly influential band which fits into the "rock" genre which is introducing new art which moves us, drives culture, and demands the attention of music lovers around the world - the way Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Allman Brothers, Steely Dan, Elvis Costello, the Beatles, or others did back in their hay-day. There isn't one. Even Nirvana was temporary - and their biggest fame came a few years AFTER they ended their run. I thought Fun might make it, they were a flash in the pan. Sufjan Stevens got a good start and faded. And most of the great "new" artists I see you guys posting in the Music section of this forum are all imitating the old styles we love. We are OLD! Our era is past.

We can relive it by buying music from copy-cats, going to our geriatric performances of our still living favorite bands from our youth, or catch a cover band at our favorite club. We can even get off on some modern artists re-interpreting some of our favorite songs from the past, but that isn't new or breaking ground.

 

[Haywood]

There were some bands from the mid-to-late 90s that made some great music into the 2000's, and some are still doing it. I'm thinking about bands like Linkin' Park, Maroon 5 and Disturbed. Sadly, they've all been around for 20 years at this point and can no longer be called new or groundbreaking. Most of them passed their prime ten years ago.

 

[Bote]

I was ripped a new one by a guy last night who is around our age and plays electric guitar, specifically the blues (Austin Blues Rock). He vehemently opposed my assertion that Rock is dead, even blues rock.

I told him this story.

About 15 years ago I visited a dear friend and former musical business partner of mine when he got amazing tickets to see Yes perform with a full orchestra in Concorde, CA. The concert was amazing and we loved every minute of it. After the concert we seemed to make the exact same realization at the exact same time and both stated, interrupting each other, we just saw the best Yes cover band ever.

That story infers that the era of Yes was over, but we could relive the excitement of their past influence and artistic value by watching many of the former members recreate their old music on stage. They were covering themselves, which is very different from playing groundbreaking and influential music for the first time on tour. Name any highly influential band which fits into the "rock" genre which is introducing new art which moves us, drives culture, and demands the attention of music lovers around the world - the way Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Allman Brothers, Steely Dan, Elvis Costello, the Beatles, or others did back in their hay-day. There isn't one. Even Nirvana was temporary - and their biggest fame came a few years AFTER they ended their run. I thought Fun might make it, they were a flash in the pan. Sufjan Stevens got a good start and faded. And most of the great "new" artists I see you guys posting in the Music section of this forum are all imitating the old styles we love. We are OLD! Our era is past.

We can relive it by buying music from copy-cats, going to our geriatric performances of our still living favorite bands from our youth, or catch a cover band at our favorite club. We can even get off on some modern artists re-interpreting some of our favorite songs from the past, but that isn't new or breaking ground.

I like the part which mentioned geriatrics. My friend went to a Beachboy concert here a couple of years back and said she was surprised to see them so old! I told her " what did you expect, they were our era's band!?".

 

[Flint]

www.toxicwater.xyz/Temp/Transit-Mass.mp3

This is what we are left with when it comes to original writing. I like it, but I am a nerd who can find art in a crack in the sidewalk.

 

[Haywood]

Is rock dead due to generational changes or did the studios simply make it impossible for new artists to make rock albums in the post-Napster world?

 

[Flint]

Is rock dead due to generational changes or did the studios simply make it impossible for new artists to make rock albums in the post-Napster world?

Do you mean labels rather than studios?

Labels are full of idiots. They just want to make money. If the market wanted great rock music, they would have stumbled onto more rock artists to sell. There are tens of thousands of very talented artists out there making music at any given moments, and if the consumer wanted to listen to rock, they'd be buying it.

There is still a thriving live rock music scene, but it is a smaller market compared to the huge album rock era of the 1970s ad early 1980s.

 

[Haywood]

One could argue that there is very little market for any album artist anymore. There shift from physical Media to downloads to streaming really pissed things back to singles.

 

[Flint]

I don't know... Adele, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and many others are still going platinum with their albums these days. It is easy to be dismissive since Streaming did cut into overall album sales. However, music sales through different mediums have increased and more money is being made by artists than ever before - there are just that many more artists to share in a larger pie leaving the "average" artist with less sales than in the olden days.

 

[Flint]

I was watching a PRETTY LONG YouTube video where a guy I like to listen to was responding to questions and when asked about the end of artistic movements... his response was brilliant and aligns with what I've been saying in this thread.

I cannot transcribe it, but through extreme paraphrasing on my part, he made the point that when an art form is created it gets picked up by inventors, innovators, experimenters and others and it thrives and has a primal energy as it is explored thoroughly. At a certain point it seems that everyone who cares about that art form know everything there is to know about it. As such, everything that comes after that point is just copying and reliving the past glory. He goes on to give the example of the late night show genre which was invented in the 1950s and broke new ground on a nightly basis. Imagine turning on the TV and seeing a talk show with a comedian hosting, a stage with the desk on one side, a stage in the middle, and the orchestra on the opposite side for the first time - that must've been both strange and exciting! Imagine a show with mix of unscripted and scripted comedy and conversation, the best musicians of the era, and comedians being naturally funny for 90 minutes! That must've been magical! Then Johnny Carson perfected it in the 1970s, David Letter deconstructed it in the 1980s, and everything after that was just a remnant of the past. While the humor is still funny because it pertains mostly to current events, and portions of the entertainment such as music changes over time, the basic primal creativity of the genre is pretty much dead. It is a dead art form which we still enjoy, but everything there is to know about it is already known and nothing truly new will happen within that specific art form.

This is exactly what I was getting at throughout this thread. It isn't that Rock doesn't still have creative people making new music, it is that the new music doesn't have that true primal energy and exploration vibe that every new album release had 40 years ago. Even my most beloved highly crafted music genre, Power Pop of the 1990s, is basically the pinnacle of the genre where almost every definable moment borrows from something recognizable in the past. That was it - everything after that is just good imitation.

I find this to be an totally fascinating topic to discuss! You can apply this theory to any form of art: Take Opera! Has Opera been vibrant or energized since Puccini died in the 1920s? Has Poetry been loved by pretty much everyone with an education since Neruda or maybe, just maybe, Ginsberg? Angelou never did anything for me or from my experience, most poetry lovers. What about Vaudeville? No one goes to see a great orator speak for hours like they did less than 100 years ago. Today's great speeches are short and limited and make the interested listener go search for more, where that wasn't the case back in the day.

This also supports my argument that EDM is a current music genre still inventing and driving new ideas and experiences because it has yet to be exhausted of new ideas. The fans talk about the new DJ who is doing something different, and huge sums of money and time are being spent by fans to experience a proper new EDM event.

For my generation of music lovers, all we are left with is imitation of the genres we love, assuming we want to hear something new at all. Another folksy singer, another 70's hard rock band (we even compare them to being "just like" our favorite artists from four decades ago), another Progressive band who can move faster or keep more bizarre time signatures. The hardcore metal bands of the Scandinavian countries are all hacks who succeed by seeming more committed to the culture of the music, such as grafted real antlers to their heads. Even porn, which at one time was creating new an innovative ways to titillate and entertain, is just more of the same. I could argue fashion has run its course as well. Everything new is old again and there isn't much left to do to cover the body in new ways while allowing the person to live life comfortably.

What is left?

Is the lack of new art forms playing a role in the malaise our young adults, the so called "millennials", are experiencing. They have nothing to grab onto. They don't have faith in the institutions they were brought up in, they have nothing to drive them to enjoy life outside of survival and basic interests foisted on them (TV, gaming, music, parks & nature, etc.) - they aren't even having sex or taking drugs like those who came before them. They are bored with nothing new, and EDM isn't for everyone.

Wow! This is getting interesting to me. I need to find a group of thinkers to go hang out with.

 

[Flint]

A friend I've been debating this topic with sent me this live chat with a studio owner and producer who talked for almost an hour about how rock is dead.

This guy is speaking from inside the industry and makes almost the same arguments I've been making AND he says EDM is the music of the current generation.

 

[Haywood]

You mentioned EDM and that got me thinking about Lindsey Stirling and how she actually did create something completely new by mixing violin with EDM and a strong dance element to her live performances. She may have gotten her start on America's Got Talent, but she's a driven self-made performer who built a large following the hard way. She's not rock and roll, but I think the spirit of experimentation and creativity is there.

 

[heeman]

We are all getting older and things are changing. What did our folks think the first time they saw multiple stacks of Marshall amplifiers and sound through them with a Big Muff II? Mom and Dad swore those guys with long hair wore wigs!!!!

I played in a rock band in school and they saw this first hand. They were think this is great for these kids but WTF!!!

I never dreamed I would like a Gwen Stephani Album or Lourde or even Lisa Loebe. But I still love some Rush, Deep Purple And Rage Against The Machine. Hell, I recently discovered the Porcupine Tree!

Pete Townshend is one of the best, I wonder what he thinks......

Rock is dead??

 

[Flint]

I mean, think about it... the first bass drum pedal was invented in the 1920s, the electric guitar in the 1930s, and practical true waveform synthesizers in the late 1960s. This is all a relatively new in terms of musical history. Drums in general date back to an age prior to recorded language. Harps, lyres, and flutes also predate written language. Cymbals and "trumpets" are recorded in the old testament. Things like violins, guitars, and keyed instruments were made practical in the era just prior to the renaissance. But certain eras were short lived - the march genre was very short lived, yet stunningly popular for a few decades - most of the national anthems written in that era from around the world were in the march style, and a ton of nations were formed or shifted in ruling methods during that era. The oom-pah style of the polka, Russian folk, traditional Jewish, and Mexican Mariachi band has its origins in the caucuses, but it is a niche narrow cultural folk music of an area, not globally adopted and played.

Every genre of music has its era, and while the world keeps around those which can remain popular, like jazz, classical, show-tune, country, folk, and so on, most of those are western in origin. You generally don't see a Indian sitar performance hall popping up in every reasonably sized city across the globe, but you do see opera houses, symphony halls, and large venue rock halls in cities all over the world. I haven't been to any reasonably sized city in all my travels which doesn't have some jazz clubs. But those are "dead" forms as there are not new innovators breaking ground and changing our perceptions of the style and creating mass global movements.

EDM is doing that right now and it has been doing it for nearly a decade. The huge scale events for EDM aren't even American in origin where the style was honed in thousands of individual night clubs where the most talented creators rose to the top and went global - but when they went global they took on the biggest established festivals in the world and later created new festivals to support the demand for the music. Think about that. The early festivals for Jazz which turned into our hippy rock festivals and later the big monsters of rock festivals are giving way to bigger and longer festivals devoted to EDM, and none of us know the name of a single EDM artist.

 

[Randy]

The early festivals for Jazz which turned into our hippy rock festivals and later the big monsters of rock festivals are giving way to bigger and longer festivals devoted to EDM, and none of us know the name of a single EDM artist.

I do because my stepdaughter goes to those stupid things, and at 23 y/o, well actually she is pregnant and pretty much settled down now, I would still talk to her about making good decisions and the perils of those "festivals".

 

[Haywood]

I have recently spent a lot of time listening to the newer rock bands my daughter and her friends listen to and I can no longer buy into the idea that rock is either irrelevant or dead.

 

[Flint]

Pete Townshend posted a short blog on the Who web site where, among other things, he talks about the music which is interesting to him. In his going on about new music, he writes this...

I don’t think rock is quite ‘dead’, but it seems to be ailing, in the clinic, waiting for a transfusion.​

I find that hilarious and pretty on point.

 

[Flint]

 

[Flint]

I've recently read a few articles about the guitar manufacturing business which stated that in 2017 the clear majority of new electric guitar purchases were for girls versus a decade ago when they accounted for less than a fifth of electric guitar purchases.

None of the articles referenced a source for the data, but I find it intriguing.

 

[Flint]

In a recent interview, Pete Townshend also declared traditional guitar based rock dead.

Q: Guitar-based rock 'n' roll seems to be waning at the moment. What, if anything, does that mean for popular music?​

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Pete: The guitar may be losing ground, but in part, that's because if you spend an hour on Instagram or YouTube, you will quickly discover unknown people playing the guitar the way a great orchestral violinist like Yehudi Menuhin once might have played his instrument. These are virtuosos of the highest order. They can shred like Eddie Van Halen or play jazz like John McLaughlin.​

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They've literally exhausted the possibilities of the guitar.​

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This kind of virtuosity is already happening with beat box-based rap, and with laptop-supported pop. Everything will change again, maybe faster than it did for guitar music — who knows?​

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It is, as you so rightly call it, "guitar-based rock n roll" that is losing ground, not rock itself. Hip-hop is rock to my ears: music for the neighborhood, the street, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the young, the ignored. That used to be what I focused on. Now, I try to write real operas, and want my stage work to be like art installations — and why not? Kanye West has been doing the same thing.​

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