Why Rock Music IS Dead.

you really are incapable of talking about anything else, aren't you

lol

I brought up Nickelback not bcz they're some symbol of rock's vitality & cultural dominance but bcz I think whatever hair-metal revival Kerr was talking about is going to resemble the latter part of their career (or maybe them mixed with Bowie in Labyrinth)

I mentioned R Marx bcz I think '87 is kind of analogous, of course you still had U2 making the Joshua Tree and a bunch of Britrock dinosaurs doing soul homages and rocking the adult contemporary vibe, but I think lots thought that rock was p much an outdated mode. of course by 89 there was GnR and by 91 there was Nirvana, and another 10-15 years of 'uncontested dominance' from whatever you want to call 'rock'

so to sum up: yep I'm still butthurt about ship's whole "keep dreamin that dream bro"

haha sorry, just one of my all-time pet peeves is the whole 'music is cyclical' thing of acting like a few broad parallels with 20 years ago can tell you that much about the future. i mean you can look at the charts and say why it kind of feels like 1990 and hey that means 1991 is around the corner but i just don't buy it, feels more like an appealing sentiment than a realistic way of looking at the world.

right on with that, i'm not really trying to say music is cyclical, i'm just saying that there's more than enough evidence in the past 40 years to suggest that "rock is dead" claims are bullshit so saying "NO this time it's for real guyz" doesn't quite wash

but I still havent read your article so maybe there's more to it than that

also: Lamp is bringing up great points with the whole "do we even know what rock is anymore?" discussion

I'm mostly just repeating what lamp said but in limiting 'rock' to gnr and nirvana '4 guys w/ guitars' you're using the term, well, I guess how a lot of people use the term, but it misses the scope of 'rock' as a tradition / wider scope of aesthetics.

xp to DAM's post 10 minutes ago

I see the point with that; as I mentioned I am just quibbling with something very specific that was said itt

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16609484

video from bbc breakfast news about rock vs pop

one could argue that dance is just as 'dead' by any stretch of the imagination if you look at this
http://www.mixmag.net/words/news/mixmags-greatest-dance-act-revealed

a lot of this is starting to back up the theory that Reynolds first talked about in this piece;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/dec/07/musically-fragmented-decade

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2012/02/grammys-2012-the-junking-of-commercial-rock-music.html

Commercial rock has painted itself into a corner because it seldom surprises, seldom swings, and no longer possesses the creative authority to drive a conversation the way that pop, hip-hop and electronic dance music do. Innovation is discouraged, the exception being Radiohead (who can barely be considered “commercial rock” at this point), whose experimentation has become nearly as codified as Mastodon’s able riffs.

Radiohead...zzzz

I actually had to scroll down to realize that was Bruno Mars in that photo. Don't think I'd actually seen any photo of him before.

And you know:

“Every Teardrop is a Waterfall” by Coldplay

Every time I think it's impossible to want to beat these people more soundly, they do something else to cause me to rethink.

Also:

Even the alternative music album category, the place where the Grammys normally lets their freak flag fly, ignored acclaimed work by St. Vincent, Kate Bush, Wild Flag, Tuneyards and St. Vincent, among dozens of others.

Most of whom are called St. Vincent.

And finally, Skrillex!

The insane Skrillex bass-drop that has become the electronic producer’s trademark is the sound of the new distortion, one that’s way fresher and more suggestive of youth alienation right now than three chords and a scream. No Grammy-nominated artist this year made a more innovative and aggressive record than Skrillex, which doesn’t necessarily make him a visionary as much as he is a portent: His noise and rebellion emanates from a laptop and not through a distortion pedal.

ffs

sigh

Since when did rock dudes making music in a genre once known as “the sound of the city” enjoy hiking in the woods so much?

You can almost feel the dewy bliss of nature dripping into your ears — and in the perfect world, Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” arguably the most durable rock ’n’ roll song of the year, would be the avalanche that crushed the entire scene.

yeah Adele is the one to save rock music . lol America.

wait a min, why are Sum 41 still getting nominated?

i traded my laptop for a distortion pedal

*merges gentle folk and soft rock with expansive post-rock structures*

oh hear we go

Is the distinction that exists between so-called rock music and hard rock music the subject matter, the type of guitar distortion boxes used, and the quality of falsetto? Probably. It’s a battle between cavemen and nature boys, at least a little testosterone required. Where do the lines blur, and why? Is it a subtle class distinction — the blue-collar hard rockers versus the more “erudite” rock artists?

i think i'll stop reading now that hard rock = caveman thing has come up. Pathetic

*here

to find out which prat wrote this i need to scroll down. Fuck that i'll let someone who did read it all tell me

"able riffs"

lol @ that bruno mars pic btw

i hope someone points out to him that its not rock musics fault, its the morons at the grammys who select these things. There's plenty of great music out there.
Brits season will be up soon too, where they will say Adele saved pop music.

oh no i read on and saw this

Rapper Kanye West, of course, is the king of assemblage, a fearless adapter of any music that catches his fancy, be it the French house music of Daft Punk, the baroque pop of Jon Brion or the indie falsetto of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Bruno Mars steals from doo-wop as much as he does hip-hop, tosses in a rock strum and happy-go-lucky Sublime reggae-lite vibe, none more prominent than another. And Lady Gaga is the missing link between Elton John and late-period Cher that we never knew we needed. And the line between country music and soft rock is at times barely indistinguishable.

i am not reading any further, honest.

also lol @ naming "Rolling In The Deep" as the rockin' alternative to all those nominations - rock really is dead if the biggest innovation of the year is a lukewarm "Gimme Shelter" rehash

amen

'commercial'

Also:

_Even the alternative music album category, the place where the Grammys normally lets their freak flag fly, ignored acclaimed work by St. Vincent, Kate Bush, Wild Flag, Tuneyards and St. Vincent, among dozens of others._

Most of whom are called St. Vincent.
--Ned Raggett

Skrillex is better than all these bands except Kate Bush tbh

I honestly have no problem with Skrillex at all, he's just there for me. I'm just amused by Randall going 'fresh! innovative!'

king of limbs sounds pretty "laptoppy" imo

xpost (Yeah his argument's contextual and his audience is the LA Times and not us but even so.)

the alternative music album category, the place where the Grammys normally lets their freak flag fly

Radiohead, White Stripes, the Arcade Fire.... freaky, man

for all the shit jethro tull got for beating metallica in the grammys, they are probably the *weirdest* band to ever win a grammy. i mean jethro tull! think about it! how could you even invent jethro tull?

i was listening to Heavy Horses by Jethro Tull the other day and the album is dedicated to the "hardworking shire horses of England"

You have prompted a thread revival.

but, but, but, surely Sum 41 will save us all!?

― Curtis Stephens, Tuesday, December 24, 2002 3:15 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

at least you were 10 in 2002. made sense.

lol