We will soon have to gather together to honor the lifespan of rock and roll, and musical creativity. I was watcing a story about John "CCR" Fogarty, and realized that when you look a the landscape of Rock and Roll, there are no more major emerging forces. What sounds represent our generation the way our parents are defined by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Creedence, Springsteen, the Beach Boys? Sure we have Metallica, U2, and (sadly) the musings of Madonna. But what about the generation after ours, who are now teenagers? The vast majority of those making music are less musicians than marketing machanations who lust for celebrity for no other reason than to have it. They have stopped being about music and instead about hogging the limelight as actors, businesspeople and socialites. And although the results are often humorous, in the long run they will no doubt be disappointing.
I guess the best way to emphasize my point is to look at the most popular and highest grossing concerts. NONE of them are form the current generation. Springsteen, The Eagles, Aerosmith, The Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Paul McCartney. Metallica just cracks the top 10. Even in our genre everyone flocks to show headlined by Ozzy Osbourne annually. All of them popularized by our parent's generation. When they make movies in 20 years about Sept 11, what music will they use to capture the spirit of the time? Britney Spears? Eminem? Snoop Dogg? American idol winners? When the next generation is in their 50's, will they be going to Fiffy Cent nostalgia shows? Doubtful, because immenently his career will flag, and his attempt to revive it by being shot 9 more times will result in his death. And unless old people change, what near retirement age person wants to hear a 50 year old man sing about banging ho's, doing drugs, or shooting people? Plus, these people are eventually going to run out of songs to sample, leaving them only to sample each others samples. There is an alarming dearth of creativity. Aside from Greenday, what current major act writes their own songs and doesn't have their own fragrance?
So enjoy your real Rock and Roll while you can and hope Soundgarden makes a comeback when they are in their 60's. After that the rock gods will have retreated forever to Olympus, and the doors to the Groove Valhalla will be eternally closed, leaving everyone with only false idols.
What do you mean?!? Coldplay is a force to be reckoned wi....zzzzZZZZZzzzzzzzZZZZZzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzz
ReplyDeleteIn addition, the shortening of the nation's collective attention span has caused record companies to become a lot less tolerant with new acts. Unless your first outing is a big success, you're not going to get a second chance to even make a follow-up . You don't get two, three albums to develop a sound anymore... it's got to be close to what's a proven success or that's it. That won't stop people from writing great songs, it just severely limits the possibility that music not dictated by formula will reach a wide audience. Plus, if bands aren't selling or can't get on tours, then they're not gonna make enough cash to keep doing it and will either have to get "real" jobs as backup or just call it a day. So companies just keep betting on "sure things", and when it sells (I'd imagine at least in part because people aren't aware of any alternatives) they assume that's what people want.
ReplyDeleteI don't have anything against stuff being popular as long as it's deserving. I'd love to see Clutch sell millions of copies of their albums everywhere. It's just that it's been a long time since I heard a "big song" from today's supposed "top acts" that's going to endure the way something like "Thriller" has. It's weird... at this point I'd almost totally forgotten that Michael Jackson used to be a singer.
Also, nowadays you can't just be a singer; you have to be a singer, dancer, actress, model, etc. Having so many things to do is really just to camouflage the fact that they usually can't do any of them well. Jacks of all trades, masters of none. Jennifer Lopez is a good example of this.
You can even see it in the band names. What the fuck kind of a name is "Coldplay", anyway!?!? Sounds like another way of saying "Sex With Dead People". Though "SWDP" is a decidely better name. If they change it to that, maybe I'll buy the next record.
Jackedge and Drunken Stooper rock my ballsac.
ReplyDeleteThis topic is controlled by what I like to call the BIG DUMB MASSES. As much as you or I can look at this and say "this is utter crap" There are 5 million teenagers or other idiots for each one of us going "this is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!".
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think IPOD's sell? There are a million cheaper MP3 players out there that let you use them to store data and don't have a proprietary file format. There are also cheaper MP3 websites out there as well. Regardless, the BIG DUMB MASSES eat it up.
It's just like the tards that beat each other up over a $400 laptop at Walmart that is a piece of crap, when for $65 more they can get a Dell laptop online that kicks its ass. $65 vs. not freezing my ass off for 8 hours waitinf or a store to open and/or getting my head beat in by a redneck looking to 'git on that there info superHIGHway!'.
Rod iz Right. JACKEDGE 4 LIFE!
YEAHHHHH BOYEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteKev--whatever happened to bands signing with labels and labels promoting the hell out of the bands in exchange for a cut of the money? I am not in a REAL rock band (I am in plenty of imaginary ones) but if I was, isn't this the way it would work? Why was Britney Spears chosen to become a musical SuperGiant while other people with more talent are relegated to obscurity?