The Death of Rock Music

[rcarlberg]

And its difficult to feel that its new, new bands have to 'compete' with all the old, and its difficult and rare to come up with something completely new. The musicians though are generally much better technicians, but so what...

Yes, musicians today have to compete with the entire playing field of all music that's gone before, because to young listeners today, everything EVERYTHING ever recorded is out there available for the taking, and it's all on a level playing field. There is no concern about 'who was the first to do this' or 'what was groundbreaking at the time.' To listeners today a Hendrix imitator is just as valuable as Hendrix himself, a totally-derivative band is judged to be better than the original if they're a bit catchier or recorded slightly better. There is no context whatsoever to modern music, no sense of progression from early raw roots to final polished form. Everything is absolutely flat and equivalent.

Bands these days choose from a smorgasbord of musical influence. "We'll have a bit of Beatles bass riffs, with drumming from The Smiths and horn charts from Tower of Power. Won't we be original???"

[Baribrotzer]

Current practitioners plunder long-exhausted musical styles so that something’s only significant in the way it comments on something that already happened at a different time, a different place, under different circumstances.

But isn't that true of every kind of music right now? While my knowledge of jazz and classical is neither broad nor deep, I do know something about what's happening in both. And it's similar:

Of the "hip", up-to-the-minute classical composers I've heard, most seem to just be devising novel combinations of established concepts, or ironically commenting on the whole process of music-making. Some refer to popular music, in a quest to bring "serious" music out of the concert hall and back to communicating with people; but the result usually lacks pop music's vitality and directness. Indeed, I personally find a certain amount of prog to be "better" music than a fair amount of modern classical - the work of ostensibly far more sophisticated composers - because it retains that vitality, directness, and clarity. It seems to know where it's going, whereas "serious" music often seems to get lost in the underbrush and flail about at random, or tramp in exact patterns with a mathematical precision that ultimately imparts no more sense of forward motion.

Current jazz, meanwhile. seems to be bounded by four poles: pop music, free jazz, avant-classical, and its own older tradition. New jazz falls somewhere in the space between those and recombines them, sometimes to fine effect, but it doesn't seem to fundamentally offer much that hasn't been done before.

And hip-hop - setting aside its inherent musicality or non-musicality for the moment - consists of nothing but re-combined external references. A year or so ago, The Roots collaborated on an album with Elvis Costello, and Questlove (their much-admired drummer) said that it was the first time he'd made an album and played like himself. Which seemed astounding for a guy who's been playing professionally for some twenty years, but then I realized what he meant: That in every case, every gig he's performed, every record he's made, someone had said, "Play like John Bonham," or, "Play like Clyde Stubblefield" or "Play like ---". But no one had previously just said, "Play something good!".

I'm fairly certain that there is interesting (and maybe even progressive) music happening; I'm just not sure it's rock music.

I wonder what it might be?

[Jay.Dee]

Earlier today, in another thread, Scrotum Scissor wrote this about the death of rock music:

"Rock music of today is entertainment through reminiscence, very little else."

I'd say that it has been like this since the new wave lost its creative force by the mid-80s. Since then it's been an ongoing procession of revivals and re-enactments of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

And I certainly do not feel that it lost any momentum in the mid-00s. If anything I'd rather point at the mid-90s as the moment when mainstream rock started to calcify into a fossil and the action moved to fringes and niche markets.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

realistically, Rock music is only "dead" for those who think the 70s was the peak of Rock music

[DocProgger]

realistically, Rock music is only "dead" for those who think the 70s was the peak of Rock music

I think "Pop Muzik" by M pretty much sums it up.

[profusion]

Pop music as an important cultural force has been dead for some time--at least a decade. It's not just rock.

There is WAY more music being made now than 30 or 40 years ago, in all genres, but it doesn't have a significant effect on the culture. It's a fashion artifact, now, or a niche hobby.

The cultural effect of pop music in the West from 1945-95 will be looked on as a relatively unique phenomenon (can't overlook the cultural impact of pre-rock 'n roll acts like early Sinatra). Gangsta rap and grunge rock in the early '90s were probably the last manifestations of it. It's rather interesting how neatly that timeline correlates with what one could describe as the "Post World War II Period." These things don't happen in a vacuum.

Personally, I have no problem with music being a specialist hobby for me (and probably anyone reading this) and nothing more than "lifestyle wallpaper" for most others. My love of sophisticated music isn't tied to whether a new generation of 15-year-olds is trying to shock their parents musically.

[notallwhowander]

I think it is more helpful to think of the generational sweep of the Baby Boom. Rock was very important because it was tied to such demographic swell. That swell is passing. Now rock, like a jazz, is one thing item on the buffet, just like hip-hop, country, and r&b. If anything, r&b artists have been the most resourceful in maintaining a pop-music market share. That rock is only a 'entertainment through remembrance' just means you're hanging out with old people. There are still rock clubs, rock stations, and rock festivals. It's not what it was when so many young Boomers dug it, that's saying a lot, but really that's pretty much what there is to it.

[moecurlythanu]

I've had this argument with 2 friends twice. They were outraged that I was claiming that Rock is dead, and argued vehemently against it. Problem is, we had 2 different standards for our arguments. For them, as long as Rock music was being played, whether in the last Greasy Spoon in Colorado, or 200 years from now on an outpost in another solar system, Rock was alive. A pretty low bar, imo. I was arguing from the standpoint of Rock not being the cultural music standard bearer, no longer the dominant musical force in the wider culture. That it's not isn't open to debate. From my POV, (and I was paying attention,) the coup-de-grace was delivered around 1995 when the Pop Tarts assumed dominance in the culture, (later to be reinforced by TV programs like American Idol, The Voice and whatnot,) and all Rock had to answer with was the angry frat boys of Nu-Metal. Zonefish is basically correct. The passage of time has given perspective and the ability to codify that the lack of prescience seeing in real time could not give. In other words, too close to the object in 1995 to see the bigger picture. Not a problem now.

When bands like The Who or artists like Todd Rundgren were musing about the Death of Rock, they were looking at it from the lens of the voice of youth culture. The dominant musical force with young people. I gave up my heroes long ago, but many (nearly) old men on PE still refer to these Rock Stars as "heroes." That's what is gone. Whatever Rock is in the culture now is virtually irrelevant. It blazed such a bright path that it's still looked back on by Pop Stars and others as a touchstone, and claimed to give imprimatur to their own relevance, but it might as well be a dusty old book. It's time has come and gone in the culture. If you had told me this would be the case back in 1977, I would have laughed at you.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

rebel music is dead

Rock and Roll is alive and well

[Mythos]

Rap and Hip-Hop.

Unfortunately.

Sure you can blame Rap & Hip-Hop (both of which I despise), but in actuality you have to blame the fans, the music fans that support these artists.

And most of all the pussification of the American youth!

When I was 13, I was listening to the Doors and Hendrix, at 15 it was Genesis, King Crimson, Yes, Amon Duul II & Can. I loved music and admired the musicians that created music. It was complex, it was challenging, it made you think!

Today's Rap, Hip-Hop and Top-40 radio crap is one dimensional garbage, there is no creativity, there is nothing sustainable or long term, it is created to sell today without a care about how it is perceived or how it holds up 5, 10, or even 20 years from now!

That's why I am glad that they are still true musicians trying to keep progressive, psychedelic, kraut rock, etc. alive, I support them, buy their music, they do it for the love of the music, not the money, most bands will never make in their entire career what these hip-hop and rap heavies make in 6 months.

long live real music

[DocProgger]

I don't think the impact of radio listening habits of our baby boomer generation (especially those born between 1950 and 1970) had on how rock music thrived and why it may be relegated to the sidelines now can be overemphasized. Before FM album oriented rock stations, the AM radio stations we all grew up listening to played everything, a veritable smorgasbord of great music. Motown stood along with folk rock, next to the Beatles, next to the beginnings of hard rock, next to bubblegum pop, easy listening etc. We all drank out of relatively the same spigot.

And then when the early FM stations got into rock music, those DJs had the freedom to play what THEY wanted, there was an independence and freedom and corporate suits didn't dictate what 20 songs had to be played over and over. So again, in the early to mid 70s we all heard longer album cuts of hard rock and progressive rock and jazzy fusion bands etc that opened up the sound palette, fed the concert going experiences, and rewarded the freedom and experimentation of that time period. Again, we all tended to share a basically common musical landscape even while it broadened to stuff that had never been played on radio before. That coincided with bands having a lot more freedom to create and record and experiment musically, so a lot of new trails were blazed in that time period. There was a common radio listening experience that is now lost because there are so many outlets for music with the internet, and as a result that common spigot that we all drank from is fragmented, divided, marginalized, etc. People growing up as a teen since about the mid 1980s, when the corporate suits really started stifling the FM rock format, just haven't had that same shared musical landscape experience. Its all scattered now.

[Scrotum Scissor]

I certainly do not feel that it lost any momentum in the mid-00s. If anything I'd rather point at the mid-90s as the moment when mainstream rock started to calcify into a fossil and the action moved to fringes and niche markets.

Musically, every little sense of "development" basically ceased with the endeavour of post-rock in the mid-90s - yeah. That's true. But the very charge of rock music as pop-cultural caricature somehow lingered on for yet another decade, with charades such as the 'post-indiepunk' (i.e. The Arctic Monkeys?!) and the ridicule of Emo/nú-metal actually claiming contemporary meta-cultural relevance and to spawn not only a following but their own "movements".

Of course, relevant it was not. But there were good stuff to come from the very realization of the decline, not least in the practice of drawing inspiration from the disintegration of styles themselves; the New Weird America-wave didn't really have an assembled style to its back, but it produced some genuinely fascinating amalgams and anarchic approaches - as did the endeavours of mathcore and post-noise rock etc. Asserting that "rock development/progression" had long since become a futile notion as such, everything was suddenly game and allowed - and, for some years at least, the better for it. Of course, it didn't sell - or "stick". And obviously not the purveyors of 'New Weird' inside the hermetically sealed confinement of "prog"; even the material of a laborously refined band like The Dirty Projectors had their main bulk of success with alternative pop-audiences, although their material was often far more elaborate than that of purported "prog" artists.

I believe it was JJ88 who only recently posed the question as to what bigger names have emerged this last decade. Any significants? I think not. It's over.

[Zappathustra]

Just woke up, the level of discussion is excellent, and the "issue at hand" is being covered by all possible angles. Thank you people.

[Zappathustra]

I'm fairly certain that there is interesting (and maybe even progressive) music happening; I'm just not sure it's rock music.

Since your voice is one of the few leaving some ray of hope for music, could you give some examples?

[alucard]

Looking back to have been sheepishly parked in big venues to see Pink Floyd, Genesis, Zappa etc in the 70s and leaving all my pocket money in record shops. From today's perspective Rock was always a giant rip off IMO and as long as a company will make money with Rock in any form ( concerts , records , instruments , paraphernalia) it will survive. Actually I prefer much more going nowadays to small festivals like the RIO or the MIMI in France or small clubs with an interesting Programm like Le Triton compared to the 70's big concerts .

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[Big Ears]

I sometimes wonder what will happen when the seventies rock musicians are gone and my generation are dead. According to statistics, as a UK male, I have only 19.1 years remaining. I hope that successive generations will pick up on the old rock music, in the way that some people still listen to early Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong.

[alucard]

PS Lots of interesting music happening right now . Saturday I am going to see Himiko Paganotti in concert. She released a great record last year with her father and her brother and Emmanuel Borghi , influences from rock, electro and David Lynch for the concert visuals. Btw Himiko sings on the new great Michael Mantler record, she was recommended to Mantler by John Greaves, a good friend of her. Only one example where the heritage goes on.

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[spacefreak]

I would lower dear S.S.'s "time ceiling" for the cultural resonnance by 5-10 years, mostly with the decline of post-rock & in Europe and the replacement of the leading figures of alternative -yet still 70s inspired guitar rock- with retro-carricatures under the stoner-rock banner in the US. New Weird America as a trend/"scene"/"movement" was very minimal and seclusive in nature, to make an impact (out of the circles of the connoisseurs) in the period 2000-2005. As a broader gente it stopped defining the popular culture even earlier on...

Further speaking about the counter-cultural impact of rock in society (some label it "rebel rock"), well that was over sooner... by the early 90s. In Britain with the Criminal Justice Bill and the penalization of raves/free festivals and in the States with the massive embrace by multinational record labels of "grunge"/post-hardcore as the final big-scale rock product destined for massive consumption.

Today's rock has lost its insight to reinvent itself and appeal on a massive scale. Everything went underground and it's purely music by now, I cannot see any "tribal" characteristics or any deeper sense of "belonging" among the younger "rock" audiences. Rock music is rather reduced to its pure aesthetics and the inherent pleasure to consume them, rather than a life-defining cultutal force that can offer the viable illusion that "a change is gonna come". Socially or individually.

Music combining a status of social urest, isn't a priority for the youth of today. It's not their voice anymore. For both my daughters f.e., it is a relic of the distant past (as true tech kids, a couple of years equal decades in their comprehension of the "passing of time"). Rock is now the music the parents and the grandparents love. And without being relevant to the majority of the young, it is condemned to breathe within the confines of its tiny niche.

[Zappathustra]

The question remains: what do the weird kids of today listen to? Is it rap? But rap comes so blatantly as a massively commercialized product that I find it hard to believe that the youth of today "buys" it as a "revolutionary" sort of force.

I grew up in the 80's and was surrounded by horrible pop garbage as anyone else. But there were alternatives to turn to. I went for heavy metal, as others were going for post punk/new wave, and there was a thread in both cases that could lead you to form a musical taste and appreciate good music, good lyrics etc.

The pressure applied on the youth by smartphones, social media, gaming etc was mentioned here, and cannot be overstated. Yes, perhaps music has stopped being a defining force, and it is just another little stream that leads to the same big river, which is the monitor of the smartphone. Watching, not listening.

My 13years old daughter doesn't like rap or hip-hop but loves her smartphone and wants to participate in the "spirit of time". So she's fully aware of the hip-hop and trash/pop plague, and while mocking it and understanding its lack of value, does not listen to any good music. Her argument is that she cannot find it! She can only find on YouTube music that has a lot of views, otherwise it's like it doesn't exist. This tells something about today's youth mentality.

[spacefreak]

The question remains: what do the weird kids of today listen to?

I don't think that we can trace a linear relation of the notions "weird kid" and "listen/music". It's rather a peripheral type of relation because music (in general) nowadays, does not have the life-defining and affirming capacities it used to. It is not a commonly followed roadmap to translate and interpret one's environment. Not anymore.

[Zappathustra]

I gave up my heroes long ago, but many (nearly) old men on PE still refer to these Rock Stars as "heroes." That's what is gone.

yep

I sort of feel proud that this thread made you write 2 big, serious paragraphs (maybe I am mistaken but I don't think you do that often). And they're excellent and to the point too.

[Geoff O'Donoghue]

Rock music is rather reduced to its pure aesthetics and the inherent pleasure to consume them, rather than a life-defining cultural force that can offer the viable illusion that "a change is gonna come". Socially or individually.

Rock is now the music the parents and the grandparents love. And without being relevant to the majority of the young, it is condemned to breathe within the confines of its tiny niche.

I'm really enjoying this thread - lots of well-considered opinions being expressed here. I think Spacefreak's pretty much summed up my thinking. It seems that I will most likely be able to count on the continuing creation of rock music for my pleasurable consumption. And I can look with nostalgia at the days when rock was truly a cultural force while accepting that this will not (and indeed could not) happen again.

[Scrotum Scissor]

music (in general) nowadays, does not have the life-defining and affirming capacities it used to. It is not a commonly followed roadmap to translate and interpret one's environment. Not anymore.

In a nutshell.

And it essentially complies with the general decay of Dionysian or Chthonic virtue in Western society as a whole.

[Baribrotzer]

My 13 year old daughter.... loves her smartphone and wants to participate in the "spirit of time". So she's fully aware of the hip-hop and trash/pop plague, and while mocking it and understanding its lack of value, does not listen to any good music. Her argument is that she cannot find it! She can only find on YouTube music that has a lot of views, otherwise it's like it doesn't exist.

Or it tells you something about smartphones. They have a small screen, so what pops up will be what's most likely to get clicked on - which is what many others have clicked on. Bring up YouTube on a PC, and there's all kinds of stuff in the sidebar. But on a phone, you have to go looking for that.

[Zappathustra]

I don't think that we can trace a linear relation of the notions "weird kid" and "listen/music". It's rather a peripheral type of relation because music (in general) nowadays, does not have the life-defining and affirming capacities it used to. It is not a commonly followed roadmap to translate and interpret one's environment. Not anymore.

So it seems. Maybe I don't want to admit it. I think we're reaching the core of the "issue at hand" here.