I honestly have no idea what people refer to when they say "rock" these days. The definition has become so general that it's useless.
Even the Rock and Roll hall of fame doesn't seem to know what rock is. They've inducted people like Miles Davis and Grandmaster Flash, choices which don't make any sense to me. While both of those guys were innovative, creative, and talented musicians, they aren't what most people would consider Rock and Roll.
But they both 'Rocked!'.
Miles Davis's fusion was pretty much far-out rock music, although it was obviously based first and foremost in jazz. Grandmaster Flash is a different story, but dude deserves some recognition, even though it doesn't make sense that it's from the rock and roll hall of fame.
That's confusing 'Rock and Roll' with 'Rocking'. Many none rock (music) things rock.
What do you mean? Also, "rock and roll" has a different connotation than "rock."
The problem with rock right now is that everyone is doing the same thing. Very few bands are around that you could consider original or outside the box.
I am enjoying reading however, b/c this helps define my band a bit.
I think we should get back to a little thing called lyrics in the mainstream.
Springsteen=GREAT LYRICS!!!!
Foo Fighter=Not so much...
Songs on majors have lost a lot of the deepness and soul that made people listen to them more than twice. Fuck, they have this problem with all genres on majors. They went from finding artists who made great musical achievements to bands that could push 50 gajillion units. There's not much difference of bands in the eyes of majors. If the mainstream stagnates it will be bad for the whole scene.
I think we should get back to a little thing called lyrics in the mainstream.
Springsteen=GREAT LYRICS!!!!
Foo Fighter=Not so much...
Songs on majors have lost a lot of the deepness and soul that made people listen to them more than twice. Fuck, they have this problem with all genres on majors. They went from finding artists who made great musical achievements to bands that could push 50 gajillion units. There's not much difference of bands in the eyes of majors. If the mainstream stagnates it will be bad for the whole scene.
dude i love springsteen but his lyrics aren't amazing pieces of poetry. there are only so many times a thing can be compared to cars/driving.
in fact i'd argue that what makes springsteen so great is just that. his lyrics are simple and approachable, and as a result his music (especially his earlier music) feels more genuine and made a strong connection with his audience.
It's easier to speculate about the future of music in general than rock, becauase it's almost impossible to say what culturaly derivitive niche of rock will be dominant.
Look where rock was at in 1969, now look at 1979, 89, 99 ad infinitum. It would have been incredibly difficult to speculate with any degree of accuracy where rock was going. You can make broad statements like "LOL more distortion" or "HAHA synth". But even those would be eerily accurate. One thing that appears to be constant since the early 50's, rock (and music in general) is moving away from a time when the buisness of mass marketing music and a sincere creative environment for musicians was in some kind of balance. It appeared to me that's what the 60's and 70's, and to some degree 80's were. Not so much anymore. I believe this has had an adverse effect on rock.
The farther we get away from the genesis of the genre the less it resembles those things that define it as derivative. I think we're approaching a time when we seriously have to listen to the shit that's coming out and come to the conclusion it's not rock. This may be the most signifigant progression of the next decade or two, the genesis of new genres, and or the retirement of the whole notion of rock. It may be this is impossible, and that we'll see with clarity how many divisions of popular music can coexist in the public consciousness (rap, rock, straight pop, heavy metal, ect) This is obvious and has been covered, but is still relevent to OP and is part of why OP is difficult to answer. It should also be noted music when taken on an individual basis is just that, music. You cannot and should not strictly define it by genre, it is what it is. For the sake of arguement, we can treat things in a broader sense I think.
I dunno wtf we can say about ten years from now about any given genre.
"LOL xylophones make a comeback" would probably be as accurate as anything I could imagine. (Just look what they did for Tom Waits!)
As far as the future of music I think the internet will fill the void that the death of really prominent tours/radio had in western music. I'm really interested to see where the direction of live music is going, and the effect live music has on the birth/role it plays in sustaining a working band, at least in America (I can't speculate outside the states). This is an important question because the foundation for previous incarnations of rock were built on live shows and spectacles. Is this statement true? If so has this diminished in recent years? If it continues what will that mean for the genre?
I think we should get back to a little thing called lyrics in the mainstream.
Springsteen=GREAT LYRICS!!!!
Foo Fighter=Not so much...
Songs on majors have lost a lot of the deepness and soul that made people listen to them more than twice. Fuck, they have this problem with all genres on majors. They went from finding artists who made great musical achievements to bands that could push 50 gajillion units. There's not much difference of bands in the eyes of majors. If the mainstream stagnates it will be bad for the whole scene.
dude i love springsteen but his lyrics aren't amazing pieces of poetry. there are only so many times a thing can be compared to cars/driving.
in fact i'd argue that what makes springsteen so great is just that. his lyrics are simple and approachable, and as a result his music (especially his earlier music) feels more genuine and made a strong connection with his audience.
That was probably a bad example but it does seem that lyrics have gotten in a lot of mainstream outlets. At least to me, and I may be the minority.
You would think that the bands who grew up with grunge as the primary musical movement of their formative years, would have been emerging over the middle of this decade with some kick ass music. Maybe all the major labels in the late 90's just underwent a fundamental shift in how they locate, sign, and cultivate talent, but I don't really think this holds up. The 70's and 80's had their share of vapid and disposable commercial music as well as their more classic and legitimate acts that excelled in the mainstream.
Perhaps the Jimmy Pages and Hendrixs of this century are too busy playing Guitar Hero!
You would think that the bands who grew up with grunge as the primary musical movement of their formative years, would have been emerging over the middle of this decade with some kick ass music. Maybe all the major labels in the late 90's just underwent a fundamental shift in how they locate, sign, and cultivate talent, but I don't really think this holds up. The 70's and 80's had their share of vapid and disposable commercial music as well as their more classic and legitimate acts that excelled in the mainstream.
Perhaps the Jimmy Pages and Hendrixs of this century are too busy playing Guitar Hero!
Sure they did, sure they did.
I ask you however, where our are Jimmy Pages and Jimmy Hendrixi...'s....ESS.
Oh right, guitar hero. Yeah, maybe.
Or maybe they're just actually playing instruments but you can't hear them over the blaring of the money driven shit that is somehow so much louder.
Where is our decade's Nevermind and OK Computer? What the hell kind of a decade is this, anyway?
Not to sound like an indie snob, but it definitely seems like most good rock music today is not in the mainstream. It's weird, the new Arcade Fire album debuted at #2 and the new Modest Mouse debuted at #1, but are either of those bands actually popular on mainstream rock radio? I don't even know.
During the 90s, at least during the first half, rock music was very big in the mainstream. There was a healthy balance between the popularity of pop music/R&B, rock music and hip-hop. Now it seems that rock music in general is not so big in the mainstream. As far as I can tell, the really popular, mainstream rock right now is all stuff like Avenged Sevenfold and Hawthorne Heights, or stuff like Coldplay and The Killers.
flamebroiledchicken on
0
Options
Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
edited April 2007
I, for one, am happy I don't hear anymore Pages and Hendrices (proper plural)
That music is over. And while Jimmi could make some beautiful music, pyrotechnics in general are not good for music. Look at Paganini - interesting from a technical standpoint, but not very interesting in general. Now look at Beethoven - the coda of the opening movement of the tenth string quartet is incredibly technically demanding, but the dazzling display serves the music - not the other way around.
I LOVE how bands like Arcade Fire do not feel the need to dazzle us with their technical prowess and concentrate on making music on a whole. Johnny Greenwood can tear ass on guitar, but rarely does he feel any need to do it. He is a musician, not just a guitar player.
Where is "rock" going, as a genre? Look at where it was a few generations ago, and compare that to now.
you mean down the toliet?
i consider "rock" to be blues-influenced and guitar-heavy. i think rock needs to return to its' roots and stop with all of this other bullshit. when fucking GREEN DAY is considered to be a rock band, something is terribly terribly wrong here.
wolfmother, despite being a led zep tribute band, is probably the closest mainstream thing we've got to "real" rock nowdays.
jet is pop rock, sorry. also they're annoying as shit.
That's right, regression is the answer to everything, particularly rejuvenating art forms:roll:
Also, to all the people looking for "another Jimmy Hendrix" check out Omar Rodriguez Lopez. I wouldn't say he's better, (wouldn't say he's worse either, I'm not really in the business of rating artists like athletes) but he's certainly original, interesting, and closer to the 70's guitar heroes than most other mainstream rock figures.
You guys act like indie is the next big thing- you're wrong, it's already here. In the local scene around here every fucking band sounds the same and I know indie encompasses this massive, massive area of music that isn't marketable to the mainstream but The Arcade Fire's albums debuting at #2 proves it- people want something more than what they've been given, and now we turn to the Cursives and Arcade Fires and Desaparacedos and Dresden Dolls of music to give us shit that isn't so generic. We're in a transition period for music- you guys can speculate what constitutes rock and indie all you want, but to stay pertinent to the topic this is an ugly, ugly transition period of rock where we're bombasted with shit like My Chemical Romance and Breaking Benjamin as the "good bands." My generation of kids didn't have a Nirvana, a Beatles, a Led Zeppelin. We didn't have one single band that could be called the definer of an era. What we had was a lot of shit thrown at us by the mainstream and a lot of individual niche acts doing their own shit trying to gain their own audience. Eventually they will, and that's when we enter a good mainstream period again.
The closest thing we've had to a big, generation-defining band since the turn of the century in my eyes is either System of a Down or Muse. Take it or leave it, Mezmerize/Hypnotize was huge, and Absolution and Black Holes both certainly got some major, major airplay here.
As someone old enough to have been around in the heyday of Nirvana, I'd just like to point out that they weren't as important as people think when they look back. The massive amounts of publicity and Cobain's death just keep the name going longer than other acts. At the time, a lot of people considered Nevermind to have been a commercial album.
That's not me having a go at Nirvana, just that we have bands like Muse, Artic Monkeys and so on that have a unique sound and are generating the same kind of buzz now that Nirvana were creating then. The real test is going to be how they're looked at ten years from now.
My generation of kids didn't have a Nirvana, a Beatles, a Led Zeppelin. We didn't have one single band that could be called the definer of an era. What we had was a lot of shit thrown at us by the mainstream and a lot of individual niche acts doing their own shit trying to gain their own audience.
We had the same in the 90s. You probably already listen to you generation's Nirvana/Beatles/Zep etc but you won't notice it until all the crap falls by the wayside.
Unless you're talking mainstream rock as opposed to mainstream music.
Muse are really mainstream indeed. They had a single in the top ten recently, I felt I should have been horrified but I wasn't
Every now and then a good band slips under the radar. Rock bands do far better in the album charts than pop bands, but the occasional single gets high in the charts and puts them on the same footing as manufactured bands (in terms of chart position).
I, for one, am happy I don't hear anymore Pages and Hendrices (proper plural)
That music is over. And while Jimmi could make some beautiful music, pyrotechnics in general are not good for music. Look at Paganini - interesting from a technical standpoint, but not very interesting in general. Now look at Beethoven - the coda of the opening movement of the tenth string quartet is incredibly technically demanding, but the dazzling display serves the music - not the other way around.
I LOVE how bands like Arcade Fire do not feel the need to dazzle us with their technical prowess and concentrate on making music on a whole. Johnny Greenwood can tear ass on guitar, but rarely does he feel any need to do it. He is a musician, not just a guitar player.
The whole "where are our Jimmy hendrices/Pages" was not really a serious statement but yeah...
I agree with the notion that rock music, or music in general, should not regress to a time when the solo was king, and we not mark the progression of an art as something purely technical. But I don't think we can completely overlook this either. I think a balance has to exist somewhere.
I also concur to an extent that bands who "make music" instead of try and compose an entire album around nothing more than overblown masturbatory technical prowess are refreshing. You could point to something like The Beatles as an older example I suppose. Something more modern for me would be like, The Decemberists.
Arcade Fire works too, while I might hate them I certainly agree that is a perfect example.
Look at Paganini - interesting from a technical standpoint, but not very interesting in general. Now look at Beethoven - the coda of the opening movement of the tenth string quartet is incredibly technically demanding, but the dazzling display serves the music - not the other way around.
Come on man.
Besides, I wouldn't say Jimi Hendrix's importance lies only in his technical ability. I wouldn't even say it lies primarily in his technical ability.
I find it surprising that no-one has mentioned The Strokes at all in this thread. Then again, they've always been under-appreciated in the U.S.
I like the direction their music is taking; the third album is a definite progression. Personally, I can't wait to hear what they do next. Of course, from the looks of things it's likely be at least 18 months before anyone gets the chance.
Yeah I should clarify, my little comment on Page and Hendrix referred more to their impact on the progression of rock music as a genre more so than their technical skill, despite my earlier comments on musicianship.
I'm find I'm currently getting my new rock fix from bands that made their name in previous musical eras, like RHCP and Pearl Jam, or supergroups of 80's/90's figures like Audioslave or Velvet Revolver.
Yeah, the Strokes ftw. Rock isn't really dead, its just sort of stagnant since nothing really excitingly new is happening or has happened in a while. There are some indie-rockish bands around that don't suck, and they're definitely rock. Wolfmother, the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, etc... hell, the Killers are definitely rock too.
Personally I think that rock will become more poppy over time, before breaking down again. I mean that's what usually happens, right?
Rock'n'roll (chuck berry, elvis) --> teen idols & weird singing groups
rock revival (beatles, rolling stones) --> disco
punk (ramones, clash) --> over-produced metal
grunge (Nirvana, Alice in Chains) --> boy bands (Backstreet boys, N'sync
indie rock/garage rock revival (the strokes, white stripes) --> ???
Yeah, the Strokes ftw. Rock isn't really dead, its just sort of stagnant since nothing really excitingly new is happening or has happened in a while. There are some indie-rockish bands around that don't suck, and they're definitely rock. Wolfmother, the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, etc... hell, the Killers are definitely rock too.
Personally I think that rock will become more poppy over time, before breaking down again. I mean that's what usually happens, right?
Rock'n'roll (chuck berry, elvis) --> teen idols & weird singing groups
rock revival (beatles, rolling stones) --> disco
punk (ramones, clash) --> over-produced metal
grunge (Nirvana, Alice in Chains) --> boy bands (Backstreet boys, N'sync
indie rock/garage rock revival (the strokes, white stripes) --> ???
That progression is so off I don't even know where to begin.
Yeah, the Strokes ftw. Rock isn't really dead, its just sort of stagnant since nothing really excitingly new is happening or has happened in a while. There are some indie-rockish bands around that don't suck, and they're definitely rock. Wolfmother, the Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, etc... hell, the Killers are definitely rock too.
Personally I think that rock will become more poppy over time, before breaking down again. I mean that's what usually happens, right?
Rock'n'roll (chuck berry, elvis) --> teen idols & weird singing groups
rock revival (beatles, rolling stones) --> disco
punk (ramones, clash) --> over-produced metal
grunge (Nirvana, Alice in Chains) --> boy bands (Backstreet boys, N'sync
indie rock/garage rock revival (the strokes, white stripes) --> ???
That progression is so off I don't even know where to begin.
Where is "rock" going, as a genre? Look at where it was a few generations ago, and compare that to now.
you mean down the toliet?
i consider "rock" to be blues-influenced and guitar-heavy. i think rock needs to return to its' roots and stop with all of this other bullshit. when fucking GREEN DAY is considered to be a rock band, something is terribly terribly wrong here.
wolfmother, despite being a led zep tribute band, is probably the closest mainstream thing we've got to "real" rock nowdays.
jet is pop rock, sorry. also they're annoying as shit.
while the recent greenday stuff is very close to what i'd call rock, the dookie album will never be considered rock. I've got no problems with a band changing genres, do you?
Posts
If you don't know, then you don't rock!
It's a discussion on what constitutes rock and what will be it's next evolution. The meaningful post count of the entire thread is 0.
Personally, I like how many insane numbers of styles it's produced.
Hard Rock, Metal, Alternative, Soft Rock, the bazillion flavors of Dark Wave....
I am enjoying reading however, b/c this helps define my band a bit.
Not at all.
DON'T FUCKING DO THAT. Just play.
Definitions are shit that other people use to try and describe you to someone that hasn't heard you. Simple as.
Springsteen=GREAT LYRICS!!!!
Foo Fighter=Not so much...
Songs on majors have lost a lot of the deepness and soul that made people listen to them more than twice. Fuck, they have this problem with all genres on majors. They went from finding artists who made great musical achievements to bands that could push 50 gajillion units. There's not much difference of bands in the eyes of majors. If the mainstream stagnates it will be bad for the whole scene.
Thank you!
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
Unless you're talking mainstream rock as opposed to mainstream music.
dude i love springsteen but his lyrics aren't amazing pieces of poetry. there are only so many times a thing can be compared to cars/driving.
in fact i'd argue that what makes springsteen so great is just that. his lyrics are simple and approachable, and as a result his music (especially his earlier music) feels more genuine and made a strong connection with his audience.
Look where rock was at in 1969, now look at 1979, 89, 99 ad infinitum. It would have been incredibly difficult to speculate with any degree of accuracy where rock was going. You can make broad statements like "LOL more distortion" or "HAHA synth". But even those would be eerily accurate. One thing that appears to be constant since the early 50's, rock (and music in general) is moving away from a time when the buisness of mass marketing music and a sincere creative environment for musicians was in some kind of balance. It appeared to me that's what the 60's and 70's, and to some degree 80's were. Not so much anymore. I believe this has had an adverse effect on rock.
The farther we get away from the genesis of the genre the less it resembles those things that define it as derivative. I think we're approaching a time when we seriously have to listen to the shit that's coming out and come to the conclusion it's not rock. This may be the most signifigant progression of the next decade or two, the genesis of new genres, and or the retirement of the whole notion of rock. It may be this is impossible, and that we'll see with clarity how many divisions of popular music can coexist in the public consciousness (rap, rock, straight pop, heavy metal, ect) This is obvious and has been covered, but is still relevent to OP and is part of why OP is difficult to answer. It should also be noted music when taken on an individual basis is just that, music. You cannot and should not strictly define it by genre, it is what it is. For the sake of arguement, we can treat things in a broader sense I think.
I dunno wtf we can say about ten years from now about any given genre.
"LOL xylophones make a comeback" would probably be as accurate as anything I could imagine. (Just look what they did for Tom Waits!)
As far as the future of music I think the internet will fill the void that the death of really prominent tours/radio had in western music. I'm really interested to see where the direction of live music is going, and the effect live music has on the birth/role it plays in sustaining a working band, at least in America (I can't speculate outside the states). This is an important question because the foundation for previous incarnations of rock were built on live shows and spectacles. Is this statement true? If so has this diminished in recent years? If it continues what will that mean for the genre?
It's 6 a.m.
I need to stop musing. Shit.
EDITED FOR CLARITY.
That was probably a bad example but it does seem that lyrics have gotten in a lot of mainstream outlets. At least to me, and I may be the minority.
Wolfmother just sounds like an inferior Black Sabbath to me.
Like.
Why would I listen to this when I could just listen to something clearly it's progenitor?
White Stripes are ok.
Perhaps the Jimmy Pages and Hendrixs of this century are too busy playing Guitar Hero!
Sure they did, sure they did.
I ask you however, where our are Jimmy Pages and Jimmy Hendrixi...'s....ESS.
Oh right, guitar hero. Yeah, maybe.
Or maybe they're just actually playing instruments but you can't hear them over the blaring of the money driven shit that is somehow so much louder.
Sorry about that guys.
I'll go back to practising if you want.
Not to sound like an indie snob, but it definitely seems like most good rock music today is not in the mainstream. It's weird, the new Arcade Fire album debuted at #2 and the new Modest Mouse debuted at #1, but are either of those bands actually popular on mainstream rock radio? I don't even know.
During the 90s, at least during the first half, rock music was very big in the mainstream. There was a healthy balance between the popularity of pop music/R&B, rock music and hip-hop. Now it seems that rock music in general is not so big in the mainstream. As far as I can tell, the really popular, mainstream rock right now is all stuff like Avenged Sevenfold and Hawthorne Heights, or stuff like Coldplay and The Killers.
That music is over. And while Jimmi could make some beautiful music, pyrotechnics in general are not good for music. Look at Paganini - interesting from a technical standpoint, but not very interesting in general. Now look at Beethoven - the coda of the opening movement of the tenth string quartet is incredibly technically demanding, but the dazzling display serves the music - not the other way around.
I LOVE how bands like Arcade Fire do not feel the need to dazzle us with their technical prowess and concentrate on making music on a whole. Johnny Greenwood can tear ass on guitar, but rarely does he feel any need to do it. He is a musician, not just a guitar player.
That's right, regression is the answer to everything, particularly rejuvenating art forms:roll:
The closest thing we've had to a big, generation-defining band since the turn of the century in my eyes is either System of a Down or Muse. Take it or leave it, Mezmerize/Hypnotize was huge, and Absolution and Black Holes both certainly got some major, major airplay here.
Turmion Katilot.
Check 'em out! ;-)
That's not me having a go at Nirvana, just that we have bands like Muse, Artic Monkeys and so on that have a unique sound and are generating the same kind of buzz now that Nirvana were creating then. The real test is going to be how they're looked at ten years from now.
We had the same in the 90s. You probably already listen to you generation's Nirvana/Beatles/Zep etc but you won't notice it until all the crap falls by the wayside.
Muse are really mainstream indeed. They had a single in the top ten recently, I felt I should have been horrified but I wasn't
Every now and then a good band slips under the radar. Rock bands do far better in the album charts than pop bands, but the occasional single gets high in the charts and puts them on the same footing as manufactured bands (in terms of chart position).
The whole "where are our Jimmy hendrices/Pages" was not really a serious statement but yeah...
I agree with the notion that rock music, or music in general, should not regress to a time when the solo was king, and we not mark the progression of an art as something purely technical. But I don't think we can completely overlook this either. I think a balance has to exist somewhere.
I also concur to an extent that bands who "make music" instead of try and compose an entire album around nothing more than overblown masturbatory technical prowess are refreshing. You could point to something like The Beatles as an older example I suppose. Something more modern for me would be like, The Decemberists.
Arcade Fire works too, while I might hate them I certainly agree that is a perfect example.
Besides, I wouldn't say Jimi Hendrix's importance lies only in his technical ability. I wouldn't even say it lies primarily in his technical ability.
I like the direction their music is taking; the third album is a definite progression. Personally, I can't wait to hear what they do next. Of course, from the looks of things it's likely be at least 18 months before anyone gets the chance.
I'm find I'm currently getting my new rock fix from bands that made their name in previous musical eras, like RHCP and Pearl Jam, or supergroups of 80's/90's figures like Audioslave or Velvet Revolver.
Personally I think that rock will become more poppy over time, before breaking down again. I mean that's what usually happens, right?
Rock'n'roll (chuck berry, elvis) --> teen idols & weird singing groups
rock revival (beatles, rolling stones) --> disco
punk (ramones, clash) --> over-produced metal
grunge (Nirvana, Alice in Chains) --> boy bands (Backstreet boys, N'sync
indie rock/garage rock revival (the strokes, white stripes) --> ???
That progression is so off I don't even know where to begin.
I can give it a shot.
Ah fuck it I'm lazy, it's just so wrong.
while the recent greenday stuff is very close to what i'd call rock, the dookie album will never be considered rock. I've got no problems with a band changing genres, do you?