Entertainment For Lively Minds
Rock Is dead - when did it die?
Posted by Uncle Wheaty on 27 June 2011 - 9:03pm.
Rock music has arrived at a state of perpetual reinvention
Where do we go from here?
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Only answer to that question
Is it down to the lake I fear.
I hope you have a nice knitted jumper in case it gets cold
April 5th, 1994.
Probably.
But it hadn't really been well for long time before that.
It depends, I reckon,
as these things always do, on how old you are. Young enough and it's no doubt still very much alive.
Young people
It is all their fault...innit.
Too right
all western skunk cabbages round are way.
It's not dead
just sleeping while it's brighter, slightly mad, younger, pop sibling is having it's time in the limelight.
Rock is dead they say ...
... Long Live Rock!
Top tune
38 years later the question is more valid
I blame mobile phones innit.
I blame mobile phones innit.
Nietzsche said:
"God is dead"
Kiss said:
"God Gave Rock 'n' Roll To You"
Now, someone's been lying and I'm not letting anyone leave the classroom until I find out who.
God is indeed dead but
he gave us rock n' roll before pegging it. So no one's lying!
I've listened to Aladdin Sane
five times in the last two days so it's alive and well in my ears.
Rock started its long decline...
when it began to take itself far too seriously, winding up in the "Mah Daddy didn't love muh" whinefest that was Grunge. There is still a heartbeat - just - but it is indeed on its very last legs.
When I listen to music nowadays it is almost exclusively rhythm and blues from the late 1940s and early 1950s. There is such joyous abandon and lack of pretension in those records that is infinitely more appealing to me than some mouthy gobshite in drainpipe jeans saying he's the future of music despite possessing all the talent for songwriting of a verruca.
If rock music is to have a future then musicians would do well to remember that those early rock n' roll 45s were on the whole lighthearted and fun. Consequently they still sound as fresh as the day they were recorded. Musicians - therapists are available. Just bloody enjoy yourselves.
U2/Coldplay/Elbow/Radiohead
four back catalogues and not a single Chuck Berry riff within them. That's the problem.*
*and drumming you can't dance to.
One of the reasons I think Iron Maiden...
are still so popular is that they look like they're having a right laugh when they play. Ridiculous music, ridiculous hair, ridiculous clothes and a 14 ft zombie with glowing eyes. Kids go mental.
you've hit the nail on the head there, Patrick
and it's not just in Rock music, but in almost any area of performance; if the people performing are enjoying themselves, (or appear to be, at least), then it transmits to the audience.
I know from time spent hoofing about on the stage that every director I've ever worked with says 'just smile; if you balls it up, smile even more'. They're wise words. An audience wants to feel the, er, positivity coming from the performers. Look at those live Beatles performances before it all got insane. They're having a fucking BALL up on stage. They are smiling at the crowd and at each other, and they are getting a response.
There's oodles of other bands I could think of who I love to see live. They're taking the show seriously, but not themselves; they're enjoying it, they're entertaining the crowd, there's bugger all going wrong with the songs, but if it does - so bloody what! Have you ever seen Madness perform? Again, they're just enjoying themselves; the fact that an audience has seen fit to come along and join in the fun is almost a bonus for 'em.
Rock music will spring back to liveas soon as Rock Stars begin to lighten the feck up.
There's nowhere to go from here
Is there?
I think it died when The Stone Roses released their second album.
it died sometime in the early 90s
US Grunge was the probably last gasp of originality but even that was derivative of punk and bits of heavy metal. Everything that came afterwards, including the very best of the Brit rock period, was merely old wine in fancy new bottles (e.g the musicality of Oasis is a throwback to the Beatles' late 60s period, modern progresive rock bands all sound like a hybrid of Genesis, Yes and early Marillion). The White Stripes offered a fresh perspective but at the end of the day they were blues band essentially.
Most of the stuff I listen to now predates the late 80s and when I want to get excited by music, I put on some loud 60s and 70s rockn'n'roll, cos you can't beat that with a stick.
It's not Dead
it's just that the days when there was something that could narrowly be defined as 'Rock' in the sense of the noise made The 'Oo or Zep are gone.
'Rock' has splintered into a million subgenres, but there are plenty of young folk bouncing around to drums and guitars and having fun, they're also bouncing around with samplers and synths and not worrying to much about 'chops' and solos and where the line between Rock, Pop, Dance, Hip Hop and so forth actually is.
I got roped in to DJ for an 18th birthday the other day, and they wanted to hear Tinie Tempah, Beyonce and Chase n Status but they also asked for...(and went bonkers to) Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. So there.
Get your slippers on if you like
but rock is not dead. Forget Glastonbury, forget 40's and 50 R&b, forget The Who, and go down to the St. Moritz Club this friday night 1st July. The Len Price Three will prove to you that rock is not dead with a scorching set of guitar and harmony. If this fails to blow you away which I doubt, on Friday 8th july the West Thames Delta's finest, The Jetsonics will get those old pulses racing away with a superb set of three minute rock anthems. I think both gigs are six quid!
You are in the Len Price Three.
And I claim my £5.
i don't think
pop is rock's younger sibling..
for many, pop equates with the centre..variety..entertainment..rock now enjoys and deserves a far lesser part in popular culture..
it says nothing new in an old way and is increasingly reliant on the same economic and demographic realities that jazz, classical et al began to live with years ago..that's right..old gits who give one!
couple all that with technical innovations and the whole shebang begins to settle into a wider historiography of popular entertainment...
yes..it's very dead...
Maybe Rock just has to learn to walk again
and from the same album - one of my fave rock riffs of the last couple of years.
It usually died...
at the same time that the person putting the argument stopped following new music and just relied on playing old stuff on heavy rotation instead.
Absolutely spot on
I think the 'all the best rock music was made in 1971' comment really summed up a malaise particular to readers of the rock monthlies.
Everyone knows it was 1995.
U2 and Coldplay buried it on
U2 killed it on Friday, Coldplay buried it on Saturday and Beyonce held the wake on Sunday.
I hope
my wake is that cool
Coldplay?
Cool?
..now that's got to be a first.
I thought
- as Andy noted above - that Beyonce was doing the wake?
Sorry...
that makes Coldplay the undertakers of rock which is rather apt.