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Is It Here to Stay? Rock’n’roll Considered

34 points by tintinnabula 10y ago

blacksmith_tb 10y ago
For me the question is can Rock continue to claim to be intrinsically rebellious and new, as opposed to say, Blues. The Rock of the 50s and 60s ossified into Arena Rock in the 70s, which provoked Punk, which was gradually co-opted, until there was a resurgence of sorts in the 90s. At this point, however, I am skeptical there can be any radically original combination of elements in the genre. Which is fine, obviously people continue to make satisfying Blues records, but they also aren't claiming to be doing something bold and new... EDM (in all its many subgenres) does seem to still be developing, as do Jazz and Western Art music (aka Classical), but none of them make quite the same claims about rebellion, either.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Has rock ever been rebellious, really? It always seems to turn into another genre when it's clear cut rebellion.
  - tnecniv 10y ago
    I don't really know what you mean by rock. I would classify punk, metal, and all their angry friends as rock subgenres. Putting those aside for a minute, the earliest forms of rock were quite rebellious. Rumble by Link Wray, the 1954 instrumental hit that pioneered the distortion and power chord combo, ended up getting banned in many markets because it was thought to incite delinquency. Today, the tune is bland at best. At this point, I think it's quite hard to rebel culturally. So many different genres have pushed their definition of rebellion so far at this point that it has become exceptionally hard to push the envelope of what is culturally acceptable.
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      "Rumble" still sounds dangerous to my ear. It's that bass line. boom, boom, boom <rest> . Yeah. The whole idea of rebellion has become a ... set of inane lifestyle choices. It was, frankly, pretty stupid back in the day, too. But I remember Bob Hope talking about how Kiss' mothers told them to "kiss and make up" on TV. Ace Frehley - guitar teacher to America.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    In a media-friendly way, sure. But the end of "Mad Men " was an allegory of the "The Hill" ad for Coke. It's rather like Hunter S. Thompson talking about the watermark the counterculture left before the flood rolled back. I read "Been Down So Long.." by Richard Farina when I was like 12 , and it had the observation that the counterculture was just as venal and self-interested ad the Establishment. This is almost without a doubt the most useful idea I've ever been given. And it's from like 1964. The "rebellious" part became marketing fodder some time in the '70s. This is when music teachers decided to include the "rock" beat in things like jazz programs and choral music in junior high school. "Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, don't kid yourself." - Frank Zappa.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  What I like about rock songs is that you can put arbitrary content in them. Like good books, they have no blind spots. And indeed there's all kinds of bands with all kinds of messages. Other music like Blues is more like narrow genre books, like detective fiction. You know what you'll find in a detective book and where the borders are. Challenge these borders and you're on post-modernist grounds, outside the genre. Of course, rock used to be rooted in some things, just like sf&f used to be rooted in some things. But it turned out that using the method you can uproot it and tell about anything you want.
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  It seems to me like most of the progress in rock is happening at the fringes, particularly in metal. The folk-metal (both european "celtic/viking" and particularly "southern sludge"), jazz-influenced progressive metal, and hybrid instrumental/electronic djent genres are all breaking significant new ground.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  I consider jazz as largely a dead art form, and have for thirty years. It's more an artifact of its habitat - it doesn't much exist outside of the academy. It got a shot in the arm when it was fused with hip hop but that's pretty hard to do. I made the mistake of pursuing "fusion" and there was just no point in that at all. It's not like it's being organically and spontaneously created at the Five Spot any more. If it is, it's because somebody decided that's what the "Five Spot" does, and makes that happen by force of will. I suppose a "farmed" version of jazz is what we have, not "free range" jazz. But bebop wasn't sustainable. And people don't drink three-martini lunches any more... Classical is surprisingly healthy. Well, the performance part is struggling for funding. There will probably always be something we call "rock" or "rock and roll" but it's probably in its 8th or fifteenth iteration now - these things last about five years, a canon forms for it and that branch solidifies. I'm old, and I only learned actual rock-and-roll in the 1980s when I played with guys born in the '40s who still knew how. You can hear it in Keef and Charlie of the Stones. There's a hell of a lot of overlap between rock-and-roll and country music for the last 50 years.
  - 21echoes 10y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/08/is-jazz-entering-a-new-golden-age https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/08/is-jazz-enteri...
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
      I have most of the Funkadelic records up to a point. Find me something that is not on those Funkadelic records and I might get back to you. And that was a hell of a lot less funky than those Funkadelic records. "Mirror of Youth" was nice but ...Brubeck much? Damn nice, though. Thanks for the reference. It is one thing for ... JJ Cale to lead with a drum machine riff because he was being lazy, broke or cheap but trying to present the stuff at that link as somehow the saving of jazz merely serves to reinforce my point. I am talking about an art form as a living, breathing entity. I didn't kill the [ expletive deleted} thing but something did, and I'm just as disgusted as you are. Miles is to jazz as Eastwood is to the Western. It is going to take real leadership to get it out of the rut.
mturmon 10y ago
Reading this #slatepitch, one is reminded of Sturgeon's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law) -- Sure, 90% of (rock 'n roll) is crud, but then 90% of everything is crud.
Animats 10y ago
I never expected we'd have 30 years of house music/EDM. (It's a big tent. Here are snippets of the current top 50.[1]) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuqM-5U9lBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuqM-5U9lBk
- jessaustin 10y ago
  The names might change, but that stuff will probably outlive "rock & roll".
  - ChildOfChaos 10y ago
    Pfft... unlikely. Rock is still going extremely strong on it's own, even if it's not at the forefront, it's still strong and going along, doing it's own thing. There is still a great community with it. EDM, dance, trance whatever is nothing. Just a bunch of people thinking they are cool, taking too many drugs and drinking too much because thats they only way they can enjoy such bad music. Edit: Although admittedly I didn't read this article. I just clicked the link and it has a picture of the beatles? The beatles are not a rock band, the beatles were a boy band, much like the backstreet boys etc, maybe this form of "rock" is dying, but real rock is still around.
    - atoko 10y ago
      You could flip EDM and Rock in your descriptions and it would still be just as ill informed
    - pgodzin 10y ago
      The first few years the Beatles were a boy band. After that, Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper, the 3 albums listed in the article, are highly influential albums that laid the groundwork for more experimental and complex songwriting and composition in rock music. Everything you consider "real rock" were influenced by these albums.
      - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
pastProlog 10y ago
It talks about effects on the culture, but things mentioned like the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan happened over half a century ago. You may as well talk about how World War I affected the culture. Kids don't listen to rock and listen to hiphop nowadays? In my mostly white grammar school (and then junior high school) in the early 1980s, LL Cool J, Newcleus, and UTFO had much more cultural relevance than any rock band. By 1986, when Run DMC covered "Walk This Way", they were considered the new sound, Aerosmith was a rock band popular with people then in their 20s. Rock has not been at the center of the culture for over 30 years. This guy seems out of touch. Even in the mid-1980s, the rockers that I knew listened to 60s-70s rock more than 80s rock. It was already dead. The old core rock demographic was more into heavy metal than rock. The rise of heavy metal, outlaw country, techno and hip hop finished rock off by the 1980s as any kind of cultural center. I don't get this navel gazing about the 1960s from a half century ago. The 1990s is what affected this youth generation's culture in which the Internet, Snapchat, memes, FPS games and so forth is a heavy influence on the entire youth culture. Back in the early 1990s, very few young people were on the Internet (few old people were on the Internet too).
- bluthru 10y ago
  >Rock has not been at the center of the culture for over 30 years. They heydays of MTV centered on rock bands. (Especially if you include grunge.)
  - keebEz 10y ago
    Centered on rock maybe, but constantly nipped at by the dominant forms of music today. MTV was Rock's swan song.
    - bluthru 10y ago
      20 years is a pretty long swan song.
      - AstralStorm 10y ago
dascripter 10y ago
I was a little surprised to see Yes on the list of bands you would only go back and listen to for nostalgia's sake. I always found most of their music to be deep, mature and very rewarding of repeat listening, but I suppose I am coming at it from a direction of musical complexity and interest and not a lyrical one. Just another reason why music is so great; two people can look at the same thing and see two completely different things.
- acagle 10y ago
  I agree. I felt the same about Meddle. I think the whole article kind of read like a nostalgia piece
yusee 10y ago
Kanye West is the world's greatest active rock star.
- douche 10y ago
  If Kanye West is a rock star, then I'm the space pope. Although perhaps the term has just been diluted to meaninglessness.
  - collias 10y ago
    Next time a company says they're looking for "rock stars", I'll be sure to tell them that I'm the Kanye West of <insert skillset>
TheGRS 10y ago
I liked the original thesis of this article, which sounded like it was going to talk about why we would never have another Rock'n'Roll genre, but instead the article spent a lot of time talking about why Rock was never great to begin with. I'm not sure I'm convinced as I still love a lot of that music and I am what you would call an early Millennial (to reference another comment on here). Rock is/was great and its idiotic to dismiss it because of the lyrical content. But anyway, I do agree that there will never be another Rock genre in terms of popularity. Music is just way too segmented. Even the power of popularity that will get the masses to listen to a hit only has a fleeting power in the face of choice. Sure I could enjoy this Taylor Swift song since its on the radio every day, but I could also easily turn on Alabama Shakes on Spotify and enjoy that.
- IANAD 10y ago
  > there will never be another Rock genre in terms of popularity That is purely based on your recent experience, and I believe it to be short-sighted. As an example, Classical Period music was popular roughly between 1730 and 1820. That's 90 years- in comparison, Rock is only about 61 years old. Rock will no doubt continue to influence future musicians even when it is no longer the predominant form of popular music. But, assuming history repeats itself, which it tends to do, Rock probably won't be the last popular form of music spanning several decades. And I believe what will replace Rock will be some form of electronic pop.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tnecniv 10y ago
I really dislike articles like this. People come out of the woodwork to criticize or defend rock music to the nth degree, when the truth is, it doesn't really matter. The 20th century was a huge anomaly in the history of music. Standards were created, established, and destroyed multiple times due to evolving technology and cultures came together in a unique way for the first time that cannot be replicated (since we gradually converging on a monotone culture thanks to post-war globalism). (Aside: rock was never as popular as people think. Look at the chart toppers from any given year. You'll be surprised how much you don't recognize and how much was rock) I really like rock music and I hate pretty much anything that gets radio play today. I'm cool with that though because through the internet, I've discovered dozens of bands and albums that are making albums that I love right now. I see more shows than any of my friends. My friends all like different kinds of music, and they've found their own niches, and they're all happy with that, too. As a consumer, now is the best time to be listening to music, regardless of genre.
wtbob 10y ago
Man, I hate sites which only display the first paragraph of the article when JavaScript is disabled. Why do that? It makes it look as though every article is just a passing note. … and when I re-opened the tab to make some comments on the article itself (which I quite liked) after reading the comments here, it told me I'd reach my limit. Well, never mind. It's a good article; shame it's so hard to read.
pessimizer 10y ago
Rock is already gone, as the Baby Boomers turn 70. The real question for me is whether pop music itself will last much longer. It's only about 30 years older than the subgenre. At this point, it's all pastiche. There's nothing new anymore, just stuff that is slavishly imitating other stuff that its target audience are too young to remember.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  'twas ever thus. Even John Phillip Souza ( the pop music of his time - it came by RAIL CAR!) ripped off everybody but especially Wagner.

34 points by tintinnabula 10y ago

For me the question is can Rock continue to claim to be intrinsically rebellious and new, as opposed to say, Blues. The Rock of the 50s and 60s ossified into Arena Rock in the 70s, which provoked Punk, which was gradually co-opted, until there was a resurgence of sorts in the 90s. At this point, however, I am skeptical there can be any radically original combination of elements in the genre. Which is fine, obviously people continue to make satisfying Blues records, but they also aren't claiming to be doing something bold and new... EDM (in all its many subgenres) does seem to still be developing, as do Jazz and Western Art music (aka Classical), but none of them make quite the same claims about rebellion, either.

duaneb 10y ago
Has rock ever been rebellious, really? It always seems to turn into another genre when it's clear cut rebellion.
- tnecniv 10y ago
  I don't really know what you mean by rock. I would classify punk, metal, and all their angry friends as rock subgenres. Putting those aside for a minute, the earliest forms of rock were quite rebellious. Rumble by Link Wray, the 1954 instrumental hit that pioneered the distortion and power chord combo, ended up getting banned in many markets because it was thought to incite delinquency. Today, the tune is bland at best. At this point, I think it's quite hard to rebel culturally. So many different genres have pushed their definition of rebellion so far at this point that it has become exceptionally hard to push the envelope of what is culturally acceptable.
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    "Rumble" still sounds dangerous to my ear. It's that bass line. boom, boom, boom <rest> . Yeah. The whole idea of rebellion has become a ... set of inane lifestyle choices. It was, frankly, pretty stupid back in the day, too. But I remember Bob Hope talking about how Kiss' mothers told them to "kiss and make up" on TV. Ace Frehley - guitar teacher to America.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  In a media-friendly way, sure. But the end of "Mad Men " was an allegory of the "The Hill" ad for Coke. It's rather like Hunter S. Thompson talking about the watermark the counterculture left before the flood rolled back. I read "Been Down So Long.." by Richard Farina when I was like 12 , and it had the observation that the counterculture was just as venal and self-interested ad the Establishment. This is almost without a doubt the most useful idea I've ever been given. And it's from like 1964. The "rebellious" part became marketing fodder some time in the '70s. This is when music teachers decided to include the "rock" beat in things like jazz programs and choral music in junior high school. "Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, don't kid yourself." - Frank Zappa.
guard-of-terra 10y ago
What I like about rock songs is that you can put arbitrary content in them. Like good books, they have no blind spots. And indeed there's all kinds of bands with all kinds of messages. Other music like Blues is more like narrow genre books, like detective fiction. You know what you'll find in a detective book and where the borders are. Challenge these borders and you're on post-modernist grounds, outside the genre. Of course, rock used to be rooted in some things, just like sf&f used to be rooted in some things. But it turned out that using the method you can uproot it and tell about anything you want.
CuriouslyC 10y ago
It seems to me like most of the progress in rock is happening at the fringes, particularly in metal. The folk-metal (both european "celtic/viking" and particularly "southern sludge"), jazz-influenced progressive metal, and hybrid instrumental/electronic djent genres are all breaking significant new ground.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I consider jazz as largely a dead art form, and have for thirty years. It's more an artifact of its habitat - it doesn't much exist outside of the academy. It got a shot in the arm when it was fused with hip hop but that's pretty hard to do. I made the mistake of pursuing "fusion" and there was just no point in that at all. It's not like it's being organically and spontaneously created at the Five Spot any more. If it is, it's because somebody decided that's what the "Five Spot" does, and makes that happen by force of will. I suppose a "farmed" version of jazz is what we have, not "free range" jazz. But bebop wasn't sustainable. And people don't drink three-martini lunches any more... Classical is surprisingly healthy. Well, the performance part is struggling for funding. There will probably always be something we call "rock" or "rock and roll" but it's probably in its 8th or fifteenth iteration now - these things last about five years, a canon forms for it and that branch solidifies. I'm old, and I only learned actual rock-and-roll in the 1980s when I played with guys born in the '40s who still knew how. You can hear it in Keef and Charlie of the Stones. There's a hell of a lot of overlap between rock-and-roll and country music for the last 50 years.
- 21echoes 10y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/08/is-jazz-entering-a-new-golden-age https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jul/08/is-jazz-enteri...
  - ArkyBeagle 10y ago
    I have most of the Funkadelic records up to a point. Find me something that is not on those Funkadelic records and I might get back to you. And that was a hell of a lot less funky than those Funkadelic records. "Mirror of Youth" was nice but ...Brubeck much? Damn nice, though. Thanks for the reference. It is one thing for ... JJ Cale to lead with a drum machine riff because he was being lazy, broke or cheap but trying to present the stuff at that link as somehow the saving of jazz merely serves to reinforce my point. I am talking about an art form as a living, breathing entity. I didn't kill the [ expletive deleted} thing but something did, and I'm just as disgusted as you are. Miles is to jazz as Eastwood is to the Western. It is going to take real leadership to get it out of the rut.

mturmon 10y ago

Reading this #slatepitch, one is reminded of Sturgeon's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law) -- Sure, 90% of (rock 'n roll) is crud, but then 90% of everything is crud.

Animats 10y ago

I never expected we'd have 30 years of house music/EDM. (It's a big tent. Here are snippets of the current top 50.[1]) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuqM-5U9lBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuqM-5U9lBk

jessaustin 10y ago
The names might change, but that stuff will probably outlive "rock & roll".
- ChildOfChaos 10y ago
  Pfft... unlikely. Rock is still going extremely strong on it's own, even if it's not at the forefront, it's still strong and going along, doing it's own thing. There is still a great community with it. EDM, dance, trance whatever is nothing. Just a bunch of people thinking they are cool, taking too many drugs and drinking too much because thats they only way they can enjoy such bad music. Edit: Although admittedly I didn't read this article. I just clicked the link and it has a picture of the beatles? The beatles are not a rock band, the beatles were a boy band, much like the backstreet boys etc, maybe this form of "rock" is dying, but real rock is still around.
  - atoko 10y ago
    You could flip EDM and Rock in your descriptions and it would still be just as ill informed
  - pgodzin 10y ago
    The first few years the Beatles were a boy band. After that, Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper, the 3 albums listed in the article, are highly influential albums that laid the groundwork for more experimental and complex songwriting and composition in rock music. Everything you consider "real rock" were influenced by these albums.
    - ArkyBeagle 10y ago

pastProlog 10y ago

It talks about effects on the culture, but things mentioned like the Beatles appearing on Ed Sullivan happened over half a century ago. You may as well talk about how World War I affected the culture. Kids don't listen to rock and listen to hiphop nowadays? In my mostly white grammar school (and then junior high school) in the early 1980s, LL Cool J, Newcleus, and UTFO had much more cultural relevance than any rock band. By 1986, when Run DMC covered "Walk This Way", they were considered the new sound, Aerosmith was a rock band popular with people then in their 20s. Rock has not been at the center of the culture for over 30 years. This guy seems out of touch. Even in the mid-1980s, the rockers that I knew listened to 60s-70s rock more than 80s rock. It was already dead. The old core rock demographic was more into heavy metal than rock. The rise of heavy metal, outlaw country, techno and hip hop finished rock off by the 1980s as any kind of cultural center. I don't get this navel gazing about the 1960s from a half century ago. The 1990s is what affected this youth generation's culture in which the Internet, Snapchat, memes, FPS games and so forth is a heavy influence on the entire youth culture. Back in the early 1990s, very few young people were on the Internet (few old people were on the Internet too).

bluthru 10y ago
>Rock has not been at the center of the culture for over 30 years. They heydays of MTV centered on rock bands. (Especially if you include grunge.)
- keebEz 10y ago
  Centered on rock maybe, but constantly nipped at by the dominant forms of music today. MTV was Rock's swan song.
  - bluthru 10y ago
    20 years is a pretty long swan song.
    - AstralStorm 10y ago

dascripter 10y ago

I was a little surprised to see Yes on the list of bands you would only go back and listen to for nostalgia's sake. I always found most of their music to be deep, mature and very rewarding of repeat listening, but I suppose I am coming at it from a direction of musical complexity and interest and not a lyrical one. Just another reason why music is so great; two people can look at the same thing and see two completely different things.

acagle 10y ago
I agree. I felt the same about Meddle. I think the whole article kind of read like a nostalgia piece

yusee 10y ago

Kanye West is the world's greatest active rock star.

douche 10y ago
If Kanye West is a rock star, then I'm the space pope. Although perhaps the term has just been diluted to meaninglessness.
- collias 10y ago
  Next time a company says they're looking for "rock stars", I'll be sure to tell them that I'm the Kanye West of <insert skillset>

TheGRS 10y ago

I liked the original thesis of this article, which sounded like it was going to talk about why we would never have another Rock'n'Roll genre, but instead the article spent a lot of time talking about why Rock was never great to begin with. I'm not sure I'm convinced as I still love a lot of that music and I am what you would call an early Millennial (to reference another comment on here). Rock is/was great and its idiotic to dismiss it because of the lyrical content. But anyway, I do agree that there will never be another Rock genre in terms of popularity. Music is just way too segmented. Even the power of popularity that will get the masses to listen to a hit only has a fleeting power in the face of choice. Sure I could enjoy this Taylor Swift song since its on the radio every day, but I could also easily turn on Alabama Shakes on Spotify and enjoy that.

IANAD 10y ago
> there will never be another Rock genre in terms of popularity That is purely based on your recent experience, and I believe it to be short-sighted. As an example, Classical Period music was popular roughly between 1730 and 1820. That's 90 years- in comparison, Rock is only about 61 years old. Rock will no doubt continue to influence future musicians even when it is no longer the predominant form of popular music. But, assuming history repeats itself, which it tends to do, Rock probably won't be the last popular form of music spanning several decades. And I believe what will replace Rock will be some form of electronic pop.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tnecniv 10y ago

I really dislike articles like this. People come out of the woodwork to criticize or defend rock music to the nth degree, when the truth is, it doesn't really matter. The 20th century was a huge anomaly in the history of music. Standards were created, established, and destroyed multiple times due to evolving technology and cultures came together in a unique way for the first time that cannot be replicated (since we gradually converging on a monotone culture thanks to post-war globalism). (Aside: rock was never as popular as people think. Look at the chart toppers from any given year. You'll be surprised how much you don't recognize and how much was rock) I really like rock music and I hate pretty much anything that gets radio play today. I'm cool with that though because through the internet, I've discovered dozens of bands and albums that are making albums that I love right now. I see more shows than any of my friends. My friends all like different kinds of music, and they've found their own niches, and they're all happy with that, too. As a consumer, now is the best time to be listening to music, regardless of genre.

wtbob 10y ago

Man, I hate sites which only display the first paragraph of the article when JavaScript is disabled. Why do that? It makes it look as though every article is just a passing note. … and when I re-opened the tab to make some comments on the article itself (which I quite liked) after reading the comments here, it told me I'd reach my limit. Well, never mind. It's a good article; shame it's so hard to read.

pessimizer 10y ago

Rock is already gone, as the Baby Boomers turn 70. The real question for me is whether pop music itself will last much longer. It's only about 30 years older than the subgenre. At this point, it's all pastiche. There's nothing new anymore, just stuff that is slavishly imitating other stuff that its target audience are too young to remember.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago
'twas ever thus. Even John Phillip Souza ( the pop music of his time - it came by RAIL CAR!) ripped off everybody but especially Wagner.