seriously, does music suck now?
Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 5:05 pm
well, if we're talking about the suckage of recent rock music
Rock has lost a lot of its bite because doesnt really have any drive attatched to it right now. It seems to have had these major phases:
a) initial youth rebellion era, which tied in with rock and roll as anarchic blend of pop and sexuality
b) protest phase where rock was used as a public medium against war, the establishment, etc; segue into what we call "classic rock"
c) punk rock introduced, which blended both of the above and gave rock the most liberation it had ever had
d) post punk, nu wave, etc - people allowed to experiment with more advanced equipment, former punks writing new music with influences from every aspect of music
At this point music shifted in the pop world and the in the "underground" (fuck that's a dumb word). the "punk revival/alternative/grunge" phase happened in pop music which was a retread of past ideas; for most, rock music shifted to pop music and became more and more digital-centric. we are still basically seeing this in the popularity of emo music and alternative music by the dave matthews band and about 400 other people who would like to be the dave matthews band.
In the non-pop world the most interesting and driven stuff to go on from this point was post-/math-/noise- rock which all came out of basically nowhere and what a lot of us at EA consider the apex of rock so-far. but since then... not really a lot has happened.
it makes sense to me why rock would hit this point. where do you progress from here without resorting to stuff that is breaking off from what we call rock? my favorite "rock" cds in the last 10 years are almost all stuff that really do not fit into the category of rock without stretching it (like newer postrock and electronic stuff) or could have concievably been done in the scene 20 years ago (i mean come on, bellini and deerhoof are even prasied for bringing back the post-punk attitude).
so in summation the problem for me is that rock is kind of stagnating and has been for a while. part of that is cause it lacks a movement now, part of it is cause at some point you just have to look for non rock places because we have done practically all you can do with the tools, alone, to make rock music.
fuck i feel like tmh. sorry.
If it makes any difference this is my perspective as a high schooler, so if my views on how rock music developed are out of context then that's probably because i didn't actually see most of the fun parts as they happened.
Rock has lost a lot of its bite because doesnt really have any drive attatched to it right now. It seems to have had these major phases:
a) initial youth rebellion era, which tied in with rock and roll as anarchic blend of pop and sexuality
b) protest phase where rock was used as a public medium against war, the establishment, etc; segue into what we call "classic rock"
c) punk rock introduced, which blended both of the above and gave rock the most liberation it had ever had
d) post punk, nu wave, etc - people allowed to experiment with more advanced equipment, former punks writing new music with influences from every aspect of music
At this point music shifted in the pop world and the in the "underground" (fuck that's a dumb word). the "punk revival/alternative/grunge" phase happened in pop music which was a retread of past ideas; for most, rock music shifted to pop music and became more and more digital-centric. we are still basically seeing this in the popularity of emo music and alternative music by the dave matthews band and about 400 other people who would like to be the dave matthews band.
In the non-pop world the most interesting and driven stuff to go on from this point was post-/math-/noise- rock which all came out of basically nowhere and what a lot of us at EA consider the apex of rock so-far. but since then... not really a lot has happened.
it makes sense to me why rock would hit this point. where do you progress from here without resorting to stuff that is breaking off from what we call rock? my favorite "rock" cds in the last 10 years are almost all stuff that really do not fit into the category of rock without stretching it (like newer postrock and electronic stuff) or could have concievably been done in the scene 20 years ago (i mean come on, bellini and deerhoof are even prasied for bringing back the post-punk attitude).
so in summation the problem for me is that rock is kind of stagnating and has been for a while. part of that is cause it lacks a movement now, part of it is cause at some point you just have to look for non rock places because we have done practically all you can do with the tools, alone, to make rock music.
fuck i feel like tmh. sorry.
If it makes any difference this is my perspective as a high schooler, so if my views on how rock music developed are out of context then that's probably because i didn't actually see most of the fun parts as they happened.
