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What's killing Rock Music.


dkookypunk43

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I was thinking, rock isn't dead, at least yet. I think what is killing both the rock and metal scenes is that the fans of each of rock's sub genres are so one dimensional with what rock is and I believe that's what's killing the rock music as a viable pop threat. Tonight we saw two Completely different rock acts kill it tonight proving the genre is still alive. Alabama Shakes is a roots rock act with a gritty blues style and the Hollywood Vampires is that classic sounding hard rock sound but modernized. Both did great and they were back to back. I think we as music fans get caught up in the genre Battle itself and not support other different rock acts because that's not how that particular person sees rock. To me both acts are rock but they have different interpretations of what rock is and us as rock music fans should embrace that instead of tear it down

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I think the decline began when every band started to sound like Pearl Jam, then they all started to sound like Creed. The grunt-voice(for lack of a better term) dominated radio in the late 90's/early 2000's, to the point where it became a parody. 

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I agree with this article a lot and I confess I'm mostly a rockist by definition but I like my fair share of country, hip hop, pop, and alternative. I feel as these critiques have really divided music fans as people of even the era before mine were more open for musical diversity. I'm all for musical diversity and the thing is we can't get that with Radio anymore because of this shift

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America's taste in popular music gets worse and worse. Even if people got a chance to hear a masterpiece like Steven Wilson's Routine most wouldn't appreciate it.  I don't mind having to dig to find something as good as Teramaze's Her Halo album that I recently discovered.

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But should gainfully employed adults whose job is to listen to music thoughtfully really agree so regularly with the taste of 13-year-olds?

 

Given that I hang out regularly with people who prefer to play like the Dolls and the Ramones but willfully -- nay, insistently -- put on Justin Timberlake and extol his virtues when given enough beer and whisky, I really wonder. Especially when people that play in bands that sound like Kyuss get onstage for cover sets and do (three years in a row, consecutively) 1. Korn, 2. Limp Bizkit, and 3. Slipknot. 

 

But then, this argument was solved long ago.

 

 

EDIT: It's not to say we can't all appreciate different kinds of music. I love the Go Gos as much as I love the Smiths as much as I love Immortal Technique as much as I love Anti Cimex as much as I love Blasphemy. But you have to wonder where some people's heads are at. ABBA to me is still a reeking pile of shit and even they are sported on the back of people's punk jackets for what I wonder is any reason at all, aside from being meta. I guess some people just like bad music (like Crass haha). 

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If I want to find something new and interesting to listen to I end up going backward in time. There's only a couple of bands that have come out in this century that I really like (Ghost, Halestorm just to name a couple). Everything new is old really. I'd rather listen to old rockabilly or something than a lot of the "new" stuff today.

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I agree with this article a lot and I confess I'm mostly a rockist by definition but I like my fair share of country, hip hop, pop, and alternative. I feel as these critiques have really divided music fans as people of even the era before mine were more open for musical diversity. I'm all for musical diversity and the thing is we can't get that with Radio anymore because of this shift

 

 

But that also ties to another problem that hurts it- the fact there IS so much musical diversity is doing as much to kill rock music, and pretty much every genre of music. In most people's high school days, there was a sense where what genre of music you preferred was like making a powerful statement of your very identity, determining how you dressed, how you acted, who your circle of friends were- basically everything else in your life.  Now, however,  there's almost no music listeners anymore who'll buy anything of one specific genre of music. Everyone has some songs or artists they like of pretty much any different musical genre...and between mp3s or streaming, you don't have to go into a record store and say "I like this"- you can just add it to your playlist and not have to worry about it. 

 

When this happens, naturally the lines between different genres will blur to different areas- you'll have hard rockers working with pop stars, rappers doing guest verses on country songs, which then hit the pop charts, and any number of shifts between genre, taking away all the differences between any particular genre of music.

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I was thinking, rock isn't dead, at least yet. I think what is killing both the rock and metal scenes is that the fans of each of rock's sub genres are so one dimensional with what rock is and I believe that's what's killing the rock music as a viable pop threat. Tonight we saw two Completely different rock acts kill it tonight proving the genre is still alive. Alabama Shakes is a roots rock act with a gritty blues style and the Hollywood Vampires is that classic sounding hard rock sound but modernized. Both did great and they were back to back. I think we as music fans get caught up in the genre Battle itself and not support other different rock acts because that's not how that particular person sees rock. To me both acts are rock but they have different interpretations of what rock is and us as rock music fans should embrace that instead of tear it down

Hollywood Vampires sucked out loud.  All the lights and pyro in the world couldn't hide the fact that the song was pure shit.

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last time I tried to bring up how lame rock is I got yelled at despite not actually being wrong, so, uh, here's a few bullet points that are on my mind on the subject right now

 

*dance-proofing (prog, metal)
*rock is music for advertisements now, like jazz became when rock exploded

*deciding there is a line between the masses and the educated few is literally the opposite of rock and roll

*lamenting the kids for not liking music the way it was in your day is the thing that made all your rock stars mad enough to make their great albums

*the sequestering of the instruments/sound of rock from the amateurism spirit of the blues is what killed imagination for new frontiers in guitar music

*the misunderstanding of blues as groans and scales exacerbated this problem tremendously

*the conflation of provocation with volume/"distortion" 

*the societal displacement of white men as the human unit through which all culture passes is what causes rock to feel so irrelevant/ignored
-white male life has been explored in such detail that there are fewer and fewer things to say about it that are worth saying
--the mental effort and resources it takes to create a "concept album" is untranslatable to the public
---YOU HAVE. TO MEET. THE AUDIENCE. WHERE THEY ARE. that's what Bowie did and you're not too good for that.

 

I could go on about this forever. I bet I could write a new reason rock is dying every day for about a year without repeating myself. instead I'll wait for the topic "what's killing rock music and what can I do to help" because I am ready for something new.

 

EDIT: Oh, and the "slam dunk boy I showed him lol" you're looking for is "but you made four rock albums, wrote a fifth, and have two more in writing. you are a hypocrite." To which I'd say "I feel trapped by things I didn't understand well enough when I started writing songs, and I am desperately trying to shake them in the ways I feel I still can." which is more of an excuse than a counterpoint.

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I heard a DJ say that it doesn't really matter how good a song is, what is important is whether or not a song connects with people.  What is killing rock music is that there hasn't been a band that connected with the masses in a long ass time.  Sure there are plenty of bands that have pretty good fan bases, but when was the last time a rock band could really be called ubiquitous?  When was the last time you had a conversation about who was the best between two current rock bands?  I think the problem is that no one has made a rock album that feels like it is of this time.  We haven't had a new rock movement since the 90s, and that is kind of the problem.  If the genre doesn't change with the times, it kind of feels like the genre is playing catch up.  Current hip-hop is hit or miss for me, but Drake, Future, Kendrick Lamar, and Kanye don't feel like they are stuck in past.  Those guys are making music that sounds like today, I can think of some good rock artists, but none that feel like they couldn't have come out 10-15 years ago and made essentially the same exact music.

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I actually intern at 93.3 WMMR and you'd be amazed with the process, you'd think everyone in the station has input but it's really only 2 or 3 people. I watched and observed a music meeting and it was eye opening, because of how few people choose what's on a particular station. They do music surveys and look at statistics and charts but some other opinions would work too. So that was really eye opening

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My gut says that the most important thing is that traditional metrics no longer apply. There's more music available to more people more easily than ever and you can find pretty much whatever you want, anything under the sun, any sound, and blend of styles or genres, quite often made by hugely talented people, with just a few minutes of search for it. 

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I actually intern at 93.3 WMMR and you'd be amazed with the process, you'd think everyone in the station has input but it's really only 2 or 3 people. I watched and observed a music meeting and it was eye opening, because of how few people choose what's on a particular station. They do music surveys and look at statistics and charts but some other opinions would work too. So that was really eye opening

I'm more amazed that it's actually 2-3 people at the station, rather than 1 or 2 accountants at the broadcasting conglomerate that owns it.

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My gut says that the most important thing is that traditional metrics no longer apply. There's more music available to more people more easily than ever and you can find pretty much whatever you want, anything under the sun, any sound, and blend of styles or genres, quite often made by hugely talented people, with just a few minutes of search for it. 

 

Agreed.  It's not hard to LEGALLY at least stream all sorts of music you had to pay for just 15-20 years ago - FOR FREE.  If you had told me 20 years ago that I would have access to almost anything I could possibly ever want for free, I would have freaked out.

 

Music stores are all but dead aside from those who are surviving selling vinyl.  And it's not hard to find retail stores that don't even bother selling music anymore.

 

I'm not saying any way is right or wrong (for those of us old enough to have actually BOUGHT hard copies of music and have been burnt, there is some happiness in this), but I do feel some guilt in being able to LEGALLY stream an album by an artist I like without having to spend any money.

 

It's my guess that what we are perceiving as rock dying, or any sort of popular music fading, at least; is that it's become really difficult for these artists to make money at this aside from touring.  We can't really go off of sales as an indicator of success at this point and I don't think things like the Grammy's will catch on to this for another 5-10 years.

 

That said, with technology it's also easier for us to have access to what current stuff is good.  WE have to do the work and not rely on industry marketing - and WE have to throw the artists some money to allow them to continue on.  It's a different world and I'm not sure the industry will catch on anytime soon.

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2015 was a great year for rock and metal you just have to accept the fact you aren't going to hear those acts on radio or playing the Grammys. I'm perfectly fine with that myself. Yeah I wish Ghost, Mastodon, Steven Wilson, Dream Theater and Opeth were household names, but just because they're not selling millions of records it doesn't change the fact that they make incredible music.

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I could go all in on this discussion as a morning rock radio guy and a musician. Suffice it to say, the record labels are the walking dead. They are dead but still moving and, to keep forward motion, they have consolidated everything. They need maximum results from as little output as they can manage. Thus, they want bands that will "cross over" and move units to rock fans as well as pop fans. I was just at a convention this weekend in Vegas that brought together rock radio, bands, and labels and this was widely discusses. Rock radio will always exist so long as humans with dicks like the sound of electric guitar, but, for the most part, the good stuff won't be on the radio. Like I said, I can go much, much deeper on this topic but, alas, I won't.

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last time I tried to bring up how lame rock is I got yelled at despite not actually being wrong, so, uh, here's a few bullet points that are on my mind on the subject right now

 

*dance-proofing (prog, metal)

*rock is music for advertisements now, like jazz became when rock exploded

*deciding there is a line between the masses and the educated few is literally the opposite of rock and roll

*lamenting the kids for not liking music the way it was in your day is the thing that made all your rock stars mad enough to make their great albums

*the sequestering of the instruments/sound of rock from the amateurism spirit of the blues is what killed imagination for new frontiers in guitar music

*the misunderstanding of blues as groans and scales exacerbated this problem tremendously

*the conflation of provocation with volume/"distortion" 

*the societal displacement of white men as the human unit through which all culture passes is what causes rock to feel so irrelevant/ignored

-white male life has been explored in such detail that there are fewer and fewer things to say about it that are worth saying

--the mental effort and resources it takes to create a "concept album" is untranslatable to the public

---YOU HAVE. TO MEET. THE AUDIENCE. WHERE THEY ARE. that's what Bowie did and you're not too good for that.

 

I could go on about this forever. I bet I could write a new reason rock is dying every day for about a year without repeating myself. instead I'll wait for the topic "what's killing rock music and what can I do to help" because I am ready for something new.

 

EDIT: Oh, and the "slam dunk boy I showed him lol" you're looking for is "but you made four rock albums, wrote a fifth, and have two more in writing. you are a hypocrite." To which I'd say "I feel trapped by things I didn't understand well enough when I started writing songs, and I am desperately trying to shake them in the ways I feel I still can." which is more of an excuse than a counterpoint.

This guy fucks.

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Here's my theory: The aging of the rock demographic coincided with the contraction of the music industry, leading nervous executives to focus on promoting incumbent popular bands instead of developing new talent.  Simultaneously the proliferation of Pro Tools and the like lowered the barrier for entry for creating hip hop, pop, and electronic music compared to instrument-dominated rock.  Hip hop in particular, with the prevalence of collaboration and the mixtape offered an alternate path to recognition than the endless touring that was traditionally the path to fame in rock.  So radio play and promotion get dominated by dad rock while younger people flock to newer genres.

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