In response to Dale:
The blog post that this is directed at can be found here.
The mini-essay comment I typed up:
Good music didn’t die in the 80s, but it definitely was driven underground and out of the spotlight. I think when a lot of people come out and say things along these lines, they’re speaking more to the fact that the music industry has shrugged off its responsibility to promote ambitious music, than they are to the actual “death” of good music.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that someone his age would be unfamiliar with the new means of discovering “good” music, so when someone his age laments over what he/she hears on the now-completely-commercial radio, the comments aren’t totally off-base seeing as the radio companies of the past were by-and-large more exploratory and willing to take risks over different, boundary-pushing music. Thus where these people were discovering their music and witnessing the evolution of the rock genre changed without directing them toward the new mediums through which the evolution of the music genre continued to be distributed. The Led Zeppelins of our time, for instance, aren’t getting mainstream radio time. This isn’t so much a problem with music, but with the music industry, which, before the 80s (if I were to put a date to it), wasn’t nearly as separated from ambitious acts and fringe genres as it is now. Is it really that surprising that the new distinction between industry and artist was lost on the generation that preceded the change?
I can’t really fault them for failing to make that transition. My parents who are in their fifties are just now discovering HBO and Showcase, so should I really expect people their age to be able to navigate music blogs? For people in this age bracket, music really did die in the 80s as it was no longer adequately distributed to them. I doubt that these men and women are actually close-minded about new music. They’ve just not been introduced to new music in a way that mirrors the intimate way in which they were shown their beloved “classic” artists. I’m slowly whittling away at my dad’s dislike for modern music, and now that I’ve introduced him to Songbird and torrents, I find things like Clutch and Black Mountain in his music collection.
My central concern with your list of artists, Dale, is that these artists do not represent the next stage in rock music’s evolution (I won’t speak to other genres as rap artist obviously do represent a relatively new take on music, and I won’t speak to pop because celebrities like Lady Gaga have shown that there truly hasn’t been any change in the genre since the late 70s). That’s not to say that they’re “bad” artists, but I side with the “music died in X year” crowd in that the songs put out by these listed artists largely have not innovated within the genre. Coldplay is channelling the Beatles; Nirvana, folk; Radiohead, late psychedelia. They, by-and-large, are takes on older musical tropes , influential more for their role in introducing these musical identities to the next generation of audiences, rather than actually defining the next step in rock’s foundation. Again, I don’t view this as a bad thing; Clapton intentionally did the same thing for blues with his solo work, introducing a young audience to a genre that had dwindled. Nirvana and Radiohead and company were doing the same for the rock genre that had dimmed in radio circulation during the rise of metal and hip-hop. So when people that had grown up during the first wave of rock music hear this newer stuff, they can make out the same ideas being explored, the same lyrical themes, guitar tones, structures, etcetera. It doesn’t sound all that new. It sounds stale, dead.
The difference between Clapton’s approach and this new wave of rock’s approach is that Clapton’s albums, being blues-based, consisted mostly of arrangements of blues standards, so that music directly pointed backwards. The line was drawn clearly. Nirvana et al weren’t so clear, so the audiences they reached with their new approaches to old material were not pointed towards now “classic rock”, and their listening habits could become dismissive of rock history. In this way, the two time periods of rock became separate, opposed. You don’t find a lot of young people searching out Foghat albums, for instance, because there isn’t something new in it for them; it sounds similar to what they’re listening to today, but dated since the music isn’t framed within modern pop culture. The same can be said of older people being dismissive of new music because of the sameness.
These listed artists might be considered groundbreaking in the here and now, but in the scheme of rock history, I’d describe them as a return to form. The music we all ought to be turning our attention to is still being swept away from the spotlight because, well, “safe” sells, and as long as that’s still the case, lists such as these will cite artists whose influence is rooted in the impact they have on the music industry rather than on music itself. Nirvana changed who got radio time, not necessarily music itself.
There are plenty of artists with large underground followings that will be remembered for their impact on music for far longer than most of these listed artists, but I won’t argue that the listed artists are unimportant. They were certainly integral in wrestling the general populace’s listening habits back from the completely manufactured acts like Nickelback, and they’ll again be integral in combating Disney’s music regime. I’m of course being a little reductive of your list, but I feel comfortable in my assertion concerning most of it.
Okay, rant over. Check out Mastodon, Pelican, and some other acts that fit loosely into the post-rock genre, as the splashes they’re making are the ones that will be channelled in the future. I could go on forever about this stuff, so hopefully you’ll post some kind of a retort that I can comment on again in defence of both old people and scensters.
