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| What's Up With Rock Music? |
What's Up With Rock Music?
Fifty years ago, rock music drew the rebels, the kids who didn't want to exclude others and the ones who believed in a new vision. Forty years ago, it drew musicians who were influenced by the folk music of the Great Depression, young men and women who were disillusioned with government and who believed in a new vision. In the 1970s, despite the bubble-gum feel of disco music, rock was still filled with innovators, with movers and changers who – no surprise here – believed in a new vision.
Today when you look at music and music headlines, you get a different feel. Hip-hop has taken the rebel's seat in rock, but instead of the rebels of the 1960s, it houses many of the criminals of today. While musicians in the 1960s were likely to get arrested for drugs or peaceful protesting, today's musicians may get arrested for assault with guns and knives or even murder.
What happened? Where did the innocence of love songs transform into the social activism of the sixties, and how did that social activism transform into the raw sexism and greed we hear so often in today's music lyrics?
The answer might be found in 1976, when music companies got into a bidding war over Peter Frampton. Despite sex, drugs, and violence, the place where rock and roll truly lost its innocence may have been when it discovered commercialism.
Rock and Roll: A Commercial Icon
Before the seventies, commercialism did exist in rock; after the Beatles descended on America and subsequently the rest of the world, only a hermit living in a cave would not see the possibilities of wealth inherent in rock. But throughout the sixties, the radical youth culture, focused more on social problems and less on making money, seems to have held that tendency at bay.
In the seventies, though, the music industry started looking for ways to make the harder edges of rock more appealing to the mainstream. Everyone, they reasoned, wanted the kitsch of being a rebel, but not everyone really liked the music. Like fast food, they started adulterating the flavors behind music to make it more palatable. Out went the radical change-the-world lyrics; in came the smoother melancholy ones. Forget the hard edges of Janis Joplin; try gentler licks from someone like Karen Carpenter.
By smoothing it out and toning it down, the music industry made rock and roll more palatable for more people, and record sales skyrocketed. Teen icons like Andy Gibb started rising, and the term "bubble-gum pop" was invented to describe their music.
But what are of the roots of rock? Much of the energy and feeling had gone out of it as fans and record sales started swinging toward the sounds being marketed by the music industry.
Though rock still went strong for a while (partly due to punk), the turning point came when Peter Frampton went in a bidding war to the record company willing to pay him the most money. Rock, built around rebellion and nursed on social justice, had become just another commodity.
Despite the later movements of punk and new wave, rock today is still overly commercialized as the music industry tries to identify what the fans want to hear – and see. Five-member boy bands were the vogue for a while, then manufactured girl bands based as much on looks as on vocal and musical ability. Today it seems to be overly-sexed young people of either gender. But herein lies the problem: rock and roll isn't about music anymore. It's not about the words. Instead, it's about fashion, about a certain look, and it is utterly superficial. Can't sing, but have the look? Talented music mixers can over mix your voice so you sound good. And then there's the Milli-Vanilli way out.
That's not to say that rock and roll doesn't have a chance. Garage bands have a whole new way to spread their sounds, thanks to the Internet. And on the fringes of rock, in Eastern Europe and South America, new sounds and new movements are trickling into the mainstream. If you want to hear the best new sounds, look in unexpected places.
UK Music Groups
The exception? Great rock and roll has always come from the United Kingdom. From the days of the Beatles, to the Rolling Stones, to glam, punk, and alternative rock, fresh injections of life have continually been imported from Britain to the United States and to the rest of the world.
Why? Possibly because Britain sits on the fringes of rock and roll. Rock and roll was originally rooted in strictly American music forms: blues, jazz, and bluegrass/folk music. It did not have a great deal of influence from the rest of the world. Britain provides that missing ingredient because of its proximity to Europe and Africa, and because it is something of a world crossroads.
Ireland is also a strong influence on modern rock music. This part of the British Isles has always had a strong musical tradition, and more than one traditional American music form can trace its roots to Irish folk tunes.
But it's not just the musical fusion the United Kingdom can provide. Rock music was born in the United States, and most powerful rock movements are disseminated via the US as well. The British musicians were just different enough to be exciting and energetic, yet similar enough to Americans to seem familiar. While the Germans, the Icelanders, the Japanese, can all provide an injection of The Other to rock music, only the British were familiar enough to make Americans really comfortable with their music.
Where Is Rock Music Going?
Anyone who can answer that question will be a wealthy person in a few years. It appears that rock and roll is moving online, in large part. New musicians, frustrated with playing small local venues and unable to capture the attention of national companies and agents, are self-recording albums and putting them online, often freely downloadable and also often sold on-site to help support the band.
The most hip listeners are starting to follow the new bands online as well. They're fed up with the music industry telling them which bands are good, with payola schemes on the radios, with the commercialization of music through videos and orchestrated media meltdowns.
The fans are going online to find the real future of rock and roll. If the music industry is smart, they'll follow them there to find out what's going to be hot. |
| Average rating: 5 | Add 23 Feb 06 Alex |
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| Comments |
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| alice |
Fine, so how do you think the online music world is really affecting rock and roll? It seems like everyone wants to hear the bubblegum stuff or blood and guts violence, but no one is into the really serious things. Sure, there are the fakey little social awareness songs, but they seem to have the same depth as Phoebe's songs on Friends. Where are the Bob Dylans of today? Frankly, I'm ready to give up on rock and roll. It doesn't seem to have much bearing to the world anymore, at least not to my world. I'll stick with the old stuff. |
| kath |
Alice, i agree with your opinions - i think the problem is generational complacency, people are narrow minded and have tunnel vision on the world. Most people have no idea about real societal issues, they don't care because it doesn't effect them. Ithink this will change as global issues hit home more. |
| starker |
R&R died the day i couldn't listen to it. The day in 1983 when i heard my first cd. There is alot of music I would like to listen to but I can't. Cd's are now too loud so i just stick to 50's - 80's vinyl and not that new digital mastered vinyl.The music industry will never have respect for anything. |
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