Thursday, January 13, 2011
6 Chords Under
As happens every year at this time, a report comes out claiming that "Rock is dead", because some other genre has the whit to realise that there is more to music than just guitars and so appeals to people whose life didn't begin and end in the sixties and sells a lot more because of this. Sadly this isn't true and, like a horror movie monster, rock has a habit of coming back again and again, dumber and more derivative with each passing resurgence. Not that the inaccuracy of the story bothered the BBC, who were quick to open up a Have Your Say topic on the subject, believing that the right wing, socially inadequate nut jobs who populate this forum might have some relevant views on the current music scene. Unsurprisingly, they were very, very wrong.
The views on display didn't exactly demonstrate a great variety of thought. There were those who blame the entire problem on "Teenage girls" liking things they don't, and it's unclear whether most of the vehmence on display was because they were teenage or, worse, girls. There where the borderline racists who bemoaned the prevalance of rap and R&B, happily ignoring the fact that most guitar music was appropriated from black culture in the first place. There were those who felt that going to see the same unknown metal band play the same songs over and over again to the same audience year after year somehow made their tastes better than those who were prepared to try new things. And that was it. The lack of imagination in their views was equivalent to that in their taste in music.
We've said this before, and we'll say it again: Dance while the record spins. But we've also said that the sooner the generation that deifies the Beatles dies out the better things are going to be culturally. They were big 50 years ago. 50! That's the equivalent of people in the 60s still being fans of music from the pre-war years. Things have moved on and things have changed and you're welcome to still stick to the view that everything was better when we didn't have synthesisers and the only purpose of girls in music was to look pretty and dance in the background while the only purpose of black people were to lug the equpiment around, but don't act like your outdated views have any sort of relevance in the 21st century. This refusal to let rock die has already given us one Oasis and one Darkness. Lets not make those mistakes again.
The views on display didn't exactly demonstrate a great variety of thought. There were those who blame the entire problem on "Teenage girls" liking things they don't, and it's unclear whether most of the vehmence on display was because they were teenage or, worse, girls. There where the borderline racists who bemoaned the prevalance of rap and R&B, happily ignoring the fact that most guitar music was appropriated from black culture in the first place. There were those who felt that going to see the same unknown metal band play the same songs over and over again to the same audience year after year somehow made their tastes better than those who were prepared to try new things. And that was it. The lack of imagination in their views was equivalent to that in their taste in music.
We've said this before, and we'll say it again: Dance while the record spins. But we've also said that the sooner the generation that deifies the Beatles dies out the better things are going to be culturally. They were big 50 years ago. 50! That's the equivalent of people in the 60s still being fans of music from the pre-war years. Things have moved on and things have changed and you're welcome to still stick to the view that everything was better when we didn't have synthesisers and the only purpose of girls in music was to look pretty and dance in the background while the only purpose of black people were to lug the equpiment around, but don't act like your outdated views have any sort of relevance in the 21st century. This refusal to let rock die has already given us one Oasis and one Darkness. Lets not make those mistakes again.
