This could be the single most short-sighted comment I've read here in awhile. Since you like charts so much - here were the top grossing movies of 1973: 1. The Sting Universal Pictures $156,000,000[1] 2. The Exorcist Warner Bros. $128,000,000[2] 3. American Graffiti Universal Pictures $96,300,000[3] 4. Papillon Allied Artists Pictures $53,267,000[4] 5. The Way We Were Columbia Pictures $45,000,000[5] 6. Magnum Force Warner Bros. $39,768,000[6] 7. Last Tango in Paris United Artists $36,144,000[7] 8. Live and Let Die United Artists $35,377,836[8] 9. Robin Hood Walt Disney Productions $32,056,467[9] 10. Paper Moon Paramount Pictures $30,933,743[10] A black and white period drama, an erotic drama, a heist thriller, a big budget horror film, a 50s nostalgia piece, a prison drama, a romance, a Dirty Harry flick, a Bond flick, and a Disney flick. And 2017 (so far): 1 Beauty and the Beast (2017) BV $504,014,165 2 Wonder Woman WB $412,501,742 3 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 BV 4 Spider-Man: Homecoming Sony 5 It WB (NL) $317,734,616 6 Despicable Me 3 Uni. 7 Logan Fox $226,277,068 8 The Fate of the Furious 9 Dunkirk WB $187,630,833 10 The LEGO Batman Movie WB $175,750,384 Five superhero movies, a live-action remake of a cartoon, an animated sequel, a big budget horror movie, a war movie, and a big stupid action flick. And TV? If you wanna compare The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones to MASH and All in the Family, go ahead and knock yourself out. Even the traditional television content-delivery model of only 3 networks, cookie-cutter sitcoms and dramas, and summer reruns is long since dead.
A lot of that is due to Knuckleheads Saloon, doing live music five nights a week, and how the Grand Emporium set out to sea as the Blues Cruise (and doing events on land as well.) Hybridization of musical genres is a good thing! Young bands are pulling in every influence because they can hear everything.
There's no possible way to know that for certain. People used to say that there'd never be anyone come along as big as Presley - until Michael and Madonna took off. Throughout the late 80s, I kept reading that rock was dead. Then Lollapalooza, grunge, and Britpop came along.
All In the Family was a remake of a British show. So a more apt comparison would be something like Shameless.
Quoting myself, there are three different concerts happening tonight alone at Knuckleheads: Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash in the 50 seat Gospel Lounge Funky Butt Brass Band in the 350 seat Saloon Kelley Hunt w/ her Band XL in the 700 seat Garage ...and from 1 PM until 5:30 PM, there is a free open jam with Billy Ebling, and tomorrow's open jam is lead by Amanda Fish. I'll be there Wednesday for Nick Lowe with Los Straitjackets. On the same night, Pastor Carl will be holding church in the Gospel Lounge.
You're mixing your metaphors here. You start out with a comparison of the album charts then you switch to talking about songs. We're in a pure pop era and the focus is on the single. Both the US and the UK singles charts are a wasteland for rock. It's been years since anything has even hit either top ten; let alone gone number one. I don't look to the singles charts for new rock. I look to the album charts. Low sales numbers have lead to high turnover on the charts and it's blurred the line between the mainstream and the underground. 50,000 albums used to be decent cult level sales, now it's enough to top the Billboard 200. They're the biggest band in the nation, then drop down to selling 300-400 a week; I say maybe that makes them all underground bands. If I narrow my definition of rock enough and then qualify it with great, then maybe there's not even any rock on the album charts. I lost touch with the cutting edge years ago. I get almost all my new music from the charts. But I even when I was first listening to Iron Maiden and Sonic Youth, I still wanted to hear what was on top. I've followed the charts almost religiously since I first hear the words American Top 40. I listen at least once to every song that goes number one; pop, country, R&B; US, UK, Canada, Australia. Given the level of dreck out there, sometimes once is one too many. But I keep going back every week. If a rock album goes number one in the US or the UK, I'm buying it. I've bought 14 new releases so far this year. I put them in my personal heavy rotation for at least a week. I'm just finishing up with the new Liam Gallagher. As far as what will endure; that applies to all music, not just to rock. I'm not much into hip-hop, but with 14 number one album I say that Jay-Z has got to be doing something right. If the charts are immediate, then wouldn't that make the RIAA/BPI certifications a reflection of that endurance? Every one of his albums has gone at least platinum. Is his music "long-lasting, enduring, catching society's ear in a more whole way"? Between his acne commercials and his TV show, Adam Levine is the personification of corporate rock. He's more like an actor than a rock star. In fact, he's not a rock star at all, he's merely a successful professional musician. Oscar-winner Jared Leto is more of a rock star than Levine could ever hope to be. But if Leto ever tried to pull even a fraction of the chit they did in the 60s, 70s & 80s; he'd be crucified by all the self-anointed moral arbiters on insta-twit.
Oooog - I must be getting pretty old. There are a lot of albums on that 1973 list that look pretty good to me (also a lot that look like dreck).
Did you even read it? Other than Tom Petty; there's only 7 rock compilations. The highest from Queen at #95. Meanwhile we've got new releases from Marilyn Manson (#8), August Burns Red (#19), Liam Gallagher (#30), and the Black Dahlia Murder (#35). None of them are amongst my favorites, but they're there.
Those new forms of pop music have nothing to do with rock. Rock music came from Blues. That's why, we had had bands like Cream, Zep, Beatles, Stones, Purple etc...
So definitions don't change and music doesn't evolve, got it. I love when people play god and think they define everything
Are saying that grunge and Britpop have nothing to do with rock or am I misreading you? You list five British bands and make a blanket statement that rock came from blues. Elvis Presley's first hits were on the country chart and his first number one. All of Jerry Lee Lewis' number one singles were on the country chart. Between Dylan, the Byrds, Neil Young, Eagles, and Tom Petty, there's just as much folk and country in rock as there is blues.
Britpop and Grunge was over 20 years ago and even that stuff was kind of a retrograde thing. What major rock movement has emerged since then? I suppose swing music might also make a comeback (remember the trendy 90s revival?), but it wouldn't make the same kind of impact that it initially did. Also, the Presley-Jackson-Madonna comparison is a spurious one. As long as we have a pop culture, there will be pop stars, but they're not likely to be rock stars.
I don't have much response except I agree with your points- didn't mean to make the switch from albums to songs. I was talking albums. Like someone else said, the singles charts have not always been rock's best friend. I also think you shouldn't give up on looking for the cutting edge. I do a bit of the chart thing like you for rock now just so I know what's going on, but I do also search for that cutting edge. EDIT: And like you, I haven't given up that rock can make its mark again. They'll come a day perhaps when hip hop, pop or country have their over saturation period if you believe that's why rock has declined.
Keep cool man, i'm not trying to impose my point of view to anyone. I'm just saying what i think. We don't agree ? ok, no problem : each is own.
ok well, you know, there are a lot of worthy indie acts out there. No Beatles that I've heard, they are clearly the best that ever was and the best that ever will be, but there are quite a few indie acts on the next eschelon. But.. there has to be a chemical reaction for any of these bands to see the light of day. and that really can't happen. The chemistry provided by the present-day music biz is too based on cloning itself for any truly original talent to gain any foothold. It's 1000x more based on money and appearance and not songs. The internet has failed indie artists, mostly. Can a good one penetrate the glut of **** and get there? No. Popular music ended up being a septic tank.
And he's been around since the late 80s, hardly some hot new cutting edge artist. It's a legacy act with a pre-existing fanbase.
There' no doubt. But, to me, musically, that's not rock, that's all. Call it metal or trash or anything else.
What is a rock movement? What does that mean in 2017? I can cite the over-lapping post-punk and garage-rock revivals or the NWOAHM and you can shoot it down because you qualified your question with the word major. I said in a previous post that I lost touch with the cutting edge years ago. Do we even have regional or national scenes anymore? My point was that I heard before that rock was dead. The 80s was a commercial era not all that different than we have now. Whether it was metal or alt/indie post-punk, all the best rock was underground then. A rising tide lifted all boats; a healthy mainstream allowed for a thriving underground. When the economy tanked in the late 00s, it effected the entire industry - not just rock. We've only seen two Diamond albums in this decade. Is that our Lost Decade economy or more due to focus shifting to the individual song? Maybe both?
A lot of blues musicians felt the same way about the blues-based rock you cherish as you feel about what followed it. And for largely the same reasons, I'd suspect... D.D.
With it's mix of blues, country, folk, gospel and pop, rock & roll was the original Americana. Rock is the ultimate hybrid as it added jazz, classical and (what we now call) world music into the mix. It's the industry that sets the standards, not us. Metal, punk and corporate arena rock stripped away those traditional roots dynamics along time ago. I've always wondered how far metal (for example) can move away from the basic conventions of rock. At what point is it just free jazz and avant-garde that's merely dressed up in leather and whorpse paint?
Well, Britpop and Grunge were fairly significant rock movements for a few years, assorted groups of bands that made an impact on the broader pop culture with recognizable stars and even including a fashion sensibility. I see nothing remotely like that now. We all know that there still rock bands out there performing to paying audiences. There are periodic revivals of garage, post-punk, psychedelia, prog, you name it, continuing right up to the present day, but these are smaller micro-scenes with a niche audience, not mass market sensations. The topic of this thread is basically, can Rock ever again reclaim its old dominance or even anything close to it. The recent evidence isn't promising.
