Head of A&M's A&R: "Don't give us any more [rock] bands"

I've been trying to think of a rock album released in the past twelve months that has gone platinum, but I can't come up with one.

Top 40 radio unfortunately is playing virtually no rock music these days. Of the top 40 songs currently on Billboard's Rock Songs chart not a single one is also on the Mainstream Top 40 chart.

 

Music genres have become EXTREMELY segmented. Back in the days of classic oldies you had Pop, Rock, Folk, Classical, country, Jazz and Easy listening. That was it for the most part the whole time I grew up also. Now there are like 50 genres of music that not only overlap but no one could predict Rap, disco, Punk, new wave, electronica, Trip hop, alternative rock, Female alternative or solo acts being big, or any of the miriads of stuff we have now.

No single group can sell millions upon millions as they did in the olden days of the 60s and 70s ever again. Back then there were mabye 5-10 really big groups and NOT hundreds or thousands of lesser known groups. Maybe a hundred total that most people actually knew or bought. Today there are no kings or rock or pop but instead maybe 50 recognizable names and thousands of somewhat known music groups of all genres. The internet, and so on made the music world splinter into TONS of barely known groups that have no real mainstream name, but still have thousands of fans. Its not the olden days anymore....

 

And the Carter Family is responsible for half of 'em

It's so strange seeing folks freak out—Rock 'n' Roll Will Never Die!!! Well, sure, of course it will die, it's no more exempt from the winds of change than the Ars Nova or the Rococo or the Belle Époque. I think it was Robbie Robertson who said that there's only so many good three-chord songs in 4/4 time that can be written.

Meanwhile, we're all awash in new music, if we only know where to look.

 

Kids and young people dont have the fan worship we had for big groups such as Beatles, Floyd, Zep, black sabbath, Cream and so on. They just listen to whatever they are in the mood for at the moment, no whole album plays through, but instead they jump and skip tracks and groups with no notice. There are no kings of music today, in fact Tori Amos was the last singer I remember that actually INSPIRED adolation and caring the way the old classic rock groups did. Fans actually bought all her stuff and went to many concerts and such. But that was back in the early to mid 90s.

 

I have finally found a new era of music that really excites me, and it resides in the indies. I love what I'm hearing from acts like Arcade Fire, Blitzen Trapper, MGMT, New Pornographers, Wilco...on and on and on with bands that you just don't hear on mainstream radio.

Let mainstream radio catch up later...I gave up on mainstream radio in the early 80's. Why worry about it? Support the music you appreciate. Ideally, buy it... and maybe we'll hear more of it as a result.

The old days are gone. Mainstream radio is the wrong place to look for great tunes...shouldn't even bother with it.

 

Thanks, Grunge rock.

 

Theres still a huge market for rock music, no matter what people are inferring from some article or quote out of context. These executive bloated archaic music corporations are looking for artists that can inject a quick couple of million to their concern. It isn't about music. Skrew 'em.

There's a pot of at least forty-five years of 'rock' music to choose from now. New rock bands are going to have it tougher. They have to compete with all those dinosaur bands for the rock fans money. Younger music fans are buying as much classic rock stuff ('60's-'80's) as they are newer acts (newer meaning rock in the last 10-15 years).

Maybe my city is an anomaly but when I see 15 year old girls in a store buying Crosby Stills and Nash and 15 year old guys buying Blue Cheer CDs I can't help but think there's a big market flying under the corporations money radar.

 

The electro-revival took place between 1998-2004 with many succesful commercial acts as Tiga, Zombie Nation, Felix Da Housecat, Miss Kittin, The Hacker, Alter Ego,...

Now there aren't many "electro tracks" in the charts at the moment. But Boys Noize and Dr. Lektroluv are still popular (at every festival). These days I see more and more people discovering tech-house, which i a good thing IMO (as long as Tiesto, Guetta and Black Eyed Peas stay away). House is also becoming more and more popular again.

There was a whole new wave-revival afterwards. Then there was the whole neo soul (Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Jamie Lidell), Popjazz (Lady Linn), Folk (Fleet Foxes) and worldmusic (Beirut, Yael Naim) revival that was dominating the charts.

btw don't call Black Eyed Peas or that Frenchman David Guetta Electro. That's commercial dance music. Don't judge if you don't know what "electro", "tech house", "minimal", "progressive house" is.

The major label guys in America are living on another planet, if you'll ask me.

btw there's a loads of good electronic music, but Americans never had a clue because everything was "controlled" for them by the Major Labels.

 

Sure, and if that's the only kind of music you like, you might find a few bands these days that will please you, otherwise there's always the old records. There are other forms of music, and other permutations of pop/rock/r&b/country to explore, besides mainstream pop/rock. The public's tastes keep moving on.

This dinosaur label guy is just chasing the trends. Some people set trends, others follow.

And that's what a lot of bands these days do. Rock isn't the cultural force it was years ago. The Black Keys are selling out venues, but small ones. It's not what the general public values anymore.

 

What are you talking about. Grunge was the last time rock really was both exciting and commercially dominant. Just because movements since then never quite panned out (remember all the monosyllabic pseudo-punk groups that were supposed to be the next big thing? or EMO, or Nu-metal)?

But, as Kevintomb noted, the fact that these didn't quite pan out has more to do with seismic changes in the industry than the quality of the music.

 

Load of crap, IMHO. Total generalization. Look over at the Arcade Fire thread and see how indie bands are building a fan base as intense and dedicated as any band in the 'golden age'. Their just one of countless examples.

There are still plenty of big music fans out there, the difference is it's all fragmented. There is really no 'mass media' anymore, so there will never be huge rock stars like in the Zep days. For better and for worse.

dan c

 

That's right, and they are music fans, not just ClassicRock or MusicMadeBackInOnlyOneEra fans.

 

Electronic music is/was just a niche market here, its never had the more mainstream appeal like has occurred in Europe. There has always been a 'clued-in' underground scene here too (in addition to whatever the major labels were supposedly hawking). A lot of DJ's and artists flit back & forth between the continents. Its not like there's only a clueless US electronic scene.

 

Best selling compilation cd at the moment: 25 Years Pukkelpop Festival

I was yesterday at a popular "multimedia shopping centre" shop for 30 minutes. The Arcade Fire album is selling like crazy!

Broken Glass Heroes, Arcade Fire, Amy MacDonald, The National, Avi Buffalo... got many airplay, positive reviews,...

Editors is already 2 weeks at number 4 in Official Singles Charts. Amatorski is still holding on after more than 10 weeks. All Florence & The Machine-singles reached the charts, album is top 5 again in Belgium, number 1 in UK a few weeks ago.



The kind of mainstream dancemusic that at the moment is very popular in commercial charts is:

Yolanda B Cool & D Cup (We No Speak Americano) (sample Renato Carasone - 1956): European summerhit of 2010

Grammophondzie (Why Don't You) (sample PEGGY LEE 1948): One of 2010's most played records at radio



Back Catalogue Singles Sales Chart (August 31th 2010)

01 Cranberries "Zombie"
02 Coldplay "Viva La Vida"
03 Daan "Swedish Designer Drugs"
04 Faithless "God Is A DJ"
05 Daan "The Player"
06 Editors "An End Has A Start"
07 Amy MacDonald "This Is The Life"
08 Snow Patrol "Chasing Cars"
09 Radiohead "Creep"
10 Laurent Wolf "No Stress"
11 Michael Jackson "Beat It"
12 Jason Mraz "I'm Yours"
13 Coldplay "Clocks"
14 Black Eyed Peas "Pump It"
15 M.I.A. "Paper Planes"
16 Rage Against The Machine "Killing In The Name Of"
17 Metallica "Nothing Else Matters"
18 Noir Désir "Le Vent Nous Portera"
19 Faithless "Insomnia"
20 U2 "Beautiful Day"
21 Green Day "Basket Case"
22 Rammstein "Sonne"
23 Shakira "Whenever Wherever"
24 Michael Jackson "Billie Jean"
25 Queens Of The Stone Age "Make It Wit Chu"

And don't forget that Belgium is a dance minded-country (where it all started for electro, next too Germany)

 

I think thats just what I just said.....


Music is fragmented and its all smaller groups.
There arent huge groups anymore etc.......I said kids like groups that are all over the place etc. NOT huge groups such as the beatles etc.....How is it a "load of crap" as you so nicely put it, if you are saying the same thing I said....or did you misunderstand what I meant...

 

So majors go for the fast buck. Nothing new. It's just that they somehow keep on losing money. And there are literally hundreds of small and big indie labels that put our great rock, punk and metal albums out on a monthly basis.

The basis question is: who needs these majors anyway?

 

I 'm glad that these artists are doing well over there. Your country has had a fantastic music scene for a few decades now. You just don't want to know most of the numbers of the album sales of the bands you mention. They are bad in Holland. I am sure they are worse in Belgium.

 

Sales are bad everywhere these days. And off course it's a small market: Belgium: 10 million people, Holland: 14 million.

But let it be an example for the Americans to be more open minded to different genres

Some European artists deserve it more to be popular than some mediocre US artists. In Holland for instance Anouk. She's such an amazing artist. And everybody knows her: My 14 year old cousin, me, my parents, my friends, my collegues,...

Different generations appreciate "new good music" in Europe.

In America 40+ don't even try to search for good new music. For them: all new music = bad.

 

Imagine this scenario......John Lennon turns to Paul McCartney and says "What do you think of this lyric, Paul.....'I did 'it all for the nookie, the nookie, the nookie and you can take that cookie and stick it up your a$$' "

Paul then says, "Must be good drugs, then, eh John?"

Evan

 

LOL! ya know, sometimes it takes reading Slim Shady's lyrics to really understand them. Once you do, you see just how talented and funny he is. He's the real deal, IMO. And I don't even like rap that much.

 

Huh? I was talking about them in relation to popular music, not electropop. The electropop thing was mostly incidental, as a way to show that the majors don't care about rock any more (hence the quote in the thread title). I know a lot about electronic music, although my tastes are generally more in the "IDM" or downtempo (trip hop/dubstep/ambient) side of things.

There is some truth to that, but I think the way you present it is misleading. These past "trends", like punk, grunge, and new wave, had organic beginnings that the labels pounced on and then made a "trend" out of. What are the organic beginnings of things like the boy bands or some of the other dreck on the radio? It has become a true industry, where trends are manufactured from the top down. Perhaps it was inevitable... Also, the whole "kids these days" argument is a lazy one, very relativistic. Yes, people often decry change. That doesn't mean they can't have a point or that there aren't objective changes happening in music. In other words, not all "trends" are equal.

(Oh, and I agree that the best stuff isn't on the radio any longer. In fact, the worse pop radio has gotten, the more I seem to like the rest of the stuff being released, in a way: my musical preference is for the 80s onward.)

 

Very true.

You make too many sweeping generalizations about people here.

 

Interesting

I think, since the dawn of MTV, music has become pregressivly less musical and more visual.

 

It was the last time, and what caused it to end. Rock went back to chords and never recovered. Where could it have gone after that. What if Punk had come in and there was never anything after that. No Van Halen, no Iron Maiden, no Dio, no Ozzy, no 80s metal, no great guitar players, nothing. Punk would have been the end. I am not saying it was on purpose, but Grunge was the end. I hope everyone is happy.

 

Sorry, didn't mean to be rude...I typed that in a hurry. (I also used the wrong 'their'...should be 'they're'. Oof!)

I originally took your post to say basically 'kids these days don't care about bands', and I can't disagree more. Here's what I was reacting to in your earlier post:

I just don't agree with that. I do believe younger audiences have the same passionate 'fan worship' boomers and Xers had in the past, it's just that the market is totally different now. Smaller groups of fans, but lots of 'em. I missed the 'big groups' in your post so I assumed it was the kind of generalization that is too common here. Sorry about that, I apologize.

dan c