Is there even an audience for new rock anymore?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Scott S., Jan 26, 2017.

  1. Mike Campbell

    Mike Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota, USA
    An era that came, and is slowly drifting away....Glad I was here for it...
     
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  2. johnny 99

    johnny 99 Down On Main Street

    Location:
    Toronto
    Jack White (41) (The White Stripes) and Josh Homme (43) (Queens Of the Stone Age) are two of the smartest guys in Rock music in the last 20 years or so.
    As far as I'm concerned, other than those two guys, there's no one else doing any interesting Rock music now who's under the age of 45.
    "New" Rock music by young artists got damn dull after Kurt Cobain died in 1994 and Jeff Buckley died in 1997.
    Cobain was the last real "great" Rock star.

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Kids where I live are almost exclusively into Hip Hop; that's their "Rock" music.
    Let's face it, since 1954 every single facet of the "rock" genre has been explored and done already. There's nothing "new" left to do. Just because some new weird-sounding silly stuff by Tuneyards and Bon Iver seem to make the critics salivate, that doesn't mean I'm buying into it; that's not Rock to me anyway. Same goes with all that newer bearded hipster "indie folk" nonsense like "Mumford & Sons" and their ilk (that stuff is awful)...


    At least we have a lot of the great veteran/legacy artists out there still doing great work.

    Iggy Pop made one of the best albums of last year.
     
    Last edited: Jan 26, 2017
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  3. Laibach

    Laibach Forum Resident

    there's an audience for everything.
     
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  4. Mike Campbell

    Mike Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota, USA
    Pablum for the masses.
     
  5. bluesky

    bluesky Senior Member

    Location:
    south florida, usa
    What's rock?
     
  6. zen

    zen Senior Member

    Another term for rock 'n' roll...
    or the solid mineral material forming part of the surface of the earth and other similar planets, exposed on the surface or underlying the soil or oceans.
     
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  7. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    That's what elite critics often said about rock back in the day.
     
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  8. Ted Dinard

    Ted Dinard Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston suburb
    I listen to XMU on Sirius and enjoy the new bands. Admittedly that station emphasizes the "indie" part of "indie rock," not the "rock" part. Still they play driving guitar music too.

    So a band like Car Seat Headrest, or the Lemon Twigs sound OK to me--I enjoy them. And yes, you could say they're "derivative," I suppose--maybe the former remind us of Archers of Loaf or some other North Carolina 90s band, but...

    I'm starting to wonder, who cares if something's derivative? As long as the bands are passionate and sincere, and sing about life as they experience it, who cares if they're contributing to the March of Progress or pushing the World Spirit to a new plane? They sound like themselves, that's enough. Nobody in the past sounds quite like Car Seat Headrest. I don't love them, but they're OK by me.

    There's a newish pop-punk band called Martha from north east England. Yes, they're in that pop punk idiom and don't really stray from it (they're more Buzzcocks pop punk than Blink 182, thank God).

    Yet they sound like themselves. They have their own sensibility. That's enough for me: I love listening to them. They're new, fun, smart, and fresh, and they're young kids. That's all rock really needs. I wish we'd drop the critical language of "derivative" etc. like we were plotting the succession of styles of Western Art. It's boring and unrealistic.

    I always liked bands that got back to the spirit of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis anyway, not the ones who felt they had to "surpass" the Beatles, whom I don't even like much.
     
  9. Sprocket Henry

    Sprocket Henry Forum Resident

    A perfect example of reaching middle age, passing through the looking glass and never returning. Depp nowadays looks like Marlon Brando on a bad psychedelic fugue.
     
  10. WilliamPoe3

    WilliamPoe3 Active Member

    Location:
    Bay Area
    I think the labels indie and alternative killed rock to be honest. There are a ton of "indie" bands that aren't even independent. I have heard a lot of good indie bands that sound similar to 60's stuff and 70's soul/funk but I think that label just kills off mass appeal. Why not just call it rock like they did back in the day? For so many years I was entirely dismissive the indie/alternative because I thought it was just grunge or "quirky" soft rock. I also think that too many modern bands just don't put in the effort. You have to be persistent, put out records every year and tour your butt off. The Black keys were perhaps the last big rock band, certainly of this decade and they've been together for over a decade.
     
  11. Scott S.

    Scott S. lead singer for the best indie band on earth Thread Starter

    Location:
    Walmartville PA
    You missed the rest of the bands I named. A listener called us the best American band so why not include us. We rock.
     
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  12. Scott S.

    Scott S. lead singer for the best indie band on earth Thread Starter

    Location:
    Walmartville PA
    Sid said there isn't a lot of demand, that's what I was responding to.
     
  13. Mike Campbell

    Mike Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota, USA
    yup
     
  14. wolfram

    wolfram Slave to the rhythm

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    There's more to music than Rock.

    A lot more, actually.
     
  15. Synthfreek

    Synthfreek I’m a ray of sunshine & bastion of positivity

    Ice Cream and Sunscreen is a Top 10 song of the year for me...so damn catchy.

     
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  16. Ted Dinard

    Ted Dinard Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston suburb
    Me too. And I love their first record Courting Strong (2014) also.

    When Naomi sings "Maureen--school is totally bor-ing" in her Northern accent, I know I'm hearing something that comes out of her experience and it's just great:

     
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  17. RichC

    RichC Forum Resident

    Location:
    Charlotte, NC
    I love the Stones but it's not like their "compositional talent" is at a once-in-a-century level. I can't think of a single Jagger/Richards song with more than six chords total.

    The Beethoven/Bach/Mozart comparison is apt... Because most musical geniuses don't gravitate towards classical music anymore, and haven't for a few centuries. It's why we have the Beatles catalog rather than hour-long symphonies written by Lennon and McCartney. There's probably still genius music left to be written... It just won't be in the field of rock.
    (Maybe hip-hop? Maybe musical theater? Maybe a new musical hybrid altogether?)
     
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  18. dmiller458

    dmiller458 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Midland, Michigan
    Why would it need more than six?
     
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  19. Ted Dinard

    Ted Dinard Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston suburb
    We just don't know.

    If somebody told me a couple of years ago that the biggest musical force of our time would be a Broadway hip-hop biography of Alexander Hamilton, I'd have looked at them like they were bonkers.
     
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  20. Mike Campbell

    Mike Campbell Forum Resident

    Location:
    Minnesota, USA
    Certainly there is. There is great and horrible in every genre...
     
  21. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    But I think that most of the demand you were getting at with that Desert Trip concert was for the glory days of yore, not really for new rock.
     
  22. dmiller458

    dmiller458 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Midland, Michigan
    As long as bands are still making songs like this, rock will be okay...
     
  23. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    It's been a whole two weeks since the last time I answered this question, so I'll just repeat it here:

    Mainstream / Top 40? I'd say 1994.

    Great artists / albums regardless of popularity? 2016.
     
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  24. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    Quit living in the past, old man! :winkgrin:
     
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  25. BroJB

    BroJB Large Marge sent me.

    Location:
    New Orleans
    Spent last night watching the amazing Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls play to an nearly full Fillmore Auditorium in Denver (3700 capacity). I saw him 7 years ago in a bar with 50 other people.

    I expect his next turn in Denver will see him playing 5000 seaters. And who knows after tat.

    It was a straight up rock and roll show, gloriously fun and filled with energy -- and lots of young people.

    So yeah, you can succeed playing rock but you'd better a> be really freaking good and b> be willing to work your ass off, as Turner has.
     

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