Was the late 90s post punk revival the last great rock movement?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by humanracer, Jan 6, 2021.

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  1. Evethingandnothing

    Evethingandnothing Forum Resident

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    Devon
    Well that's Britpop out of the equation then, and we're back to......shoegazing?

    Or is it possible that none of these things are a revival but a continuum?
     
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  2. dmiller458

    dmiller458 Forum Resident

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    Midland, Michigan
    Help me out and explain the cultural impact of Nickelback.
     
  3. Evethingandnothing

    Evethingandnothing Forum Resident

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    Devon
    They killed off Grunge, Post Grunge and anything related?
     
  4. dmiller458

    dmiller458 Forum Resident

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    Midland, Michigan
    I thought Creed had already done that.
     
  5. friendofafriend

    friendofafriend Forum Resident

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    South Jordan, UT
    Yes, good point, it is a completely subjective opinion. Of course The New Abnormal is different enough that I'm not surprised some fans might not enjoy it, but I do find it really interesting that someone would like Is This It and not find A Room On Fire to be be just as good as it seems like the main criticism at the time was that it was too similar. I agree it is similar, but as I said above, don't accept that as a criticism, since all I care about are songs and not innovating on sound. I personally think the songs on Room On Fire are all really great, but of course, as you say, that is a completely subjective opinion.
     
  6. Evethingandnothing

    Evethingandnothing Forum Resident

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    Devon
    Then how come Nickelback at all?
     
  7. m3kcomp

    m3kcomp Forum Resident

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    NY, NY
    Both Britpop and the Post-Punk "Revival" were weak rehashes of "great" rock movements. The last semi-great movement in rock music, call is whatever you want, was the various scenes that were happening in the early 90s. I don't really listen to a lot of that stuff, but it was indeed a movement...albeit a fractured one, and not without many problems.

    I guess if you go by record sales Britpop was significant, but what came of it really?

    The Post-Punk revival was nothing of the sort. Post-Punk was music that challenged what had come before and expanded the barriers of what constituted rock music. The "revival" cannibalized the catchy, trendy and most comfortable aspects of that scene and bastardized them to sell records. There was nothing challenging about it at all. An exercise in figuring out how to get people to be ok with listening to "Post-Punk" while shopping at the mall.

    Great? Hardly.

    I'd argue Post-Punk proper was the last great rock movement...and surely the last original one.
     
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  8. Neonbeam

    Neonbeam All Art Was Once Contemporary

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    Planet Earth
    How many of these albums or bands have you actually heard? :whistle:
     
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  9. friendofafriend

    friendofafriend Forum Resident

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    I think the fact that the name post punk revival has the word revival in it doesn't make it a blatant revival. As others have pointed out above, many of the bands lumped in with this movement didn't really even sound that "post punk". I definitely see the movement as real and very significant to me both at the time and still, but the name that got attached to it, like many music genre names, should not necessarily be taken literally.

    I mean, what does "post punk" mean? I know it has a certain actual meaning and there are of course certain bands that are iconically considered to be "post punk", but if you take the literal meaning of that term, it could apply to any music of any genre that was created after the punk movement. Now, I'm not suggesting that we give it that broad of a meaning - I think most people know what it actually means (at least to them), but rather just suggesting that similarly, we don't need to interpret the label "post punk revival" as being literally only a revival or applying only to bands that had a similar sound to a band from the original post punk movement.

    I don't think any band that got lumped in with the "post punk revival" movement was actually attempting to revive anything specifically, but rather just create new music that they enjoyed making. For example, no one should seriously try to argue that Interpol was nothing more than a Joy Division revival band, even though those two bands were often compared. Paul Banks and Ian Curtis definitely each have their own unique lyrical style and point of view, and the bands each created their own unique music.
     
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  10. friendofafriend

    friendofafriend Forum Resident

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    Why does music need to "expand barriers" in order to be great. I'd argue that it is only songwriting and performance that makes music great. Why do we always need to find a new style to be great? There are almost an infinite number of songs that could be written in any style, so you could argue that by always looking only for new styles, you are not getting enough use out of the ones we already have. To me, greatness in music has to do with emotional connection, and that happens based on the feel of the music and the poetry of the words. A new song can be great just by connecting with me emotionally without breaking any new ground stylistically. Every single person is unique and has their own point of view and therefore any music created by a person still feels unique and potentially exciting to me independent of whether it is expanding any barriers of what constitutes a supposed genre of music.
     
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  11. Evethingandnothing

    Evethingandnothing Forum Resident

    Location:
    Devon
    Would you say the same for science?

    How about if we'd stuck with 1920's Jazz. Would you be happy with that?
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2021
  12. Sear

    Sear Dad rocker

    Location:
    Tarragona (Spain)
    I was there. I was 20 something at that time. And IMHO , insist IMHO, those bands sucked, I didn't like em at all.
    Same with fads such as nu metal and weird folk America. The 00s were a dismal time
     
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  13. peskypesky

    peskypesky Forum Resident

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    Satantonio, Texas
    Most people consider the Last Great Rock Movement to be the one during which they were getting laid the most.
     
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  14. Neonbeam

    Neonbeam All Art Was Once Contemporary

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    Are you trying to bring up Disco again? :bdance::bdance:
     
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  15. peskypesky

    peskypesky Forum Resident

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    for me, it was Grunge.

    With a resurgence during the post-punk revival (I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at the time that Interpol, the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and TV on the Radio were hot).

    ahhhhh.....the glory days...
     
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  16. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

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    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    I'd like to say I'm surprised that no one is on board with me about nu-metal, but unfortunately I'm not surprised. :p
     
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  17. Neonbeam

    Neonbeam All Art Was Once Contemporary

    Location:
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    For me it was absolutely relevant, especially since I was writing at the time and interviewed many of these bands. But as pointed out above the bands and styles were so diverse. One needs to be cultural pretty ignorant to pretend that The White Stripes or The Strokes were not significant - because they did change the musical landscape - but for each of these bands you had ten or twenty also-rans. And many bands that might not have been "important" but simply made one - or two - great albums. "Costello Music" by The Fratellis comes to mind. An album I love playing to this very day.
     
  18. Evethingandnothing

    Evethingandnothing Forum Resident

    Location:
    Devon
    It was popular at the time. Was it great? Debatable.
     
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  19. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    I can't see saying that the White Stripes, Strokes, etc. were a "movement" really, though. What would the definition of "movement" be if they were part of a movement? Was it the "Rock bands who were around during the turn of the 21st century" movement? Nothing against the White Stripes, etc.--I like that stuff, but it seems to me like a movement should require (a) people trying to do something different with music, where (b) lots of people are engaging with the same ideas while putting their own individual spin on it, and where (c) there is at least some interaction/camaraderie/etc.--or even rivalry to some extent--between the artists in the movement.
     
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  20. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    I like it (obviously).
     
  21. Evethingandnothing

    Evethingandnothing Forum Resident

    Location:
    Devon
    It was an interesting hybrid of styles that produced some decent stuff, but didn't particularly appeal to me, at least not enough to buy records.

    I guess you have a full collection of Slipknot masks?
     
  22. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    This is an interesting question. Music definitely doesn't need to be ground breaking to be enjoyable--most music isn't reinventing the wheel, of course--but if we're going to dub the post-punk revival as "the last great rock movement", I think that there should be something fresh and new going on, not just a rehash of pre-existing sounds. (To be clear, I'm not judging these bands one way or the other in terms of innovation but rather just speaking to your question here.). I like a lot of music that could be described as neo-psychedelic, including the Elephant 6 label bands that drew a heavy influence from the baroque sound of Brian Wilson circa Smile, but as much as I enjoy this stuff, would I really consider it a great movement? No, it's just interesting to me as a fan of that kind of sound. Somebody else mentioned neo-prog as another contender earlier. I love the old prog bands of the 70s, but I personally find most of the newer stuff to be pretty sterile and derivative, though I know that a lot of fans feel differently. So I think that these kinds of revival movements can be problematic or at least limited, failing to move the sound further in compelling new ways, though as you pointed out previously, it may be a bit of a misnomer in the case of a lot of the bands that we're discussing here. As I said before, I'm not convinced that we're really talking about a bonafide "movement" here, but rather a loose assortment of bands that were broadly influenced by the post-punk sound to one extent or another. When it comes down to it, most of the bold new innovations in rock naturally happened in the first two or three decades of its lifespan because the frontiers were still wide open then, but as the years roll on, it does get harder to reinvent things in exciting ways that haven't been tried before. So the question becomes, can you teach the old rock hound dog new tricks, hence the perennial discussions about the supposed death of rock around here.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2021
  23. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

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    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    haha, no. My favorite nu-metal band, by the way, is (hed) pe.
     
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  24. m3kcomp

    m3kcomp Forum Resident

    Location:
    NY, NY
    This is perfect, as it was always the writers screaming about how important The Strokes were, not the people in the trenches. I was there too. A lot of people were. I didn't know a soul listening to the Strokes or buying their records. If anything they didn't change the landscape, they killed it.

    The Velvet Underground were significant. The Ramones were significant. On and on. The Strokes aren't significant because writers who were searching for the next big thing tried to tell us so. It just wasn't the case, man. I got my bagels on the weekend in the same places the people in a lot of those bands did...the mornings after all of us were at shows. No one was talking about the Strokes except to laugh about what a sham it was. It's good to see that you guys are still trying to carry a torch that you lit yourselves, points for sticking to your guns.

    The culmination of this "significant change of the musical landscape" was a headlining slot at Little Steven's Underground Garage festival in 2004 where you could almost smell the death in the air as it became crystal clear NYC (and the world) had been sold a bad bill of goods. The writers can wax poetic about what took place during those years and how important it was all they want...it's not true.

    Some really good records came out of those years, for sure. Significant records or bands that changed the musical landscape? Nah. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was selling her belongings off of sheets on Bedford Avenue while the writers were trying to deify a bunch of rich kids stealing other people's ideas. A sham.
     
    Last edited: Jan 8, 2021
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  25. patient_ot

    patient_ot Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    As a huge fan of late 70s/early 80s post punk, most of these newer bands do nothing for me. Tried to get into Fontaines and wasn't into them at all - maybe I just heard them in a bad mood or something. I saw Proto live a few years ago and they were very dull and boring and sounded awful generally.
     
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