What happened to rock music?

Discussion in 'Music and Recordings' started by rhythmdevils, Sep 5, 2020.

  1. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    The 2000’s and the early 2010’s were full of new original rock bands that were seriously good. I remember a thread by the same name on changstar 10 years ago or do and I wanted to respond that it was still very much alive but just evolved.

    bands like

    • The National
    • The Walkmen
    • Grizzly Bear
    • Tame Impala
    • Low - The Great Destroyer
    • Arcade Fire before they completely lost their compass and forgot how to write songs much less rock songs after they won the Grammy for Suburbs. Their 2 new albums are just WTF
    • Fleet Foxes
    • Radiohead still going strong
    • Elbow
    • Mumford snd Sons (who turned into a rock band)
    • The Boxer Rebellion (Still going strong)
    • Beach House
    • Mono
    • Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes (who kind of fell apart)
    • The Antlers
    • Mac DeMarco (still going strong)
    • Beirut
    I could keep going. Not all are strictly rock but you get the idea.

    I’ve been away from music since about 2013 and when I was able to get back to it, I was expecting the same rate of new bands coming out with interesting rock music. But aside from metal, the only band I can think of is The War on Drugs. Which is awesome. But where’s the rest? Am I missing a whole bunch of bands, or has the music scene changed?

    most of what I’m finding is jangly soulless indie that’s full of hooks and nothing else. Seems like their inspiration was the bands above and not the history of rock music.
     
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  2. Rockwell

    Rockwell Friend

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    My favorite pure rock band of the last ~20 years or so is Clutch. They've never received a lot of mainstream attention but they're amazingly consistent, and they rock.

     
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  3. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    Man. I, too, used to listen to a bunch of those bands and more. Wilco, The Sea and Cake, Modest Mouse, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Interpol, The Mercury Program, The Helio Sequence, Broken Social Scene, The Secret Machines, Franz Ferdinand, and on and on. I know a lot of the good "indie" rock bands mentioned ran into internal strife/external strife, and some of 'em have stopped making the same kind of music altogether. A bunch are still making music of varying interest to me. I feel like a lot of them "got old" and started trying to write music that spoke to their experiences moving into and through middle age. Maybe it's hard to make "Dad Rock" that still captures the edgy, novel sounds a lot of the above bands were known for a decade or 2 decades ago. I mean, take The National, for example. They started out playing like 200+ live shows a year, and the only way you heard them was hearing them open for some other "bigger" band at a live show. Now, their songs get used during the weepy parts in movies about 40-somethings whose lives are coming apart at the seams. Not particularly Rockin' music...

    It's also different (at least for me) how I find new music. I used to practically live on the KEXP Seattle webstream and would find SO MUCH new good music through their DJs. That, and when Pitchfork was still kind of fresh they were (and I guess still are) a good source. Then, I kinda mostly used "customers also bought..." recommendations on iTunes. Now, although I listen to weirdo-bloop-bleep music mostly these days, Roon's recommendation engine is absolutely killing it. Anyhow, I'm rambling now, so I'll shutup and keep watching this thread.
     
  4. Syzygy

    Syzygy Friend

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    I've been wondering the same thing since 1985 about all the good music and bands of the 70's.

    It still hasn't come back around...
     
  5. Ringingears

    Ringingears Honorary BFF

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    10 years since Changstar? Wow! I guess we’ve all grown up. |\/|
     
  6. edd

    edd Almost "Made"

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    Yea... It used to be that I listened to a lot of music that Pitchfork seemed to also favor many years ago, but not so much now.

    Lately, the female-fronted bands/artists have been doing it for me.

    Off the top of my head, Car Seat Headrest (Sober to Death) are the only other somewhat more recent band that's caught my ear.... and some bands who have been doing it for a long time are still putting out quality albums (NIN, Spoon, Pedro the Lion, Cat Power)... but yes, fewer newer bands these days get my attention.... but I don't know if it's just because I'm getting older; most folks I know tend to just listen to stuff they loved in high school/college (if not, whatever's popular on the radio).
     
  7. robot zombie

    robot zombie Friend

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    Been wondering this, too. I wanna say it's not dead because I feel like every now and then something really good/big comes around. But I can't remember and that says something too!

    I think it's pretty simple. People aren't as interested anymore... namely, young audiences. They drive everything, you know? They determine what is cool/in, they go to the shows, they propagate stuff. They define the culture. And these days they mostly want hip-hop, pop, and EDM. If labels can't find a way to sell something to the younger crowds, it's basically dead.

    I feel like I might've been in the crowd for the last wave of truly [globally] big, awesome, rock bands. After the grunge lull it felt like there was a resurgence up into the mid-2000's. Not quite like before, but there were bands everybody loved, regardless of what else they were into. Even then, trap music was taking hold big time. But at least you could still go and see big bands playing new guitar-driven music that was actually good. No more since then. It doesn't get the same love and respect it used to on the main stages.

    For me, it's neither here nor there. I grew up on classic rock and went up through the eras, so it has a special place for me. Everything from the late 50s up to the '00s. Every ebb and flow. I've been playing guitar for two thirds of my life. So a part of me always wants to stand up for it.

    But I think it met the same fate as anything that gets that big. It has its prime period and then people just sort of run out of new stuff to do and music itself gets burned out to the whole affair. It just becomes more of the same, defeating the purpose. The same thing will one day happen to the stuff that pushed it off of the charts. Which makes me wonder if maybe after enough time has passed, it can make a comeback.

    Maybe it's better to say rock isn't dead - just dormant... a sleeping giant.

    Right now, it just isn't as relevant to people. But one day it might be just what people need to hear, perhaps drawing off of some of the stuff that's popular now and turning it into something more suitable for rock-loving ears... or maybe even something completely different and exciting.

    Until, then, it remains kind of a niche thing. We have no 'greats' in the original sense, but there is a whole cropping of 'goods' on top of the sea of mediocre. It's kind of hard to recommend stuff because I think bands in those spaces have learned to just do what they want to do for smaller audiences who really appreciate that thing. None of it has that mainstream appeal. It's no longer worth doing for fame and recognition. That's not all bad. There's a bit more freedom in it, which might one day birth the next big thing in rock... something people couldn't imagine right now. But at the right time... when people are a little more bored of the wonderbread laptop music... maybe something will happen. But it won't ever be like before. It never is. It'll be something nobody expects.

    There is still a lot of interest in making that sort of music, and people are still learning the instruments. It's just gone underground now. A lot of the good music is like that... because lets face it, the mainstream the industry now presents is mostly geared towards kids who don't yet have a barometer for when they're being fed crap. Why write a song when you can just make one? With the tech these days, you can go into the studio with some lyrics and ideas, and come out with an album that will sell by the end of the week. You don't even really need the studio.

    But even that stuff has limited appeal. It can't last forever. I've said it before... underground is sort of winning out over mainstream. You just can't see it because in mainstream, a few artists get ridiculously elevated, while in the underground there's a little something for everyone. There's so much more music to go around that everybody spreads-out across the sea individually, so artists never really 'blow up' even if the scenes as a whole are healthy. Sometimes, I think that's actually perfectly fine. You wind up with more artists just kinda doing what they want to do, because going for mass appeal isn't worth it anymore. It also means that almost any person can dig around and find some semi-unheard-of band that will blow their minds. Just never at center stage.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2020
  8. Ringingears

    Ringingears Honorary BFF

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    I retired from teaching a little over a year ago. I taught high school for 33 years. The last few years my students were listening to classic rock. A lot of them. When I asked them why they said most of the stuff that’s coming out today is crappy and they don’t like it. Not sure which kids are buying music, but at least my students weren’t that interested. But when I put on classic rock from when I was a kid they loved it. Always bugged me to turn it on during labs!
     
  9. dasman66

    dasman66 Self proclaimed lazy ass - friend

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    My kids finished high school a couple years ago and, while neither of them care for rock, more than half of the school was listening to Led Zepplin, Ozzy, NIN, etc. I think it really comes down to kids today feel completely comfortable listening to whatever they want. My daughter likes classical and jazz (especially the old male crooners) and my son likes brass bands, marching band music, etc. No one made fun of them, everyone accepted everyone else's tastes.

    It was refreshing and completely unlike when I grew up.

    -----Edit------
    Half the school is overstating it. It was probably 30% Rock, 30% country, 30% Rap/Pop/EDM and 10% other. It was just surprising walking thru the halls after class and hearing some of the bands I grew up on.
     
  10. penguins

    penguins Friend, formerly known as fp627

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    What robot said - not enough young listeners. I wonder why 15-25 don't listen to as much rock these days though. I don't get much out of probably 70% of modern hip-hop, EDM / electronic, or pop that I've heard.

    Aside from "normal" stuff, I wonder if it has to do with society at large:
    Hip-hop, EDM, and pop are being pushed and promoted more because it's easier to produce, record, make etc. (everything is more and more commercialized and commiditized now with much more emphasis on bottom line)
    It will sound good w/o good equipment (current generation of <25 is more relatively poor than the previous several <25 generations). Bluntly put I wouldn't like a lot of the music I like nearly as much if I only heard it on a not great / cheap system.
    It doesn't require lots of instruments (also $$).

    One other speculative topic/item would be that the few teachers I do know say kids now are a lot harder to teach than ever and generally don't really work together very well anymore... this would not be conducive to the formation of students making music together and forming rock bands. Very conducive to creative people forming a 1 man show though.

    Or maybe it's tin foil hat time and they need to produce that devil's music to degenerate and degrade society... because rock music never got labeled as such rite?????
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2020
  11. crazychile

    crazychile Eastern Iowa's Spiciest Pepper

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    My daughter who is a senior at University, likes a lot of 70's and 80's stuff. A month or two ago I asked her how she came to get into the music of my childhood and it came down to movie soundtracks. She grew up with iPods, not FM radio, and movie soundtracks from Guardians of the Galaxy, Baby Driver, etc got her excited about "the oldies".
     
  12. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    Say that again :punk:

     
  13. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    There’s lots of rock music coming out but it’s just so shallow and happy and jingley. Even the psychedelic rock movement is almost entirely full of music that’s just way too happy. Good music has to have at least an element of sorrow to it. Think of all the good rock bands in history, they all have an element of sadness. Especially the greats. Pink Floyd, Lef Zeppelin, The Velvet Underground, The Grateful Dead, etc. And the great rock bands of the 2000-2013-ish are the same. Look at the list I posted in the beginning of this thread. All have an element of sadness to them.

    it really comes down to depth. Real life isn’t happy. It’s sad as well and more often sad than happy. Honest music that has depth where the artists are digging deep and really expressing something genuine has an element of sadness to it.

    Most of the rock music I’ve found over the last 7 years or so the artists just aren’t reaching deep and expressing something honest. It’s like they’re just making music for the sake of it.

    music is supposed to be art and express a truth about human experience. Not just a bunch of regurgitated hooks and finger exercises.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2020
  14. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

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    I'm not much of a rock aficionado, but what you said resonated with me in regard to movies. I think the trend in the last 10 years or so has shifted to streaming, and cheap looking/feeling productions with no name casts. Movie stars are pretty much dead, and can't sell movies on their name alone like they could 20 or 30 years ago. So the popular stuff becomes corporatized, huge $200M budget blockbusters that must please every single person, and as a result feels bland and uninspired, while everything else gets shoved down into much lower budgets and put on streaming. Alot of these cheaper movies have potential, just not the budget to realize the filmmaker's vision, so you end up with alot of half baked movies that feel like there's something missing. 30 years ago these kinds of movies had $50M budgets and got a major theatrical release, and felt full realized. Today they stretch what they can of maybe $5M-$15M (some much cheaper) and the scope and grandeur of the large production that gives a movie more emotional impact and visual power just isn't there. It's rushed, cheap and underdeveloped.

    I blame alot of the blandness on the "netflix aesthetic"... ever notice how most netflix originals or movies aspiring to end up on that platform feel and look the same or similar? That's not an accident. Netflix literally uses an algorithm that monitors their customers' viewing habits... when they pause, when they fast forward, when they turn it off to watch something else, etc. They use this data to inform future productions to avoid these interruptions. The problem with this is that the movies begin to conform to the algorithm and start to look and feel the same. Netflix even demands filmmakers only use specific types of cameras that fit the company's aesthetic.

    Music is probably going through the same downward spiral, with all the interesting stuff that was once done in rock being replaced by cheaper, more modern influenced music for the social media generation... who don't seem to care alot of about the quality of production, since they're listening on ipods, or watching on laptops. Music also has to now compete with all the other forms of content that fight for a person's attention... social media, youtube, video games, etc.... so these songs have to grab people's attention in the most base, primordial, crass way possible. It's the music equivalent of a pop up ad.
     
  15. Skyline

    Skyline Double-blindly done with this hobby

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    You all are just old and cranky.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  16. Ringingears

    Ringingears Honorary BFF

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    In my experience and everyone’s is different, when I started teaching in the mid-80’s kids were way harder to teach. I had students come in after lunch so stoned that some fell out of their chairs. Most would fall asleep sitting up. It was rough. The last ten years or so where much easier. Maybe it was the years of experience, but my students are/were much more accepting of others. And easier to teach. It probably depends a lot on school and District leadership too.

    Gotta say I retired just in time. My friends are telling me this remote learning is brutal. Long long days.

    Long live rock!
     
  17. haywood

    haywood Friend

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    There are still lots of rock bands but you don’t hear them as much because it’s not as popular. There are a lot of reasons for that but think about how much listening you did to the music your parents liked.
     
  18. k4rstar

    k4rstar Britney fan club president

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    ^ what he said

    I stopped listening to rock FM because every time I turned it on it was either Greta van Fleet or Glorious Sons and I felt a sudden urge to veer my vehicle off the road into a ditch

    I only listen to classical in the car now and all murderous urges are gone :)

    I would be upset about it but there is an infinite wealth of music from before I was born, more than I can experience in my lifetime. it's not worth it to dig through today's garbage to try to find something worth listening to. I think most aficionados feel the same and so the only consumers of todays popular music are the zombies who will buy anything with aesthetics they identify with on a surface level
     
  19. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    I don’t agree. All those distractions have been around for decades. Since the 70’s or 80’s. It doesn’t explain the rise of so much good music in the 2000-2013 era and then the complete dying off of that movement.
     
  20. Tchoupitoulas

    Tchoupitoulas Friend

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    It’s been said for a while now that albums as coherent, unified musical forms are a thing of the past. I’d go further: there are barely any alternative/indie rock bands from the past decade that I’d be excited to follow for any length of time (excluding those listed above); I’d be hard pressed to find even half a dozen songs by many of them that I really like. We’re in the age of the “greatest hits” EP.

    That said, and more optimistically, I’ve got more faith in the direction of rock music when thinking of musical trends and less in terms of individual bands’ output. There has been some great stuff released and a few flashes of brilliance. Here are some favorites examples from some of the main trends I’ve seen (ten favorite tracks in bold):

    The early 10s was a great moment for lo-fi/garage and punk rock, a good deal of it in the Bay Area and CA more broadly. A few I’d recommend are
    • Thee Oh Sees: Contraption/Soul Desert, The Dream, Corrupted Coffin, Toe Cutter - Thumb Buster, Web, Sticky Hulks, and Henchlock
    • The Blind Shake: Dots in the Fog, Breakfast of Failures, A Clock, A Window, A Pyramid
    • Ty Segall (ok, this guy’s output is prodigious, so he gets a great hits album): You Make The Sun Fry, My Head Explodes, Tall Man Skinny Lady, Feel, Girlfriend, My Sunshine, Thank God for Sinners, Inside Your Heart, She, Every 1's A Winner
    As @edd notes, perhaps the most promising trend, one that’s still going strong, has been the rise of a great number of female-fronted, or predominantly female indie bands, Beach House having been pioneering here. I’d suggest checking out:
    • Big Thief: Not, Jenni, Real Love, Mythological Beauty, Those Girls
    • Sorry: Lies, Twinkle, Wished
    • Melody’s Echo Chamber: You Won't Be Missing That Part of Me, Endless Shore, Some Time Alone, Alone
    • Khruangbin: A Calf Born in Winter, Time (You and I), White Gloves
    • Still Corners: Cuckoo, Endless Summer, Heart of Fools, We Killed the Moonlight, Strange Pleasures, Dreamhorse, The White Season
    • Sorry: Lies, Twinkle, Wished (very 90s one-word track titles)
    • Porridge Radio: Sweet, Don't Ask Me Twice, Eugh
    • Mint Field: Ojos En El Carro, Ciudad Satélite, Párpados Morados
    • Pip Blom: Come Hom, Ruby
    • Warpaint: Krimson, Disco//Very, Billie Holiday
    • Just Mustard: October, Feeded
    • Hand Habits: Flower Glass, Yr Heart
    • Vagabon: The Embers, Cold Apartment, Vermont
    • The Stargazer Lillies: Golden Key, We Are the Dreamers, Undone, How We Lost
    • Nots: Entertain Me, Reactor
    And then make the point for me about the bands being female, see also
    • Goat Girl: Burn the Stake, Cracker Drool
    • Dum Dum Girls: Rest of Our Lives, Coming Down (admittedly a decade old now)
    • Our Girl: Our Girl, Being Around
    • Mothers: It Hurts Until It Doesn’t, Lockjaw
    • Dream Wife: Let's Make Out, Somebody, Fire
    Part of this trend includes excellent solo artists, some of whom have folk- and singer-songwriter influences, so we’re straying a bit from rock at times here:
    • Angel Olsen: New Love Cassette, White Fire, Stars, Acrobat, The Waiting, Sweet Dreams, Drunk and with Dreams
    • Marissa Nadler: Dead City Emily, Drive, For the Sun, Stay Here With Me On The Planet, Shadow Show Diane (and the rest of the album Strangers)
    • Sharon Van Etten: Taking Chances, Your Love is Killing Me, One Day, I Wish I Knew, Serpents
    • Laura Marling: Night After Night, Gurdjieff's Daughter, Held Down
    • Vera Sola: Loving, Loving (Acoustic Reprise), The Colony, Small Minds
    • Weyes Blood: Andromeda, Wild Time
    • Courtney Barnett: Need a Little Time, Avant Gardener
    • Dana Falconberry and Medicine Bow: Calling Mountain, Cora Cora
    • Julia Holter: In the Same Room, How Long?, Night Song, Betsy on the Roof
    • Anna Calvi: Swimming Pool, Wish, Alpha, Away
    • Heather Woods Broderick: Turned, I Try
    Others worth mentioning are Julia Jacklin, Haley Heynderickx, Lucy Dacus, Julia Holter, Cate le Bon, Bedouine, Faye Webster, and Jenny Lewis.

    There was also a brief but fun resurrection of surf rock, albeit a punkier version. Some female bands in here, as well:
    • The Buttertones: Reminiscing, Sadie's a Sadist, Gravedigger
    • The Frights: Wow, OK, Cool
    • La Luz: Floating Features, You Disappear, Don't Wanna Be Anywhere, I Can't Speak
    • Daddy Issues: Dog Years, Locked Out, I’m Not, Wild Thing
    • Dead Coast: Hills Made of Sand
    We’re in the midst of a punk revival, the anger of the punk/post-punk years having been rekindled:
    • Protomartyr: Pontiac 87, A Private Understanding, Half Sister, Processed By The Boys, Worm In Heaven
    • IDLES: Heel / Heal, Mother, 1049 Gotho, Divide & Conquer, June
    • Fontaines D.C.: Big, Sha Sha Sha, Too Real, Hurricane Laughter, Liberty Belle
    • Wild Fruit Art Collective: Fabric
    • Viagra Boys: Upside Backwards, Sports
    • Shame: Dust on Trial
    • Material Girls: Residual Grimace
    • Anxiety: Trapped Shut
    • LIFE: Moral Fibre, Bum Hour, Switching On
    Beyond these trends, a few other artists and bands worth checking out are
    • Parquet Courts: Bodies Made Of, Ducking and Dodging, Black and White, Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth
    • Ed Harcourt: The World Is on Fire, Furnaces, Occupational Hazzard
    • The Black Angels: Currency, I’d Kill for Her, I Dreamt, Life Song, Mission District, Young Men Dead, Bad Vibrations, Haunting at 1300 McKinley
    • Brand New: Can't Get It Out, Same Logic / Teeth
    • A Place to Bury Strangers: Never Coming Back
    • Ought: Beautiful Blue Sky
    • Destruction Unit: Bumpy Road
    • Michael Kiwanuka: Love and Hate, Cold Cold Heart
    • Matthew White: Big Love, Holy Moly
    • Minor Victories: Give Up the Ghost, Scattered Ashes (Song for Richard)
    • Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam: A 1000 Times
    • Kevin Morby: Beautiful Strangers, Miles, Miles, Miles, Harlem River, Amen, Moonshiner, and the album Singing Saw

    Well, there went Sunday.
     

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