And another one bites the dust

[Ranger REG]

Hehehe. Another good reason to go OTA.

 

[Felon]

Atlanta has one station that plays mostly music. The biggest Top 40 station is the mostly commercials. Their morning show may play one song a hour, 30 mins of commercials and the rest is inane chatter. I've started listening to public radio more. It's mostly talk but at least it's informative.

I was devastated when 96 Rock switched from classic rock to...well, eclectic crap rock, basically. As much I hated the Regular Guys, I'd wish them back in a second if it would mean the return of a real rock station to Atlanta.

Seriously, I gotta wonder what happened to rock music? Why did it get displaced so badly? When did someone decide hiphop music was better than music with vocals and musical instruments?

 

[Moulin Rogue]

Seriously, I gotta wonder what happened to rock music? Why did it get displaced so badly? When did someone decide hiphop music was better than music with vocals and musical instruments?

Well there IS still noisy music with "vocals and musical instruments" that does well on the charts of course, but there's not a strong overlap between fans of the "classic rock" sound and fans of today's "emo/pop-punk" sound. Not sure if you're lumping all that stuff together or not, but I guess either way, the answer as I see it is fragmentation.

1991 is the great dividing line: grunge came along and blew up the "continuity" in the rock timeline. Prior to then your cool rock band could draw upon anything from the '60s, '70s, and '80s for inspiration, but suddenly that wasn't the case. If your cool new band didn't sound like Nirvana or Pearl Jam you were not going to get signed by a big label. Rock took it itself very, very seriously from then on: no more flashy clothes or lyrics about partying, no more singers hitting high notes or fret-burning guitar solos.

The pre- and post-grunge division is reflected in the programming of mainstream American radio: "classic rock" stations don't play artists that came along AFTER then, and the alternative stations for the younger crowd play little to no music released BEFORE then. So a young new band that sounds like Van Halen or Led Zeppelin will have a very hard time breaking through to the mainstream because they don't have a natural place on the radio dial: classic rock stations won't play them because their roster of artists to play is set in stone, and the alternative station probably won't play them if they want to devote their very limited playlist slots over to a new band that is more emo or punk.

So what can the kids listen to now if they want flashy clothes, celebrations of hedonism, and a spirit of showmanship? That's right.... Hip-hop has been the new rock n' roll ever since it took a big step up to the mainstream in the '90s. Throw in the rise of "new country" and whatever other genres you want to (rap-rock, etc.), and things are just way too fragmented for rock to ever again become the cultural force that it was for the baby boomers, who still account for a ton of music dollars by the way... I don't think it was teenagers who sent that Eagles record to #1 last year!

Teenagers do still listen to classic rock from years ago, of course: you can still hear a Led Zeppelin song from 1969 in a high school parking lot (how many teens were listening to '20s music in the '60s?). These songs are all over Guitar Hero as well. So rock will never die, in the same way that jazz and blues are not really dead. The standards will always be around getting played in clubs, at least.

I hope these 4am ramblings made some sense

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I think it just depends where you are, here where I'm at Hip Hop is sparse on the ground and stations are fairly evenly divided between rock centric and country(old-country) centric. In fact we've got one of the best rock stations I've ever heard, though basically I'm at the edge of the range of its most outlying repeater.

If what you want is a rock fix just go to thefoxrocks.com and catch it's streaming webcast, record and play it back on your iPod. Even though it's more than 60 miles away I drive into Louisville for the music fairly often, it has a rock scene like nothing else. It's like the Seattle of new hard rock and metal.

 

[Felon]

Well there IS still noisy music with "vocals and musical instruments" that does well on the charts of course, but there's not a strong overlap between fans of the "classic rock" sound and fans of today's "emo/pop-punk" sound. Not sure if you're lumping all that stuff together or not, but I guess either way, the answer as I see it is fragmentation.

1991 is the great dividing line: grunge came along and blew up the "continuity" in the rock timeline. Prior to then your cool rock band could draw upon anything from the '60s, '70s, and '80s for inspiration, but suddenly that wasn't the case. If your cool new band didn't sound like Nirvana or Pearl Jam you were not going to get signed by a big label. Rock took it itself very, very seriously from then on: no more flashy clothes or lyrics about partying, no more singers hitting high notes or fret-burning guitar solos.

The pre- and post-grunge division is reflected in the programming of mainstream American radio: "classic rock" stations don't play artists that came along AFTER then, and the alternative stations for the younger crowd play little to no music released BEFORE then. So a young new band that sounds like Van Halen or Led Zeppelin will have a very hard time breaking through to the mainstream because they don't have a natural place on the radio dial: classic rock stations won't play them because their roster of artists to play is set in stone, and the alternative station probably won't play them if they want to devote their very limited playlist slots over to a new band that is more emo or punk.

So what can the kids listen to now if they want flashy clothes, celebrations of hedonism, and a spirit of showmanship? That's right.... Hip-hop has been the new rock n' roll ever since it took a big step up to the mainstream in the '90s. Throw in the rise of "new country" and whatever other genres you want to (rap-rock, etc.), and things are just way too fragmented for rock to ever again become the cultural force that it was for the baby boomers, who still account for a ton of music dollars by the way... I don't think it was teenagers who sent that Eagles record to #1 last year!

Teenagers do still listen to classic rock from years ago, of course: you can still hear a Led Zeppelin song from 1969 in a high school parking lot (how many teens were listening to '20s music in the '60s?). These songs are all over Guitar Hero as well. So rock will never die, in the same way that jazz and blues are not really dead. The standards will always be around getting played in clubs, at least.

I hope these 4am ramblings made some sense

It was a pretty good read. I certainly was into Pearl Jam and Nirvana in the day. I don't know that a PoS emo group like Panic at the Disco represents any kind of evolution (some things suck so bad that they seem to cross the line from a subjective point of view to an objective matter of fact). I certainly would be happy to see any kind of return to progressive rock, with bands trying to do something both marketable and innovative with their music.

I think South Park summed up the young folks' attitude towards Guitar Hero and classic rock. They don't quite connect to it as real music. I think a lot of it is the shift towards kids having to perform music for kids. Not a lot of thirtysomethings allowed on stage anymore. Back in the eighties, I didn't think twice about how old the guys in AC/DC or Van Halen were.

 

[Thunderfoot]

MuchMusic and MuchMoreMusic (the Canadian equivalents of MTV and VH1, respectively) were cooler for longer than their American counterparts, but now they too have all but abandoned playing music videos. They mostly run reality and celebrity profile shows now. I only have the basic TV subscription of 20-something channels now and I don't miss anything.

I've read that blocks of music videos simply don't get good ratings any more. I just watch videos (old and new) on Youtube now: if I hear a song I like I just go there and see if there's a video for it.

Well, there goes the question I was going to ask - MM was better even when MTV did play music.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Well there IS still noisy music with "vocals and musical instruments" that does well on the charts of course, but there's not a strong overlap between fans of the "classic rock" sound and fans of today's "emo/pop-punk" sound. Not sure if you're lumping all that stuff together or not, but I guess either way, the answer as I see it is fragmentation.

1991 is the great dividing line: grunge came along and blew up the "continuity" in the rock timeline. Prior to then your cool rock band could draw upon anything from the '60s, '70s, and '80s for inspiration, but suddenly that wasn't the case. If your cool new band didn't sound like Nirvana or Pearl Jam you were not going to get signed by a big label. Rock took it itself very, very seriously from then on: no more flashy clothes or lyrics about partying, no more singers hitting high notes or fret-burning guitar solos.

The pre- and post-grunge division is reflected in the programming of mainstream American radio: "classic rock" stations don't play artists that came along AFTER then, and the alternative stations for the younger crowd play little to no music released BEFORE then. So a young new band that sounds like Van Halen or Led Zeppelin will have a very hard time breaking through to the mainstream because they don't have a natural place on the radio dial: classic rock stations won't play them because their roster of artists to play is set in stone, and the alternative station probably won't play them if they want to devote their very limited playlist slots over to a new band that is more emo or punk.

So what can the kids listen to now if they want flashy clothes, celebrations of hedonism, and a spirit of showmanship? That's right.... Hip-hop has been the new rock n' roll ever since it took a big step up to the mainstream in the '90s. Throw in the rise of "new country" and whatever other genres you want to (rap-rock, etc.), and things are just way too fragmented for rock to ever again become the cultural force that it was for the baby boomers, who still account for a ton of music dollars by the way... I don't think it was teenagers who sent that Eagles record to #1 last year!

Teenagers do still listen to classic rock from years ago, of course: you can still hear a Led Zeppelin song from 1969 in a high school parking lot (how many teens were listening to '20s music in the '60s?). These songs are all over Guitar Hero as well. So rock will never die, in the same way that jazz and blues are not really dead. The standards will always be around getting played in clubs, at least.

I hope these 4am ramblings made some sense

HEY!!! Metal school is a different thread - and they're my classes....