Twilight of the Rock Gods

Wall Street Journal ^ | March 24th, 2017 | By Neil Shah

[Mariner]

For music fans, the recent flood of celebrity deaths has been overwhelming: David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael and Chuck Berry seem like a disproportionate number of superstars to lose in a short time span.

But with many of rock’s founding fathers and mothers reaching their 70s, the end of the age of rock ’n’ roll is just beginning. While every generation bemoans the passing of its great artists, the outsize influence of rock promises to have a profound impact on popular culture and overall music-industry sales.

Of the 25 artists with the highest record sales in the U.S. since 1991, when reliable data first became available, just one—Britney Spears—is under 40, Nielsen data show. Nineteen of the 25 are over 50 years old.

[Mariner]

The rather lengthy and thorough analysis at the link epitomizes what is wrong with modern music.

Several paragraphs, multiple charts and demographic analysis, and not one single reference to quality...or that feeling the audience had in 1968 when the Rolling Stones first performed Jumpin' Jack Flash in front of a US audience at Madison Square Garden.

The sheer emotive genius that coincided with powerful amplifiers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ9D0UHP7x4

[Mariner]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ9D0UHP7x4

[Dilbert San Diego]

Are we still in the rock and roll era?

Maybe a dumb question. I recall the Billy Joel song in which he sang about “new wave, dance craze, new funk, old junk, it’s still rock and roll to me”. I wonder if all the different trends in modern music are still considered rock and roll.

[equaviator]

“Are we still in the rock and roll era?”

I sincerely doubt it. The latest is by no means the greatest.

[Mariner]

I think funk and new wave are certainly derivatives of rock and roll.

Just as rock was a derivative of country blues.

But rock is a bit louder and harder in tone and temperament.

[Mariner]

I agree.

U2 and Metallica were the last generation of great rock bands.

One could also argue the grunge era was the last creative spasm before death.

[MrEdd]

There is nothing wrong with modern music, and it is a vastly better time for music lovers than the sixties, seventies, or eighties.

I guess if you mean big acts, well, their day came and went. There will be fewer of them and that is a very very good thing.

The gatekeepers are dead. Few will take up the cry “long live the gatekeeper” because a new one didn’t replace the old one.

Instead, the cost to record, engineer, and distribute music fell into a deep abyss. Anyone can make anything, and with a little effort it will be a polished anything.

Niche genre music that previously was not recorded now is. Acts from Sweden can distribute music intantly to Chile.

If your tastes were succesfully molded by the recording industry to mainstream pap all this is confusing and bewildering. But if you have broad tastes in music then today is wonderful and amazing.

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

Let us not Leon Russell.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvazuyF6eXw

[Mr. Jeeves]

Grunge and rap killed rock & R&B. It coincided with the Clinton takeover - the proliferation of bad and offensive art forms, with implicit government support, was just another Gramscian tactic to attack the middle class.

There is great music still out there, but we will never again see it promoted by "MegaCorp Records."

[shibumi]

Rock Gods?

(I think Flash got them all in
"Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" Episode #6)

[dfwgator]

Rock n Roll’s been going downhill ever since Buddy Holly died.

[lulu16]

Thank-you. Bless you. That song really touched me today more than it ever has been in my life. (My husband and I were just in the backyard playing music and I was dancing in the grass. Ah, youth that has past.)

Beautiful song, deep and moving.

[dfwgator]

One of the great things about YouTube is that you can discover a lot of great music from the 60s and 70s that was not very popular back when it came out, and as they say, if you’ve never heard it, it’s new.

[Mariner]

The only thing I’ve seen lately even remotely interesting is Dark Americana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86z2zPcX3mM&list=PLcjh5X1h22tiawLKXRI1XrHhltbcUxMX7

Even Bob Dylan has been picking up some of the style over the last decade.

[MrEdd]

You discover great music from the twenties and thirties too.

And then bands like Postmodern Jukebox show that music of today would be much better if performed by better musicians and rescored for other instruments.

[bk1000]

“Maybe a dumb question. I recall the Billy Joel song in which he sang about “new wave, dance craze, new funk, old junk, it’s still rock and roll to me”

Bet you didn’t realize that song turns 20 this year.

[Migraine]

David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael and Chuck Berry

All of those guys would be shocked to see that Leon Russell was left off.

[kristinn]

It was released 37 years ago in 1980.

[Migraine]

I think you meant let us not “forget” Leon Russell? See my post 17. He was a guru to ALL rock n rollers over the past 50 years, and a GREAT purveyor of song in his own right.

[lee martell]

One big difference between now and ‘back then’, is the lack of a shared experience in music or most movies. There are occasional exceptions when America does have a shared experience, pro or con. One of the most recent was when the Clint Eastwood film “American Sniper” came out.
Before, there were only a few big record labels and only a few stations on TV. Now, there are innumerable recordings that are done independently. Someone can have a huge ,loyal following on YouTube and 96% of the general public will have never heard of them.

That goes with TV programs as well. I haven’t owned a TV set since the Clinton Administration.
I was fully into talk radio until very recently, when Cumulus began it’s process of destroying most of talk radio, replacing the big names with infomercials about cooking, finance, vitamins, sports and Spanish language broadcast music shows.