Like Jazz, Rock Music Is on Life Support. Is Hollywood Next?

The era of mass media may have ended decades ago, but the hangover is about to hit us all hard. In “The coming death of just about every rock legend,” Damon Linker of The Week explores the rock & roll carnage to come:

Yes, we've lost some already. On top of the icons who died horribly young decades ago — Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, John Lennon — there's the litany of legends felled by illness, drugs, and just plain old age in more recent years: George Harrison, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty.

Those losses have been painful. But it's nothing compared with the tidal wave of obituaries to come. The grief and nostalgia will wash over us all. Yes, the Boomers left alive will take it hardest — these were their heroes and generational compatriots. But rock remained the biggest game in town through the 1990s, which implicates GenXers like myself, no less than plenty of millennials.
All of which means there's going to be an awful lot of mourning going on.
Behold the killing fields that lie before us: Bob Dylan (78 years old); Paul McCartney (77); Paul Simon (77) and Art Garfunkel (77); Carole King (77); Brian Wilson (77); Mick Jagger (76) and Keith Richards (75); Joni Mitchell (75); Jimmy Page (75) and Robert Plant (71); Ray Davies (75); Roger Daltrey (75) and Pete Townshend (74); Roger Waters (75) and David Gilmour (73); Rod Stewart (74); Eric Clapton (74); Debbie Harry (74); Neil Young (73); Van Morrison (73); Bryan Ferry (73); Elton John (72); Don Henley (72); James Taylor (71);

Quite true. Every time the entertainment industry approached total control of production and distribution, the product turned into garbage. When new technology loosened the industry's stranglehold, creativity exploded, and the industry rode the wave, reaping tremendous profits.

Now we are in a strange situation. Production and distribution technology is readily available directly to artists. But their creativity has yet to explode into a mass acceptance. It appears we are in the middle of a major transition. But what we are transitioning to is a mystery to me.

In the meantime, time to clean out the “once semi-useful parasites”.

“Also interesting is the Peart is one of the few who was both a master of his instrument and a lyricist of great importance to a lot of people (yeah, there are haters, to hell with ‘em).

They went out with class with the R40 tour, too; that’s how to do it IMHO.”

As much as I love Rush, if I am honest I have to say that Geddy’s singing on their last couple of tours was not really very good anymore.

I don’t think ‘mass acceptance’ is anymore necessary, or even good, than having three big networks.

someone upthread commented that it was good when everyone had to listen to a few stations, and thus be exposed to new stuff, but the problem was that you didn’t get to hear anything new that the corporate A&R men didn’t sign!

Mass audiences made sense when we had a limited number of radio stations and a limited number of ways to listen.

I always wanted to play the bass. I figured since I can type 90+ words per minute, how hard can it be.....fail.

I don’t know why I chose the bassoon when I was a kid. Not exactly a “chick magnet”. Couple that with my love of “Rush”. Then finish it off with my Dungeons and Dragons activity. I just stacked the chips against myself, I suppose.

Jazz died off as a mass genre for two reasons. First, as Mark Gauvreau Judge wrote in his fun 2000 book, If It Ain’t Got That Swing, postwar economics and the rise of bebop as a counterforce in jazz greatly killed off the big bands of the 1930s and ‘40s, but the complexities of bop led many teenagers in the 1950s to seek out rock and roll as a simpler music style to dance along with.

Put more simply, jazz died because it ceased to be musical. The quantity of notes became more important than the quality of the notes.

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