The Decline and Fall of Rock

Not only is rock music dead, it’s been dead for quite a while. Like the jazz, blues, and classical genres, it rests now in an afterlife of soundtracks and in the tombs of dark clubs and gilded concert halls, where the remnant priesthood still perform the ancient rituals. But it has no thriving existence.

Rock is a form of music distinct from, but closely related to, the earlier doo-wop, rockabilly, and rock ‘n roll. It draws inspiration from the same genres of jazz, blues, gospel, country, and the folk music of the British Isles transplanted to the American backwoods. It first leaped on to the cultural scene with “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” in 1963, and came into its own as an art form, along with the Boomers, in the late 1960s, from which point it arguably displaced Hollywood as the principal global cultural force.

But no idea, product, or music, takes off unless there’s a receptive market for it. The post-World War II baby boom was followed by an economic boom lifting even working class families into the consumer class. For the first time there were lots of young people with free time and cash. With such wildy different material and social circumstances separating parents and children it’s little wonder the so-called Generation Gap became a real sociological, cultural, and economic factor. Teenagers, or youths, suddenly became real entities distinct from children and adults. It can be argued that modern Western culture is Boomer culture, and that culture, and rock music especially, is inseparable from Boomers. As they matured, so it matured. It reflected their youthful hubris and idealism in their early years, their cynicism and greed in their prime; and as they declined, so did the music.

Demographics is destiny, even in music. Rock was largely by, and almost completely for, young white men. But, people will interject, rock has roots in black music. What of Jimi Hendrix? Where did Hendrix break big? Not back home, but in the very white UK of the 1960s. And it was specifically among men. The cool boys made noise in a garage and sat around listening to albums and smoking—their girlfriends were along for the ride. Left to their own devices they’d have preferred to listen to The Carpenters, disco, and ABBA, not Led Zeppelin.

The counter culture, which was so important to rock, had always been an expression of what, going back to Homer’s Iliad, was Western civilization form of self-criticism. The West evolved by always questioning itself and established assumptions. Along the way, however, some figured out that you could short circuit that virtue into a vice: to critique, not to improve, but to remove. Deconstructionism is less interested in new creation than in the ruins. And the upshot is that the media and academia struck ever more wedges into the common culture, to the point of even questioning the value of that culture as a whole. West and white were out.

This trend was reflected in the following decades in demographic changes all across the West. And the raw numbers belie the real impact of the increasing immigrant populations, as they were concentrated in the urban boiler rooms of the cultural engine, and among the young. Not only are whites a rapidly shrinking part of the population, but even more so among the younger cohorts. And what young white men there are, are increasingly demoralized and emasculated—from rage and melancholia, to artistically barren collective clinical depression.

As the artists, and the audience they reflected, went from, “I’m a superstar!” to “I’m a creep!” to “Whatever, nevermind,” the technological and business side of things was going through massive changes as well. Rock music may have flaunted a devil-may-care aura of rebellion and working class attitude and style, but there were always substantial barriers to entry, for good and ill. these barriers ran the gamut—from what your local, regional, and national radio stations chose to give airtime to, to what the A&R (Artists & Repertoire) people signed, to what the studios marketed, and the music magaziness wrote about, and, not least, to what your local record store stocked.

And those barriers became almost impossibly high, before crashing completely. In February 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act, clearing the way for giant conglomerates like ClearChannel to buy up vast swathes of radio stations across the country. As a result, programming was centralized and homogenized. Local radio stations could no longer break local bands. Video may have already killed the radio star by the 1990s; but radio was now no longer even a credible stepping stone to stardom. And then something even bigger happened.

Computer technology was about to remove almost all the barriers to entry in the music industry, most income streams for musicians, the very need for a band as a requirement for producing music, and just about any quality control along with these things. The first change was on the production side with the introduction of digital mixing. In the old days, bands could work for years before ever setting foot in that hallowed place, “The Studio,” the sanctum of machines you dare not touch with money burning by the minute. Now that whole stack of equipment, the rooms that used to house it, and the select few who had access to learn to use it could be reduced to a guy with a laptop in a basement. And then Napster happened.

Modern popular music had been born from a leap in technology, the invention of physical media. Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby became global stars through record sales. Later idols, like Frank Sinatra, adapted their singing in ways that were contingent on microphones and amplification. Royalty checks from the sale of LPs and even just one hit wonders financed yachts, fancy houses, and a lifetime of drinks in kidney shaped pools filled with fashion models. But what technology giveth, technology taketh away.

This business loop was so profitable, and, not least, so well rehearsed and dependable, that the major labels recoiled in reflexive horror at any idea of subverting it. The labels didn’t want to change their distribution model, so the pirates did it for them. And even though Napster, and similar filesharing apps like Kazaa and Limewire, were eventually sued into submission, the labels did not adapt and come to own the legal alternatives that replaced them.

Two interrelated facts had become the new reality: One was that music was basically worth nothing, and the second was that all music was easily available. In 1991 Nirvana was competing against Guns N’ Roses. New artists today are competing against all the music ever made.

The income side of the music business has collapsed. Albums, singles, CDs, and all physical media sales plummeted. Labels, as well as independent artists, were forced to make cuts on the other side of the ledger. And rock was expensive. Instruments cost money, amps cost money, recording those instruments well cost a lot of money. Setting up the mics for a drum kit is a skill in itself. So it became much more cost effective for labels to just sign guys who could produce the whole thing on their laptop. Tech, Hip-Hop, and House was in the ascendant.

This artificial and formulaic music could be reproduced in ever more mechanically automated ways. The 1970s German pioneers of electrical music, Kraftwerk, had triumphed—both in the philosophical and the practical sense. Music was becoming an industrial product. Digital audio workstations like Pro Tools, with plugins like Beat Detective, in effect, turned even live drums into just an interface for a drum machine. Auto Tune could carry the tune for you. In fact it could take a text to voice recording and make it sing.

Together these digital editing tools allowed you to “quantize” music into interchangeable samples on a grid that could be moved around like Lego blocks. It turned even “indie” rock into techno. The band was now a vestigial, or just the PR image part of the music production. Sample by sample, preset by preset, music was becoming similar. By the time AI that was good enough to mass produce music came along, the industry had already reduced it to such a simple and mechanical formula that AI didn’t even have to be very sophisticated to do it.

Moreover, the generation gap that had spawned rock music was closing. Mother and daughter dance to the same disconnected tracks. Father and son groove to the same timeless, as in being uprooted from any cultural context, wall-to-wall carpet Americana one can find on the “Classic Rock” station. The counter culture had triumphed, but, like a dog chasing a car, faced the question “Now what?” Paul Joseph Watson once wrote, “Conservatism is the new punk!” Being outspokenly right-wing today is far more, literally, dangerous than being a hippy, punk, or even death metaller ever was.

The original rockers, reaching their socio-cultural apotheosis at the 1987 Live Aid moral orgasm, are now the establishment—censoring people, arresting them for counter-revolutionary wrong-think, and reintroducing conscription to send the kids off to imperialist wars. The twists of fate have resulted in rock becoming the conservative music of the age, but specifically conservative, not right-wing, which would have been truly counter-cultural and “dangerous.” From the shock of Elvis’s hips and Black Sabbath’s antics to politically correct muzak.

And it ends in ever more dour festivals, where the banned cigarette smoke no longer covers the stench of BO and stale vegan sausages, and anemic Eloi gyrating in faithless facsimile to try to conjure up a teen spirit long since dead and departed. From culture to compost.

Poseurs. No talent like we heard in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. Country music has same problems. Up to the early 2000’s were good for country but for 20 years it has been poseurs.

Max Martin. Martin has written or co-written 27 Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles. None are good but are catchy enough for people who are tone deaf.

Taylor Swift types who cannot sing or play musical instruments well. They depend on backing vocals and lip syncing and player piano type keyboards. Dancing and lights flashing to distract.

This guy explained it some 40/50 years ago.
Frank Zappa Explains The Decline Of The Music Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYdGMJmMvmI

Pretty good analysis.

The computer revolution? I lived through it. Quite literally, our first four songs were done on a four-track in Pascagoula, MS and were excellent. Sound quality may have been lacking, but the energy and inventiveness was there. When we got our recording deal, the producer of the “Bellamy Brothers” (”Let Your Love Flow”) had a new 16-track studio and wanted to put every instrument on its own track. This was a disaster. No energy, the music sounded like cardboard.

Yes, being able to fix screwups by going to that PRECISE note was good, but even the Beatles, in their early songs, had screwups. (You can hear George and Paul singing a different lyric from John, for example) every once in a while you get a drum beat that is heavier or lighter than the next.

THAT WAS GOOD. It gave the music life. Even today, almost without exception, I can tell a computer drum track from a live drummer. When everything was sterilized, everything sounded the same. It’s one reason “live” albums were always so popular. (Today, unfortunately, the essence of a concert is that the band starts one of their hits, then hands it over to the self-absorbed crowd to sing the rest of the song).

If you want a really good artist/band - crowd interaction, listen to Michael W. Smith’s “Worship” album.

Another major factor was that the advent of napster/spotify/itunes permanently ended the concept of an “album,” where one song led into the next. Think of Santana’s “Abraxis” and how everything flowed. Obviously, “Pet Sounds” or “Sgt. Pepper.” The songs told a story but the album as a whole told a story. Those are gone. It’s all one-hit-wonders.

That said, there are still some who have thrived in this environment: Dua Lipa is this generation’s Madonna (of the 80s/90s) where she has one hit after another. No, this woman is not all that bright-—listen to interviews-—but either she or her mgt KNOW HOW TO PICK HITS. Likewise, Ed Sheeran, Charlie Puth, Morgan Whalen, Post Malone, Meghan Trainor, Billie Eilish, The Weeknd, Lewis Capaldi, (obviously) Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Mley Cyrus, just to name a few, constantly turn out good songs.

We won’t get back to the Hendrix/Cream/Who/Zeppelin days. But there are some VERY good jam bands out there, including my favorite, “Goose.”

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