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Posted on 05/11/2025 8:04:59 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Despite the ‘album era’ fast approaching its approximate 60th anniversary, the lauded rock heritage that deified stadium monsters such as Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones as the paragons of musical achievement and authentic expression still looms over a pop climate that’s undergone seismic creative and social shifts across the last half-century. It won’t be too long before the cultural totems that still command such collective veneration, rock and roll, Woodstock, and AOR, will all cease to be living memories sooner than you think.
With Rolling Stone‘s ‘rockist’ residue still colouring many muso’s quality metrics and indication of a healthy music climate, the stats collated on the absence of bands from the contemporary charts by TV personality Richard Osman triggered much online debate. Speaking on The Rest Is Entertainment podcast with Marina Hyde last year, Osman revealed that in the first half of the 1980s, there were 146 weeks where bands were number one, with 141 weeks for the first half of the ’90s. Jump to the 2020s, and the number drops to three, one from Little Mix, another from The Beatles’ AI-drossed ‘Now and Then’, and BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge Allstars take on Foo Fighters’ ‘Times Like These’.
On the face of it, it’s all fairly humdrum, and tempting to lapse into curmudgeonly deadends lambasting the supposed artistic degradation of Gen Z and well-trodden theories on an increasingly hyper-individualist fracturing of broader pop culture in the TikTok age.
While there are grains of truth to such talking points and legitimate discussions to be had about risk-averse corporate labels favouring easily marketable solo stars over the complex bag of characters that make up a band, such critique can often feel like ruses to merely attack a youth culture whose trends and expressions alienate one’s rock puritanism, a typical lashing out when the pangs of old age irrelevancy start to rear its head.
The digital age has fundamentally freed up scores of budding artists to create their art without the need for studio time and multiple collaborators, production software and Digital Audio Workstations offering a platform for music-makers to record and release an album entirely in one’s bedroom, handling all promotion and marketing with savvy social media knack as well as send over stems and audio files anywhere in the world for mixing and mastering. Economic pressures, too, have forced artists to go it alone, the dismal revenues made from streaming and loss-incurring tours simply unviable to split across multiple parties.
But the concern for bands ‘disappearing’ only holds water if your search for such artists is as deep as who’s currently in the top ten. At the time of writing on a drizzly morning, tonight Italian kosmiche conjurers Traum are playing Dalston’s The Shacklewell Arms, Million Moons are showering New Cross Inn with their gargantuan industrial post-rock, and Fabric will be host to Decius’ squalid electronics. Beyond London, antipop metallers Gürl will be taking over Bristol’s Exchange, and Newcastle’s The Cluny will witness Renegade Brass Band’s 12-piece fusion of jazz, hip-hop and funk.
Bands are very much alive. Never mind the success of The 1975, The Last Dinner Party, Fontaines DC, and Kneecap bringing back the hip-hop group, but on a grassroots level, there’s a myriad of bands playing some of the most vital music you’ll ever hear.
The stale ‘only bands are good’ prism should die a death, fantastic and innovative art is being forged that will look and sound contrary to the rock monoliths that still serve as eternal barometers of artfulness but, buried beneath homogeneous algorithms and lazy radio curations, a thriving eco-system of bands are cutting essential soundtracks to the febrile contemporary alongside all manner of differing art ensembles and collectives. Let’s celebrate the continued shine of the band, but let’s finally shake off the notion that exciting music must conventionally look like one.
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Further, with youths becoming more conservative, rock may start ascending. And yes, old people, there IS great new rock…A few years ago I posted a series of new, unreleased music that caught my ear on Bandcamp, an independent music portal where (generally) unsigned bands can post their music for purchase.
Some FReepers voiced interest in learning about more new, fresh music that isn't what Sony et al want you to hear.
Thus, for those of you who still believe in capitalism, don't like to be told what is good music, and who believe that music isn't a free good and should be purchased to, among other things, prove commerce is greater than communism, this may be a thread/ping for you.
Below is the Original collection of new tunes/bands that caught my ear, with a few updates at the end. I am not employed in the music industry and I don't make money off of these bands. I simply don't want my musical future to be a combo of vulgar pop tunes, whiny singer-songwriters, or any other form of entertainment that wants me to get an ice pick in the forehead.
Enjoy.
Album: Arise
Artist: Dan Sartain
Song: People Throwing Stones At Glass Houses
Trippy old school rock and roll that's contemporary.
Album: Delusions Of Grandeur
Artist: Delusions Of Grandeur
Song: Drinking My Life Away
Power punk guitar-driven rocker with no hope for tomorrow, the way it used to be.
Album: Beyond the Dome
Artist: Sigma Ori
Song: Beyond the Dome
Thoughtful instrumental progressive rock - a lava lamp could enhance your listening.
Album: Intra-I
Artist: Theon Cross
Song: We Go Again
Experimental electronic new jazz from London featuring THE TUBA!
Album: Kites
Artist: This Winter Machine
Song: Pleasure & Purpose
Melodic, lyrical, neo-progressive rock out of the UK.
Album: Imprints
Artist: Simeon Walker
Song: Gleam
New Classical Music! Minimalist yet tasteful piano that demonstrates that the rests are as important as the notes.
Album: Gary Bartz JID006
Artist: Gary Bartz, Adrian Younge, Ali Shaheed Muhammad
Song: The Message
Jazz saxaphonist for 60+ years Gary Bartz teams up with younger players for a contemporary yet traditionalist jazz tune.
Straight-ahead guitar-driven rock from a 9-year old homeschooled guitarist and 49-year old father/drummer, with vox provided by a modern singer who WANTED to be on the track.
Album: Cannonball Run (full album)
Artist: The Gasölines
Song: Autobahn Outlaws
A repeat from last time, punkabilly guitar-driven rocker from Norway. Watch how fast you drive when you play this in your car. And one of the best album covers in ages.
Artist: Cosmic Order Band
Song: Let's Go Brandon
An original from FReeper Rocco DiPippo and the Cosmic Order Band. The Bidet paper mask is spectacular.
Album: Transhuman (full album)
Artist: Max Boras
Song: Absolute Power
Instrumental, progressive hard rock from a young guy who tears it up on guitar. No woke lyrics.
Album: Hang On (full album)
Artist: Scotty Saints and the True Believers
Song: Devil at my Back
Outstanding contemporary punk rock. This sounds like a Charlie Daniel’s punk tune. I’ve seen this band live and they cook.
Album: The Spin (full album)
Artist: Messa
Song: At Races
Italian mixture of prog, ambient, with metal elements yet vocals that don’t sound like the Cookie Monster.
THE STONES will live forever.
“cease to be living memories”
I have 2/3rds of a century under my skin.
Bands won’t disappear, but music companies generally only stick with in-house writers and singers.
The joy of homeschooling was good and worthy of a listen. The rest not so much except for the jazz one.
There is no shortage of music. Actually one thing hasn’t changed much — it has always been hard for average musicians/bands to make a decent living playing music.
But now it’s worse. The business model changed to streaming and now even minimally successful bands are struggling. There are numerous interviews with known musicians where they explain the situation.
For many musicians — consider getting a job and view music as hobby.
My fave was “The Doors”. album.
Could still dance all night to “Light my Fire”.
Who listens to any classical music that was composed in the last 100 years?
At some point there just is no more room for anything really knew.
It’s virtually impossible at this point to do anything with rock music that hasn’t already been done.
And now here comes AI on top of it all.
Well respected music expert Rick Beato did a video on the disappearance of “bands”. It happened in the early 2000s, when the number of bands on the charts dropped from nearly 150 to 3. There are reasons why.
Worth watching:
Who cares? A song can be made by AI. Just add a few changes and some personal tweaks. Songs used to tell stories, ask questions, and express emotions, or be an anthem.
All done already. Only differences is syncopation, layering of sounds, and reactions to things that we didn’t see before. No one has solved the age old philosophical issues. (e.g...why do fools fall in love? Why do I miss her(him) so? You cheated, you lied....etc.)
Derivative and boring, and impertinent. Too bad.
bfl
Why Are Bands Mysteriously Disappearing?
40 years ago, nearly all hit music was recorded by bands. Now it's single digit percentages.
I wouldn’t say that, necessarily. There are more ways to combine notes than there are stars in the sky, seriously
It is just that nobody has figured out a new way yet.
I agree. It’s all been done.
In addition, if there was anything new to be done, no one has put in the time and practice to see that it was done properly anyway. It’s a lost cause.
All I can say is I have rarely heard a decent new song on the radio in at least 10 years. Famous pop singers today just make up lyrics and melody to go with the pre-recorded tracks their managers and producers give them. I swear that some of them can’t find a note that isn’t in the pentatonic scale, and... it’s all Auto-Tuned and time corrected until the musicality has been sucked out of it.
Most of the music 40 years ago was made by one writer, maybe one collaborator, and professional studio musicians. If you see a lineage chart of bands at that time, most of them had regular changes to the lineup except for one or two key members. It's rare that a band could gel well enough to make one album, much less two or three.
I was okay with the author's overwrought vocabulary right up until the end, but "...essential soundtracks to the febrile contemporary..." did me in. "febrile"? (overheated)
Anyway, I've played rock and roll in bands for 60+ years, mostly doing covers in clubs and bars and the occasional big theater; no stadiums. 99% of the material my bands covered was originally performed by bands, not solo singers.
The 1% was in the early 70's when one of the bands had a female front vocalist who demanded that we include some solo female vocalist covers. That band didn't last more than maybe a year; she disappeared and went into theater.
Had a car come in from auction that the satellite radio still worked in.
New music sucks.
I’ll stick with my old mp3s
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