Posted on 03/16/2006 1:42:40 AM PST by nickcarraway
WASHINGTON -- Those gruesome news reports from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony the other night remind me of a conclusion I came to a few years back. Rock and Roll is dead. Rest in peace.
Through the years the peace of the grave has crept up on a lot of rockers, usually years before they arrived at the average life expectancy of almost any type of adult human being, including skydivers and inebriated jaywalkers. Given how preachy the average rocker became by the late 1960s, this is ironic. In their warbles they lectured ordinary Americans on what to eat, what to wear, even prayer. They lectured us on the value of the great outdoors and of world peace. An astonishingly high percentage of them then found themselves under arrest for random violence or ingesting substances that were decidedly unhealthy. So Rock and Roll, rest in peace. Besides, Rock and Roll has not come up with a worthwhile song in at least a decade.
Happily the replacement for these left-wing nihilists on radio has been the right-wing talker. Rush Limbaugh -- the master of the genre -- and Mark Levin, the rising oracle of the genre, are total opposites from any warbler ever featured in Rolling Stone magazine and both are probably better singers. I have no doubt that they are popular because America is an increasingly conservative country and because conservative Americans are not welcomed by mainstream media with the exception of Fox. Yet there is another reason. Rock and Roll is dead.
Radio is a medium peculiarly suited for music, but there is apparently not much of an audience left for Rock and Roll. I mean, how many decades can we listen to the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and other rockers from Rock's better days? They get tiresome, and apparently there is just not a large enough audience opening for earlier musical styles, for instance, big band or swing, jazz, or folk music. Country and Western's audience is not replacing Rock and Roll, and classical music's audience seems to be in decline.
Hence we hear more and more Rush wannabes. Some are dreadful, vacuous, only dimly conservative, shouters. But then as I say we have the rising Mark Levin and doubtless there will be others.
The declining audience for music on radio, however, is a secondary reason for the rise of the conservative talker. The primary reason is politics -- and not any kind of politics but rather conservative politics. The wave toward conservatism still seems to be gaining strength even as the wave for liberalism evanesces. I can recall the late 1960s and the 1970s when talk radio was a very different land from what it is today. Most talk radio hosts were decidedly left. A conservative, for instance, the venerable Bob Grant, was rare. But at some point liberal talk show hosts lost the audience, probably about the time liberalism began to lose out wherever the citizenry's vote mattered. That would be in the early 1980s with the rise of Ronald Reagan.
I think Democrats ought to give this a little thought. Almost nowhere can they start up a successful media alternative to Rush and the gang. Not even Al Gore's opulently endowed television network shows promise. The frightful suffering of the left's Air America is well known. Some say Air America staggers because Al Franken is not funny. But it is more than that. There just are not enough votes out there in radioland to elect a left-wing Rush.
Michael Barone recently gave an analysis of this condition that bodes drearily for Democratic politics. He did not use my radio evidence to foretell a bad day at the polls in the year's off year election. He looked at voter trends, vulnerable congressional seats, and other traditional evidence to predict this fall's elections. He was the first columnist to predict the 1994 takeover of Capitol Hill by the Republicans. The Democrats see themselves duplicating that feat this fall. Barone says no. The votes are just not there. Now let him explain the death of Rock and Roll.
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator, a contributing editor to the New York Sun, and an adjunct scholar at the Hudson Institute. His most recent book is Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House (Regnery Publishing).
--Reagan wasn't a Reaganite. Massive spending, a tax raise in his second term, etc. He was no better than Bush on fiscal issues.
Not to mention the massive money paid out to farmers before the re-election. For what? He was shooting for 50-0?
Video killed the radio star.
Naw, Rock isn't dead. It just moved over to the C & W station. Old C & W fans hate it, and they all say "That ain't country music" But listen to the drums, the guitar riffs, the beat, and then take a look at the stars! Kenny Chesney may wear a cowboy hat, but the rest of his outfit sure ain't Hank Williams!
Keith Urban! Shania Twain! KID ROCK for pete sakes! Cheryl Crow!
The rock station just went so far out that they left the fan base behind. And the fans moved over to C & W.
Oh and one more thing, like rockstars of old -- now it's the C& W artists that marry the pretty girls from Hollywood.
LOL. You've got a point :) And I've been listening to more country. Though, in general, I still prefer the golden oldies in both genres.
Why this is the case I don't know. But I'm sure it has to do with someone's leftist agenda.Actually, I've always suspected "grunge" was pushed by leftists as a counterpoint to "party all night" late 80s metal. That generation supported Reagan and was indeed Bush's strongest age group in 2004.
Punk-pop rock is making a pretty big comeback with bands like Sum41, Bowling for Soup, Blink182, Green Day, Click5, Relient K, Maroon Five (as you mentioned), The Killers, etc.
Rock never went away in England, Jet and Oasis are huge there and they get these flash-in-the-pan bands like Kenickie that do one or two CDs and come up with great stuff, then fade away in true rock tradition. Sleeper and Elastica are highly underrated as well.
If you go back a decade you come up with at least two rock songs that belong on any list of the best: Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" and Our Lady Peace's "Somewhere Out There".
-Eric
-Eric
Long before MTV, rock thrived on TV with American Bandstand. Rock and Roll was an American invention and institution. The British invasion led by the Beatles changed Rock for the worse. Within a few years Rock lost its musicality and became noise. As vocalists the Beatles suck. They set a new low for pop music. All sorts of Beatle knock offs became the norm. Nowadays, kids don' even realize that pop singers should have an ounce of musicality in a song. Not only is R&R dead, but also so is pop music. This is all a result of the Beatles who came out of a decadent society.
Rock's alive and well. But you won't find it at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Dear sweet Jesus don't call that stuff punk rock.
Yes, someone left them on - lol!
Modern country isn't country at all, it's recycled soft core southern rock.Lynard Skynard was more country than any of the "new country" I've heard.Where's the new Tammy Waynet?Merl Haggard?,..snif..PPatsy Kline?
You know, when I saw the title of this posting, I first thought, "what happened at the R&R HoF?" I have to admit, I haven't heard anything about it. It makes me realize just how out of step I am with popular music today.
I also thought about the music DVDs I recently bought... There are 2 King Crimson DVDs, both of which are from the mid to late 80s. Rush's R30, their 30th anniversary tour. And Yes' 35th anniversary tour. High on the list is the Cream reunion concert. It seems that I haven't heard any R&R that I really loved for 20 plus years, certainly not the bands.
Mark
-Eric
After 
disturbing isnt it?
That second picture is actually Eddie Van Halen? I thought that was a joke. Wow.
Maroon Five, while a very decent band, is no rock band. They sound more like very talented back-up musicians for a boy-band.
Obvious wig. The whole thing, everything you see. Sits on Jagger's head like a cow flop.
When I was young I wondered what those guys were going to do when they grew up and had to get a job. I suppose I have been envious of Peter Pan's lost boys. Schadenfreude.
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