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).
Good list. I would add Audio Slave, The White Stripes, System of a Down, The Strokes, 10 Years ...
Mick moved well, but so can a guy in a wheelchair when he wants to.....doesn't change the fact that they sound awful....
Oh man, the White Stripes are one WEEEE-RRRRD band. Good music though, nice hooks.
They are weird. And I really enjoy their music.
Another band I recently heard of and really enjoy is She Wants Revenge. I don't consider their music rock- they sound like a mix of whole lotta Sisters of Mercy, a pound of Depeche Mode, half a cup of The Cure (circa 1980), and just a dash of Echo and the Bunnymen.
check your ears
ROFL!!!!
Don't see a need to....they were marginal in the 60's and just got older and more marginal....give me Tower Of Power or the Motown studio band any day....
Heh.
I've been listening to a lot of Travis, Nightmare of You and The Meligrove Band. Oh, and Mobile's debut cd sounds pretty good, but it's not out until the 27th. All are available on itunes.
I love She Wants Revenge!
LOL! You owe me a new lap top and an iced coffee from Starbucks.
Perhaps this is true on old-fashioned radio, but it's certainly not true on Sirius, where there are plenty of channels that devote 24 hours/day, and 7 days/week, to rock-and-roll and all of its modern derivatives. You want to listen to music on your radio? Get yourself a Sirius radio---you're all set.
Not to mention Otis Redding or Booker T and the MG's. Can't remember the last time I heard someone "sell" lyrics like Otis or a good instrumental.
Everything is niche marketing now. Back in the day, you had a thorough sampling of styles: rock, pop, r&b, soul, instrumental, blues etc.
"Dear sweet Jesus don't call that stuff punk rock."
I second that request...
So, in your opinion, there's more "musicality" involved in Chuck Berry's 3-chord masterpieces than, say, anything on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper? Wow.
A-men.Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Tesco Vee, Suicidal Tendencies, Gang Green, Black Flag, Mission of Burma . . . now that's punk, in my book.
Joy Division- you are absolutely correct. Also New Order (just a tad), and to a smaller degree Pet Shop Boys.
I noticed that they list their influences on their website at myspace.com.
SWR's cd is very good. When I heard 'Tear you apart' I decided I wanted to own the cd. After listening to all the songs, I like Red Flags and Long Nights the most. Some of the songs are simple and thin, but I appreciate any cd I can listen to throughout without feeling the need to forward to the next song. I also noticed there is a hidden song not listed on the cd jacket.
Another cd I purchased around that same time was Franz Ferdinand. All in all a decent CD with a few great songs, but to my ears, not as enjoyable as SWR.
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