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| -Great Cultural Revolution |
| Who Killed Rock and Roll? |
| 2024-02-10 |
| He's dead, Jim. [Bleeding Fool] Shock rocker Marilyn Manson may have been rather tame and boring in hindsight. But in retrospect, it turns out that he did make at least one true observation. Rock and roll is in fact dead. And it died right around the time he was singing about its demise. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll be familiar with Cultural Ground Zero theory. In its simplest terms, Ground Zero was the point before which consumers of pop culture product could expect each new release to be better than the last. And by definition, it was the point after which declining quality no longer justified that expectation. The downward trend affected every medium from live action movies to anime to music. And it hit right around 1997. Veteran session musician and producer Rick Beato has provided foundational insights for the development of Ground Zero theory. Here, he diagrams a perfect storm of greed, corruption, and cowardice to answer Manson’s implied question: Who killed rock and roll? |
| Posted by:Abu Uluque |
| #18 Doo-wop radio.com. All oldies, no commercials. Free. |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2024-02-10 15:15 |
| #17 Rock may yet survive but it's without a doubt having a hard time these days compared to the '50s, '60s and '70s. I miss the old radio stations with the independent disc jockeys who had just enough freedom within the Top 40 format to play some offbeat stuff now and then. Besides, Top 40 artists in those days all understood beat, rhythm and melody. A lot of them were pretty good. And then came the psychedelic, classic vinyl FM stations who were lame in some ways but still managed to play some good stuff. These days it's all hip hop and I just can't stand it. I miss Mowtown. I remember well when Clear Channel bought a radio station in coastal North County San Diego. KKOS was truly independent, locally owned, and they played basically without a format. You never knew what they might play, a song by the Cocteau Twins might be followed by Dwight Yoakam or Louis Armstrong. That was cool. But the suits at Clear Channel decided they should play strictly country western. Well, North County already had KOWN in Escondido, an inland city, that had a lock on the country western market. I enjoy country western but any fool could have told them that country western doesn't belong on the coast in Carlsbad. KKOS went kaput in short order. The suits, as you call them, might have the money and the power but they are incapable of appreciating music, art, literature or any of the cultural traditions that contribute to civilization. They may wear suits but they are reptilian barbarians. |
| Posted by: Abu Laptop (same as Abu Uluque but on a different computer.) 2024-02-10 14:42 |
| #16 Abba. At least, they sang at the funeral. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2024-02-10 13:29 |
| #15 #11 ....its a Digital Life. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-02-10 12:23 |
| #14 Please excuse my spelling errors. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2024-02-10 11:56 |
| #13 Wherever there is money, there will be corruption. The music industry has always been corrupt. When a band makes enough money, they start their own record label, to get away from it. Their fame and followers will demand air play. The Beatles, Led Zepplin, Kiss, they all started record labels to get our from under the corruption. Rock is not dead, bid record labels are though. There is great music out there, cranking out great rock and roll. Its just not produced by Sony and Soros. The Stones wrote about the corruption in Get off of my cloud, Pink Floyd did in Welcome to the machine, its always been there. Tom McDonald, a rapper, has his own label and has a number of number one hits, despite Youtube and the media blacking out his music. I understand that mainstream media, has tried to take it over, but rock has always been underground and its thriving. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2024-02-10 11:56 |
| #12 Came across this band last night...a cool, fun, and young set of rockers. Lead singer is fantastic a Jack Black/John Belushi clone. Adam and the Metal Hawks. https://www.amhband.com/music |
| Posted by: Tennessee 2024-02-10 10:00 |
| #11 IDK, but I know that video killed the radio star. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2024-02-10 09:56 |
| #10 Remember though, each generation has their 'own' music and everything else is considered inferior or just crappy. The old 50's vid of the dude smashing records saying "rock and roll has got to go" comes easily to mind. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-02-10 09:21 |
| #9 #6 The innertubes were supposed to let them all get rich without a middleman. Didn't happen. Won't happen. Plenty of musical artists get their music on the Internet. They won't get rich; musicians who are signed by the labels make their cash through tours, and everything the record labels can take as their own. Like those who sign with the labels, the artists who use the internet make their money through tours. It's not all hookers and blow, but it is an honest living. Point being that music is written performed and heard because of the internet |
| Posted by: badanov 2024-02-10 09:13 |
| #8 New Blue Oyster Cult album coming out in a week. Old masters digitally remastered and AI enhanced. This is the pre-release "single." It's mush. I'm a huge fan for decades, I'll buy it anyway. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-10 08:37 |
| #7 Last really good show I waw was Bill Frisell at the Rex Theater on Carson Street in Pissburgh. They could barely keep the power to the stage on. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-10 08:11 |
| #6 The innertubes were supposed to let them all get rich without a middleman. Didn't happen. Won't happen. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-10 08:10 |
| #5 There are lots of good bands coming up in all the genres. It’s just that the market has mostly changed — instead of giant stadiums and huge contracts with record companies, they’re playing the bar circuit, both in the US and abroad, then graduating to the festival circuit, and selling CDs, vinyl records, and internet downloads as a secondary income stream. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2024-02-10 08:08 |
| #4 |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-10 08:06 |
| #3 Who? Roger Arthur Peterson (May 24, 1937 – February 3, 1959) The Day the Music Died |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2024-02-10 07:51 |
| #2 Been to a bar with live music lately? There are no new Kansas or Blue Oyster Cult being discovered there. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2024-02-10 07:24 |
| #1 Suits. Strangely enough, I found more rock and roll in Latin Music from the 90s on. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-02-10 06:44 |