Rock is Dead, Volume 4,238,109

I was minding my own business yesterday, just working on some work and listening to an album that someone had called top ten for 2019, when along comes my little brother, throwing bombs into my brain, with this e-mail:

Jack,
I ran across this article, but am too musically illiterate to form a point of view.  That said, thought you might enjoy:  https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/january-2020/the-year-the-music-died/
Ed

I went on to go and read that article, and became irrationally incensed in such a way that now I find the need to share this information with you.  Go read the article, and then when you come back, you can jam "The River" as you consider his argument.

My response to Ed: 

That guy is so full of shit.  I’d bet the binding on his thesaurus is split from trying so hard to come up with different important sounding words (and yet still using “pastiche” twice).  I don’t know how many “rock is dead” articles I have read – but for this one to draw a line at 1980 is fully asinine.  His descriptions of those two albums rely heavily on how they repeat the best of the old rock – the ways that they take historical rock pieces and combine them well (“stylistically retrospective”) and make it “fresh.”  So, he’s arguing for the strength of music that looks to the past.  Meanwhile, that runs counter to the exact argument that most people have made against rock right now – that nothing new is being made, these new bands aren’t original, it is just the Greta Van Fleet kids discovering their dad’s old Zeppelin records or Tame Impala finding it easy to remake the weirdest parts of the Beatles’ catalog.  If he thinks the perfect rock records were made up of a patchwork of what came before, then his argument should be that rock is alive and well today, because that is the best of the rock we have today as well.

Of course, he also looks like he is currently smelling his own farts and enjoying them, so I shouldn’t be too terribly shocked.  And also, I made my neck sore on Saturday while driving to [child]’s basketball game by thrashing a little too voraciously to a song in my car, so I may be a little too into rock and roll…

Ed:

Dude.  This is awesome.  If there were any justice in the world you’d be a music critic and stop with the laws.  The laws are dumb, the music is interesting. 

Me (the next day):

BY the way, I’m still fired up about this dipshit.  I spent my whole walk this morning with the dog brainstorming albums that this guy apparently views as non-rock and roll.  Appetite for Destruction.  Nevermind.  Blood Sugar Sex Magic.  Anything by R.E.M., U2, Pearl Jam, or Radiohead.  Anything by Stevie Ray Vaughan.  Purple Rain.  So many other things that were both critically loved and commercially successful.  Even stuff that maybe only I loved – Black Crowes.  Jane’s Addiction.  Dave Matthews Band.  Paul Simon’s Graceland.  Tom fucking Petty!  Siamese Dream.  What’s the Story Morning Glory?  And he’s drawing the line at The River?  I even like The River, I think it is a really great album, but to say that rock and roll ended right then is so disingenuous and stupid and wrong and horrible and infuriating.  Nevermind blew people’s minds because it launched a new style of rock that looked to the past and yet pushed it into a new space.  Isn’t that exactly what this guy thought was created by The River?  Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever was awesome!  I hate this person so much.

I wrote about rock and roll not that long ago on the blog, and the main reason I came up with for why I think rock is down on its luck as a genre is that its actually hard to do well.  In order for a band to step up and make a classic rock and roll record right now, it requires multiple people to be very good at their respective instruments, put together a good set of songs (not just one hit) with complex different parts mixed together into cohesive songs, and then add good lyrics.  That takes a ton of work.  On the other hand, the currently most popular genre – rap – just requires a kid with a laptop who can come up with a catchy chorus over a prepackaged beat and then upload it to soundcloud.

Ed:

You should write to that magazine, tell them to fire Bobby Hill, and hire you.  I’m only half-joking.

Yeah, I didn’t think about this nearly as much as you, nor am I anywhere near as well-versed as you, but Nevermind definitely came to mind.  The whole spirit of that album and the grunge movement is completely in line with the original ethos of rock; it didn’t sound like anything that had come before; it came with its own mores around fashion (which is very rock); and it was a big fuck you to the establishment (both the post-Reagan zeitgeist, but also hair-band rock that was so played out by then).   No one gave less fucks than Nirvana, which is the absolute quintessence of rock n roll. 

I'm all fired up all over again.  AND, before you say it, I'm well aware that the point of articles like this one, these days, is to create outrage and find clicks and craft a fire hot take of molten lava spiciness that will make people forward it to their friends to rant and rave about how stupid the take is.  But whatever.  I know I just gave the guy a few more clicks.  I need[ed] release (do you want me girl to be yo thief?).  Now I have excised the anger from my brain.

Thank you, this has been a sponsored message by the Jack You Should Get Back to Work and Quit Worrying About 1980's Rock Albums Society.  Good Day, Sir.  I SAID GOOD DAY!