I hate to be the one to burst Noah Berlatsky’s bubble but Gene Simmons is right: rock is dead. But it’s not dead for the reasons Simmons thinks it is. In the original Esquire interview, Simmons bemoans the changes in the record industry and scolds the entitled fans who ruined the support system that used to exist for rock bands. What he overlooks is the record industry greed that got us there.
In the late 1990s-early 2000s, the record industry was taken to court for price-fixing and to jack up the price of compact discs. They lost. To a lot of music fans, that was 2-3 hours of their burger flipping that went to pay for corporate’s hookers and blow, rather than to the musicians they loved and thought they were supporting. Artists like the Goo Goo Dolls had to embark on endless tours to pay back their record companies “support system.” Or they could take the TLC route and just file bankruptcy. Add to this, record companies themselves are no longer record companies: buyouts and mergers have turned record companies into just another arm of a corporate revenue stream. What little attempt these companies ever made at producing any semblance of “authentic art” ended long ago.
The most obvious sign of this lack of authenticity is the obsession with signing adorable morons before they’ve finished high school. It makes for more malleable performers. Thanks to Autotune, it doesn’t even matter that they can carry a tune. In this musical climate, nothing interesting is going to happen in the mainstream. Also, a singer or singing group singing to pre-recorded music is cheaper for a venue to book than a full band of people that like eating, and have to take time to set up and break down their gear. That cost consciousness has also led to the rise of the DJ. Not only is paying one or two people less expensive than a band, but it’s also easier to book them for several appearances at a venue. If anything has killed rock music (people playing instruments in bands), then it’s because EDM and dumb pop music are simply more cost effective to make and sell.
This isn’t the first time music has seen such a transition. After World War II, bop quartets started to push out full swing bands consisting of around a dozen people because smaller clubs couldn’t afford the bigger acts. More intimately minded artists like Miles Davis flourished in that atmosphere, while the bigger bands either pared down, like Benny Goodman, or ceased touring for a while, like Duke Ellington.
But what of the proverbial bedroom artists? People who still write songs and play an instrument? Do they even exist anymore? As Berlatsky points out, YouTube tells us they do. I suppose the best of them can hopefully sign to a genuinely independent label and flourish that way. But I suspect that many of these artists will mostly exist in a vacuum. It’s hard to say, because we’re in such a new place with this type of self-promotion.
What I do wonder, though, is how good these people can ever hope to get. I have two reasons for asking this: the first is that a generation of kids who have been given more anti-psychotic drugs than music lessons. The impetus to be interesting has been drugged and counseled out of them. If Bob Dylan was a kid now, he’d probably be given Ritalin instead of a guitar. It seems impossible to demand that this generation give us authentic musicians when it’s normal to deny them the privilege of being their authentic selves.
This line of questioning extends to the audience too. How can a generation who have been drugged into submission ever learn to appreciate an artist who calls out the bullshit in the world? Because that is the spirit of not just rock ‘n roll, but of great art. I mean, it’s not the only thing, but it can be a substantially more interesting starting point being another sparkly, dancing kid on Nickelodeon. And this is probably what scares me more than anything about the death of rock ‘n roll: that we’ve reached a point, culturally, where there’s no room for honesty or rebellion. So much of what we consume, not just in music, but in movies and television, has little room for anything that hasn’t been already designed and pre-approved by a committee.
Rock ‘n roll has had a good 50 year run or so, and by the time Gene Simmons’ kids are grandparents, it will be like jazz is to our generation. It will still exist in some pockets of the music world, among serious music fans taking themselves very seriously, but it will continue to move farther and farther out of the mainstream. And hip-hop will be on the chopping block very soon.
In the context of Kiss, I have trouble worrying about the decline of music-making skills going forward….
Yeah, as one of those kids who grew up with debilitating anxiety, depression, and eventually developed OCD, I’ll take the drugs that are supposedly depriving me of my “authentic self”. My authentic self sucked, I am not “drugged into submission”, and I still like rock music, thanks.
“Rock ‘n roll has had a good 50 year run or so, and by the time Gene Simmons’ kids are grandparents, it will be like jazz is to our generation.”
And presumably we’ll be singing some variation of that song from Bye Bye Birdie:
Why can’t they dance like we did
What’s wrong with Sammy Kaye?
“Farther and farther out of the mainstream….” Isn’t that what rock n’ roll is supposed to be?
Just quickly to reiterate my points about Simmons, which I think apply to this piece as well… Any genre is porous and flexible, and that’s the case for rock as well. Rock originally included performers like LaVern Baker and Etta James; if you see that tradition as continuing through people like Ray Charles, James Brown, and Sly Stone, then hip hop and R&B performers like Beyoncé look a lot less discontinuous with the tradition of rock than if you define rock (as Simmons does) as mostly white guys playing guitars.
Whether or not you’re willing to accept Beyoncé as rock, though, there’s a tendency in these discussions to equate rock with quality. I don’t think that holds up. There was a lot of marginally competent rock at the best of times (like Kiss) and there’s a lot of very talented musicians around now. Rapping and electronica require different skills than rock guitar, but that doesn’t mean that they’re less authentic or less musical (IMO).
I believe all musical genres tend towards entropy. You either eventually move so far away from the genre that what you’re doing no longer belongs there according to most of its adherents (cf., European free jazz) or you ape what used to be played in the halcyon days (cf. Wynton Marsalis). Or you just insist on referring to the current shit with old labels (see Noah’s post above, or consider Johnny Lang). Rock is either dead, or really boring. Just like blues, soul, country, jazz, hip hop and whatever else one might name.
Amen to this article, Tracy. I’d add that KISS is pretty much the nucleus of the worst part of rock or popular music. They’ve done everything in their power to make it all about commodities.
Is this satire or an exercise in Poe’s Law?
Is this a subtle attempt to discredit the Rock Is Dead argument by posting an a pile of cliched generalizations even post-9/11 Dennis Miller would find a bit much?
Particularly this: “What I do wonder, though, is how good these people can ever hope to get…a generation of kids who have been given more anti-psychotic drugs than music lessons. The impetus to be interesting has been drugged and counseled out of them. If Bob Dylan was a kid now, he’d probably be given Ritalin instead of a guitar. It seems impossible to demand that this generation give us authentic musicians…How can a generation who have been drugged into submission ever learn to appreciate an artist who calls out the bullshit in the world?…we’ve reached a point, culturally, where there’s no room for honesty or rebellion. So much of what we consume, not just in music, but in movies and television, has little room for anything that hasn’t been already designed and pre-approved by a committee.”
It’s embarrassing enough to read the usual dopiness about mainstream authenticity which a) invokes the false myth of a time when top selling entertainment wasn’t mostly diluted cultural product; and b) embraces the worst of corporate consumerism by pretending successful “authentic” work doesn’t count if it has less money and success than the mainstream. [Hear that Tom Waits and Kathleen Hanna? You might as well not exist. Also The Mynabirds, Warpaint, Janelle Monae and Thao Nguyen and The Get Down Stay Down and on and on.]
It’s worse to read such a trite dismissal of an entire generation – multiple generations at this point – as helpless doped up kids who can’t even conceive of rebellion. Why not just come right out and use the word “Sheeple”?
I looked up Tracy Q. Loxley and this has certainly GOT to be satire. I cannot believe the author of the Stay Curious entries would be so lacking in nuance and incurious, spouting inane cliches that erase the agency of vast groups of people. HU usually champions critical thinking. Where exactly is that in this post?
Well…critical thinking all depends on where you’re sitting, right? I don’t agree with Tracy here, but I don’t want to only print things I agree with; that’d be a boring blog!
I liked the point about DJs being cheaper than bands. And Tracy does talk about how labels have always ripped folks off (not to mention the CD price-fixing issue, which I hadn’t realized had actually been proved in court.) I think the dismissal of young people as somehow especially benighted is really problematic; I really don’t think kids at the moment are any dumber than kids in the past — or than adults in the past or present, for that matter. There’s some argument to make maybe about overdiagnosis of ADD and related conditions, but I don’t think turning that into a broad-based moral panic is necessarily the way to go.
“After World War II, bop quartets started to push out full swing bands consisting of around a dozen people because smaller clubs couldn’t afford the bigger acts.”
Swing is arguably an anomaly, arising from a sweet spot of technical, economic and taste in the mainstream which inevitably passed. Through out history, large bands were the exception not the rule because they simply weren’t financially feasible for most. There’s a reason symphonic music is deeply connected to the aristocracy.
The roots of jazz involve many genres which did not require large groups to perform. Swing was the ballroom tradition prolonging its viability by incorporating jazz at a moment when such full sounds technically required a large band.
Yet the biggest bands – both in size and success – relied on recorded audio, radio and film profits as much as touring, as well as extended gigs at high profit venues in growth cities. The majority of the business involved break-even finances and struggling journeymen who rarely played an original compisition. A significant portion of the audience rarely saw a big band live.
Beyond changes in technology and taste making it possible for fewer people to entertain larger numbers, the economics which undermined swing were a bit more complex: a radio boycott of ASCAP songs, Petrillo’s ill-timed recording ban (which elevated singers to use smaller bands or vocal groups), excessive cabaret taxes and a loss of personnell to WWII.
I realize some of this is relatively obscure history, but it’s all a few clicks away. It doesn’t mean the mainstream doesn’t suck, but it does provide perspective on how and why.
I don’t think the mainstream sucks! I’d say overall the mainstream at the moment is better than it was in the 90s, though probably not as good as the 70s. Still, lots of great music in popular genres (and probably more than ever available in less popular venues/formats.)
The stuff about cost-effectiveness sounds plausible but the article lost me with drugged up youth, that crosses into insensitive crotchety scaremongering.
The idea that drug use and musical achievement are inversely correlated also seems like it’s contradicted by a certain amount of evidence, from Louis Armstrong to the Beatles to just about everybody else.
Kids in the 60s and 70s might have wanted to start a band so they saved up and bought a guitar.
When those hip-hop kids realized you didn’t need a band, just a turntable and a decent record collection it became a lot cheaper for the average kid to make music. Mom’s already got a stereo and you can pick up used records at the thrift shop.
Now kids can torrent beat making software for free and they can even use it on a smartphone.
So,is this piece about rock as a specific form or is the term being used in a more general sense that covers all popular music of the last half century or so? There seem to be so many unexamined assumptions here that its hard to know where to start….
For the moment, I’ll just point out that there are plenty of musicians that aren’t north American – I don’t happen to know how many Hindi singers or young Saharans guitarists were prescribed anti-psychotics, but they seem to be coping with the current state of the music biz.
Why would anyone care if “rock is dead”? It’s a genre that’s what, 50, 60 years old? Even punk is over 30.
To put that in perspective, imagine that the Beatles had performed only music-hall type music; early Rolling Stone constantly ran “Is Tin Pan Alley dead?” cover stories (alternating with “Can Band X save Tin Pan Alley”); ageing vaudeville-ist critics complained that the kids these days couldn’t hold a candle to Al Jolson, etc. etc.
It’s weird that so many people would expect a genre that old to remain relevant today, or care that it isn’t. I can’t stand his music or persona, but Jack White at least seems to me one of the most honest and authentic rockers, because he treats rock like Seth-style old-timey cosplay. Good riddance to rock [/endvent]
I’m really tired of this “If X was born today, he would be given ritalin and never amounted to anything” cliché.
I just heard it on the PBS Roosevelts documentary, for god sakes.
As someone who has been booing bands in clubs since 1999 and has been DJing a radio show on an independent radio station since 2004 I can simply state that, no, rock is not dead.
Are things changing? Yes.
Are record labels (as we have historically known them to be) basically dead? Pretty much.
But there’s still tons of bands out there, all you have to do is take some effort and look.
Brian Foss
Seattle, Wa
PS – Interesting factoid – In the documentary film “Wheedles Groove” (about the funk/soul music scene in 1970’s Seattle) it was stated that disco killed the live band funk scene since it was cheaper for clubs to hire one DJ instead of a whole band. History repeats……
Oh yeah, people need to just ignore Gene Simmons & Ted Nugent – those fools are just trolling.
I agree with what Jones said.
Popular music is in constant flux, no one should be surprised that an old style is experiencing diminished popularity.
I dont think its because rock is too expensive to produce either, especially in this climate where live shows are losing ground to digital distribution. its because tastes change and young people don’t always like their parents music.
I found the implicit labeling of Ritalin as an “anti-psychotic” to be especially amusing.
I’m going to guess that you’re either a thousand years old, don’t know anyone under 25 or both, because we have these things called “hardcore” and “noise rock” that still manage to attract thousands of kids per weekend to bars and clubs. My friend set up a punk venue in his loft that had no marketing except for word of mouth and by the end of the venue’s run (it was an illegal operation, obviously) it was attracting a couple hundred kids per show, with no presence online or in the press and no hook except for “come hear good, heavy music.” Real recognize real.
Try harder, Hooded U. Your troll articles tend to be a little more articulate and a little less oblivious than roping some mummy that bought her last CD during the Bush era into writing a thinly-veiled complaint about how Millennials are soft and stupid.
Sheesh; you sound way more crotchety yourself than Tracy does.
I like hardcore and noise rock, though I tend to be more into metal. fwiw.
Tracy wrote: “If Bob Dylan was a kid now, he’d probably be given Ritalin instead of a guitar.”
Despite a few protestations, there’s a lot of truth to that statement. Starting in the late 1980s, teachers who could not cope started having meetings with parents and “guilting” them into prescribing Ritalin for their “problem” children. I saw it happen first-hand. I know some kids need meds, but it was clear to me that the educational community was overprescribing the stuff in some cases where it was the teacher who had a problem, not the kids.
It’s arguably the case that ADD is overdiagnosed and that some drugs are overprescribed. I think it’s really dubious to argue that this is happening enough to be some sort of nationwide epidemic that has changed our cultural character.
If Kurt Cobain were a kid today, he’d probably be given an SSRI instead of a shotgun — no wait, that doesn’t work.
If Charles Manson were a kid today, he’d probably be given olanzapine instead of — no wait, that doesn’t work either.
Shit, you guys, this is hard.