Rock and/or Roll

I want to rock and roll all night, and party every day...so went an old song by Kiss. Amazingly enough, Kiss is still around. Let's be honest, their music was always fun...loud and over the top...but essentially pretty sophomoric in content. It was the 70s, the decade that gave us "serious" singer-songwriters like James Taylor (blech), Carol King, Elton John, etc. The 70s also gave us a fair bit of good, old fashioned rock and roll like the aforementioned Kiss, The Runaways, Thin Lizzy, and more. The 70s also gave us punk rock (yay!!!!!!) and disco (zzzzzz).

So, what's my point,you may be wondering. Well, simply put, I've been noticing a trend lately. Lots of my friends, and not just the old farts like myself, have been posting a lot of videos of the old 70s bands lately. Has this music become suddenly hip again...or is there something else? As for my friends and contemporaries, aka the old farts, it could be chalked up to strolling down memory lane. But what about all of the younger folks who have suddenly developed a taste for The Runaways, Suzi Quatro, T-Rex, etc?

The best I can figure is this: they've realized just how awful today's music is! I've been complaining about contemporary music for almost 20 years. Really, most of it is just horrendous...and it just keeps getting worse! There have been some glimmers of hope here and there, thanks in large part to indie labels and the internet...but the major labels still keep churning out dreck and clogging the airwaves, and the media (including the internet) with auditory drivel.

Modern "country" is country only in that there may be a fiddle or steel guitar hidden somewhere in the mix, it's been recorded in Nashville, and someone is wearing a cowboy hat. Aside from that, it's become nothing more than bad, watered down pop music. Safe as milk and every bit as boring.

The alternative market has become the land of clones. You have your loud/noisy bands that all sound the same, your folk wannabes that all sound the same, your hip hop which now all sounds the same, and your girl singer stuff that all sounds pretty much the same. Right there is about 85% of the contemporary music market. Sure, there are still some original sounds out there...but they're few and far between. And the record companies wonder why sales keep scratching the bottom.

It's funny, at least to me, to see young folks cling on to these old tracks, songs that their parents probably listened to while smoking pot in their parents' basement. This younger generation has adopted their parents' soundtrack as their own! So much for the generation gap.  I see young kids wearing Led Zeppelin t-shirts and beginning to look more and more like refugees from the 70s...albeit a caricature of the average 70s teen. While I don't personally have a problem with it, it's disturbing to me that these same young folks have nothing to call their own. Like I said, there are a few decent groups out there...but I think most of the younger generation are too bone-idle to go in search of them and their sounds.

It makes me wonder...has rock and roll finally hit it's ultimate peak? Does it have nowhere left to go? I personally walked away from contemporary music back in the 80s. I found blues and rockabilly, injected my own punk rock fuel into it, and called it mine...but even that is old now. When people hear one of my songs, they know it's mine...and I could've written it any time in the past 30 years! What will the next generation be listening to? Mashups of the Smashing Pumpkins and Taylor Swift? Disco bluegrass? Grunge ska? Two step dub step?

I can only hope that somewhere out there, there are some young musicians bashing away in a garage, torturing their instruments as well as the neighbors' ears, and coming up with the next big thing. Until then, rock on to the sounds of yesteryear kids! There's some cool sounds out there...and luckily, you can find most of it on YouTube!