skankdelvar

In the old days one certainly got the impression that Rock was reasonably big in Germany and the Netherlands. Flying Vees and mullet-sporting gents in tight leather trousers, you know what I mean. The Scandies have their own slightly odd thing going in the Metal department while Finland seems to have a quaint penchant for Dr Feelgood and pub rock. The French, not so much apart from Little Bob Story and ... er ...

Rock's problem is not that old people (in industry terms that means those aged over 35) like it or don't like it. It's big problem is that young people are turning away from it whether as a performance thing or a consumption thing Electric guitar sales are down by 33% in a decade with the biggest fall being among young people so that's the input end of the operation f*cked. At the output end a Ticketmaster study showed that 65% of US concert ticket sales were accounted for by people aged 35+. Oldies, in other words. Where did those screaming teens go? They got old. Meanwhile in the world of recorded music sales Rap overtook rock as the #1 genre in the USA in 2017. 8 of the 10 most popular acts in 2017 by consolidated US sales were Rap / RnB artists. The two 'other' acts were Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran. Might this be because Rappers and RnB artists are frankly fabulous while Rockers are either boring and slightly talentless dead-eyed boys or old men with more hair coming out of their ears than they have on top of their heads? I mean, Drake on his own sold more than the top 3 rock acts put together (Metallica, The Beatles and Imagine Dragons). Even within the Rock genre the rock artists who performed the best in 2017 in the USA were either legacy acts or bands you've never heard of but had a one-off hit. Of the five best selling rock albums, one was the Guardians of the Galaxy 2 soundtrack ffs. Imagine Dragons (who?) had the top two songs in “Believer” and “Thunder”. The top two rock acts were Metallica and the Beatles. Let me say that again in case you missed it. The top two rock acts were Metallica and the Beatles. And even Lil Uzi Vert sold more than the Beatles and he was #10 top artist by US sales. It's just f*cking hopeless. You've got old men like Green Day and Metallica and The Stones and Fleetwood Mac ever more desperately hawking their schlock to audiences trying to recapture their youth while everywhere else young bands are beginning to realise they can't get a gig let alone a deal. And why? Because the bottom's falling out of the Rock market and the money-men realise that the market's falling out of their bottoms. They're not going to spend crillions on artist development just to push some 'difficult' acne-ridden twerps with guitars out there when there's ready market for Rappers who are happy to work with a team and would rather be thinking about their fashion line than writing a 'meaningful' song. The sooner we start to treat Rock like Jazz - as a specialist interest form with a dual offering of unlistenable experimentation and reassuring familiarity - the happier we'll all be. There's no law that says Rock must live forever or that it's always going to be moving forward. Sooner or later, everything dies and Rock's time has come. They say, it's gonna die: oh! Honey please let's face it; They just don't know what's-a goin' to replace it. Cliff Richard is 77.

Idles explained in one sentence: Sham 69 hire a Motorik drummer and have a go at Morris dancing.

You are Big Vern and I claim my £5.00

If nothing else, it would have been a nice day out. We could have had chips on the way back.

Which is fine and dandy, except that some bands hook in replacement players on the false pretence that they're a gigging band when they're not. That's what causes half the threads on BC where people lament their wasted 3 / 6 / 12 months, at the end of which they discovered that the band (wittingly or otherwise) had no real intention of playing out.

I say we should all go round and give these bastards a savage leathering. Let's sort out a minibus.

The fundamental misapprehension that some are bringing to this thread is that it's about Rock music not being as good as it was. Wrong. It's about the reasons why Rock no longer enjoys the mass appeal and saliency of - say - twenty years ago. But if people want to use it to demonstrate to the rest of us that they're 'young at heart' or emphatically not a ghastly 'old' person then that's fine too.

Indeed so, but this reinforces my point that rock as a sub-genre of pop has been commoditised like all other popular music (and some classical too, but that's another story). If RnB is the hamburger then Rock is the filet-o-fish. It shifts far less units but they keep it on the menu because it sells to a different consumer group. The other reason that Rap and RnB are more popular than Rock is that these genres haven't rejected the notion that sexual intercourse is something to be celebrated. Rock (as it is currently practised by certain pursed-lipped, inhibited white people) is now a bowdlerised, genitalia-free zone where performers mostly sing about their inner conflicts and WASP neuroses. I suppose one might stretch a point and include certain white performers in these fundamentally black genres but the truth is that Justin Bieber is the Pat Boone of his generation. Rick Beato and his Merry Men may opine that Rock's gone down the shi**er since it lost touch with the blues. More accurately: for a couple of decades white pop music docked with the swaggering Blues tradition, particularly those aspects related to outlawry, bacchanalia and unconfined shagging. It all started to go wrong when Rock stopped thinking with its balls and slipped into an infatuation with 'art' and ''meaning' and politics and 'compassion'. John Lennon - J'accuse. So while Rock withers feebly on the vine, Rap and RnB proudly carry the Blues tradition forward in a heady cloud of sex and bad behaviour, and in consequence shift crillions of units. I mean, who would one rather be? A pallid, ingratiating wanna-be or a bad-äss motherf**ker.

Apart from the fact that 'interesting' is both relative and subjective, I agree there may be interesting and vibrant bands within metal. Certainly. plenty of bands may be releasing great albums either paying homage to their heroes or developing new takes on established sounds. Some or many metal bands may well have released 'good' records (though good is also a subjective term). For myself, I likes me a bit of Metal and can even occasionally be found wigging out on a guitar tuned to drop D or drop C. I'm not writing it off as a genre because - obviously - people still play it and consume it and good luck to them. I'm just saying that in the wider cultural sense Metal is an internally-focused phenomenon which - like cosplay or historical re-enactment - has its own rules and customs, and obsessions with authenticity and detail. This doesn't render Metal invalid but it sets it apart from the rest of music in its own little feedback loop. Fair play to it, Metal is the last outpost of the Rock & Roll ethos, possibly because it is the sub-genre which will not die. It is neither progressive nor regressive but essentially static (which may explain its longevity) and while it may be important to its fans it's more of a curiosity than a cultural force like Rap or RnB.

No. Rock & Roll is dead as ärseholes. Anything new is either unlistenable or a tired retread. In fact, it's got so bad one can play 'Spot The Influences' Bingo for days on end. Metal is a self-referential Moebius loop of infinitely smaller and smaller sub-genres, each of which sounds - surprise, surprise - pretty much exactly like most of the others and is populated by hopelessly deluded, vacuous twits with tattoos and piercings who think they're 'dangerous' but pose as much threat as my Aunt Mabel's budgie. Who's dead. The budgie, that is. Though so is Aunt Mabel. She liked Glen Miller, y'know. In fact, Metal is now about as much fun as an exit wound from a Mossberg shotgun and as believable as a school Christmas play. The utter hopelessness of the protagonists shines through just as if each of them had written on their foreheads 'I'm more than a loser - I'm a gaping a$$hole of a loser who knows he's a loser but depends on other losers to keep giving him their money so he can carry on being a loser and not have to go back to his old day job as an artificial limb salesman for SW England and Wales". I'm not saying that 'Rock' was better in my day. It just was - in the sense that it existed at all - but now it doesn't exist beyond its function as a label hung off a t-shirt. Indeed, those old stagers who 'keep the rock flag flying high' (Black Star Riders, anyone?) are just as terminally pointless as - say - Greta Van Fleet who are forty years younger. If you don't believe me about old rock musicians, watch The Story Of Anvil. It's so sad, you just want to cut your wrists at the sheer desperation. Clive Dunn? Well, yes, rock in the 70's (strangely) co-existed in the pop charts with novelty songs and ballady dreck. But the singles charts were a sideline to the real action and Rock existed in its own far larger hinterland of albums and tours and TV sets going out of windows and sweet, sweet punani. Now the charts are a desert of homogeneously over-produced, knowing pop-bait for 11 year-old girls and very little of any note occurs beyond it, except among microscopically small groups of 'enthusiasts' who sit around saying 'Have you heard this? It's new and it's just like the Grateful Dead mashed up with Anthrax and Pat Metheny' and stroking their chins like a crew of smelly ol' jazzbos who've just found an unreleased Thelonius Monk session and are preparing to engage in a disgusting circle jerk of pseudo-scholarly delight. But it's not all bad: Rock isn't really 'Dead'. Rock has just been quietly shuffled into the old folks home and now sits in the day room with its friends Folk, Jazz, Ragtime and Swing, gumming away at a nice Digestive biscuit and slurping a cup of milky tea and saying' I'm still relevant, me. Oh, I've wee'd myself' while young people wander down the street outside doing something much more interesting than listening to Rock music like - I don't know - texting their idiot 'friends' or bullying their schoolmates into suicide or posting pictures of kittens. And if these kids do actually go to a gig, they and the sad, middle-aged has-beens around them don't listen, oh no, they all just film the gig through their phones and walk out afterwards and say 'Who was that we just saw?' And while Rock passes its twilight years in the Springfield Retirement Castle, the advertisers and the media and the record companies (f*ck you, Jimmy Iovine, f*ck you) have successfully cultured a clone from Rock's stinky, yellow toenail clippings and now that clone staggers around wearing a sandwich board that says 'Hi! I'm Rock! This musical experience was brought to you in association with (insert brand here)'. It would be a kindness if someone were to put a bullet into Rock & Roll. I'd do it with a song on my lips and that song would be 'Oh What A Beautiful Morning' from the musical Oklahoma (Rodgers & Hammerstein: 1955).

I've watched this vid and I concur with its findings though I would add that the corporatisation and commoditisation of youthful rebellion might have something to do with it. For myself, I knew Rock & Roll was clinically dead when VW sponsored a Stones tour and brought out a Stones-logo'd Golf to go with it. See also: Fender headphones, £150 AC/DC tickets, Lady Gaga in 'A Star Is Born', Iggy Pop doing car insurance ads and that ghastly pervert Ed Sheeran with his stupid, tiny Martin stuffing up the charts with 18 songs out of the top 20 or something. Rock & Roll: I spit on your gravy.

Welcome, Andrés. Enjoy the forum

That 'tapping' timeline explained 19,003 BC - Ugh the caveman picks up a club and taps out a rhythm on his brother-in-law's skull. He obtains a musically pleasing result though his brother-in-law dies. 1763 - Antiquarian and amateur musician Sir Lemuel Linnet discovers Ugh's brother-in-law's skull - infers rhythmic tapping as cause of death 1803 - Italian cellist Pietro Bandileggi reads Linnet's Discourse; applies technique to Haydn's Second Cello Concerto and is lynched by furious audience 1898 - Sir Edward Elgar finds Bandileggi's marginalia in old musical score: 'Ho iniziato a battere sul mio violoncello e venne fuori la voce degli angeli' (I commenced to beat my cello and this came forth the voice of angels). Elgar mentions technico di tappo to his wife Olga who notes it in her commonplace book. 1926 - Jazz mandolinist Eddy 'Little Hands' Schnauzer meets Elgar's widow. Learning from her of Bandileggi's percussive cello technique Schnauzer adapts it for the mandolin 1964 - Schnauzer is taken ill while touring in Sicily. Local guitarist Vittorio Cammardese is at Schnauzer's death bed and hears of the 'tapping thing' from the ashen lips of the expiring mandolinist 1971 - Pimlico-born guitarist Steve Hackett sees Cammardese performing on TV's The Sooty Show. Intrigued, Hackett begins to experiment with tapping, recording a cover of Alexis Korner's Tap Turns On The Water. Hackett is dismayed when producer Mickie Most removes Hackett's solo and replaces it with sound effects of tap dancer Fred Astaire 1974 - 19 year-old Californian covers band guitarist Eddie Van Halen discovers the tape of Hackett's excised tap solo in a garbage can in Los Angeles and spends weeks learning to copy it. Van Halen's tapping technique is unveiled at a Frat House party in Van Nuys, Los Angeles on October 13th 1975. The party-goers are appalled and the band is ejected without payment. Van Halen swears revenge and commits himself to tapping, with what effect we now know.

Having done the London thing for 30-odd years before decamping to the boonies I can assure you that rehearsing in London is a complete nightmare. There may be a great public transport network but using it in evening rush hour (i.e. about the time you'd be on your way to rehearsals) is a Dante's Inferno of fat, sweaty locals and whining tourists. And it breaks down all the time, so you think 'F**k it, I'll drive', but road traffic moves slower than it did in 1900 so forget about sneaking out of work at five, home by six, studios by seven so that means bringing the car to work to go straight to rehearsals but there's nowhere to park your car on the street at work so you stick it in a private car park which costs you £20 and even if you set off on time there's a burst water main on Camden High Street and nothing's moving so you throw every back double you know and you're banging your head off the steering wheel and when you walk into the rehearsal room 20 minutes late the singer gives you the stink-eye and says 'Glad you could join us' in that sarky way of his and the next thing you know you've got your teeth in his windpipe and everyone's shouting and grabbing at you. And anyway London's full of cockneys going 'Cor blimey, guv'nor, I can only get me tone by turning right up, strike a light, me old china'. So think yourself f**king lucky you live where you do. It's grim down South.

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THE SUN SAYS What's wrong with our Young People? They're all a bunch of snivelling woofters COMMENT By The Sun 34th September 2018, 2:49 am Updated: 35th September 2018, 2:50 am Kids Today, eh? WHATEVER happened our young people? Back in the old days we'd listen to music by Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin then go out on a Friday night like a horde of rampaging Vikings intent on burning, looting, and pulling a few stunnahs. But our kids don't do that anymore. Instead, they sit around posting videos of themselves singing the Jeremy Corbyn song while their pinko 'friends' (say it with a whinging lilt) bang on about 'isshoos' and communism. What a bunch of nancies. Research shows that our nation's shining youth are far less like likely to drink, smoke or bonk than any of their proud British ancestors. But it's not really our kids' fault. Meddling social workers and hand-wringing 'teachers' have brainwashed them to reject booze, ciggies and shagging. And make no mistake: these socialist 'assassins of youth' could never have got away with it if they hadn't been supported by a Brussels-financed Quisling record industry full of whiny ginger snowflakes with stupid tiny guitars and screeching pop feminists on a mission. THERE'S only one answer: Everyone under the age of 25 must be prescribed a musical crash diet of Whitesnake's Greatest Hits until they're back to normal

TBPH, all I can remember of him was the AC30 and a reference to The Regiment. Other than that, he's a total blur.

Very possibly. IIRC, he claimed to have served at one time with a certain military formation based in Herefordshire (or something like that).

Coming back round to Molan's initial hypothesis, I think that over-loud performers contribute to the continuing decline popularity of 'local' music but they're not the only factor in play. There's a whole heap of other things which we could discuss another time, but I'm of the opinion that the wider 'pub gig' model is verging on breakdown.

Various studies suggest that one's musical tastes are formed by the age of 14 (men) and 13 (women) and that one reaches one's peak age of musical discovery in one's mid twenties. One assumes that the years 0-5 are those in which one's musical exposure is predominantly formed by the tastes of those around oneself (parents, older siblings, etc) and the years 5-14 being those in which one begins to exercise a growing degree of control of one's consumption. At 14 one stands upon the threshold of adulthood, probably armed with sufficient cash to begin one's wider exploration of musical consumables. By one's mid-20's one's exploration (and formation of identity) is more or less complete. At 30 one's tastes abruptly atrophy and its the same three bands on constant rotation until one drops off the twig, one's last words being 'I can see God and ... it's ... Tom Petty'. The same applies to pretty much everything else one consumes from ice cream to toothpaste. This is nothing new: I remember having an almost identical discussion about life-stage formation of preferences with someone from Proctor & Gamble's washing powder division nearly 40 years ago. He enlightened me when he explained that most advertisers target young people to embed general product affinities early on and frankly don't give a toss about those aged over 35 unless it's incontinence pads, back-ache pills and Saga cruises.

I knew one guy who had a Bluesbreaker combo (first re-issue). He thought it was too quiet so he got a tech to whip out the chassis and somehow squeeze a JCM800 into the cabinet (he had to leave the top back panel off). Of course, the amp sounded much less interesting but it was louder so that was all right.

Back in the 60's-70's and without PA reinforcement one needed a 100w valve head to fill out big club / cinema gigs where a thousand or more people were all dancing and screaming at the tops of their voices. Small room in a pub, four men and a dog, not so much. It's like using a JCB to weed your flowerbed. I met up with a guy one time looking to start a pub covers band in Oxford. Asked me my rig wattage. Well, FWIW, 500w, I told him. Says he scornfully, if you're going to work with me you'll have to buy a bigger rig, at least 1000w, I always run my AC30 at full whack. Twunt.

Outstanding work, Sir. Cap doffed.