What Killed Rock & Roll?

[peteb]

I know that it seems like everyone thinks that music was better when they were young, but do they have a point?

Rick Beato is a music producer who has had a few hit records and now has a very interesting YouTube channel, where he explains various aspects of how music works as well as how the industry operates as well as series where he forensically examines how a number of great songs were recorded / written (from Steely Dan to Adele to Nine Inch Nails).

Here he has a clip on why he thinks rock music what led to the decline of rock music and why much of today’s popular music (i.e. all Max Martin / Dr Luke and melodic math songwriting that dominates the airways) lacks the depth of that of twenty years or so ago, not to mention the stuff going back to the fifties (and long before). FWIW, I happen to pretty much agree with everything he says but wonder what anybody else who can take the time to watch the video thinks…  

 

 

Edited September 25, 2018 by peteb

[skankdelvar]

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.

[drTStingray]

1 hour ago, skankdelvar said:

..........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.

Which is probably the reason rock and roll is dying for some people - unfortunately it is that they are so out of step with the youth of today they overlook the fact that 'rock' music is well and truly alive and kicking in the metal and various other genres. Dear old Eric Clapton has one of those little Martin guitars I believe! At the height of rock music (as I guess some people view it through whichever brand of rose tinted spectacles or era one chooses) the pop charts were always carrying artists like Clive Dunn, St Winifred's Choir and the Singing Nun (some of them even sporting now revered sessions musicians on bass and guitar etc).....

I think some of us older folk are just too old to see the wood for the trees. 

Surely the golden age of rock and roll is the first RATM album - on a par with the first Black Sabbath etc etc - take your pick there are some in every era and decade! It certainly isn't dead in my view!! It may not be mainstream pop chart just now but there again, it only has been off and on for selected songs over the last 60 odd years - dependant on what you count as rock and roll. 

 

Edited September 25, 2018 by drTStingray

[alyctes]

Guitar wnaking.

Edited September 25, 2018 by alyctes

[peteb]

23 minutes ago, drTStingray said:

Which is probably the reason rock and roll is dying for some people - unfortunately it is that they are so out of step with the youth of today they overlook the fact that 'rock' music is well and truly alive and kicking in the metal and various other genres. At the height of rock music (as I guess some people view it through whichever brand of rose tinted spectacles or era one chooses) the pop charts were always carrying artists like Clive Dunn, St Winifred's Choir and the Singing Nun (some of them even sporting now revered sessions musicians on bass and guitar etc).....

I think some of us older folk are just too old to see the wood for the trees. 

Surely the golden age of rock and roll is the first RATM album - on a par with the first Black Sabbath etc etc. 

 

I think that one of the main points of the video is not that there isn't a vibrant metal scene (and other sub-genres) because there obviously is, but that this has lost the thread (i.e. some sort of blues influence) that linked it to the music that proceeded it and with that, no longer has any relevance to the mainstream. Modern metal has a strong underground following, but does not have crossover appeal to non metalheads in the way that, say AC/DC did with Back In Black nearly 40 years ago. Also, even music that on the face of it seems very radical, is actually rather conservative - using a limited number of the same producers, recording techniques, sounds, etc... 

Edited September 25, 2018 by peteb

[grandad]

I was born in 1948 and enjoyed/enjoy most music genre to a greater or lesser extent. The search for music, especially American music in the 50's & 60's was a teenage quest to obtain rare LP's and avidly read the sleeve notes. So England went through Skiffle and then a pale copy of Rock ' Roll  to the Beatles, Stones, & all the rest followed. R&R is quite a broad genre in itself and the best will always stand the test of time. Jazz isn't dead, R&R isn't dead. The industry is still chasing teenage pocket money but I reckon todays teenagers don't get the value we did.

[drTStingray]

It happens every so often from what I've experienced - if we are talking music which contains crunchy guitar rock, for instance The Darkness and Muse. I'm not sure if the guys in the video would recognise those bands in the same way. I also don't see why rock music should be rooted in the blues - surely it progresses and has different influences. 

That there are a limited number of producers dominating is surely reflected throughout the last fifty years - I well recall loathing Mickey Most and the Chinneychap production line of the early 70s, but actually love some of those old songs now (but only a few of the very many) - same with Stock, Aitken and Waterman. 

Back in the 60s I remember watching a tv documentary where various jazz musicians and officianados denigrated the Beatles work as worthless. How wrong they were. 

I think it's just people out of touch really (and basically saying they don't make em like they used to). 

When bands like Hendrix and Deep Purple appeared on chart tv shows I really don't think they were there because they appealed to the teeny boppers and 'crossed over' - they were there because a different audience bought sufficient copies to put them there. 

Edited September 25, 2018 by drTStingray

[grandad]

They don't make 'em like they used to.

[peteb]

5 minutes ago, grandad said:

They don't make 'em like they used to.

But they are trying to explain why

[ambient]

Did it die or just evolve and branch into other genres?

Depends what is meant by rock n roll, there’s the 50s Bill Haley stuff, though in America it’s used to describe quite a large section of music.

[skankdelvar]

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).

 

Edited September 26, 2018 by skankdelvar

[grandad]

Rock'n'Roll

"a type of popular dance music originating in the 1950s, characterized by a heavy beat and simple melodies. Rock and roll was an amalgam of black rhythm and blues and white country music, usually based around a twelve-bar structure and an instrumentation of guitar, double bass, and drums".

Yes I think it did evolve into much more and the above I suppose describes Rockabilly.

[peteb]

7 minutes ago, drTStingray said:

It happens every so often from what I've experienced - if we are talking music which contains crunchy guitar rock, for instance The Darkness and Muse. I'm not sure if the guys in the video would recognise those bands in the same way. I also don't see why rock music should be rooted in the blues - surely it progresses and has different influences. 

That there are a limited number of producers dominating is surely reflected throughout the last fifty years - I well recall loathing Mickey Most and the Chinneychap production line of the early 70s, but actually love some of those old songs now (but only a few of the very many) - same with Stock, Aitken and Waterman. 

Back in the 60s I remember watching a tv documentary where various jazz musicians and officianados denigrated the Beatles work as worthless. How wrong they were. 

I think it's just people out of touch really (and basically saying they don't make em like they used to). 

When bands like Hendrix and Deep Purple appeared on chart tv shows I really don't think they were there because they appealed to the teeny boppers and 'crossed over' - they were there because a different audience bought sufficient copies to put them there. 

First of all, I would say that the Darkness do have a blues influence. What he is saying is that rock music has lost the mainstream because generally it has lost it the blues influence. A great band like Muse, who have hit the mainstream, are an exception but there are not too many around like them. 

There have always been hit producers and songwriting teams writing to a formula, but they have not had the stranglehold that they seem to have now. Notice how everything on the radio now hits the chorus before the 45 second mark? That was always a thing but no where near as much as now days. Repetition is key rather than creativity! Even the nu-metal stuff that gets out there tends to very much follows the same formulas. 

As far as your last point goes, if you remember the old greatest hits albums aimed at teenagers that you used to get in supermarkets in the 70s - Strange Kinda Woman and Purple Haze would be on the same compilation album as Wig Wam Bam and Tie A Yellow Ribbon...! 

[drTStingray]

I guess the compilations were designed to appeal to a very broad range - and Edwards/Rogers generally followed the Motown tradition - start the song with the chorus... no 45 second wait for them. 

I do see where these guys are coming from but I think the premis is possibly wrong. 

I quite like the music served up on my local commercial station but the fact the song and artist is shown on my car's 'infotainment' system has alerted me to the fact that every song seemingly contains three diverse artists - presumably to sell to three lots of fans and boost or to make enough money to justify the outlay. 

At least Calvin Harris has very audible bass on his stuff!! (the Sam Smith one sounds like Bernard Edwards at the height of Chic).

[Bluewine]

I haven't watched the video yet, however I remember Disco taking a hard wack at Rock & Roll.

 

Blue

[DJpullchord]

The three guys in that video are living in a musical bubble.

[upside downer]

What killed Rock & Roll?  Damned if I'm going to sit through half hour of some American chaps whining about its demise. I'm off to listen to some Turkish psychedelic folk rock. 

I hope I don't have to make a video about 'What killed Turkish psychedelic folk rock?' in the near future.

[bassace]

Since girls bought records.😛

[Happy Jack]

Y'see, I always thought it was when Elvis got drafted.

[Newfoundfreedom]

To me music should always have something to say. It should always be an expression of the creator(s) It should always stir some kind of emotional response. When it became more about the money than personal expression, mainstream music became stale and none descript. I remember some great tunes coming out of the 2000's American punk / numetal scene. But they were all sing along ditties which could have come from any one of 20 identical sounding bands. None of them had any real presence, individuality, or anything important to say, and all of the bands were interchangable with no real identity or individual sound. 

Also when people call computer generated noise "music" you know something's gone wrong with the human race. Anyone that listens to rave / acid house / dubstep, or anything of that ilk should never be allowed any kind of opinion on music, EVER! 😂

Then ........

John Lydon advertising butter.

R.I.P musical integrity. 

[mikel]

When kids started getting into music to make money, rather than to make music.

[Lozz196]

What killed rock n roll - musicians being told/thinking they`re role models.

Edited September 26, 2018 by Lozz196

[Leonard Smalls]

Nowt killed rock'n'roll...

Because rock'n'roll is an idea, an attitude; just because there's not much of it in "the charts" mean nothing. The charts aren't really the charts anymore, not like when I were a lad - people find music in a thousand different ways and just because some of us old fools on a bass forum can't find new rock'n'roll doesn't mean it's dead. It just means it's changed, or not. Either way, moaning about it is much the same as saying "it's not as good as when I was young". If you're interested, go out and find it! Otherwise just stay in remembering the good old days, and how the youth don't respect anything any more, and how you could leave your door open etc...

 

 

[Stylon Pilson]

I think it's just a natural cycle. Kids don't want to listen to the music that their parents and grandparents listened to, they want to listen to something that makes their elders exclaim "well it all just sounds like a bunch of noise to me!"

And then the kids can roll their eyes and say "duh, you just don't get it. You're so embarrassing."

The solution to this is simple - parents need to stop allowing their children to listen to music.

S.P.

[ianrendall]

Easy online streaming has all but killed the idea of the ‘album’, designed to be listened to in its entirety. 

Modern bands just don’t have the staying power to commit to more than one or two albums before splitting up over childish arguments.

Record labels forcing their ‘ideas’ on artists causing them to dilute their music in favour of commercial reach.

Bands becoming less about music and more of a business and marketable brand.

Bands that leave it too long to release new material. By the time the new album comes out people have moved on.