Aside from the loudness war and musical taste...

[andyhix]

there are a couple good rock bands coming out now... you just have to know where to look... actually there are quite a few good bands out now... but they're not very big

I think this right here is the problem - you have to know where to look. For the average Kaitlin or Brady, their exposure to music comes from the local clear channel station or MTV2. Consequently, they hear the same 20 crap pop songs repeated ad naseum everyday. The chance for something truly original or any local music to get on the air is slim to none.

Hell, I don't even know where to look to hear new cool music. For me, the best bet is internet radio stations - accuradio, etc., and by reading articles in music mags, to get an idea if I might like something.

 

[Light]

The thing is, all of this applies ONLY to the shit coming out of the corporate record companies. Corporate rock has ALWAYS sucked, so it is not like this is a new development. The thing which has changed is the access to great new music.

It used to be that a great local band could get their shit played on the radio. Now? Not to bloody fucking likely. I mean, here in Minneapolis, we have had, for the last 10 months or so, a Public Radio station who has a real commitment to playing local music. Shit, they will play just about any great music, reguardless of who made it, when it was made, or what record company released it. But we are in the minority of cities in that reguard. Largely because of this radio station,89.3 The Current, I would predict that Minneapolis has a really good chance of becoming the "Seatle in the early ninties" for the next few years. Now, I could be wrong, but I doubt it. I am already seeing local bands show up in more national venues, and there have been some amazing things going on around here for touring acts from other local scenes. The one I love is Devotchka. They came to town on a make up date for their tour, their van having broken down on the way to their first scheduled gig here. So, it is the end of their tour when they get here, and their crowds have been small to moderate. Then they get here, where they have been getting a LOT of airplay on this one great radio station, and they sell out a room which is a bit larger than they normally play.

There IS great rock out there. Shit, every now and then, great rock ends up on corporate labels (Louis XIV comes to mind, or the Drive by Truckers). Not often, but sometimes. But if you have access to it, it is there. You just can't rely on the easily avalible channels. Radio, for the most part, sucks. MTV doesn't even play music anymore, and if they did it would all be corporate crap (as it has been since about 1985, when the labels finally realized that, "hey, these videos can actually sell records!"). File sharing doesn't work too well either, as you are probably only looking for bands you already know.

I conseder myself extremly lucky to live in an area with a great radio station playing great NEW music (along with great old music, of course). I don't like everything they play. In fact, every now and then they play some real dog shit (their is this English rapper I just can't stand!). But I know that, most of the time, if I don't like the song they are playing right now, I will like the next one.

There is nothing wrong with Rock and Roll right now. Rock and Roll is fine. You just have to go out and look for it.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

 

[Projbalance]

This is my two cents, and it probably isn't even worth that.

I would say that a big problem is that there is this perception that what is and is not "rock" music can be defined. Rock n roll was meant, at first, to describe the feel and sway of the music the same way punk was meant to describe the people who listend to and played it, not the music itself. The very definition is what is part of the problem, because just defining it by the "Who gives a fuck" attituded plugs bands like the Cocteau Twins, U2, and many others into the same catagory as Motley Crue and Iron Maiden.

Whats wrong with modern rock is there is no heart. No one has anything to say about anything real, and I'm not talking about politics. Modern rock meanders from the, "Woe is me, I hate my dad, all the kids hate me at school" and the "Party party party party" motifs. This is nothing new, but the divide has become more pronounced I think due the to the overwhelming demands of marketing. However, when you listen to many of these bands it becomes clear that there is something missing from their sentiments. I beleive tht too many bands are very concious of the spoils of being a "big" band, thanks to all the coverage celebrities get for just being celebrities, and that taints everything they do. This self awareness is less an antithesis to the self destructive attitudes of the past and more of a self concious understanding of whats at stake. They understand all to well what they can get from playing the game and they percieve the material gains as being at least as important as the music itself. Again, nothing new here, but definately an escalation of the issue.

As far as the sound of modern rock goes I think it comes from the desire to get things to sound so perfect it ends up sounding fake. Producers and mixers are so concerned with the frequency ranges, getting everything to sit as perfectly in the mix as they can; micro managing every peak, every tap of the delay, every microsecond of the reverb decay. Theres no randomness, the entire chain of recording is set up to eliminate the very possibility of anything out of the ordinary or undesireable sneaking onto the track. It's this sterility that I think affects the feel of modern rock. I'm all for getting a good recording, but not if it sacrifices to very essence of the song, which is fucked up for me to say because I record all digital using a POD and a drum machine, but out of necessity and not choice. It's not just Autotune and compression, it's the whole deal. The music is just overworked and the life has been taken from it. You have to have a little bit of that dirt, a little bit of that chaos, to create drama and excitement and too many modern rock recordings don't have that. And just like it has always been, if the big boys do it all the little guys want to do it too. So many low budget producers attempt to emulate the sound of the big guys, often at the request of bands that don't know the difference and just want to sound "pro", and they end up putting out even worse types of the same bland crap.

The one excuse many use is that they are just doing what the industry demands. Honestly though, if they know better and put out crap anyway, they need to shoulder much of the blame. As most bands have no real clue about how things really it is up to the producer and engineer to make them understand why some things sound better than others. The producer is in charge of the sound of the record, that's what he's hired for. By not standing against the wind and being honest about their work they are doing as much damage as the know-nothing record labels.

Perhaps the biggest problem is the idea that we have to have big rock music. Most of the best music, the music that inspired a lot of people to want to make music in the firs place, comes out of small labels and little bands that flare up and die in a righteous fire of activity. You talk to a lot of musicians and their big influences usually end up being some little band that no one has realy heard of, or the guys that just never seemed to break through. There is more than just the music as it is written and played, though that is usually a major factor. The records, given to their low budget nature, are usually very raw and real sounding. The rawness puts the emphasis on the music itself, making the music more important than the recording. That doesn't happen much in big rock because labels are afraid to try and sell music. They sell a sound and an image that doesnt often have much of anyhing to do with whats being recorded.

So maybe that's what needs to be done again. Maybe the music needs to be taken out of the realm of the pristine and the sonically perfect and dragged back throuhg the mud. Bands should go back to the crappy garage and basement studios where the equipment is older than the floors and doesnt always work right. Maybe we should stop worrying about how the music sounds and concentrate on how it feels and what it says.

Or maybe I should just put my thumb back in my ass and leave this kind of thing to the pros'.

 

[grn]

some music that is good in my opinion, but not well known: rufus wainwright, of montreal, beulah, brazilian girls, shapiro, the dissociatives (a side project of the lead singer from silverchair), then of course coldplay and fiona apple (but I think they're much better known)... oh yeah and my band is probably the best and we're having a lot of success here.

 

[blueroommusic]

5 words....QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE...the "real" saviors of rock.