Rock era over for real this time?

Well, that does not seem right. Do you say "aboot"?

Worst part of anti-globalization movement = terrible folk songs considered part of the ethos?

Similarly, worst part of "prison industrial" mvt. = horrendous "slam" poetry?

Yo Dave Q! Interesting responses!

1. Dunno, maybe this "rock = self-centred" is more of a US thing, (Tho I don't know how Crass and RATM fits into that picture.) and so might be badly affectected by post 9/11, but I think there's has been always an element of "social comment" in UK rock and pop music, at least since the mid-60s beat-boom. Which might sound like folk to you, and it's probably true- there were a fair amount of folk elements in the music. (And actually I'd argue the same for a lot of US music as well- I mean, people didn't exactly ignore the likes of Dylan, did they?) Not that I'm saying everything was totally atruistic - a lot of the "comment" was effectively politicised "I Wanna Be Me" stuff- but in a lot of it, especially punk and afterwards, a great deal of self-love elements were defined more in terms of "me against this unjust world" as opposed to "me me me", and whichever way you look at it, it's a bit less self-centered. Also, don't forget a lot of punk was in direct opposition to self-indulgence in music and musician self-love. Furthermore, it's not as though rock was this first to offer "the freedom of music without use-value". It wasn't even the first to hit the mass media. (What about jazz?) Party music has existed throughout the ages. "Freedom of music without use-value" was probably invented not with bangin' Rock, but with, erm, banging rocks!!
2. Stopping the swastikas wasn't the only thing UK punks did in response to the likes of the National Front et al. Ever heard of the original UK Rock Against Racism? Rather successful it was, and it probably gave an impetus to all those political records I mentioned above...

Old Fart!!!!

I wonder how the next Jon Spencer album will do.

"indigenous forms that resulted from the pain of obscene social inequality": your beginning lays a questionable foundation. The indigenous forms you refer to, unless I'm mistaken, are the blues; field songs; maybe ragtime. That these forms "resulted" from anything other than the human need to make music is far from clear, and correlation doesn't prove causation: just because all early bluesmen were poor and marginalized doesn't mean that their music sounds the way it does because of their poverty and marginalization. Rock took an adult form (blues, which details adult concerns: work, marriage) and made it an adolescent form, and adolescent feelings flare brighter than adult feelings, hence rock's immediate, visceral power. Until there is no more adolesence and no more memory of adolescence, rock will exist in some form or other.

adolescent feelings flare brighter than adult feelings

That's really depressing. I wish you wouldn't say it.

adolescent feelings flare brighter than adult feelings

Y'all sure about that? If anything I think my own feelings have gotten more intense with time.

John D - I don't think 'poor and marginalized' is a quite adequate description. I'm talking about centuries of unrelieved physical and psychological brutality, the most protracted attempt to humiliate, enslave and destroy a group of people since ancient times. I think it would be poetic justice if the blues was designed as a slow-acting poison, created in the knowledge that it would be seized, mutated and swallowed by the West, who grew lazy, solipsistic and purposeless on this strange new drug, leaving them vulnerable to deserved destruction at the hands of the earth's ultra-oppressed.

Mr. darnelle is right and wrong -- not *just* poverty & oppression, no, but certainly shaped by those foces to a degree. Our emotions do burn brighter at adolescence, & there will always be music to reflect that -- but that != rock per se except in the off-kilter dave-q sense. Rock is so rooted in "authenticity" that I see 9/11 as if anything a contributing factor to the *return* of rock, and in particular the countrification of nu-metal.

Also, dave q is indeed the wierd poet of the apocalypse.

Ned -

I'd agree that feelings grow more complex, but by "flare brighter" I mean: when we are seventeen, and we hear a great song (I remember: hearing Cindytalk's "It's Luxury" when I was eighteen, for example), we don't make a note to put it on the next mix tape we make. We make a mix tape RIGHT NOW because we feel like everybody must hear this incredible song RIGHT NOW and we will not be satisfied until everybody is having the exact same amazing experience that we are having RIGHT NOW, etc. etc. Wherefore as adults we may enjoy subtler musics, perhaps at deeper levels, but seldom achieve the raw-nerve reactions in the immediacy of the moment that were our daily bread when we were young and pretty. Your depressing friend John

While the 9/11 incident has sparked much introspection concerning US policies and how they led up to this present state, the collective consciousness of the American public has only grown inward and xenophobic. People respond and relate to rock music because the overwhelming majority of themes presented speak of isolation, agnst, hopelessness, etc. And while the genre itself only grows more derivitive and trite, its content plays directly to the hearts of bruised children that were raised in a culture that knows no happiness outside of materialism. Rock in its past form has ended. In its place a new and faceless monster, created for mass consumption by purely profit driven industries and fed by crying, hysterical, naked children now resides. Modern Western culture, US in particular, isolates humans to such an extent that the values of community and social responsibility, which held us together for so long, have given way to selfishness and profiteering. In its wake are many ills (we all know this already), but its new sound track is modern rock.

Western culture, US in particular, isolates humans to such an extent that the values of community and social responsibility, which held us together for so long, have given way to selfishness and profiteering.

Where and when did this imagined period of "community and social responsibility" exist? In the East? In Russia perhaps, during the Cold War, under the brutally selfless Soviets? Or in the very un-corporate and anti-capitalist Afghanistan under the Taliban? Are those values to be found in the Congo, Somalia, or any other Socialist basket-case around the world?

Lastly, you assume selfishness and profiteering is a bad thing. Humans are a selfish and profiteering species. Fact of life.