Rock gods and things that have just.... receded.

i'm just theorizing here for each, not judging the acts but as far as the first post --

i mean Clapton was done as far as being a god long before his '90s comeback and his '90s comeback was strictly the folks who were longing for Winwood beer commercial era rock to make a comeback. I actually owned his blues album from the '90s, which was well played but ultimately felt like some real straining to be credible (still better than Bonamassa though.) he's been dad rock since 1980, in the actual pejorative worst sense of the term. just nothing really interesting or compelling to hang on to.

The Who i just don't think ever really transcended into the subsequent generation of listeners for some reason. i like them but they never carried over like the Stones or Zeppelin or the Beatles. it's not even that they sounded like an oldies band any more than those bands did, but their specific sound and image and personality just didn't appeal in the same way. that's my sense, at least. growing up i knew so many fans of other bands of the era but the only Who fan i knew was my older cousin, who's got about a decade on me in years.

Hendrix, i don't know. it's probably just him imagewise being so tied to the '60s and the hippie era, and that scene just isn't as appealing anymore. which is deeply unfair to him and what he accomplished.

I fucking love deep purple but I’m voting for king crimson for their seat in the trinity.

there is no pain, you are

Oh shit. You’re right. What was I thinking

frank zappa used to be huge!

i've noticed that small town record stores seem to always have a zappa poster somewhere on the walls.

The Who are so esoteric, though, that it makes sense. "OK, I hear 'Baba O'Riley' and it seems to be about...a farmer?"

with all of these we should probably leave open the possibility that we are just older and don't really know. feel like outside of music nerd circles it is still very very very very very very common for self-important teens to hate on the musical choices of other teens for being sell-outs with no street cred who don't even play their own instruments or write their own songs. god only knows what's going on out there. impossible to read from sales charts. apparently billboard's tenth-biggest Rock Album this week is something called abbey road by a guitar group called "the beatles"

― Newb Sybok (Doctor Casino), Saturday, December 23, 2017 10:18 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

my millennial & gen z take- ill reiterate what badg said, that the concept of "selling out" has been replaced by authenticity. it's fine to be Chance the Rapper and do commercials for Mentos and get sponsored by Sprite as long as you remain "true to yourself," whatever that means. it's totally cool that Arcade Fire plays stadiums, but when they release an ironic and emotionally dishonest and condescending album, people get mad. Kanye getting committees of songwriters and musicians to make hours and hours of material for him to sift thru and 'curate' (wasn't Thomas Frank mentioned itt?) is fine. on a smaller level, PWR BTTM could've continued to grow playing PBR sponsored showcases and Converse sponsored package tours and gotten lots of movie & tv syncs, but the allegations of sexual harassment and abuse completely cancelled them out because it opposed their whole ethos. their music is wiped from streaming services while Charles Manson & name your wife-beating-classic-rocker remain on there because their crimes don't negate their constructed narrative mythic personalities, which are what "authentic self" really means in this context: if you violate the public's perception of you, you will be punished. it's not a money or class thing, it's about sustaining the ability for other to live vicariously thru whatever "you" they've been fed or constructed themselves.

"But Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, southern rock, seem as important as ever. Is this wrong?"

Yeah.

Great post flappy

yeah, good stuff

Yeah, I don't really know what the basis is for saying that Southern rock has maintained a level of importance and esteem that Hendrix hasn't.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?cat=3&date=all&q=%22sweet%20home%20alabama%22,%22purple%20haze%22,%22sunshine%20of%20your%20love%22,%22sir%20duke%22

This new piece about Seeing McCartney in 2017 relates to this.

I had never heard any former Beatle in concert. I had never tried to. I’d always had an ineffable feeling that the Beatles exist in our memory, in our headphones, in our imagination, somewhere above and beyond us. Seeing Paul or Ringo, I’d assumed, wouldn’t conjure that aura. Another reason I’d never tried to see McCartney in particular was McCartney himself. I’ve only lived in the decades of post-Beatles McCartney—regular guy of whatever era you were in. In the seventies, my parents scoffed at Wings; in the eighties, I scoffed at “Give My Regards to Broad Street” and “The Girl Is Mine” (which, as far as I’m concerned, remains a comic high point of the twentieth century). Later, I’d get wary when he’d show up on some televised event and plunk out an earnest “Hey Jude.” All of that helped me take McCartney for granted.

Receded for whom? The critical establishment? Audiences? Which audiences? Where?

What are our sources? Reviews? Lists? Books? Interviews with young musicians? Friends and acquaintances? TV series and films?

Just went through the discussion new noise linked upthread and it was a great read but chock-full of anecdotal evidence that comes across as intuitively 'right'.

This is not a reproach btw, it's more that I'm curious about how one would go about studying these shifts.

Yeah, I don't really know what the basis is for saying that Southern rock has maintained a level of importance and esteem that Hendrix hasn't.

Southern rock is still really big? I'm not so sure about that. Maybe the song Sweet Home Alabama has become more popular over time, but that's about it. The band Lynyrd Skynyrd are basically shills for right wing republican party.

And do a quck test. Write down 5 musical artists who died in 2017, off the top of your head.

Was Gregg Allman on the list?

dying definitely had a negative effect on his concert business

Country stadium rock definitely carries the southern-rock torch (Florida Georgia Line, etc.)

One thing that appears to have receded is strong, outspoken aversion towards a given genre/artist. 'If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all', etc.

Hendrix, i don't know. it's probably just him imagewise being so tied to the '60s and the hippie era, and that scene just isn't as appealing anymore. which is deeply unfair to him and what he accomplished.

I saw a drunk guy start an argument with the Hendrix statue at 14:30 on Christmas Day yesterday fwiw

xp yes that is otm. maybe something to do abundance of negativity endemic to the internet/social media & people resenting others that add to that by choice? but this doesn't apply to everyone: criticizing Beyonce is heresy, but 'Nickelback sucks lmao' has reached 'jokes about airplane food' levels of hacky cliche. dunking on Arcade Fire also acceptable bc they've violated their public persona oath. feel like it's related to increased social awareness and support and recognition of the discriminated and disadvantage that's simultaneous with the spread of childish & reductive phrases like 'garbage person' or 'garbage opinions.' and describing anything as a 'dumpster fire.'

Maybe the underlying assumption is that music – even so-called 'pop' music – isn't as crucial a cultural battleground as certain critics make it out to be (in part because writing about music implies a necessary socio-politicisation due to the recourse to language). Hence a certain degree of indifference towards public expressions of musical disgust: they have no bearing on anything that actually matters. The 'real' fight takes place elsewhere.

Right. (most) everyone is a cultural polyglot, it's not weird at all to rep Metallica and Madonna and Lil Peep in the same breath. The cultural battleground of HIGH FIDELITY type record/book/movie store clerks has vanished, thankfully. Now the argument or the 'fight' is about whether something matters, whether it adds to the culture, what it's saying, etc. Purely aesthetic disgust is frowned upon because it adds nothing to the conversation. you're otm that those opinions have no bearing on anything that actually matters.

As for Rock Gods mentioned in the thread title, the signifier of "rock" has become so disconnected from its original connotations that it's meaningless. Energy drinks, software companies, programming job listings, corporate correspondence are all rockin' rockstars. I supposed the same bleaching happened with "swinging" between the 1930s and 70s, growing more anodyne with each decade.

Now the argument or the 'fight' is about whether something matters, whether it adds to the culture, what it's saying, etc. Purely aesthetic disgust is frowned upon because it adds nothing to the conversation. you're otm that those opinions have no bearing on anything that actually matters.

I feel like rock criticism has always had strong tendencies towards this approach, honestly. Criticisms of e.g. Queen were so often about their purported fascist overtones as opposed to, say, "I hate the tone of Brian May's guitar".

I mean, what was the rockism that has supposedly been vanquished, if not an emphasis on "whether something matters, whether it adds to the culture, what it's saying, etc."?

(It sure wasn't about loving Queen or Rush or even Led Zeppelin.)

the whole fascist thing with Queen always seemed so weird to me? like get a sense of camp

Yeah, I agree. I wasn't advocating for this approach wrt any period.

ums you probably shouldn't click on that thread then

i'm too busy working on my "we will rock you"/"bodak yellow" mashup

I recall Run DMC saying they got a ton of shit for the trainers stuff.
There must be a ton of hiphop which is critical of that kind of thing?

A few questions about poptimism... I know I'm a few years late.

- I thought lots of poptimists (not to be confused with regular pop fans who want respect and write thinkpieces) were critical of the glorification of wealth in pop, with other similar critiques?

- Are actual poptimists very small in number but general pop fans benefited from it and taken their talking points?

- does it generally cut off somewhere in the 70s? Dadrockers tend to like Abba, old girl groups and pop music which was written by people outside the bands and produced by people like Spector and Meek.

- has pop really benefited from this globally? I feel like I'm generally hearing about the same old brits and Americans with a few European pop stars and occasional koreans.

Bo-Dak!
Bo-Dak!
Yel-low!

Goddamn it, ums.

Searched that, it's a Cardi B song?

Sorry, I have no insights about poptimism for you. Was just responding to upper mississippi sh@kedown's post above yours from two days ago, because the idea infected my brain.

I saw a skater yesterday wearing a Hendrix shirt, ergo Jimi still rules

Flappy otm. Speaking for myself but music enjoyment is generally is textural to me and aesthetic. Much harder (though not impassible) to have conversations about radical subjectivity wrt sound when we all hear so differently. Much like a food palate, but yeah easier to talk about what something means in the greater cultural context maybe. It's early so this may be bad logic.

*impossible

idk euler, out on the road last week i saw a hendrix sticker on a cadillac, ergo you can never look back

http://img.cakesdecor.com/c_limit,f_auto,h_1000,q_80,w_540/hkmrmf9cqwaiyzndihvt.jpg

J I M I R U L E S

http://emilyscakes.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Jimi.jpg

the kids are alright

https://inhabitat.com/greenhalloweencontest/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/2012/11/Tat-GreenHalloween-Jimi-Hendrix1-671x417.jpg

if yr 6 year old were 9, I don't mind

I feel like cash-in greatest hits reunion tours are falling out of favor. Your Pavements, your Neutral Milk Hotels, your RATMs, your Polices... there’s an expectation now that if you come back, you better record some new material, regardless of its quality.

Whoever said upthread that selling out in hiphop was never a big deal is completely ignorant.

i think doing music that was considered watering down hip hop was considered selling out, but hip hop has always had a fundamentally different relationship to money and advertising and brands than rock

it was me BTW as my name was under my post

The main way the concept of selling out matters is if you go along with something out of fear of losing something, like not just an improbably lucrative deal, which might be at a brief career peak, get it and sock it away while you can etc., but your whole career---like the former Weinstein assistant who recently broke a confidentiality agreement she seems to have signed mostly out of fear: the deal was, "Take the money and shut up about what you know, or lose everything." Get blacklisted from the Industry, overqualified for Walmart (and no references, duh). And a number of other women in other gigs have said they put up what was being done to them, and/or looked the other way when it happened to somebody else.
he Dixie Chicks became an example: "See, they said that shit, and look what happened to them---you ain't nearly as successful, so just imagine how much worse it could be..."(Later for platinum, the Dixie Chicks went diamond).

But getting back to the main topic, some/most rock and other gods have receded in my interest just because---well like Van Morrison had a good long run, from the mid-60s to the early 80s at least, and may still be good for all I know---maybe I should check out his album of Mose Allison songs! But prob not. Prolific living geezer-wise, only Willie and Dylan keep me hanging on, and even with the latter I check in and out---may never hear Triplicate, even on free Spotify, and that's okay.

By the early 80s, we were getting a wider range of extant music than the 70s (like I was starting to find African music, King Sunny Ade, Papa Wemba etc), not to mention post-punk and so on--- good old Van had a lot more competition for my interest and budget.