“Sorry kids, but Daddy’s a Rock star”
Taylor Hanson on Rove, 2004, speaking about how he can’t be at home all the time due to his Rock star commitments.
Really Taylor Hanson, are you a Rockstar? You would put yourself among the great all time rock and roll heroes like U2, Guns n Roses, ACDC and Queen.
If this is the case what has happened to the typical Rock sound of shredding guitar and loud bass. There is conspiracy in the music world that rock music is dead, long gone, never to revive itself. But has it really gone? Like all music, it evolves. Buddy Holly and Elvis are considered the pioneers of Rock Music, but nowhere to be seen is Elvis’s hip shaking and Buddy Holly’s thick black glasses and his famous hiccough voice.
According to some, genre is a way of classifying music, however the question that goes begging is whether the classification of the genre is intrinsic in the sound of the music or is it an external quality projected on the song/album in a separate process.
The first opinion is my point of interest. There are so many musicians classifying themselves as ‘rock n rollers’. What defines and characterizes rock music is ever changing, but none so dramatic as what it has in the last decade. Green Day, one of the most influential punk bands of our time is now considered to be rock music. Similarly, Kings of Leon find themselves in the same predicament. Breaking down the genre barriers seems imminent if these classification faux pas are to continue.
A recent countdown on the Vh1 television channel airing on Foxtel during March 2009, of the Top 100 Rock Songs Ever, was able to showcase this identity crisis that rock music finds itself in.
Songs and musicians that appeared in the top 10 included the likes of David Bowie, ACDC, Nirvana and Queen, which to me held no surprises. However Michael Jackson’s Beat It coming in at ninth place was something that became disturbing to my eyes and ears. Michael Jackson is hailed as the all time King Of Pop. I’m sure no person on this planet could dispute that, yet he is popping up alongside Led Zepplin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’. This is evidence that the genre classification system as discussed above and further reviewed by Jean Julien Aucouturier in Representing Musical Genre: A State of the Art is in disarray.
However not all is lost for the avid rock and roll music guru. Take heart that just a click away is the Classic Rock website where they are discussing the likes of Iron Maiden, Muse and of course ACDC.
References:
Really Taylor Hanson, are you a Rockstar? You would put yourself among the great all time rock and roll heroes like U2, Guns n Roses, ACDC and Queen.
If this is the case what has happened to the typical Rock sound of shredding guitar and loud bass. There is conspiracy in the music world that rock music is dead, long gone, never to revive itself. But has it really gone? Like all music, it evolves. Buddy Holly and Elvis are considered the pioneers of Rock Music, but nowhere to be seen is Elvis’s hip shaking and Buddy Holly’s thick black glasses and his famous hiccough voice.
According to some, genre is a way of classifying music, however the question that goes begging is whether the classification of the genre is intrinsic in the sound of the music or is it an external quality projected on the song/album in a separate process.
The first opinion is my point of interest. There are so many musicians classifying themselves as ‘rock n rollers’. What defines and characterizes rock music is ever changing, but none so dramatic as what it has in the last decade. Green Day, one of the most influential punk bands of our time is now considered to be rock music. Similarly, Kings of Leon find themselves in the same predicament. Breaking down the genre barriers seems imminent if these classification faux pas are to continue.
A recent countdown on the Vh1 television channel airing on Foxtel during March 2009, of the Top 100 Rock Songs Ever, was able to showcase this identity crisis that rock music finds itself in.
Songs and musicians that appeared in the top 10 included the likes of David Bowie, ACDC, Nirvana and Queen, which to me held no surprises. However Michael Jackson’s Beat It coming in at ninth place was something that became disturbing to my eyes and ears. Michael Jackson is hailed as the all time King Of Pop. I’m sure no person on this planet could dispute that, yet he is popping up alongside Led Zepplin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’. This is evidence that the genre classification system as discussed above and further reviewed by Jean Julien Aucouturier in Representing Musical Genre: A State of the Art is in disarray.
However not all is lost for the avid rock and roll music guru. Take heart that just a click away is the Classic Rock website where they are discussing the likes of Iron Maiden, Muse and of course ACDC.
References:
Aucouturier, Jean-Julien and Pachet, François (2003) 'Representing Musical Genre: A State of the Art', Journal of New Music Research,32:1,83 — 93 http://www.jj-aucouturier.info/papers/JNMR-2003.pd
I agree that part of the reason that it seems as though rock is losing its identity is that the music has evolved and yet the notions of ‘true’ rock for many have not. Auslander explains that in order to have authentic there must be an inauthentic. This means, if you are a rock purist (i.e. believe that early rock is the only true rock) then by comparing current music to the original late 60s - early 70s music (before that it was ‘rock’n’roll’) you will perceive the contemporary rock as a movement away from the heart of rock and a move away from the authentic. This is a pretty harsh call considering if a band was to play something that sounded too similar to a former great, say, Led Zepplin, then they would then also be considered inauthentic as they were not the creators of their sound.
ReplyDeleteThis quote from Grossberg (in Aslander,1998) really sums it up for me;
“Not only do the signs of rock authenticity differ among musical subgenres, they also change over time. Rock must constantly change to survive; it must seek to reproduce its authenticity in new forms, in new places, in new alliances. It must constantly move from one center to another, transforming what had been authentic into the inauthentic in order to constantly project its claim to authenticity”.
If indeed an artist to be deemed authentic needs to transform “what had been authentic into the inauthentic” then I feel incredibly sorry for the new artists and bands. I don’t think any new band will ever be deemed good enough to get away with claiming that the original pioneers of rock are inauthentic! Surely it is much easier for them to create a completely new sound and hence a new genre? With this, genre fusions are happening all over the place, constantly stretching the previously well defined boundaries of rock to include more and more artists, sounds and notions of the ‘authentic’. They may have drifted away from the original sounds we know and love but so have most things since the 70s and 80s. I mean stone wash jeans were denim in the 80s, doesn’t mean that just because I am wearing straight legged plain blue jeans that they are no longer jeans, they have just adapted to suit the changing times. Rock has undergone a similar transformation; it has moved with the times and created new sounds for new generations.
Unless we place rock in a time capsule to never be touched by future generations, change and growth are inevitable. The genre is getting bigger, the lines are becoming blurred but the greats will always be the greats. New subgenres does not mean a new identity or definition for the already loved rock legends – what it does mean is there is more room being created for new artists so they have a chance at being decent musicians in their own right.
Sarah Gillam
Auslander, Philip 1998, ‘Seeing is believing: Live performance and the discourse of authenticity in rock culture’, Literature and Psychology: a journal of psychoanalytic and cultural criticism vol. 44 no. 4, pp.1-26.