Rock music is dead is it?
So what passes for cutting edge sounds now is a bloke talking over a sample of "Fools Gold" by The Stone Roses, is it?
The new word in hip hop is Jay-Z's 100th return from retirement, and Eminem trying to regenerate the corpse of Dr Dre in formaldehyde, is it?
The future of Pop music is a chap re-hashing of the same lyric about "having a good time" and "getting on down" to the tune of "Time of my Life". And saying 'Dirty Bit' a few times.
Don't get me started on J-Lo's "come back".
It seems that the ONLY genre of music capable, or even attempting to merge different types of music, IS Rock!
The only bands with anything new to say in Dance music are Radiohead, Two Door Cinema Club, The Strokes and Everything Everything and the like.
Now i'm pretty certain these bands are directly influenced by dance pioneers, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brother, Aphex Twin and Orbital. They will also listen to pop music, genre defining pop that even a miserable music snob like me can't deny is catchy, well written, innovative pop.
This isn't a bashing of chart liking, X-Factor loving, disposable music appreciators, its a rhetoric at commentators of ALL music.
Reviews of the new 'Strokes record make comparisons between 2011 and 2001, in so much that with a decade between their debut and "Angles", they have returned at a similar time when rock is dead in the water. Well it wasn't then and it isn't now. They even try and condemn The Strokes for being of their time, a band that plays on its laisse faire attitude and that, contradictorily, the same atmosphere that "Is this it" was made in prevails with the new L.P and that The Strokes know they have limited shelf life.
How can a band that have lasted 10 years be "of their time"? The fucking Beatles didn't last this long.
The doom mongers have returned, circling like vultures, talons stretched out to pick on what they believe is the dying carcass of rock, whilst foaming at the cock when listening to anything with a synthesizer and a cassette of "Songs that will make great samples".
There are great, great bands out there now, fusing genres, like Tame Impala, The Joy Formidable, These New Puritans, Everything Everything, The Hurts (actually, forget them, he just wants to be Phil Oakley from Human League).
A band like Brother are just helping the naysayers out, shifting "Acquiesce" around and coming up with "The Darling Buds of May". It seems they give them column space to further the argument against rock.
Music television isn't helping anybody apart from record labels. They saturate the viewers with the same songs, the same programmes, over and over. MTV got so bored at the sound of their own voice they turned into a crap U.S reality channel, and have finally owned up to the fact, by adding to their already overburdened rostrum of channels with "MTV Music". Does that mean 'Dance', 'Beats', 'Rock', 'Hits' etc will be scrapped to make way for it? Surely then there will be even less airing of good new music, and publications nibbling at the 'Big Labels' teat will further champion the uninspiring, insipid shite that passes for music.
If ever there was proof that a trailblazer for music was sick of it, it's Mike Skinner hanging up The Streets moniker. You couldn't pigeon-hole The Streets and now he's gone and we'll be left with Example and Chase and Status spewing their samples all over our ear holes.
If music is going to be boiled down to the touch of a button, then its not just rock that's dead.
