by 
If, like me, you enjoy torturing yourself by reading frothing, uninformed, havering articles on the Internet that are the journalistic equivalent of getting on all fours and spraying piss all over the upholstery, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve read this article on BrooklynBugle.com written by Tim Sommer about how the rock icon, legendary Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, is killing the entire genre of rock and roll. His argument, the most pitifully hilarious I’ve ever read, is that the Foo Fighters’ latest single “Something from Nothing” represents soulless corporate rock music that was only created to make money rather than out of sheer passion, and by venerating Dave Grohl as a rare trusty voice in rock music, we’re saying to the entire rock scene that bland by-the-numbers songs are in and fervor and creativity are so last week.
I could go on until 2015 about how idiotic it is to single out just the Foo Fighters for making a throwaway, ticking-the-boxes rock song when Shinedown, Buckcherry, Staind, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, Mudvayne, Pop Evil, Halestorm, Adelitas Way, etc. have all had immeasurable success on mainstream rock radio by producing anonymous rock music of the same quality. But I won’t. I could also go on about how arbitrary it is to try and get your point across that the new Foo Fighters single is garbage by declaring it inferior to both Crass and Wire, two rock bands of a completely different style with entirely different mission statements. But I won’t. I could also go on about how childish, embarrassing and petty it is to declare the Foo Fighters the rock music equivalent of Adolf Hitler because the band made the stylistic choice to put curse words in their lyrics. But I won’t do that either.
Today, I’d like to address the bigger picture here and talk about the serious amount of defeatism that the majority of contemporary rock music fans seem to have.
But first, I’d like to give a bit of background on myself. My name is Jess Casebeer. I was born in mid-1998, making me all of 16 years old today. My father raised me on “classic rock” bands for the first several years of my life; the likes of Nirvana, Tool, Rage Against the Machine, Metallica, etc. The first four Guitar Hero games shaped what would be my one and only musical taste for most of my life. As I approached my teen years, however, I started to indulge more in electronically-produced music, hip-hop, experimental music, etc., and nowadays my tastes are as diverse as they’ve ever been, with only a handful of genres and styles I don’t care for. I still hold rock music in high regards, however, and I like to stay invested in both its past and its present.
The notion of rock music’s “death” has been something that’s been talk about endlessly for as long as I can remember. Back when Nickelback, Creed, Green Day, and Linkin Park were some of the biggest names in rock and roll in the first half of the 2000s, you couldn’t go five minutes without hearing some middle-aged person talking about how commercial and watered-down rock music had become, and that they missed a time when rock bands actually had to put effort into their material to become massive names among their genre. No, I’m not back onto talking about that Tim Sommer article again, I’m talking about arguments I remember hearing about the current state of rock music as early as 2004, when I was six years old. Or wait, no, I guess I am also talking about that Dave Grohl article. This brings me to my first point…
If rock music was on its last leg back when Nickelback was one of the biggest names in music period, you wouldn’t be here in 2014 gormlessly shouting over the Internet about how a flavourless, yet ultimately harmless Foo Fighters song is currently what’s murdering rock. There, there. It’s going to be okay. There’s going to be lowest common denominator rock music dominating the airwaves in every generation of rock, and that should not take away anything from the bands making new, interesting, and memorable music in our day and age too, like this, for example:
Sleaford Mods are a musical duo from Nottingham that make very socially-conscious, loud and attention-grabbing music that many simultaneously label as “post-punk” and “hip-hop”. The album that this particular song comes from, Divide and Exit, was released in April of 2014. Whether you think their music is awesome or pure concentrate garbage, I’m not sure how ignorant one could be to claim it sounds anything like the formulaic radio hard rock that many say is the only kind of rock music coming out these days.
I’m reminded of when people say that hip-hop music is on the brink of its death because artists like 2 Chainz, Chief Keef, Rick Ross, Waka Flocka Flame, and artists like them are capturing the popular consciousness on commercial hip-hop radio with instantly catchy and fun instrumentals, with little in the way of lyrical prowess. If that were the only kind of hip-hop music being made today, that’d be one thing, but the day that Kendrick Lamar, Earl Sweatshirt, Pusha T, Kanye West, ScHoolboy Q, Danny Brown, and Ab-Soul stop working because songs with meaningless bars over earworm-y beats with a memorable chorus are generally the only kinds of hip-hop songs that get airtime on hip-hop radio, then we’ll talk. Which brings me to my second point…
Current standings on commercial rock radio are not and have never been the be-all-end-all way to judge the state of rock music in its entirety. Do you want to know why commercial rock radio plays songs that, as far as creativity goes, are the rock music equivalent of printer test pages? Because those songs are commercial; those songs are what attract the most listeners. Sure, commercial rock radio has had a few pretty fantastic newer songs they’ve been playing over this past year by the likes of Tame Impala and Cage the Elephant, but the reason that most of the songs played on your local commercial rock radio station is uninspired dreck like Five Finger Death Punch and Volbeat is because those bands push no boundaries, don’t do anything that’ll draw attention to them, and therefore don’t really have any reason to turn the station when they come on. Basically what I’m trying to say is, not in a million years will you see commercial rock radio playing a band like this…
Hailing from Syracuse, New York, Perfect Pussy is a lo-fi hardcore punk band that formed as recently as 2012. With a distinct style, bracing instrumentation, and unforgettable hard-hitting vocals coming from vocalist Meredith Graves, Perfect Pussy is without a doubt a band to keep watch of, and with the band’s impassioned messages of feminism both in and out of their music, it’s obvious that they are a band with something to say, something people like Tim Sommer claim is missing from rock music wholesale in the 21st century.
You might recall that not too long ago, famed Kiss frontman Gene Simmons made a comment regarding rock music’s “official death”, saying that there has been zero musical innovation in the field of rock music over the past few decades, therefore the entire genre is dead and gone. While that’s a pretty bold statement coming from a musician whose rock band has done not a single thing to innovate rock music over the 41 years they’ve been together, it’s also a statement that’s about as ignorant as sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “La la la la la la!” as loud as you can. The biggest problem with that statement, though, is that Gene Simmons was only parroting what other geriatrics like him have been saying for years about the state of rock, and Tim Sommer’s article was just another article in a line of many to make the claim. (Which, by the way, Tim, just because you point out in your article that you’re old and out of touch with the world of rock music, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re old and out of touch with the world of rock music.) With that said, this brings me to my third point…
Musical innovation is not required to be making enjoyable and interesting music. This is true of rock music, this is true of electronic music, this is true of country music – this is true of every single genre on the planet. I find it most ironic and hypocritical that people who claim that all modern rock is shit because of zero innovation are generally huge fans of less recent rock bands like Audioslave, Bush and A Perfect Circle, none of whom are bands that have done anything in the way of reinventing the rock and roll wheel over the course of their entire careers. However, that doesn’t stop Out of Exile, Sixteen Stone and Thirteenth Step from being good, solid and worthwhile rock albums. Sure, tripe like the commercial rock bands I’ve been listing off aren’t original or groundbreaking, but they also aren’t making anything good. There are plenty of rock bands working today that may not exactly be revolutionary, but are still good and worth checking out. For instance…
Speedy Ortiz is an American indie rock band with a sound very reminiscent of other bands in the genre like Parquet Courts and labelmates Cloud Nothings, with their songs consisting of very poppy, youthful and sometimes very noisy guitars over usually short, but concise and highly-enjoyable rock songs, that are discernable the most by the emotive and striking vocals and deep, personal lyrics provided by lead singer and guitarist Sadie Dupuis. The band doesn’t really have any elements or features that’s going to start Speedy Ortizmania or anything, but that isn’t to discredit the band, as their material is great, and I strongly recommend you check them out if you’re a fan of rock music.
Really, in the Internet age of music, where there is more music available than there has ever been before of more varying styles than there has ever been before with more convenience of access than there has ever been before with more people to consume such music than ever before, it mystifies me that anyone can honestly think that any genre is “dead” or “dying”. Just because rock music has not yet had its own vaporwave or its own cloud rap (which is to say, an emerging subgenre that was birthed from the Internet), that doesn’t mean that the genre is dead and gone for good. Which brings me to my fourth, final and most important point…
Explore! If you’re reading this article, you have been granted the ability to discover as much new music as one single human being can handle thanks to the Internet. You’ll notice that the three bands whose music I’ve recommended and embedded in this article are all bands whose Facebook pages have less than 20,000 fans each. Unlike a rock band with enough fans on Facebook to repopulate Denmark (the ones guys like Sommer claim are killing rock music), I wasn’t exposed to those solid bands by hearing them overplayed on mainstream radio day in and day out. I went to seek a Great Perhaps, and in the process, found those good and different rock bands. It’s that easy. Start exposing yourself to more e-zines that cover new rock music (there’s an infinite amount of them to go around), go on Bandcamp.com and browse through their endless tags to find new music that interests you, make your own custom Pandora radio station that’s catered to playing things that will interest you (satisfaction not guaranteed), anything. Music discovery on the Internet is like exploring the ocean depths: you never know what you’re going to find, and for that reason it may be a bit scary, but upon hard perseverance, there’s just so much beautiful, weird, and amazing things out there for it not to be worth it.
If you’re one of the many rock defeatists out there and you’re reading this, I hope I’ve managed to provide an enlightening or at least thought-provoking opinion on the matter. Just remember this: having a serious defeatist attitude towards rock is like smoking. It’s never too late to stop, and you’ll feel better and healthier once you do. Sure, rock music from the latter half of the 20th century was incredible, but that doesn’t mean that rock music of the present day can’t be just as life-changing and legendary in your mind as some of the all-time greats in the “classic rock” world. There’s room in every rock music fan’s heart for both the old and the new, and it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Andrew Jackson Jihad’s incredible folk-punk does not have to replace The Dark Side of the Moon. You’re allowed to listen to both Death from Above 1979 and the Grateful Dead. Jimi Hendrix would not be ashamed of you for enjoying both Electric Ladyland and Vampire Weekend. At the end of the day, it’s just music, and foremost, it’s just music that isn’t being killed by one fucking song by one fucking band.
With love,
Jess Casebeer
