Rock and roll is dead: a cry for help.
Every blog, commercial and otherwise, needs a first post. This site will mostly be about jazz, but as an opening volley, we’ll share a post from a loosely-related blog which promotes a website selling vaguely humorous t-shirts. The original piece was meant to sell a t-shirt imprinted with the phrase “Rock & Roll Is Dead, And I Killed It”. While the emphasis therein is a little afield of this page’s, its contention that “serious” American music in general is a dead thing certainly dovetails quite nicely with our mission. Yes, we have a connection to this website, details of which are available to anyone who asks. Anyway, here’s the blog post, from www.thehamstergrowls.com, posted back in 2010.
“Rock and roll is dead. Has been for years now. Like its brighter cousin, jazz, it died sometime in the early 1980’s. Unlike jazz, it had a relatively short life. And also unlike jazz, it was never a truly original form of music to begin with. If you’re under the age of, oh, 45, you’ll take great offense at this statement. You’ve already grown weary of hearing fat, balding baby-boomers tell you how they invented everything remotely moral, fun or creative in the last 50 years or so. Unfortunately, they’re right. From the civil rights movement to sexual liberation to creative music to environmentalism, just about everything worth talking about was, in fact, the progeny of these ubiquitous post-war spawn of the denizens of the middle of the last century.
“It’s not that rock and roll doesn’t still exist in some sort of Lenin-esque state of embalmed perpetuity. It’s simply that no new, creative or otherwise contrary movement has taken hold since the early 1980’s. The last days of rock and roll were the early days of rap and punk. Everything since then is simply a re-assembly of older forms, from grunge to electronica to hip hop. Want proof? Listen to something from 1930. Avoid the most creative music of that time, whether it be a Louis Armstrong Hot Seven record or Bartok’s Fourth String Quartet, and concentrate instead on the pop music of the day. A Paul Whiteman record would be perfect. Then, listen to something from 1970–a Hendrix tune, for instance, or a Stooges track. Now listen to something–anything–produced by a current pop musician. You decide which 40 year period saw the greater evolution of popular culture. One might argue that the latter era really saw no evolution at all.
“Are baby boomers self-indulgent, self-important shitheads? Of course they are. So whine all you want about the injustice of it all, but until some succeeding generation does anything remotely different, from drugs to politics to culture, you’ll have to sit there and take it. Or, create something new. Kill the old. Be proactive. Quit whining about NOT being around for the summer of love, you worthless hippie-wannabes. Instead of repeating the past, make something original, for once. Kill the past! Start with rock and roll, and take credit for its much-overdue death. Or shut up.
“So, if you’re sick of your parents telling you how new music sucks, do something about it! Buy this shirt from us, for starters. Wear one of these bad boys while you’re popping a cap in rock and roll’s ass. On the other hand, maybe you’re a bitter old person who can’t bear the thought of Madonna being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. You might as well make a clean break with the past. Buy one of these t-shirts. Now. Rock and roll is dead, and I killed it. One can only hope.”
Anyway, this begins to explain our position on the current state of music in America. Oh, and buy one of those shirts, if you’d like.
Here’s a suggested playlist, which you can purchase tune-by-tune at Amazon. We’ve taken the liberty of picking a dandy example of current pop music. No, it’s not fair of us to pick the most innocuous pop music available from today, but it does allow you to engage with us as to what current music you suppose might emasculate our theory, Click on the song titles to hear samples and/or buy the damn things:
“Whiteman Stomp”
“Dinah”
“Quartet No. 4 In C Major – I: Allegro”
“Loose”
“Pali Gap”
“Beauty And A Beat”
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