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Rock is Dead : Fragmag 2008
An article in this year's Fragmag, would win the 'Thicko Award for the most retarded article in Fragmag' hands down. Attempted to unsuccessfully convey that Rock music/bands/lifestyle is not what it used to be and perhaps it never will be. With almost every line being flawed, the article made the narrow minded perspective of the writers more than self-evident. Jimmy 'Paige' alright.
Deeming Morrison, (an insecure, eternally-stoned-on-LSD vocalist, who eventually choked on his vomit) above others, considering grunge to be senseless, alternative as being faster than Thrash/Speed, undermining Punk, mistaking talken for technical finesse just depicts the lack of permissiveness and understanding towards other genres and a fan-worshiping attitude solely for standard popular heavy metchul bands.
Just for the record :
As for the themes and issues, Maiden has had horror sci-fi themes as their background, and most of Metallica has metchul kindergardenish lyrics. G n' R talked of love/relationships and how females are beautiful and yadayayada. That the garba-step dancing Axl Rose gets arrested for drunk behavior/woman abuse every once in a while is a different thing though. Nirvana, on the other hand, dealt with alienation, social incompatibility, child abuse, female oppression and male chauvinism, fallouts of having separated parents (If anyone cared to listen to songs other than SLTS)
Talking about the monetary aspect, I believe Metallica is one of the richest metal band on the planet, in spite of which Ulrich forced Napster to shut down. And I don't know of many bands that have their own private air transport services. Early grunge artists, however, were exploited by the music labels; and tending to be unconventional, suffered in terms of records saleability.
The Punk movement was an important milestone in breaking from traditionally laid down parameters and led to the evolution of a plethora of other subclasses. Grunge, or more correctly, Seattle Punk, translates teenage angst musically, and stands for being one of the most artistic delineations euphonically. Sadly, it got whored upon. The term itself was coined by Jonathan Poneman and the media of the 90's pounced upon it, just to feed on Nirvana's inconceivable mainstream success.
The fact remains that Rock and Metal has expanded so much, that the expansion makes it seem like the universe is shrinking, comparatively speaking. A thousand genres branching into a zillion sub-genres, with new innovative tweaks emerging everyday. Almost no post-rock band these days sounds alike. 8 string guitars, mad tempo changes, time signatures that'd make the CRO go bonkers and fvcking abnormal polymetric drum patterns (Meshuggah), falling back on technology (the Nintendocore genre). An elaborate study on Rock/Metal and its subcategories now would require way more time and dedicatedness than that needed to scrape through the 8 semesters of engineering.
And no, rock is not dead. As long as there are mp3s and torrents and seeders to seed them, there'll always be myriad individuals who'd be fans and devote themselves to a band. Its Indian classical music that'd be dead, if it doesn’t soon manage to deviate from its current 'stairway to heaven'ly extinction route.
Would've been a good read for the Linkin'g' Parkist crowd tho, I'm guessing.
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