Modern Rock = Grunge Redux = Zzzzzzzzz

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In 1997 year-end Spin issue:

Spin: Is rock dead?
Dave Grohl: Yes. But I believe in Necrophillia.

Except it's Kurt Cobain's corpse that he's been fucking. I haven't heard the new Foo Fighters yet, but is anyone else a little concerned by the big fourth quarter rock releases from the major labels? Those are: Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Audioslave (Cornell + RATM). This makes the already obvious now painfully so: the nu-garage movement was a wet pipe dream in Jann Wenner's Prada boxers, if that, and that the majors have no new ideas for rock and the figureheads of the movement have just as few. Which isn't a problem. Nu-Ideas = overrated and all too often just old ideas that we've forgotten about. Only now nu-ideas are ones from less than a decade ago. It's depressing to say the least (especially for someone like me whose job it is to cover it) that these are the key bands and that GN'R's tour is the biggest news since po' Kurt done shot himself. I'm perfectly happy with the music world in general, so don't think that this one of those rants. Here's all that I'm asking: If I turn on to Generic Rock Station at least let me be surprised by something -- whether it be a nice guitar sound, a beat that grabs my ass, a lyric from leftfield. Is this too much to ask?

― Yancey (ystrickler), Wednesday, 13 November 2002 23:56 (twenty-three years ago)

A beat that grabs your ass? How about a beat that just leers at you when you're wearing hot pants?

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Thursday, 14 November 2002 00:04 (twenty-three years ago)

I haven't listened to rock radio for years. I listen to hip-hop stations (i believe it's been pointed out that B-more's 92Q is pretty good stuff, and the DC stations aren't too shabby) and am perfectly content to let rock radio atrophy and die. Of course it won't. OZZFEST blaaargh.

I think there are lots of reasons that rock is not dead. Just they're all Scandinavian, leftist, both, or The Mooney Suzuki.

The Mooneys, BTW, put on a fantastic live show.

― Tom Millar (Millar), Thursday, 14 November 2002 00:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Beating your ass for not immediately dancing to their music, though, classic or dud?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 14 November 2002 00:22 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, the problem is you're turning on Generic Rock Station. Generic Rock rarely tries grab your ass and give you a lyric from leftfield. At least not sense "Stand And Deliver" by Adam Ant. Where he tried to rob you, dismiss your fashion sense and then stampeded over you with his horseys while screaming "qua diddley qua qua!" I don't think Soundgarden, Pearl Jam or Foo Fighters ever had beats or lyrics that do what yer saying. Though "Jeremy" and "Everlong" were at least impressively melodramatic.

All the bands you mentioned are really tired and old and haven't done anything good in ages. Shit, Nirvana took eight years to put out one fucking new song! What kind of bullshit is that? And the video is just old footage from the past! And it sounds like all they've been listening to is Godsmack in the interim.

So yeah, when did rock radio not suck? Classic rock at least has a decent rhythm section most of the time.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 14 November 2002 00:30 (twenty-three years ago)

It's nice to see Queens of the Stone Age getting more-than-decent radio and MTV airplay with "No One Knows", and dammit, I still like System of a Down. Other than that, though, alt-modern radio is still a cesspool: TRUSTcompany's bad thirdhand Quicksand impersonation, the "fat guy rock" of Saliva and Seether (dude, you guys didn't really name yourselves after a Veruca Salt song, did you?), that hilarious emo-metal song by Taproot, and all the bands that continue to dig up punk's coffin and rip out all the nails just so they can hammer them back in (Good Charlotte, New Found Glory). And I've never heard Stone Sour but I'm guessing just by their name that they're no good either.

My main (rhetorical) question is this, then: why do modern-rock-radio band continue to have such shitty, shitty names?

― Nick Mirov (nick), Thursday, 14 November 2002 02:16 (twenty-three years ago)

I dig System Of A Down too. Though I'd like to hear just one song of theirs that doesn't make me wanna do a little eastern european riverdance.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 14 November 2002 02:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Dig what you feel and fuck the rest.

Jann Wenner is an advertisement for cancer.

I don't know anything about radio anymore...I've got a 79 Monte Carlo with an 8 track. All I ever listen to is NPR or my boombox.

― earlnash, Thursday, 14 November 2002 02:57 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, with Nirvana, Foo Fighters, and Queens all on the charts right now, it's a little too much Dave Grohl.

In all honesty, Foo Fighters were never really grunge, a little too poppy, but I like their new song. Queens of the Stone Age I had heard bad things about, (I was gonna see them and And You Will Know Us By Our Amazingly Pretentious Name, live but everybody I knew said "NO WAY MAN THEYRE HEAVY METAL!"), but I enjoy their song as well. Love Audioslave, and it's not really grungy either. And Pearl Jam are pretty much indie rock now.

― David Allen, Thursday, 14 November 2002 03:14 (twenty-three years ago)

Nobody here likes garage rock apparently.
Hundreds of inbred/italian white boys have been playing the epitome/epitaph of rock n' roll for years. It seems they have yet to inspire anyone other than myself - come on, you all bought the strokes record, and at least half bought the white stripes.

Rock and Roll dead my crotchety white ass.

It's simply necessary that you acknowledge the significance of the current basement guitar+drums+yelling=rock movement.

Really. Or I'll KILL ALL YOU WHITE FAGGOT MOTHERFUCKAZ

― Tom Millar (Millar), Thursday, 14 November 2002 03:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Um. acknowledged. I love Is This It? and I'll probably like the White Stripes more now that my girlfriend is playing them all the time (currently I think they need a real rhythm section). Is Generic Rock Radio playing them a lot? I dunno. I KNOW they're playing the latest by the fogeys mentioned above.

But no, those bands are good. I actually like Weezer a lot too. They were better circa Pinkerton when their lyrics weren't so much peanut butter. But they still rock.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Thursday, 14 November 2002 03:56 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually, yes, the Strokes and the White Stripes and the Hives are all getting pretty good radio airplay, and more power to them for that, but Yancey's post seemed to ask about radio rock beyond that stuff. As for "nu-garage" type stuff that should get more airplay but doesn't, that Cato Salsa Experience album is pretty solid. And Liars! And Spoon! And, what the hell, let's throw Pretty Girls Make Graves in there while we're at it!

― Nick Mirov (nick), Thursday, 14 November 2002 05:59 (twenty-three years ago)

if they were called Pretty Girls Make Grades they would be like the best band evah

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 14 November 2002 06:32 (twenty-three years ago)

w/ the "garage" renaissance as it were in full bloom, any idea why the fairly average von bondies seem to get so much favorable press (at least in the uk, thank you very much john peel) and the soledad bros don't really? are the soledads TOO bluesy? the new record has a lot of stuff w/ that sort of exile-era stones (retread w/ feeling) that's pretty damn radio or at least college-radio friendly.

― jq higgins, Thursday, 14 November 2002 15:12 (twenty-three years ago)

The Mooneys, BTW, put on a fantastic live show.
Do they still look like long lost Brian Jonestown Massacre band members?

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Thursday, 14 November 2002 15:19 (twenty-three years ago)

I work in radio. I know how it works. I'm just lamenting that the key artists aren't even willing to take chances. The last song that surprised me from any of those bands I first mentioned was "Everlong" (maybe the best modern-rock song ever)... And yes, "No One Knows" is amazing. That's one. And from recent years, songs from Deftones, Incubus and SOAD have been pretty great. I was just grumpy at having to write more news on Dave fucking Grohl. Enough of him!

― Yancey (ystrickler), Thursday, 14 November 2002 15:49 (twenty-three years ago)

come on, you all bought the strokes record

Hardly.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 14 November 2002 16:11 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, come on - there's nothing wrong w/ Dave Grohl. According to VH1, he's sexier than David Lee Roth. SPANDEX David Lee Roth, at that. Think of the alternatives, and be happy you're not spending toner on Wes Scanlan.

As much as I empathize w/ Yancey's quandry (though it's more the fault of the Powers That Be in the industry and the media than the bands), there's something to be said for striving for greatness / what have you via constant refinement (cf. Foo Fighters). And who's to say that a group like Pearl Jam isn't taking chances? Granted, they haven't strayed too far from their original starting point, but there's definitely some measurable growth (especially if you start from the beginning).

Of course, most of the groups & performers mentioned here aren't taking many chances outside of plying their tradies in traditions established well before they existed, so I can't see any sort of earth-shattering siesmic shift of the modern-rock status-quo occurring in the near future. Besides, any little glimmer of "originality" / strangeness / uniqueness is invariably assimilated and recycyled for easier consumption by folks at large - it's the nature of the beast.

I could be more portentious, if you prefer.

― David R. (popshots75`), Thursday, 14 November 2002 17:01 (twenty-three years ago)

In Von Bondies vs. Soledad it's hard. Soledad is too lo-fi, and his voice is too Jack White like.

― David Allen, Thursday, 14 November 2002 19:11 (twenty-three years ago)

I should have titled this thread: "I'm gonna say something boring about modern rock"

― Yancey (ystrickler), Thursday, 14 November 2002 19:14 (twenty-three years ago)

The funny thing is a few of the stereotypical sludge rockers in alt-land have struck me as much more interesting then most of the vets you list. That Default hit had a best-Creed-chorus-ever chorus (though follow up singles sucked further ass). "She Hates Me" is one damn conflicted and catchy misogyny-bash and "Blurry" had that pretty twinkly sound in it. Fuel's "Hemmorage In My Hands" and "Bad Day" were fine post-Nirvana aches. I've seriously dug Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit tracks, and I'm a BIG Good Charlotte fan (but let's not get into that). "You Know You're Right" is pretty good, but it sounds more like a whining-near-death Godsmack to me (which is indefinitely more endearing than Godsmack itself). The Audioslave thing is hell, but I've never liked Chris Cornell anyway.

If you get over looking for obvious "revolution" in radio, you'll be surprised how much can be enjoyed in the viewpoints and nuances found in the seemingly generic shit on there.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Friday, 15 November 2002 02:44 (twenty-three years ago)

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