Why are rock music threads on ILM so boring?

Hey this band has a new album
I like it
Eh I don't like it
OK

Feel like all the ILM threads on new rock music are pretty short and cut-and-dried. Meanwhile the hip-hop and pop threads, while more contentious, have much more discussion about the actual music, what works and what doesn't, why people like things, etc. I don't even really listen to a ton of hip-hop but I read a lot of those threads because I like to read involved discussions about music.

So why is this?
a) rock music is boring and old and has been talked about a lot already
b) the people who always post about rap and pop have more to say/like arguing more
c) none of this is true, there are good rock music discussions on ILM
d) something else

I think it may be a sign that rock is no longer at the forefront of cutting edge popular music. I have heard murmurings of such things among the more forward-thinking ilxors.

are you including metal in this formulation

so a) basically

I don't know, am I? I delve into the metal thread(s) occasionally and generally it seems like lists of bands/albums that people like without much in-depth discussion but I don't read them consistently so I may be missing interesting stuff

Often not boring:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

(Also about old music, so it may support some of your points.)

lots of the threads about older rock are full of lols and/or great critical reappraisals etc

new rock? eh, I dunno. it's such a diversified genre at this point, with basically no wider cultural impact, I'm not sure what there is to say besides stuff like "it's great/it's terrible/this internal rhyming scheme is TOTALLY STUPID etc"

seems like in re: to hip hop there are more "event" albums than rock these days, like, i don't know, Kanye. i'm a rock fan, i guess, but if there are "Event" rock albums in this day and age, i don't really care about them.

well the Chinese Democracy thread was pretty funny

so the problem is that the entirety of new rock music is boring?

no, just the posters

I don't know, am I? I delve into the metal thread(s) occasionally and generally it seems like lists of bands/albums that people like without much in-depth discussion but I don't read them consistently so I may be missing interesting stuff

I can see how the rolling thread, populated by crits getting advance copies, can be like that, but not always. Individual threads are definitely not like that. If you want big carcrash arguments like in the other threads you mentioned then read poll results threads!

agree to a point w/the notion that "rock" is diversified/fragmented to a point of having no real core fanbase who would identify as "rock fans"...but ILM has never really been a rock-centric board. I mean, this was "debate on rockism" central for many years, and though there does seem to be a lot of love for certain indie rock, and lots of proto-indie rock stuff from the 70s and 80s, I just think it's just a matter of not being the main music listening thing for most of the people who post here. For lack of a better term, I would classify ILM as being a board about pop music of various flavors-- and not just because I want to get called out for setting up a rock vs pop duality. ;)

However, maybe what I'm really saying is that straight out rock music doesn't really hold the same pop culture share as it used to. What if this place had been around in the 90s? Or better, what if there was an ILM in 1975? Would it have been a lot of "i just heard the craziest thing, and it was called DISCO!!" threads, or "TS: synths on The Joker vs DSotM"?

oh man to a point twice in 10 words

However, maybe what I'm really saying is that straight out rock music doesn't really hold the same pop culture share as it used to. What if this place had been around in the 90s? Or better, what if there was an ILM in 1975? Would it have been a lot of "i just heard the craziest thing, and it was called DISCO!!" threads, or "TS: synths on The Joker vs DSotM"?

^^^ding ding. A fair amount of people here like to ruminate on the larger implications of music - what it means for the culture at large, for the music's given genre, how it impacts the audience, it's place in the media landscape, etc. - and since rock currently doesn't have the sizable cultural cachet that really enables that kind of debate, conversations about it are sort of more restricted.

Yeah, in seriousness I think that there's just less cultural energy and critical excitement around rock music right now, like there's still good rock music being made and plenty of people who like it, but there's just not a feeling that it has the same significance it once did or that certain other genres do now. And I think that's doubly true around here as a result of all the rockism debates, "guitar bands are boring" threads, etc.

deej doesn't post in the rock threads

I think ILX in 1975 would not be very pro-Disco.

UNBAN PAUL EDWARD WAGEMANN

this isn't as good a clusterfuck thread as the one gr80 started

I never understood why people care about "cultural impact" or if an album is an "event". fuck that. If the music is great then that is all that matters. Whether it sells 100 copies or 10 million.

I don't think most posters here would make any overt claims about a particular album being an "event" or having "cultural impact", I just think that certain hip-hop and dance music has more of that feeling to it and in turn generates more excitement in discussions.

I never understood why people care about "cultural impact" or if an album is an "event". fuck that. If the music is great then that is all that matters.

does greatness exist in a vacuum

sometimes?

in space, no one can hear you rock

the vampire weekend thread was kind of a clusterfuck, as was the animal collective one

Yeah, that's basically the Now rock that people still argue about.

I don't think most posters here would make any overt claims about a particular album being an "event" or having "cultural impact"

I cant remember who it was, but I definitely recall seeing it mentioned a good few times on ILM the past few years. Almost certainly not on a rock thread though.

i guess i don't really buy that rap or dance music are inherently more exciting or innovative or whatever right now - rap has been around for like 25 years. obviously it's been progressing/changing and it still is, but if that's true, then I feel like rock music has to still be progressing/changing in some ways that are equally interesting. writing all this makes me feel like an old old man yelling at a cloud though so maybe you all have a point.

I think it was about Rihanna last year
xp

duh make that 35 years sorry

the vampire weekend thread was kind of a clusterfuck, as was the animal collective one

this is pretty emblematic by how wide the definition of "rock" is these days

emblematic OF

all the search results for "cultural event" on ILM come up with the Kanye thread, lol.

I don't know, Shakey, if you go back to the 60s, the range of what was called rock was already pretty broad.

this might be it The 2009 Magazine Albums Of The Year Thread For Posting Lists and Discussion.

Of course the Rihanna album's going to appeal and hold personal cache to many people, same as MPP, but they're still very specific niches

the rihanna niche is just that bit bigger than the other one, which is kind of what qualifies her album and its attendant campaign as an actual cultural event noticed by people who aren't necessarily invested in her

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 9 December 2009 15:26 (1 year ago)

I don't even know how you would currently define the genre of "rock". I made the point on some other thread that all pop music subgenres have more or less dissolved into one amorphously defined blob composed of the following elements: "hip hop" drum loop/pattern (altho hey for variety, sometimes a house beat), R&B crooning on the choruses, some rapping for the verses, and maybe a rock signifier or two like a distorted electric guitar. The consistency with which this formulation hits the charts - nominally as country, as R&B, as rap, or as rock, or just "teenpop" or whatever - is mind-boggling, even moreso since the template's been around since the early 90s. The stuff that gets released these days that can be considered a cultural "event" in any quantifiable way doesn't really belong to ANY genre for the most part, they're always this weird mishmash of people trying to show that they can do it all, with a million cameos/collaborations and a million different genre signifiers all tossed together.

xp

bill magill gets mad at ppl about black sabbath sometimes

maybe one thing is that hip hop and dance both seem to have valid "undergrounds" - artists that come out of nowhere but are doing something exciting that captures the imagination of a broader spectrum of listeners. rock underground seems more focused on being deliberately obscure/unlistenable and/or recycling their ideas of old rock sounds (and i like a lot of that stuff). you don't really hear many new young rock bands who seem interested in doing something different but at the same time appealing to a broader audience

and the dance underground nowadays isn't like that?

Xpost There's always BrokeNCYDE

I don't know, Shakey, if you go back to the 60s, the range of what was called rock was already pretty broad.

that doesn't mean it didn't get even broader.

what is "rock" about Animal Collective, for example?

i think part of it is that newer/pop/hiphop stuff tends to attract a lot of the ppl on here that are actively working as critics or bloggers or both, so more beef and long posts going back and forth

the classic rock threads tend to be just fans enthusing about stuff they like man blue oyster cult rules, right? yeah bro

Animal Collective are definitely not "rock" anymore.

otm yeah (to matt)

what is "rock" about Animal Collective, for example?

― fuckin magnates, why don't they work (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 14 December 2010 00:18 (43 seconds ago)

wite ppl

i dunno i haven't heard their latest stuff but i have sung tongs and that's kind of a hippie type folk rock bongo drum circle weirdo vibe to me

for the purposes of this thread, four middle class people from edinburgh or portland making tuneful synth based pop inspired by phil spector, timbaland and new order is probably 'rock'

you don't really hear many new young rock bands who seem interested in doing something different but at the same time appealing to a broader audience

I think in most cases "doing something different" with rock at this point basically means "does not appeal to a broader audience"

xp

so basically the problem is that 'rock' does not exist

― lotta diamonds ... but prolly more display names (deej), Tuesday, December 14, 2010 4:09 PM (20 minutes ago)

:-(

'skipping 339 messages'

I guess I'm going to skip this thread

thank god

*sigh of relief*

AFAICT, "rock" mostly just meant "newer styles of popular music" in the mid- to late-60s, right?

I think the amplified instrument angle had a lot to do with that. that was really the biggest dividing line for the first couple decades of r'n'r

those sighs are really making me want to contribute to this thread

let me break rock music down for yall

tapping out now

step one: you can have lots of fun

step two two two there's so much you can dooo

put your hands on your hips

I just need to find a flow chart maker and I'll break down rock in 1 measly post

yeah, i was gonna type "so, deej was right about there being no such thing as 'rock' after all," but then went out for coffee instead.

but that's not quite true. "rock" defined an era/culture and does have use as that kind of umbrella term, or cultural mile-marker. it's not defined by its function like dance music or pop, or by its formal character like rap or jazz, but by a history of cultural progress and association. still, as a coherent musical genre, i'm gonna have to agree that rock is a discursive fiction. it makes the most sense when applied to a cluster of pop forms that emerged in the US & UK during the late 60s and pre-disco/punk 70s, but isn't terribly useful outside that.

otherwise, it's probably best to use "rock 'n' roll" as the throughline descriptor for that which must, by definition, rock (berry-stones-AC/DC-ramones-nirvana-stripes), and to use subgenre labels to talk about what's going on in the more clearly definable corners of the garage: indie, metal, punk, prog, psych, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XG2jAtXdVc
why does young people not want to rock?

so basically, n/a needs to narrow the scope & ask why certain rock subgenres arent as discussed as rap & whatever else. gbx implied its cuz there are fewer ppl concerned with those subgenres in which case the answer is just ... there arent enough ilx punk fans

(would he consider the R&B thread full of passionate discussion? its maybe not as contentious, but its a lot of the same ppl as swag cru)

Why are rock music threads on ILM so boring?

I'll cut to the chase. The Velvet Underground

so basically, n/a needs to narrow the scope & ask why certain rock subgenres arent as discussed as rap & whatever else. gbx implied its cuz there are fewer ppl concerned with those subgenres in which case the answer is just ... there arent enough ilx punk fans

(would he consider the R&B thread full of passionate discussion? its maybe not as contentious, but its a lot of the same ppl as swag cru)

― lotta diamonds ... but prolly more display names (deej), Tuesday, December 14, 2010 4:13 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

I don't think I've ever read the R&B thread.
I could just ask why none of the rock subgenres are as discussed as rap! I mean, some of them are self-explanatory. The punk/underground thread is based entirely on discussing very obscure music (discussion of the OFF! EP collection was banished because Pitchfork reviewed it, even though it has members of the Circle Jerks, Rocket from the Crypt, etc. (though this might have been facetious, I couldn't tell)) so when you limit yourself to the obscure, you're, by definition, going to have a very small number of people able to talk about it.

But based just on the number of people who regularly post on that thread, there is a decent amount of ILM posters who are interested in punk/noisy rock music in general

i don't really think any of the rolling threads (that i read) are full of passionate discussion - they're full of heads-up and youtubes and offhand, casual impressions - but they're obv a springboard to taking all those things into other threads (eg specific artist/album ones)

i'm pretty sure the off! ban was kidding around

Why are rock music threads on ILM so boring?

I'll cut to the chase. The Velvet Underground

― ZOUNDS? (CaptainLorax), Tuesday, December 14, 2010 5:16 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OTM

I think a lot of rock is really boring.

The most important discovery, however, is that Christmas with Boney M is the #31 album in Canada this week!

Really?! Wow, has everybody lost their copy in a snowbank or something? That album's ubiquitous this time of year!

the most intriguing discovery to me upon reviewing the billboard top 200 was that Enrique Iglesias albums are still selling

"why does young people not want to rock?"

i started an ILM thread on herpes this year! i like that band. i wanted to know if there was other good stuff out there like that. so there IS some new rock i like.

hipster interest in everything is on the wane.

― Mr. Snrub

discussion of the OFF! EP collection was banished because Pitchfork reviewed it, even though it has members of the Circle Jerks, Rocket from the Crypt, etc.

what do u want ppl to say about the circle jerks in 2010?

the circle jerks are touring in 2011! not sure if that's news or not. i got an email from a theater in denver that said "come to circle jerk"

Uh I thought there might be an interesting discussion in Pitchfork bestowing a "BEST NEW MUSIC" crown on the heads of old punks essentially playing hardcore music but
a) this isn't really relevant to my point (which was that the punk thread is deliberately obscure), and
b) it was probably a joke anyways

i want to hear the OFF! record both due to and despite the pitchfork recommendation, but i haven't heard it yet, so...

old ass men playing vintage hardcore music is better than most of the best new music on pitchfork

i think discussion on rolling punk is slow (relative to, like, rolling rap) because you actually have to buy records instead of just extracting .zip files & it costs money and sometimes you have to wait for them to show up in the mail or at your record store.

also (& i didn't read this thread so sorry of this is redundant, probably is) the dynamics of rap are a bit more easily penned into narrative and less abstract, & thus lend themselves to more concrete & complex discussion than rock. any given rap song you might discuss

-who produced it, are they a good producer, is there something about their sound that complements the rapping, have they been producing good beats lately, have they been producing shitty beats lately
-the career of the rapper, their reputation, whether their album is going to suck b/c of major label bs, have a bunch of corny blogs written them up yet or are they still cool
-the guest verses: are they good, do they "outshine" the others

among a million other things. in comparison there isn't really that much to say about rock, especially like underground rock or punk where there is really 0 chance it breaking out. "this new homostupids record is good, i like the production on it, rr/t put out some good records this year" is not rly a platform for much further discussion. also if you read like termbo for example, which has considerably more discussion of "rock" than ilm, a lot of those people are A) huge dicks, and B) the members of bands/heads of labels. so it gets a lot more heated if someone says some band sucks

all said & done i really like rolling punk non indie underground. sweet thread, great dudes, cool gals, always good recommendations, nice atmosphere

The Off! record is fucking great.

scott I only know about HERPES because of you, so hats off to you

it was on my mind because I'm in Berlin this week

but it's also living proof that there is good new rock music being made by younger people etc.

Liturgy, Dope Body, Pissed Jeans, Hunx and His Punx, Bloody Panda . . . i could go on

have you ever heard this guy? um, not rock, but he played in my basement a month or two ago and it was really great. from canada:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJFYWmn0ZYo

best rock show i saw all year was in my basement. and i'm not bragging its just true!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0OLQiKVP-w

This rock music thread is good. I like it.

okay, so i conceded deej's point about rock basically not existing, or being a discursive fallacy or w/e. but no. one of the problems in argumentative discussion is that the ground tends to shift around under you if you're not paying attention. i granted the non-existence of rock so as not to get sidetracked, but in retrospect with i'd pressed the point a little further.

rock obviously exists. it's not easy to pin down, but that doesn't make it unreal. it merely makes it complex and even self-contradictory: a wide net. when we talk about "rock", we're talking not a about a specific sound or approach or even an aesthetic, but a tradition, a culture. and that's fine. pop and metal can be just as hard to define, just as nebulous and home to an equal number of seemingly irreconcilable oppositions. this doesn't mean that they aren't real or can't be sensibly discussed as a whole.

you could maybe say that hip hop, the phrase, is analogous to rock. like what about j dilla's donuts? is it a rap album? no. no one raps on it. it's hip hop. but what's hip hop, as a musical genre? it seems to include but not be limited to rap. though it can be broken down (these kinds of beats & samples, mostly, these BPMs, mostly, and so on), it isn't necessarily limited by what it has traditionally been. when hip hop artists push the boundaries, the genre makes room for things that lie outside its conventional parameters. same is true of rock. i suspect that when hip hop has been around for nearly 60 years, its definitions will likewise have become a bit hazy, but this won't make it nonexistent.

i mean, think about jazz. in the 60s and 70s, jazz too had its boundaries battered all to hell, to the point where a mind-bogglingly wide variety of music could claim to be jazz in one form or another. we can even find so-called-jazz that isn't even improvised, is fully notated. in the end, the only thing that really unifies all the musics we call jazz is the jazz tradition, the culture of jazz. this makes it much like rock, much like hip hop.

I think canonical rock fans are by far in the majority on ILM (given the numbers on the July Madness polls - look at the last eight: The Rolling Stones - 87, Can - 66, The Beatles - 92, Bob Dylan - 61, The Velvet Underground - 101, Stevie Wonder - 52, Prince - 84, Brian Eno - 69) but there isn't much to be said of Beatles/Stones/Velvets that hasn't already been said - though they still have lengthy threads for reissues or best/worst tracks.

Niche rock genres will have lower traffic because they're, well, niche.

If you look at the reaction to the July madness polls you'll maybe see why canonical rock fans remain something of a silent majority - the usual and expected "more boring white guys with guitars" invective. I think it's got to a point that even white guys with guitars don't talk about white guys with guitars.

southern strategy imo

Was thinking about this thread.

A lot of the time what is framed as "border policing" in other genre threads is something slightly different, it's people saying "I don't like the idea of this particular music standing in for the broader notion of a genre." Deej was saying this yesterday about e.g. Lil B and rap. I would do this kind of thing a bit in the funky thread and people would get pissy at me and accuse me of saying "x record is not funky", which was not my point, my point was more that I think that what funky means is still open to being redefined by virtue of particular records being championed, written about, held up (even if unconsciously) as a microcosm of (or metonym for) the entire genre, while others are sidelined.

Rap is now more impervious to this but not entirely - the discussion of that Boston Phoenix rap list in the end of year thread is a good example of something held out as a list of "the year's best rap" while in its actual selections putting forward an aesthetic vision more narrow than rap per se.

Dance music offers some interesting examples here: neither Resident Advisor nor FACT (the two biggest internet dance zines at this point) explicitly cop to covering a smaller beat than dance music or electronic music or etc but nonetheless there's definitely a recognisable "aesthetic" for FACT - less so RA now since it started aping FACT somewhat, but four years ago RA was basically "minimal and related". In each case they still cover a decent amount of stuff outside their primary aesthetics, such that what is implied is a notion of dance/electronic music which is broader than the key aesthetic but for which the key aesthetic can stand in. Mixmag do the same but with more of a big club/Ibiza focus.

Which can seem perverse given that dance music has as much of a long tail effect going on as rock. I always find it interesting to pick up an issue of Mixmag or similar and turn to the genre-specialist track/singles reviews sections: the ordering of the various sub-genres and the space given to each tells you a lot about what the editors consider to be the hierarchy of importance of those sub-genres at any given point in time. It also reveals that some stuff like say hard house simply refuses to die. But you also see those entire sections being reshuffled and redrawn based on subtle shifts in values that filter through the critical reception of all the genres covered.

What I think this points to is not that hip hop or dance are stylistically more uniform than rock, but rather that there's still a belief that the discussion of these supra-genres can be held together, or even move together, that what particular dance music or rap music that is championed will affect the entire discourse surrounding those genres to some degree.

When was the last time rock (as opposed to "indie") was like this? Presumably grunge/post-grunge in the US and britpop in the UK witnessed the last time that magazines like Spin and NME respectively could kid even themselves in thinking that their favourite patches of land were the "ruling seat" as it were. Whereas I don't think that a magazine like Kerrang conceives of itself as performing the same function.

People upthread have said that "all the battles are over" with respect to what is or isn't rock. I don't think this is the issue. Indie is arguably more stylistically fluid than "rock" (or at least rock that is invested in the "rock" part), but obviously inspires a lot of passionate/snarky conversation over what is championed and what is not. But this is because the conversations about indie are a lot closer to the dance (or hip hop) model. Pitchfork, say, performs the same function for indie that FACT say does for (um) indie-dance: it offers up a notion of hierarchical structure where what is championed and what is not has implications for the entire body of the genre. It matters for the genre what is successful and what is not.

On critical terms at least I think this is less true for non-indie rock because people are no longer participating in the one broader conversation, and perhaps they no longer consider that there is anything at stake which they share in common.

Currently rock music is hugely more inventive right at its outer perimeters, which is why the post punk revival/revival of post punk methodology is by far and away the most interesting thing about the genre to date. But out at the edges things are blurred and hard to pin down, hence there's not much in the way of through lines between, say the xx and Oneida. Metal (currently), conversely, is more inventive right at it's very core, the retreat away from massive interaction with other genres is one of its great strengths.

Also, more importantly, rock music is like John The Baptist. Metal is like 80ft tall solid bronze mecha-Christ walking amongst us killing demons by firing neon coloured drill bits out of his flaming eye sockets. I need new metal. I don't need new rock flavoured rock; I have ACDC and Black Sabbath why would I need Airborne?

When I say to date I actually meant currently.

I still have a problem with this idea that only being right in the edges and refusing to sound like anything that has been is the only way to be inventive. IMO, the way The Byrds combined a cover of a Bob Dylan song with an old Bach theme, Beatles harmonies and the rhythm guitar from a Beach Boys song is exactly what made it one of the best cover versions ever. None of the elements were new, but combining them still created something new and exciting.

TBH, my actual favourite rock bands work within very rigid boundaries (even if these boundaries are sometimes hard to describe) and do so with heroic results: The Fall and NOMEANSNO.

It was punk that revived "rock and roll" and began applying it in the old TAMI Show sense--youthful, energetic music that's fun, but with an edge, never mind the genre or instrumentation. Rock and roll is a feeling and ideal. Watch the documentaries and read the books and you begin to sense it as a kind of energy carrying forward into everything, hip hop included. It's all rock and roll.

Separate from all that is the guitar/bass/drums/distortion/riffs/chorus/songs tradition that produced some of my favorite music of all time, but has somehow disappeared from the new music I love. I know I've been out of touch, but it's still a shock to realize that there's basically one rock band with maybe two other live groups at all among the 42 artists on my year-end mix.

I don't know that this is a decline, but I do wonder when every rock band besides like AC/DC decided it needed to sound "lush" with an orchestra, electronics, acoustic instruments, etc., a 0 x 10 = 0 situation that I guess could apply to a lot of new rap as well.

The punk/underground thread is based entirely on discussing very obscure music

yeah, that is pretty much true -- so, like, because someone else on that thread has actually heard and likes some of the obscure stuff that i like, i am less likely to initiate a beef with them about a band or an album or a song that they like that i don't, or vice versa. Like M@tt H and I know and like quite a few of the same obscure bands, I don't want to spoil it by attacking him over our disagreements about the Luttenbachers. Basically, I want to avoid the narcissism of small differences on that thread.

do wonder when every rock band besides like AC/DC decided it needed to sound "lush" with an orchestra, electronics, acoustic instruments, etc., a 0 x 10 = 0 situation

attention shitty indiepop singer-songwriters: learn to play/write for one instrument before you start playing/writing for twenty

Ha. So wait, sarahel, no one's equating attacking with interesting. I think congratulations just meant arguing: making the case for disagreement. There's nothing more boring to me than personal swipes requiring familiarity with the posters or their history on ILX, except maybe displays of attitude based on consensus without any argument at all.