The Oft-Told Story of Moribund Rock

The existence of "Virginia Plain" disproves this fallacious notion.

I also think alot of people that are starting bands these days are getting into the older bands/groups later down the line, after being into current punk, indie, or popular whatever music.

The appreciation for "songwriting" probably comes after they realize that for some reason their 20 minute improv suites aren't all that down and those Sabbath/Velvet/misc. punk aren't as hard to play as first thought.

Another thing is it seems that many people that play some of these kinds of music develop out the music as a group, not one person being a "songwriter". Saying or singing some words over some riffs isn't quite the same kind of thing for better or worse.

Some people that get into the "songwriter" idea also have a pretty tight view of what they want to do i.e. new country/60-90s psych pop/ power pop/ mod/ whatever... This leads to "I am the leader, you are the band" syndrome. (Often times said songwriter laments the fact that no one can sing harmony in key, when their own voice falls into a half octave range a little to the left of Malkmus.)

The post/math rock kind of thing also tends to enable those bands that never completely finish songs as kind of bang them together a bit by feel i.e. insert new riff here (I think) or it's that jam that gets 7/4 before the sabbath breakdown vegas ending thingy.

The post/math rock thing is filled with "ex-rhythm section syndrome" refugees that have had it up the wazzoo with vocalists and songwriters and just want to play. They seem to get along well with the "ex-Guitar Player subscriber dweeb" that could play along with Reign In Blood note for note in the bedroom but were far too freaky/awkward to actually get in a regular rock band. (Note: the dweeb also usually has a shitload of gear from working tech support or tool and die, so they are quite advantageous in some ways.)

These are hypothesis based on my own emperical findings and probably don't completely relate to the greater Chicagoland area which has more bands than all of Montana (perhaps minus Missoula), Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Yukon, & Nortwest Territories combined...which is a big stretch of land when you think of it terms of land space.

b-but what abt Hanson?

we need a mixture of both ppl who can write songs and do 'funny' time signatures no?

henry cow to thread!

Might it be that these folks are ignoring the art of pop songwriting for the sake of artistic integrity? Capitulation to the Man and all His mind-numbing ways, you see.

Yo N. - have you heard of Strawberry, perchance?

swap Sabbath for Gang of Four and May for Madonna and you've got the band I want to be in and have never gotten off the ground. Or even met anyone in Mpls with the same yen. (Shoulda seen the Silver Jews fans scoff at me at a party when I brought up the new Missy single. Fuckheads.)

Anyway, a friend of mine calls it "hall of mirrors" syndrome. People playing indie at the moment have grown up listening to, well, indieindieindie. The "independent rock" progenitors (in the american-midwest-azzerrad-thisbandyourlife sense) grew up on AOR+punk/newwave.

Have you heard the Russian Futurists? *swoon*

"We stitched and sutured Ill-fated futures,/Amassed the past in archaic computers/Come join the ranks in our data banks,/It's a life without thanks... And we're so new and/young like science /Full of ideas and naive defiance /We'll lose it all with each passing fall/As our wake up call."

Earl gets at what I think is the problem: that these bands' quest for "natural" collaboration means that they all stand together in a room and add least-impressive-quantities to one another -- hashing something out by general consensus -- but (see also Tom) none of them will ever go off and really write a song. Every element is the barest passable element; there ceases to be any content whatsoever except some demonstration that the people involved can play instruments.

I just find it fascinating that this is now officially the going entry-level standard for midwestern or even maybe northern-North-American indie rock: this is what the bands on the ground are doing.

Exactly. What is even more screwed up is those strange indie folks who started making acoustic guitar music after buying Palace, David Grubbs, & Jim O'Rourke albums (with perhaps the latest Scott Walker & John Fahey records on Drag City/TimKerr). Their access point for writing something folky and down home is way off center and usually ends up with 10 minutes of noodle, some beatitude post modern poetry and a few minutes of feedback.

Not that starting there is a BAD thing, but ending up a watered down less musical version.

What is true often times of the "hall of mirrors" is the context that made the music different in the first place, of course alot of electronic (re:IDM) and hiphop musicians are just as guility of this kind of thing.

I mean, I don't delude myself that lowest-level undifferentiated-mass "first band on a bill of five" bands have ever been particularly wonderful, anytime or anywhere -- the whole point is that, well, "we'll see if they're any good and probably they won't be but at least their friends will come and buy loads of drinks." BUT it both disturbs and fascinates me that it's become this particular homogenization, and I'd like to figure out what that, well, "says."

What we wind up getting is rote instrumental interplay that seems to emote, sometimes even semi-passionately, but is largely free of any content that it's actually emoting. It's zero-risk and it's awful and I think I'm going to start a petition.

Why isn't anyone -- anyone here on the ground, I mean, any group of kids in the neighborhood who've decided to start a band -- doing pop?

In other words, if everything you value from a "real" rock band is absent in these artists, what makes Don Caballero et al "rock"?

anyway, as all know, all music with electric guitars is COUNTRY.

There are bands like this, you just obviously haven't heard/seen them. Trust me, they exist.

And the first person to mention OK Go gets a kick in the teeth.

jess, if it was anyone else but you, i would've automatically *assumed* sarcasm, but your answer was so reliably glib i just assumed seriousness.

I'm not asking these questions with the intention of trying to steer you in any one particular direction. Inherent in your post is a lamentation about the various splicings and pitiful trajectory of "rock" in general; I'm merely trying to get a handle on what (in your world obv.) makes something "rock" to begin with.

(And what's wrong with OKGO as an example of what I'm talking about? I've known one of those guys for years, and during the period where they were just starting to play shows they were a perfectly reasonable example of precisely what I'm talking about.)

Your opinion (oh woe is me, the bands I see all around me only play music along four specific tropes) is not a fact. I've seen plenty of pop bands in Chicago that have nothing to do with the four tropes you've cited, usually inadvertantly.

(And what's wrong with OKGO as an example of what I'm talking about? I've known one of those guys for years, and during the period where they were just starting to play shows they were a perfectly reasonable example of precisely what I'm talking about.)

Err, OK Go is a relatively "pop" band. If anything, the only thing they'd slightly resemble on your list is (c) mid-period emo (see Cap 'n' Jazz, or early Promise Ring minus the pop), but they're far too pop to hold to the last part of it. Either way, I have no idea why a band like that would be something to strive for. OK Go is one of the most horrible things I've had the displeasure to witness in my many years of seeing live music (oddly enough, they were opening for the far more interesting Don Caballero). I'd rather see 20,000,000 Slint rip-off bands (and believe me, being from Louisville, I don't like but have seen plenty of Slint rip-off bands) than see OK Go ever again. The fact that they openly admitted in last week's Reader to having brought in a session drummer for their constantly re-worked record (how many times did the label reject it?) while keeping their drummer in the band just shows to me the kind of tools that we're dealing with here. At least Urge Overkill had a couple releases in the indie trenches before they turned into asshole egomaniacs.

Either way, it won't matter because in 6 months to a year no one will remember that OK Go existed.

<insidejoke>when did you see mogwai?</insidejoke>

In any case, I was unaware that you were near Chicago: who around here have you been enjoying lately?

(Re: OKGO, I was sort of surprised about the session drummer, as I've played with their drummer before and consider him very good. I don't see why it should qualify as a fault, though, unless we're subscribing to the line that "bands should play everything on their records even if it means they can't make the record they way they want it." I dunno, I haven't heard the record and I've been told it's not very good, which isn't exactly a huge surprise to me.)

But yeah, I've seen a lot more concentration on "skill" over "tunes" (which is the way I see it) amongst many an 'indie' opener at most shows I attend, than I remember seeing a decade ago.

HAHA... you're totally flattering the American Indie Class of 1992, Tom.

I haven't seen a ton of live music lately, due to a number of factors, but I'm moving away in a few weeks, so I've tried to get out some. I tend to go see more jazz and experimental-type stuff than rock. This past week I saw David Boykin's Expanse at Danny's (pretty decent, relatively straight jazz - not exactly my taste but aside from the retarded-acting keyboard player [aside: what is it with white jazz piano players that think they have to act stupid when they play? You're not Monk or Taylor, get over it!] it was pretty good) and Grey Ghost at Empty Bottle (my friend Aram's duo band thing, half-laptop/synths, half-sax n' drums - not bad but needs a little work). I meant to go see Lytton and Doerner last night, or maybe my friend Greg Davis, but didn't (the latter was playing all of three blocks away but I didn't want to go out). I'm hoping to see U.S. Maple on Saturday, but I may kibosh that too.

Oh, and Radiohead. Who is responsible for more horrible imitators perpetuating crimes against music: Radiohead or Led Zeppelin?

This is the most beautiful thing I've read in a while.

But since the rise of pop-punk as like a mainstream style -- Green Day through Blink 182 -- the punk foot of the average rock band has hopped over into hardcore, whence the thing I'm currently bemoaning.

The funny paradox that keeps coming into my head is that attitudes that say it's "all about the music" are in fact just the opposite, because their "all about the music" tenets usually place boatloads of attention on doing all of this extra-musical stuff the "right" way (i.e., keeping it all about the music). (I mean, what scene is less all about the music than hardcore?) So umm the music winds up sucking, but at least it's "all about the music."