I fear I had the TV muted, the less to wake the baby. I did see Ashlee stomping about, looking like a fuckwit.
I heard her “singing” for the first time when someone posted a video. I then looked up the video of her on SNL.
This is point lower than Milli Vanilli. At least in that case, the couple was soundly disgraced and ejected from the public spotlight after being exposed. Meanwhile, here’s Ashlee, still getting big-time financial backing despite being exposed as a talentless fraud.
Rock and roll is dead. I fear it died a long time ago. Everything since about 1984 has been just copies, copies of copies, copies of copies of copies.
There are people out there who think Radiohead is doing something that hasn’t been done before a thousand times over. There are people who think that you can hear new music by listening to the radio. There are people who buy Ashlee Simpson albums.
As much as I don’t care for her music and think she’s a total embarrassment, could we stop comparing her to Milli Vanilli? She was caught lipsynching, something that happens more often than the music industry would care to admit. Milli Vanilli never even sang in studio. There’s a pretty substantial difference between taking the easy way out for a live performance and being a total sham.
While all of this is true, none of it serves as any sort of basis to declare Rock and Roll dead.
Rock and Roll is alive and well, it’s just not present in the mainstream music industry, which belongs wholly to the lemmings and lemming herders of our culture.
While all of this is true, none of it serves as any sort of basis to declare Rock and Roll dead.
Rock and Roll is alive and well, it’s just not present in the mainstream music industry, which belongs wholly to the lemmings and lemming herders of our culture.[/quote]
The hilarious thing is that so many people think this is some kind of new development.
The hilarious thing is that so many people think this is some kind of new development.[/quote]
I don’t know, why isn’t it? I think one could argue about the fresh and revolutionary nature of countless recordings released to the general market during the 20th century.
As a recent example, I remember when 107.7 The End first went on the air in Seattle. It was truly edgy and in touch with the local music scene. I think I stopped listening sometime around 1993 or so (I don’t remember) when they switched from the local/indie rock with a few nationally popular hits format to the Corporate Alternative smega that pollutes the airwaves today (or so I’m told, I don’t think I’ve turned on the radio once in the past five years).
The hilarious thing is that so many people think this is some kind of new development.[/quote]
I don’t know, why isn’t it? I think one could argue about the fresh and revolutionary nature of countless recordings released to the general market during the 20th century.
As a recent example, I remember when 107.7 The End first went on the air in Seattle. It was truly edgy and in touch with the local music scene. I think I stopped listening sometime around 1993 or so (I don’t remember) when they switched from the local/indie rock with a few nationally popular hits format to the Corporate Alternative smega that pollutes the airwaves today (or so I’m told, I don’t think I’ve turned on the radio once in the past five years).[/quote]
Because the history of mainstream music is a long line of mass-produced schlock, punctuated by relatively few breakthroughs that only really serve to bleed into the next round of knockoffs.
All art is that way, and it’s been going on for as long as man has been creating things. It just doesn’t feel that way because we only remember the good stuff. If you have kids, they’re going to be posting on a forum on the Internet7 in thirty years about how there’s no good music anymore, everything is a ripoff of everything else, and how come they aren’t lucky enough to have matured during a decade of true music renaissance, in which it seemed like nothing but masterpieces were being released… the first decade of the 20th centuries.
I’m not so sure about that. Do you think there will ever be another Elivs? I think the greatest effect the 1970’s (often confused with and mislabled as the 1960’s but all the really interesting stuff was really during the 70’s) was the splintering of popular culture. Unless something really radical happens, I don’t see popular culture ever being in a place of relative homogeneouness (is that a word or koontzism?) like it was when Elvis hit.
I suppose my point is that Rock is certainly not dead but it’s not your father’s rock and roll (your father’s rock and roll is now the soundtrack to a cadillac commercial).
Depends on what you mean by Elvis. There’ll never be another exact one, no. Will there ever be another Bob Dylan? Another Run DMC? Another Elvis Costello? They’re all unique, so no. But if the question is, do I think there will ever be a masterful, innovative artist who changes the landscape of music again, the answer is yes, there will.
