I often see so and so proclaim, “Rock is now dead for reals” and it makes me wonder, with so many split genres involving this genre, when would one even say Rock peaked?
Just curious to see some opinion.
I have never heard this sentiment before? I suppose folks say something like this about every hot actor at some point.
But my favorite Rock film was probably The Rundown. Though I still enjoy him in when he turns up, in films. I don’t really watch him as a host for extreme action sporting events or whatever though.
Moana.
I’d say just before the invention of Paper. Things were never the same after that.
Sarcasm aside, “rock and roll” is somewhat different than “rock,” I would argue.
Rock and Roll died when Disco took over, so the early 70s. I tend to say 1973.
Rock, on the other hand, lasted to at least “The Wall” in what, 1980? After that, you have to ask questions like “Are the Talking Heads rock or not?”
… can’t tell if people are being sarcastic but I think JP is taking about the music genre not the actor.
But, second the recommendation on The Rundown. Great film. Pretty pumped for the Hobbes and Shaw film tho
I view rock as a container category for myriad subgenres, including Alternative, Metal, Indie, and Punk.
Because we’re in the midst of a glorious flowering of heavy metal that continuously blows my head off, I’m inclined to say “now” is when rock was best, but there are definitely arguments for lots of other periods for various reasons. For instance, it kinda feels like punk’s been in a lower-creativity, lower-output space, overall, since its last great hurrah in the early 00s with the rise of pop punk and its myriad brother-genres like emo and screamo. Indie rock had some pretty exceptional moments in the early 90s and mid-00s. As others noted, pure rock n roll is mostly just rehashing the height of that sub-genre’s creative peak in the 50s and 60s.
Even then, though, there is great work in all of those sub-genres even now. Thanks to services like Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Youtube, and the music streaming sites, it’s laughably easy to project new music to a potentially worldwide audience, and while the growing depth of and reliance upon subgenre-specialized recommendation sources might make going truly worldwide more difficult now, it does mean that even just pretty-okay releases are gonna be listened to by someone.
So, I dunno, I’ve kinda talked myself back into “now.” I suspect you can point to eras where rock music was more consistently uber-popular (Beatles-scale), or where a given subgenre was experiencing a creative peak not sense replicated, but just in terms of sheer variety, opportunity, and quality, I’m loving where we’re at right now.
The Rock was/is friends with Rupert Murdoch and that Saudi crown prince.
I know the origins of metal come from rock, but at this point I consider them wholly separate things. Not that there isn’t a lot of cross talk and musical pollination between the two. But metal ha spawned a wide variety of sub genres itself, so much so that it must have its own category.
But as a category itself, I have to agree that now is as good a time as any. As a mainstream genre it is inarguable that there is not as much life today as there was in the grunge period, And even from my contra mainstream positioning I have to give the period credit. I still listen to songs from that period.
And while I think metal is more vibrant now, there is still lots of creativity and life in rock.
lol - yea there was an article recently where a few in the industry were bemoaning the death of rock. Of ultimate irony one of those stating it was totally dead now was Gene Simmons - who I would argue was last seen holding the gun.
I think you could argue that rock started dying when the “classic rock” music format took off and people (like me) quit listening to much of what was new out there.
I’ll join @ArmandoPenblade on the “right now” train. Sure there have been times in the past where it was a larger part of the cultural zeitgeist or there was a flowering of innovation and creativity in a particular scene. But my perspective is just as an individual listener, and there’s excellent stuff coming out in every style I care about. And more importantly, the rise of the internet and streaming era means I can actually find and enjoy it without devoting a huge amount of money and time to keeping up with it.
The Metallica Black album, of course.
Meafloaf. Bat Out of Hell.
“Dunno why ya bother. It’s all shite since Roy Orbison died.”
Also: unnecessary quotation mark alert in thread title…
Haha, I figured if anyone read as poorly as I did they’d think this thread was about geology. How many votes for the Paleozoic era?
Athens, Georgia, between 1983 and 1987.
Rock will never die as long as there are angry, angst-filled teenagers and electric guitars.