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Underground > Radio & Music >

The "New Rock Revolution"- is it any cop?

All Acting Regiment

18:52 / 21.08.03

Okay. Now I'm The Opinionated Shithead esquire, so bear with me.

It seems to me that all this talk of the Strokes, etc- you know, all the "The" bands- is so much bullshit.

Let's look at the strokes. Now i'm not going to slag them off, good for them, whatever, but the point is that they're sold as this scruffy, grungy band who wear cheap clothes and record for $600 and stuff like that.

Yet the thing is, they actually spend loads of money on making it LOOK like that. It just seems a shame that all this hype has served to screw with what may well be some interesting bands.

----> RANT STARTS HERE

It pisses me off that a bunch of bands who obviously rip off image, songs, style whatever from the old days of the Smiths and Joy Division are now seen as all cool or whatever when the whole point of the smiths and joy division was that they hated cool people. I don't know, it just looks like a bunch of cool dickheads plundering a bunch of good ideas.

-----> Rant Over. Now it's your turn.

What do you think? Am i a wanker? Do i totally misunderstand this? Or am, in fact, right? Over to you!

Matthew Fluxington

19:43 / 21.08.03

From Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City

We never scoffed at the content as "contrived shock rock.' By 1983, that idea was the norm. Elvis Costello has questioned whether or not '80s glam metal should even be considered rock n' roll, because he thinks it's a "fascimile" of what legitimate artists already did in the past. What he fails to realize is that no one born after 1970 can possibly appreciate any creative element of rock n' roll: By 1980, there was no creativity left. The freshest pop ideas in pop music's past twenty years have come out of rap, and that genre is totally based on recycled, bastardized riffs. Clever fascimiles are all we really expect.

The problem with the current generation of rock academicsis that they remember when rock music seemed new. It's impossible for them to relate to those of us who have never known a world where rock n' roll wasn't everywhere, all of the time. They remind me of my 11th grade history teacher - a guy who simply could not fathom why nobody in my class seemed impressed by the Apollo moon landing. As long as I can remember, all good rock bands told lies about themselves and dressed like freaks; that was part of what defined being a "rock star."

I only agree with this sentiment to a certain degree (I really don't think it's all been done, for example), but this totally applies to what you're talking about.

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:46 / 21.08.03

Basically: calm down, and don't worry about it. It's just one of those scenes that don't really exist, but certain elements of the media have tried to rope quite disparate bands together. Just pick the ones you like and enjoy listening to them. Ignore the ones you don't like and have fun slagging them off. Eg, I think The Rapture are fantastic, and The Thrills are... not. Try not to buy into lumping them all together, one way or another, using something as arbitrary as the fact that they may have names beginning with the word 'The'. Use the search function or have a click around on the other pages of the Music Forum to see if there are already threads existing about certain bands or groups of bands. It'll be fun!