Onstage is where Rock lives. The charts can go away.
Let me first wish happy birthday to Natalie Portman. Her latest film, ‘Black Swan’, is about a “deranged prima ballerina” in a “delirious, over-the-top melodrama directed by Darren Aronofsky” (quote: the Guardian). I haven’t seen it, but if you’re a fan of dancing and leotards, I’d say give it a go.
Actually, I’m fibbing. It’s not Miss Portman’s birthday, but nevertheless, a dancer’s birthday, who’s also called Natalie, albeit being much less famous and much closer in the circle of people I know. Well, many happy returns to her.
Anyway, a long time ago at the tender age of 14 I posted an article in a preceding publication, wondering if Rock music is still the voice of youth. After a rather un-researched chronology of the timeline of Rock’s development, I concluded that it still is, but also for the older population, who were of course around the time that those bands were active.
4 years on and I realize that I was more or less blindly glorifying the legends from the ‘golden age’ of Rock’s creativity. I was really only listening to Zeppelin and Floyd. Since then I’ve spread out a lot. In fact, despite still highly regarding the above bands, I don’t actually listen to them much anymore. After becoming a self-proclaimed music nerd, I’ll listen to most things. Unless it’s Justin Bieber.
In that article I wrote years ago, I referred to an encyclopaedia of music that we had in the house. It said that “At the turn of the 21st Century, Rock keeps dividing and reinventing itself...due to this mutation process, it lacks freshness and originality. Whether it can once again become a predominant creative force remains open to question.” On the day of writing this, Sam Leith wrote in The Guardian that “Rock is dead”. In it, he asks “Who are the iconic rock fans in popular culture? They are Beavis and Butthead, Bill and Ted, Wayne and Garth, and Jack Black’s character in School of Rock. Rock has given us the worst clothes, and the worst dances of all time. It has given us Billy Idol. It has given us people who shout “Rock’n’ROOOLLLL!””
This being on the internet, you can imagine the sorts of comments on the comments section. I don’t think anyone has yet accused him of being a fan of Marilyn Manson. He’s either just having a laugh and taking the piss out of Rock’s cultural pastimes, or he’s failing to realize that most genuine rock fans do that about themselves anyway. That’s why Jack Black’s Dewey was a bit of a nonce. Spinal Tap? Strange Fruit (who featured in the film ‘Still Crazy’)? Opinionated, arrogant tossers with a distinct lack of common sense, etc. So what? That’s how it was, or at least how the mass media saw it. And that’s what made those films so brilliant. Like most things, if you take it too seriously, it becomes boring, and even annoying; for example, Axl Rose. After all, making and playing music is meant to be fun; for example, Slash.
Sam does eventually say he’ll lament Rock’s passing: “I’ll shed a tear for all those roadies released abruptly into the wild and muttering “One-two...one-two...one-two” as they struggle to make sense of an existence without sound-checks and Marshall Stacks.” To be frank, he’s wrong. In fact the whole article’s pretty pointless. I ventured onto the comments page with my own opinion, and found that someone had already posted my thoughts: Rock is not dead; it’s just gone back underground. It’s because these days there’s a massive amount of new genres that weren’t round or big at the time of Rock’s peak. Considering that styles like Dubstep won’t make you deaf like Rock will, little wonder why a health-paranoid world seemingly prefers less shouting and distorted guitars and more comparatively ear-friendly thumping beats and low-frequency ‘wob-wob-wob-wob’. I don’t care if Rock music doesn’t make into the charts these days. It is likely that, to quote the right-thinking gentleman on the comments section, it goes “back to the live venues, where it originated.”
Good for it. Because that’s the best way to enjoy such a genre. And for those of us living on and near the Isle of Arran, be sure to check out bands such as the Usual Suspects, playing the best moments from Classic Rock’s history. I’m also currently in a punkier band called ‘My Name is a Dirty Word’ (it’s probably ‘Nick Clegg’ or ‘Tony Blair’ or some other thing that will have you shot at sight upon mentioning it in the street), playing Glasgow later this month. Set your ears to 11 and break open the box of beers, because live Rock music, in all its varied sub-genres, is where it really flourishes. Singles charts can (...politely?) Go Away.
John Tilbury
