Music, Rock

There's so much to say on the subject, but recently I've been watching some 1960s rock videos on youtube, including a couple of incredible live performances by The Who.
I believe no other rock band has ever consistently infused such an immense amount of authentic energy into its performances. It's hard to look at the Who playing and say of any one thing "oh, now that's a put-on." One can certainly here Pete Townshend's body movements translating directly into the sound that comes out of his instrument.
Oh, and dig that spontaneous little harmony they hit right at the end!

But I digress. The Who were something else; I'll probably find some more time to ramble on about their contributions to the thing we call "rock".

What I am discovering is that there was a big "X factor" in the rock music of the 1960s that does not - and I argue , cannot, exist today.

It was the original energy - the sense of discovery and true rule-breaking, of being able to create sounds that had never before been heard; the idea that perhaps what was being played and what was being sung really could change the world, and at the very least was powerful in and of itself. The musical artists were aided, of course, by the fact that they were working with a very short and undeveloped history of electric amplification - electric guitar in particular. They were also working with a very short history of global "popular music" (and in this aspect the Beatles, as far as I know, really were the first).

And so there was so much that could be imagined, so much empty space to fill, and the original energy manifested itself as the rapid and exciting filling of all that artistic space.

Now, you could argue with the fact that I'm making a lot of statements of fact and conjecture without backing any of it up. And in a way, this is true (and one of the most irritating "bad-think" phenomena I encounter on the internet).

But this I contend is a special case, because the artistic explosion is quite vividly and adequately documented by the music recordings themselves.

For example, between 1948 and 1958 we go from this to this.

Between 1958 and 1968 we make it all the way to this.

And now, we're somewhere around here.

Tell me that the growth between 1968 and 2008 can somehow favorably compare to the growth between 1948 and 1958 or 1958 and 1968! (or 1965 and 1967, for that matter - but another day!)



The point of all this? "Rock is dead. Long live rock!"
It is going the way of jazz and symphonic/orchestral music. No new standards being set.

My expectation: for true revolution and growth in music, something ENTIRELY new must be discovered - and that something cannot have the guitar as its central instrument.

This is where, if there were readers, I would ask "does anyone have any thoughts on the future of music?" Prize to the first commenter: I will make a full blog post dedicated to the comment! (that oughta bring 'em in)