Stenevor

Its explained here better than im able - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_generation

If youre interested On the Road and Junky are well worth a read. I did read Naked Lunch and found it good in places but it mostly went right over my head.

Ahdkaw

Phew, been a tough week, got back at last.

I agree with a lot of what it said, including that there is a lot of crap in all genres, I suppose it's all about definitions really.

To be brutally honest I don't think I entirely agree with myself on this, because there has been some good rock since the 70's, and I like it. Then, if you look at that track that just got to the UK no 1 from download sales alone, it's a great track, by two hiphoppers, but is it hiphop? No. Is it rock? I dunno.

It get's all so confusing!

Blackalicious are cool, J5 I got bored of, but it's nice to see someone who knows a bit of hiphop here.

Trollkien

I don't think rock is dead as much as you've lost interest in the genre per se, Ahdkaw. There are a lot of people where I live who contend that rock died in the 70s — then, the punks arrived, kicked its corpse about a bit and eventually died too.

I prefer to beleive that good inventive music that still falls under the broad category 'rock' is still being made — it's just become (probably like the good hip-hop you'd alluded to) much harder to find. Apart from a lot of (relatively) new bands who've added considerably to the texture of rock since the 70s (Mogwai, Pelican, Meshuggah, Tool to name just a few), some of the 'classic' rock artists have some pretty strong albums that deserve a lot more than the speedway to the bargain bin treatment they are usually subjected to. Dirty Diamonds by Alice Cooper and The Mighty Rearranger by Robert Plant are just two examples of brilliant albums that build on the past but don't remain just stuck there and both were released last year.

littlemissattitude

What? Punk died? Just yesterday, driving down the street I saw a guy who must not have gotten the memo. He was sitting at the bus stop, bright orange mohawk gelled and gellitaned into immobility and sticking up nearly a foot out of his scalp. Thought I'd driven into a time warp, or the Twilight Zone, or something. Then again, a lot of folks tend to be a bit behind the times here in Fresburg.

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knivesout

It's alive. It's just harder to find, which is fine by me. (Can you say 'elitist snob'? )

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chrispenycate

Good rock music was always minority. We survivors of the sixties scene turn on our selective memories and get all nostalgic about all that superb music, while conveniently filtering out the ninety percent of - shall we politely say "less good"?

What is more, back then rock music was exploring an enormous empty territory, where now it only has a few, relatively limited frontiers to expand into (although any of these could turn out to have unexpectedly large territories behind them, and the music market as a whole is considerably less dynamic than back then (that's a purely commercial thing; but even musicians appreciate eating from time to time, and if producers and promoters don't follow the pioneers, you get bubble gum, boy bands and Star Academy.

Paige Turner

As they say on the internet boards, I am "laughing out loud." If you take a look back at the era we so fondly remember and check the actual Number One songs of those years, it's an excruciating dump heap of sticky pop and gimmick songs. You might think The Who were transcendant, but the Partridge Family and the Archies were moving more records.

littlemissattitude

"Selective" doesn't even begin to cover it, Chris. I remember a lot of that garbage that came out in the sixties. But, you know, the good stuff was really good.

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Syn

Fair enough. You say that rock music is dead, but have you ever considered that the 'rock' genre has been re-vamped?

It is easy to say that most of the great people from the 70's and 80's, like KISS and The Guns N' Roses were the kick starters but people have been inspired by them and have made a twist on it for example The Darkness! They Rock!

Rosemary

Then there are all of those absolutely awful cover versions we hear now...

I really don't know how these groups can call their versions - music

Marky Lazer

I'm sorry, but The Darkness doesn't rock. The first album was OK, but now it's just more of the same. When you heard three songs of The Darkness, you heard them all.

Jives

I couldn't have put it better myself.

(Jives looks at his collection)

Classical? Mozart and "The 1812 Overture" check. Classic Rock? Boston and Led Zeppelin check. Alternative? The March Violets and The Cranberries check. Hard rock? (a must-have for days when you are really mad) Rammstein check. 80's pop? A Flock of Seagulls and Huey Lewis check.
Disco? The Emotions and Heatwave check.

Looks like I've got the bases covered.

bite your tongue.

I even like Eminem, to a certain extent. He cracks me up.

I will say this, though, I'm violently opposed to Insane Clown Posse.

mikeo

The best thing about Insane Clown Posse is how good you feel about yourself after viewing one of the many ICP fansites.

Ahdkaw

I like Insane Clown Posse that much that I don't have a single track of theirs anywhere within my collection. Okay, I don't like 'em.

See, this is what annoys me about hiphop these days, everyone says they think Eminem is great, when in actuality he is crap. I hate Eminem, I had his first album, and got sick of it within two months. I gave it to friend telling him it was "great", eventually he gotback to me and told me it was "crap" but at least I got rid of the damn CD.

The point regarding poppy crap in the Sixties is news to me you see, I imagined, possibly thanks to a youth growing up with classic 60's music, that most Sixties music was great. It now seems I was incorrect, and that the charts have been a breeding ground for crap music for many more years than I had originally estimated.

There must be a lot of idiots out there buying this crap music, because it's still around. In droves!

And please no more mention of Star Academy, or American Idol, or anymore of that crap. I mean, we are shown quite clearly the process of manufacturing a pop band from a bunch of talentless freaks on telly, and then people still buy the records! Argh! Humans are insane.

Also The Darkness is exactly what I am talking about when it comes to regurgitating the same stuff. They are glam rock, which is 70's, it's not new, it's relying on the fact that kids these days never heard glamrock back in the day when it was popular. Let's take another example of a crap band (IMO), The Strokes, who produce that tracks that all sound the same, I have yet to hear a track by them that I don't instantly recog as The Strokes.

YOSSARIAN

I just listened to all the Queens of the Stone Age albums again, and now more than ever I am convinced that all music was invented solely so that Queens could exist. It may be possible that the universe itself may have been brought into existence so that we could be given the opportunity to bask in their aural perfection.