Sure, there’s been a lot of talk over the past few years about Rock’s waning position in the worlds of both radio and music.
The new music reservoir has been drying up for some time, and a lot of once-iconic Rock stations, from BCN to KLOL to Q102 to KUFO to WYSP have disappeared, one right after the other.
I have looked hard at many individual metros where there were once as many as a half dozen stations playing some form of Rock. Clearly, Rock and its fragments proliferated well beyond what the advertising market would bear. And that’s part of the story.
But the lack of a new music backbone has hurt as well. In the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, I believe that most programmers in Rock radio gave new music a chance – Godsmack, Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, Audioslave, Velvet Revolver, Jet – it’s a long list of bands that offered potential and promise. And there was no shortage of spins.
Yet, here we are ending 2011 and most stations are hard-pressed to do a countdown of the great new Rock songs from this past year. In a weird way, this hit home for me over the Thanksgiving weekend when I got my (yawn) daily Groupon email. The subject box: 81% Off on jcpenny portraits (all punctuation and spelling is exactly the way it looked in my inbox).
For some reason, I opened up the email, and below the J.C. Penny offer were four deals. This was the one that caught my eye:
Is this a statement about Rock, concerts, the economy, Detroit, a sign of the times – or all of these? You be the judge.
But it made me wonder whether Valpak is next.
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Could just be a statement on people’s G’n’R fatigue. Is Axl the only original member still touring with this version of the band? How widespread have reports spread that he’d been phoning it in live? It might just simply be that people aren’t buying tickets for this particular show, rather than Rock shows or concerts in general.
Then again, it could be everything you mentioned.
Keith, he IS the only original member and the reviews from last night’s show were mixed. One of the local papers noted that he would go off-stage whenever there was a long guitar solo, so maybe not as engaged as some would like. But I wonder about that Groupon effect. Thanks for chiming in.
Fred,
Like Keith hinted at above, it’s NOT the Detroit economy. It’s NOT the rock concert business. It’s NOT even a sign of the times…
It’s Axl Rose. He is absolutely delusional. No true Guns N’ Roses fan would put up with his arrogantly inconsistent start times and total disregard for the original lineup.
I wrote him a letter back in October that I’m sure he’ll never see…
https://www.reallifehusband.com/2011/10/open-letter-to-axl-rose.html
I wonder if the Groupon offer minium was ever even met?
Maybe that “Groupon stop” along the way takes the place of the way arena bands gradually made their way down to double-bills, smaller “intimate” venues, casinos, etc. Thanks for the opinions, Kurt.
If the essences of Rock are 1) adolescent angst and 2) rebellion against established authority, the times would seem ripe for a whole new era of Rock. The rage & passions of the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements alone seem like they could be the seeds of a Rock music revival not to mention the realization by today’s teens & young adults that life’s going to be a lot tougher than they were led to believe.
Or am I just too much of an old fart for whom a dynamic underground movement is off my radar?
Maybe it would need to be powered by an unpopular war, fueled by a draft. In any case, I have angst about Groupon! Thanks, Buzz, for pointing out how Rock is about three light years away from the attitude, vibe, and spirit that got it going back in the ’60s.