h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Pop singers throw the heavy metal horns and strut around in ripped jeans and leather jackets.
"That rocks" or similar is used to describe anything good, regardless of context.
I've just seen a flippin' cupcake described as "rock and roll".

In the 21st Century has the idea of rock, for so long a bastion of rebellion and edginess become basically meaningless as far as the mainstream is concerned?

It´s difficult for rock to remain edgy and rebellious when three generations like it.

I want to know what the hell happened to Rhythym & Blues

the title got nicked by hip hop

It moved back to the Southern US.

That was in answer to swl.

No, never meaningless!!!

things change, the energy stays (sort of)

Sultans of swing with a la flamenca:

http://youtu.be/IKN9c1llqhc

I'll raise you Al's Hall

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhrqZP_qVyU&feature=related

and

The Kid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH84YLVNzZo

A certain Declan Patrick Aloysius McManus pointed out one thing that its vital to remember about Rock....that it should be AND ROLL!!! The Roll is important. Its what turns Rock into the far more vital and important genre of Pop. Give me Pop over Rock any day. If you cant groove to it its basically lost the plot.

So is Pop dead? Well...it does seem to be eating itself. Lady Gaga was on telly the other night. Sorry - Ive just never got her. I asked my daughter to explain her to me and she told me that she sings about radical things. Yeah yeah...Born This Way. But even the parents of teenagers assume that homosexuality is innate, surely? I showed her this, which I think was far more edgy, being shown at 7pm some 30 () years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwx_ZysS9oc

Fathers kicked their tellies in when this came on!

Ill admit...lately I havent heard anything that I havent heard before, and like John Peel Id much rather hear that than something I have. The last band I got excited about was The Libertines. Still - theres always hope:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O1v_7T6p8U

~This is the story of that guy that advertises the butter.~

Oh, Jaysus, cl!!! Knopfler AND Clapton?!!!

Talking of Neil Young, I saw Big Country perform "Rockin in the free world" in the Soviet Embassy in London, 1988-ish.

2 years later the Soviet Union fell. Coincidence?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40VcnUe3vzY

And speaking of Big Country...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9udxbvHiqGw

And here's Jobson 30 years later doing the B-side http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_b0Tf_AEuA

You prefer pop music? To me pop is quite meaningless. Listen to the lyrics, you don´t get the thematical range you do with rock, it´s about 90% about love.

*Oh, Jaysus, cl!!! Knopfler AND Clapton?!!!*



Ouch, OK. Just remember that when I was a teenager Clapton was a god and Knopfler basically kick-started MTV. (And The Kid's a bit lame, innee?)

So, like, I meant the beginning-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4tPGljkR_w&feature=related

and the kid when he was a kid-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF5JU28Ilhw

I've seen Knopfler and Clapton play together. Jus' sayin'.

Im sorry - Ive just never been convinced by Clapton.

Coincidentally, last year I got talking to a friend of Mark Knopffler - an American visiting Glasgow to see him play. Hed been tasked to deliver one of Claptons guitars to Roddy ~Aztec Camera~ Frame. And then...the very next week I met a woman who turned out to be Roddys sister. (My wife used to listen to Roddy practising at her youth club in East Kilbride, She also knew the Jesus and Mary Chain at school, but they were too asocial for youth clubs).

Xanatic:
>>You prefer pop music? To me pop is quite meaningless. Listen to the lyrics, you don´t get the thematical range you do with rock, it´s about 90% about love.

Im afraid this is quite wrong in so many ways. One of the points about Pop (dont get too hung up on the term, btw - my definition of Pop is quite broad) is that it works within structural constraints, sometimes pushing them but always, basically, staying within certain formal limits.

As for all being about love - surely the combination of ~Oooh, baby~ and ~My baby done gone left me~ is 99% of the human condition? What more do you want? Songs about elves?

Meaningless lyrics? You say Meaningless like its a bad thing. The best lyric of all time wont, Im afraid, get past the Mod filter unless I asterisk it:

~A-w*p-bop-a-loola-a-w*p-bam-boom!~

If you cant see the sheer intelligence in that, youre missing the point.

Whilst Ozzy is still (sort of ) alive, rock isn't dead... It just smells funny...

There's meaningless and there's Meaningless. Tutti-frutti was meaningless, most modern pop is Meaningless... manufactured, autotuned, carefully choreographed (both on and off stage) tripe.

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle might have been started my Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols' pretend anarchy but it was ably transformed into the Great Pop Swindle by S.A.W. and their ilk.

And people fall for it. They fall for the notion that 'proper music' should work "within structural constraints" and that truly thinking outside the box ('scuse my Managementese) is a Bad Thing. We've got a world now where even in the supposedly fertile underground all that really happens 75% of the time is people re-hashing old stuff or clumsily melding two (or more) genres together to make something 'new'. Hell, there's even autotune in 'metal' these days.