The problem with rock music nowadays is the fact that it really is a victim of its own success. People are so eager and so enthusiastic about rock music that they can’t listen to enough of it. They listen to so much rock music that it has been sliced, diced and filtered and reclassified a million times over.
If you don’t believe me, please understand that are many labels to rock music. There’s emo rock, there’s corporate rock, there’s classic rock, there’s hard rock, there’s psychedelic rock, and there’s punk rock.
And there are also the many different types of cores. And these cores are, of course, based on hard core punk. There is speed core, there is ska core, there’s emo core, even. And on and on it goes.
And when you look at this massive mosaic of rock music and all its permutations, it’s as confusing as it is elegantly bewildering. It just has so many permutations. And this is why a lot of people are saying that you really cannot tell hard rock apart based on the notes, the arrangement and what you hear.
This is mostly true because there are a lot of hard rock music that sounds very similar to each other, but they’re under different categories.
This is too much of an assumption. This is a little bit presumptuous. I would suggest that it’s the other way around. I would suggest that it’s the scene or the following or the community that sets different strands of hard rock apart.
In other words, you can tell a lot about Led Zeppelin based on the people following Led Zeppelin. They are slightly different from people that follow Black Sabbath or AC/DC. These are then slightly different from people that follow the modern band, Greta Van Fleet.
It’s really all about the attitude of the community. That’s how you set it apart.
Because when you go from one concert to the next and you hang out with different crowds, you can tell based on your interactions with them, as well as based on what you can see them wear, that there is a little bit of a community difference from one strand of hard rock to the next. So it’s partly attitude, but it’s mostly the community that sets hard rock apart.
If not hundreds, of different acts and different scenes and communities.
This might seem confusing, but this is actually what’s so awesome about it. It’s definitely not monolithic, not like in the 1970’s where recording companies just cranked out basically the same music over and over again under different bands.
The funny thing about rock music is that it is a victim of its own success. It really is. Most people have a vague idea of what rock music is.
Now, you may be thinking that popularity should be a good thing. How bad could it be? After all, people have some sort of expectation or people have some sort of initial starting point regarding how to define music.
When it comes to rock music, there are really two eras: BI and AI. BI stands for before the internet, and AI stands for after the internet.
It’s very easy to see the impact of internet on recorded music. Prior to the internet, when you buy music, it is locked into some sort of media. Maybe it is a cassette, maybe it is an LP, maybe it is some sort of vinyl disc, or maybe it’s a compact disc.
When rock and roll music made its debut in the early ’50s, it was the new kid in town. Either people loved it, or people were horrified by it. Either it was the best thing since sliced bread, or it was the fourth horseman of the apocalypse out to announce the end of the world.
It’s easy to see the beginning of rock music from a black and white perspective.