We get nu metal for the younger generation that wants to hear hard stuff. We get emo for the younger generation that wants to hear soft stuff. We get nu punk just for the sake of making bands like Sum 41 and Avril Lavigne look like poser idiots. We get older bands from the late 70s and 80s like U2 and R.E.M. struggling to stay relevant and ultimately they fail but still make better music than a lot of what is out there. All I am saying is do not hold your breath. Over the last few years in Europe, more turntables were purchased than guitars.
What would the Kurt Cobain of this generation stand FOR anyway? Would we even to listen to the Kurt Cobain of this generation because I think the whole probelm is that there is no one punk-ish position that anyone can represent anyway! Kurt, for one, hated selling-out, or claimed to. he hated how money ran the world, or claimed to. He made fun of Nirvana's very own fans at one point, because that was the point, sort of. You know? It all sort of contradicted itself, but there was still some important honestly involved in the music. It was soul bearing, and people could relate to it. It was the beginning of the end really, because everybody started to "get" alternative music. Sort of. Does that make sense?
What do we expect of our artists? I think too much. I think the music industry is too oversaturated with stuff for any one thing to stand out. That's just one of the issues. Another issue is that the labels son't invest in their talent over the long-term, they don't allow a band to slowly grow up like U2 and REM and The Cure got to do. They want bands that have the right sound right NOW and later doesn't matter. It's about cash.
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
The only time I ever saw Nirvana live was at a club in Montreal. It was a weeknight, and I had to work the next morning, I was grumpy, and told the friend who invited me to see this band I didn't really want to see another Seattle knockoff Black Sabbath hair band (grunge not being invented in those days, though I do have a Mother Love Bone t-shirt).
Sure enough they were just another Seattle Black Sabbath hair band so I went home after three "tunes". And you know what, I still think they suck. But a teevee show with Kurt 'n' Courtney would be pure gold.
Now Blue Oyster Cult, there's a band.
2 - jason
Or better yet, Sid n Nancy
3 - Jim Carruthers
Sid and Nancy was, after all, the inspiration for Spike and Drusilla.
4 - Rob
Kurt Cobain was like that kid in high school who really loved a little-known band and talked about them, but as soon as they became popular, he couldn't stand them anymore, and disparaged all their new fans. The trouble was, it was his band that it happened to.
I loved "Nevermind", it came along at a time when radio needed songs you'd turn up when they came on.
It was sad that Cobain took his own life, but I doubt think the music world lost all that much.
5 - Veronica
People now a days are too into hip-hop for there to be any space for good rock on the radio. Let's face it *good* rock, is dead. All we have now is Simple Plan and Good Charlotte, and if you want a hardcore chick to look up to you have Avril Lavigne.
People don't like to hear the raw truth, the like to hear the happy parts because life is so hypocritical that they need something fake in it to make themselves happy. That's the meaning of this generation: fake happyness. No one wants to turn on the radio and hear someone with (in their opinion) senseless lyrics. It's almost like poetry, most people don't understand it, so why bother to read it? If it's loud it's kinda scary so I don't want to listen to it because people will think I'm crazy.
But I do have faith that in a couple of years, not so close, there will be another band that will change rock history and if they are women, maybe they'll even change the view of how women can't rock or be remembered in rock history.
All in all, these shitty so-called artists will be forgotten.
6 - R.P.
I know fuck all you see now are a bunch of kid who can't have there own opinions and you go with the flow for fame and cash. All you see now is a music industry owned by CORPORATE BULLSHITTERS. the early nineties where the best i can actually relate to it.