Mad Lion

Well, I just purchased Audioslave and Mad Season, which was the some people from Pearljam and Screaming Trees plus Layne Staley from AIC. It's pretty decent. Audioslave... meh. I don't know. I love Christ Cornell... but the Rage Band just kinda sucks. I mean, they're so simplistic. I *KNOW* they could do more, but they refuse.

Anyway, there are band producing things that I like, but they tend to be very hardcore. I just wish I could find something that wasn't *metal* but was decent.

Anyone looking for good metal stuff should check out anything byDevin Townsend Such as Strapping Young Lad. Also mnemic is making some pretty cool music. Wish they'd release a CD.

Of course I've heard radiohead, Fear Factory, Bjork, etc. I'm looking for some truly different stuff. The Mercury Program, Form of Rocket and Don Cabellero have been my most recent discoveries. Anybody else have any suggestions?

Kim o' the Concrete Jungle

Well, this is how it works, when your in the studio recording your CD. Some guy from the record company comes around, picks out all your best songs and says, "No, can't do that, it will never work on radio."

If you respond with some reasonable and thought out argument like, "F**k off and die you cloth eared, brain dead, product of an unnatural relationship between an accountant and a baboon," then he'll have the record producer change it behind your back anyway (in the middle of the night and with ring-in musicians, if necessary).

That's why these days you can only buy CDs in a hundred shades of bland.

August Spies

Monkeybot:

Okay ill give you soundgarden is a lot better than the other two. Still, only thing really good about "grunge" was Nirvana. And they were punk anyway.

Pseudonymph

Read my post again....

DarkBronzePlant

Funny. The musicians you list here basically make up the start of rock music's demise.

Xeluan

WARNING: RANT TO FOLLOW! I REPEAT, RANT TO FOLLOW

The start of rock's demise started earlier. I blame the hair metal bands that started to predominate at the end of the 80s. While there are some great moments from 80s rock by the end of the decade it had sunk into self parody. Also there was a fcous (especially in guitar) on technique over substance. It got to the stage where you had to practice quite hard to be able to compete with other bands. The egalitarian nature of rock was gone.

The grunge movement initially revitalized rock. It brought rock back to the basics. A cursory look at the history of grunge shows that it had its antecendants in both the best rock and punk. Angst has always been a part of rock'n'roll and grunge brought it to the fore as the main component of the genre (at the expense of raging teenage hormones). Grunge also had no humour. I'm not so concerned with Nirvana and ilk at the beginning but subsequent bands who milked the grunge vein were basically humourless blowhards whose stock emotion was a self pitying whine. You could be seen to enjoy yourself onstage but only in a postmodernist acknowledgement of irony.

The records companies, respsonsible for the hair metal affliction, decided that what the world needed was grunge in all its flavours (grunge lite, grunge acoustic, grunge girly etc). The trouble was that grunge had lost it focus and its raison d'etre. It was no longer a teenage manifestation of the troubles of dealing with the world. Grunge was a marketing fad. Marketing fads have no soul and grunge had lost the soul long before the horrors of Nickleback and Creed.

Wanna know why dance music became popular? That is where the humour and sexuality escaped too.

Rock, as they say, never dies. Learning from the wretched excess of the 80s, the punk ethos of 70s and dare I say the powerful simplicity of AC/DC, rock started to burble with energy again. While Nirvana still influences the contemporary sound the kids also discovered their parents record collections. The post modern irony is being replaced by true love for the music and associated trappings.

I may be well past the teenage years but I'm starting to quite like what I am hearing now. Been a long time coming.

Xeluan

DarkBronzePlant

That was an interesting statement.

Well, I guess if you subscribe to the popular, ironic idea that one must suck to be a good rock musician, then your argument makes sense. I don't subscribe to that idea; hence my stance.

beco

I have a cuckle a bit. I remember my friends in the 80's complaining about the crap music that was out. The said the seventies were the good times. I think the problem is that people become attached to the music they grew up listening too, for good reason, if you had a memoriable childhood the music becomes the soundtrack. As you listen to more and more music, you become more savy and decerning(sic?) but the music you listened to growing up is attached to your memories. Hence it has more impact. Thirty years from now they have this same thread about where did all the good music go and that the 2020's were the good years.

Just my 2 cent.

voltaire321

Monster Magnet is good rock.

Xeluan

I don't think you need to suck to be a good rock musician. But is there a need to be able to rip off 32nd note arpeggios on guitar or groove mightily in 9/8 time (though Soundgarden did a lot of odd meter stuff)? They are not bad skills to have but unfortunately that became the focus of many bands by the late 80s at the expense of the music (there obviously were exceptions).

Grunge did perpetuate the ironic idea that if you suck your were great. It restored the egalitarian ideal that anyone could form a band which was great. However it does matter that you can competently wield your chosen instrument.

Xeluan