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Arts & Entertainment
 

Rock 'n' roll is on a 'sad vacation'

Time for music to be taken out of corporate conglomerates' hands, 
wage music jihad

Stay Sick

Jason Gagnon

Ever since MTV appeared, there has been a steady decline in the quantity/quality of true rock ‘n' roll in pop music. Today, you've got tools like Linkin Park and Matchbox Twenty at the top of the pops, further adding to the audio muckity-muck that my generation has produced. Of course the charts don't mean anything except as a barometer for just how much drivel we, as a society, are willing to accept. To make matters worse, the all-consuming blob that is Clear Channel has aided the cancerous growth of not just selling bands but doing so with the stratagem of "all image, no substance," with it's terrifying dominion of radio stations, and more recently, live venues. 

It's a sad vacation that rock ‘n' roll has been forced into and now it's time to reclaim it just as the bands, writers and artists of the American punk rock movement did in the 1970s. But most music fans (and I use the term loosely) now are Romero-style living dead consumers and wouldn't dream of charting new musical terrain or a place in the sun for themselves and their ideas. That is why those of us who comprise the last one percent of rock ‘n' roll and the underground have an obligation to lead the misguided, wavering minions in the jihad for rock ‘n' roll. 

Yes, I said "jihad," and this does involve terrorism, but more on the non-violent and snotty side. Take this treatise and its guidelines as it reveals itself now as training tools for your faction, cell or sect -- whatever you want to call yourselves.

Phase 1: Rock ‘N' Roll High School

Being in the enlightened position of knowing that most of the albums nestled fascistically in the alphabetized aisles of record shops are pure crap, you should educate your recruits in the finest audio offerings that best exemplify the glory of rock ‘n' roll. One of the biggest problems with kids today is that they display a clear lack of passion for music. Most absorb trends ‘til they're bone dry and jovially move on to suck the life out of another corporate-concocted fad. 

You know how just one record can change someone's life, opening up new doors for him or her with each note and chord and burst of noise? After all, you wouldn't be co-conspiring with us if you didn't. Turn every blasé, apathetic brat you can find onto the stuff that got your rocks off and then explain why you emphatically adore it in all its brilliance. In rock ‘n' roll, enthusiasm is as contagious as the clap.

Next, you've got to go through your recruits' music collections and get a good idea of what they're into. Most of it will probably make you wretch, but use your knowledge of music to find bands that are similar and far superior to the bile they dig. For example, if they like the Strokes then give ‘em some Velvet Underground or Television. They dig nu-metal? Force Quicksand and Refused down their throats. 

You get the idea here? All of this is easily fixable because most kids don't know anything musically unless it's in the pages of Rolling Stone or Alternative Press or in constant rotation on the radio or MTV. People just don't know any better and it is your task to show them what's been overlooked for lack of wide-scale profitability and let them sob on your shoulder as they ask Elvis for forgiveness in their transgressions against rock ‘n' roll. Once that's over, take their CDs, sell ‘em, and get the recruits "treats" and party like the Rolling Stones in their prime!

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