an interesting Where Are They Now: the baby on Nirvana's Nevermind album cover

Pauk

CityMouse wrote:

the guy that did the Secret History of Grunge radio documentary suggests that there will never be another "revolutionary" movement in rock like there was in the early 90s. I agree with his theory that there is nothing to bond over anymore. Teenagers and people in their early 20s don't own physical copies of music and music can be obtained everywhere. 1) people don't all go for the same thing anymore and 2) it's fragmented- people don't want albums, they want singles for playlists. The author of Flowers in the Dust Bin argued that the last "global youth culture" ended in the 70s, that once you had pop, arena rock, punk, disco, etc., it fragmented youth into too many subcategories and then nothing would unify them again. I believe that in the early 90s, there were particular BANDS that were the global youth culture, but the movement in general was very close to it. I don't quite believe it could happen again, as music is even more fragmented now. It would take a truly, truly great band.

Also, if you prescribe to the theory that good rock music is born during republican administrations- because people are frustrated and want change, we should have seen this revolution in the past 8 years. If Obama is elected, young people will take things for granted and just want to dance.

I agree there'll probably never be another big music scene like Seattle in the 90s, but not for those reasons. The main thing is exposure. These days any band can show up on myspace and get their music out there. In the 90s there wasn't that infrastructure, so bands would pretty much stay in their local area and build up a network with other bands, thus creating the scene. These days music is so easily spread that there isn't that geographical and creative isolation needed for a scene to build. The closest thing we can see to a 'scene' these days are the record companies who only take on artists of a particular flavour (like Ed Bangers), building up an artificial scene. It's not necessarily any worse than the old fashioned scenes, just different. There's always going to be someone moaning about how rosy everything was in a bygone era, but change has to be accepted.

As for Rock Band being the source of all evil, how ridiculous. Kids who play Rock Band but don't play an instrument were never going to form a band in the first place. That's like saying if it wasn't for Gran Turismo everyone would be racing drivers. If anything, Rock Band would probably inspire more kids to play instruments.