Rock is dead. So what’s your point?

MANY moons ago, when I was still young and handsome, I bought a record called Geef voor New Wave. It was a Dutch only release and contained 15 songs that were considered “new wave" at the time (we’re talking 1977). It was a messy compilation, but worth the money. It featured acts that could indeed be labelled new wave, like The Motors, Radio Stars and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. But there were also songs by full-on punk bands such as the Sex Pistols, The Adverts and X Ray Spex, and even a thundering metal tune by Motörhead.

Anyway, I’m digressing. The album opened with a song by a band I had never heard of, The Rubinoos. The title was “Rock And Roll Is Dead”, which was also the chorus, with the cheeky addition of “and we don’t care".

It was a catchy song, and in those heady days of punk we loved everything that had “don’t care" in the lyrics (the Ramones excelled at that, and summed it up in a song called “I Don’t Care"). But I did find the chorus strange. After all, we were witnessing the second coming of rock 'n’ roll, heralded by the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Clash and all those other one-chord wonders.

The Rubinoos themselves were part of this resurgence of primitive teenage music that had been overshadowed by so-called progressive musicians (think Yes, King Crimson, Gentle Giant) whose main aim seemed to be to make every teenager put down their guitar in despair, knowing that they’ll never ever reach the level of technical brilliance that these guys displayed. The Rubinoos had formed in Berkeley, California in 1970. They played power pop, which was highly unfashionable in a scene that was dominated by FM rock (Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan) and navel-gazing singer-songwriters (James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell). But in 1977 the world seemed ready to appreciate The Rubinoos, so they released their debut album with the stand-out track “Rock And Roll Is Dead". It’s a perfect song with silly lyrics (“I used to do the pony/ I used to do the twist/ But now my horse has died/ And believe me it won’t be missed") and a shout-along-fist-in-the-air chorus: “Rock and roll is dead and we don’t care!"

So why am I telling you all this?

Because nearly 50 years later, it seems to me that rock 'n’ roll can actually be laid to rest. I base this partly on my top 10 for 2024, which features only two albums that can be categorised as “rock". All the others are far removed from the well and tested genre. There’s not much rock on the stunning releases by Julia Holter, Arooj Aftab, Beth Gibbons or St. Vincent. Even Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds seem to have all but abandoned the format that they used to excel in. Equally striking is that four acts in my top five are women. 

Rock as a genre became a thing in the second half of the 1960, when bands started to write songs that no longer relied on the pop formula of verse-chorus-verse-middle eight-chorus. Those short and catchy tunes were usually released as 7 singles that played at 45 rpm, and they were aimed at the charts. It was called beat, or rock 'n’ roll, or pop, or soul, or rhythm & blues.

But as the LP, which played at 33 rpm and could have 45 minutes or so of music, gained popularity, focus shifted to longer songs that allowed for experimentation and extended soloing. The Beatles – who else? – probably started the rock album trend with Rubber Soul from 1965, followed by The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and then tons of American bands that had chosen California as their base: The Byrds, The Doors, Love, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the list is endless. But observe, almost every rock musician was male.

The only female rock stars of note were Janis Joplin, Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane) and Sonja Kristina (Curved Air). In the mid-1970's things changed a bit with the arrival of Patti Smith, The Runaways and Suzi Quatro, and later Siouxsie Sioux and The Slits, but for a long time female rockers were an exception.

When many of the first generation rock stars overdosed, dropped out or sold out, a new wave of bands kicked them aside and took over. Rock 'n' roll wasn’t dead, it merely had become old, big, bloated and stodgy. And thousands of punk, new wave, hardcore, post-punk outfits took it under their arm and ran away with it, remaking and remodelling it. They didn’t hate rock 'n’ roll. On the contrary, they loved it.

On their 1977 debut album Live At The Witch Trails The Fall sing: “We’re still one step ahead of you/ I still believe in the R and R dream/ R and R as primal scream." And in 1978 Patti Smith came up with “Rock N Roll Nigger", an ode to rock, in which she placed stars like Jimi Hendrix (together with Jesus Christ and Jackson Pollock) in the pantheon of rebel outcasts. “Outside of society they’re waitin’ for me/ Outside of society that’s where I want to be", she yelled over screaming guitars and pounding drums that seemed to herald a proper rock revolution.

When all the punk bands started to sound second-hand, anger became a pose, and a new generation of rock bands came into view: a curious mix of metal, noise, punk, and glam. Still very much rock. So we lauded Nirvana and Pearl Jam as the new heroes, accompanied by a motley crew of noisy bands that included Mudhoney, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, AC/DC, Iron Maiden and the indomitable Motörhead. England also gave us Oasis and later The Libertines, bands that sounded very derivative, but at least they took the rock 'n’ roll lifestyle very seriously.

And the musos kept singing about rock 'n’ roll and its values and authenticity. Lenny Kravitz lambasted the new breed of hair metal bands when he sneered: “Runnin’ round with diamond rings/ And coke spoons that are overflowin’/ Rock and roll is dead." Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy acknowledged that rock 'n’ roll might be decaying, but it was his lifeblood and he desperately wanted to keep it alive. On “Sunken Treasure" from the 1996 album Being There he lamented: “Music is my saviour/ I was maimed by rock and roll/ I was maimed by rock and roll/ I was tamed by rock and roll/ I got my name from rock and roll."

Rock survived, basically because there’s a market for it. Those of us who grew up in the '70s, '80s and even '90s love it, because it is a release valve for all our misery, disappointments, happiness and frustrations. It’s the soundtrack to our lives, that long line that runs from Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd to The Clash and Metallica, to the Dead Kennedys and White Stripes, to Radiohead and Arctic Monkeys. Without us, the listeners, the fans, the wannabe rock stars, the dancers, the slammers, the stoners and the drinkers, there would be no rock 'n’ roll. Ray Davies sang about us on his Kinks song “A Rock N Roll Fantasy".

There’s a guy in my block, he lives for rock
He plays records day and night
And when he feels down he puts some rock 'n’ roll on
And it makes him feel alright
And when he feels the world is closing in
He turns his stereo way up high
He just spends his life living in a rock 'n’ roll fantasy
He just spends his life living on the edge of reality.

But those days are gone, I’m afraid to say. Fewer bands, fewer venues, fewer opportunities to try those tested chords, those three chords that constitute a proper rock song. Who’s still doing it, crunching them out, giving them new blood, a new lease of life? Is there anything out there that sounds as captivating as the insane fury of Black Flag, or the radical feminism of Bikini Kill?

Maybe I am completely wrong. Of course, there will always be youngsters smitten with The Stooges, MC5, Velvet Underground, Sex Pistols and Gang of Four who will be starting a new band. And didn’t The Who name one of their albums Rock Is Dead – Long Live Rock? So I checked out Pitchfork’s rock top 30 for 2024. Most of the artists I didn’t know, but with an open mind I listened to Ekko Astral (their number one), a “glitter noise punk band from Washington DC". I checked out Fake Fruit who released Macho Mistrust. I opened my Spotify account to hear what Londoners High Vis have to say on Guided Tour. They all sound good, genuine and pissed off. But there’s nothing new, nothing shocking, nothing that made me jump from my seat. The only “new" rock band that caught my attention was Fontaines D.C. from Ireland, whose fourth album Romance sounds varied, passionate and gripping.

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Okay, if I sound old and jaded, so be it. Rock 'n' roll is dead, and I don’t give a toss. Here’s is my top 10 for 2024, with a little local addition as a number 11.

#1 Julia Holter – Something In The Room She Moves (mesmerising, dreamy, jazzy, avant-garde album from the American musician, which deals with life and death, exhaustion and joy).

#2 Arooj Aftab – Night Reign (I saw a beautiful exhibition at the Venice Biennale by Pakistani artist Shahzia Sikander, and this could easily have been the soundtrack. Eastern sounds, folk, jazz, poetry, it’s all there. Fortunately it’s not all esoteric. Check out “Whiskey").

#3 Beth Gibbons – Lives Outgrown (Like Holter’s album, this is a collection of songs about ageing and vulnerability. Gibbons used to sing with Portishead, and you will recognise her voice, but this time there’s no trip-hop, but a modern take on folk music, crafting a work of timeless melancholy).

#4 The Cure – Songs Of A Lost World (I have written about this album extensively in Vrye Weekblad of November 8, so no need to further expound on this stunning comeback).

#5 St. Vincent – All Born Screaming (I am a big fan of Annie Clark, who operates under the name of St. Vincent. She’s bright, exciting, loud, tender, anything you want. And moreover, she’s hugely talented. This may well be her best and most direct album. Think of an American expressionist version of PJ Harvey and Kate Bush).

#6 Dirty Three – Love Changes Everything (Great title from this instrumental trio from Australia, carried by the wild and wonderful electric violin of Warren Ellis, who doubles as Nick Cave’s sidekick and creative foil in The Bad Seeds. But let’s not forget Jim White’s subtle drumming and the scraping guitar of Mick Turner. This album had a 12-year gestation, but was well worth the wait: brittle, angry and sad, all at once).

#7 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Wild God (The wild man of rock and roll doesn’t sound so wild anymore. Instead we get soundscapes drenched in gospel).

#8 Fontaines D.C. – Romance (My friend and editor Robbert de Witt always sang their praises, but I never really gave them much time. That is, until this fantastic album, their fourth, came out. Fontaines D.C. are a young band from Ireland, who rightly sneered at the overpriced, overhyped Oasis’s reunion. They play rock, but it sounds fresh and varied, and the vocals by Grian Chetton have exactly the right mix of passion and disdain).

#9 Kneecap – Fine Art (Northern Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap named themselves after the extrajudicial punishment dished out by paramilitary groups to traitors. They rap in English and Irish and they dislike the British occupiers of Northern Ireland. They also made a very entertaining feature film that’s well worth watching).

#10 Johnny Blue Skies – Passage du Desire (Cosmic country outcast Sturgill Simpson went through a period of depression, and came out on the other side with a new name and a new domicile, Paris. He sounds settled and wrote some captivating songs with stunning arrangements, mixing his country roots with the world of Serge Gainsbourg. Who would have thought that even possible?)

#11 Gary Rathbone – Where we end ... is where we begin (My dear friend Gary Rathbone, who once upon a time played in The Aeroplanes and The Spectres, has spent an enormous amount of time and energy on this solo album, his first. And it’s certainly been worth it. Every now and then one of his songs comes up on my phone shuffle and I am always pleasantly surprised that it’s Gary who doesn’t sound out of place between tunes by Blur and The Triffids).

♦ VWB ♦

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