FollowIt is safe to assume that rock is dead.
Don’t believe me? Just tune your radio in on KZZE or “The Rogue,” which plays outside the norm bands like Nickelback and Linkin Park. Even better, they have been playing a song by Alcyon Massive called “Aint it Fresh (The Oregon Song),” with such lyrics as,
“Ain’t it fresh when the beat sets in and you’re like “that’s right I’m in Oregon!”
And it’s on like that oo oo oooooo”
“We be rockin’ the spot, take a walk to Tablerock,
With the psychedelic visions, skinny dippin’ in the Umpqua,
Some call it Oregon but I like to call it heaven,
Beautiful trees and water falls, a never ending blessing!
Blackberries by the pounds, supply stock year round,
And we bury underground so that they can’t see it now (hey!)
We never worry about the coy undercovers,
Too busy sippin’ on dutch brothers to ever catch us runnin’ from ‘em!”
The music of this brilliant lyricist could best be described as a Sublime cover, with a dash of 311 thrown in. I assume the reason why this song gets so much play on “The Rogue” because, hey, the lyrics are like, about the Rogue Valley.
The reason why modern rock stations have been reduced to playing dulled out, monotonous, completely forgettable songs is because young adults buy it. (On a side note, Puddle of Mudd is a clear Nirvana rip off- Nickelback a Creed rip off, Creed a cheap Pearl Jam rip off.) And young adults buy cheap music more than some of the better bands out there right now, say, Black Keys, White Stripes, or Radiohead, probably because they don’t know any better.
In turn, the radio has fallen under a sort of censorship, one the FCC couldn’t have hoped to do itself. There should be no worry from parents these days that rock and roll is telling our children to rebel. At worst, modern rock tells our youth to buy things, swagger, and express a vague sense of angst.
The resulting censorship by business model is what keeps me flipping through my presets, trying to avoid accidents, hoping for that ’90s grunge song peak before rock and roll declined.
