There may also be die hard music fans getting up there in age who are making music on their own very much off the radar, but who may be worth a listen. I’ll keep you posted 😉
You know, I appreciate your surfacing new artists like The Warning (also a great Queensryche album title, btw), as well as the UTA namecheck (love them); but I gotta tell ya, all this "rock is dead" conceit is 100% pure rat-manure. For literally every particular niche-taste in rock out there there's at least 2-3 bands of regional/national status; who are filling venues and selling T-shirts by the carload. The apparent disconnect with the "critic community" is that they're being held to standards that are impossible to meet; no one's gonna be able to, on the first few years, match bands of the past that have 30-40 years of people telling you how great they were, in print, repeatedly. Most storied "scenes" and genres of earlier days have been only glorified in hindsight, and the bands in them were qualitatively no different than any band playing in Cleveland tomorrow night. Rock and roll is immediate and about Being There; not standing at a distance with a lorgnette and inspecting it like a sculpture. That's what it was in whatever era you marked as your favorite; and that's what it is now.
What it is not, under any measure, is "dead".
Anyway, thanks for all you do for new bands; it's a hell of a lot more than most media gives us these days.
Hey Shaggy, appreciate the heartfelt comment. I thought it was clear from article that this is a rhetorical question. The title was meant to be provocative. My whole point is that rock isn't dead, but it's most alive in places the mainstream media and music industry aren't looking. Yes, it's about Being There, and for me, personally, that doesn't happen watching a band that has been playing their greatest hits for 40 years. In that, we likely agree. Many of them are overrated, they have just acquired a sort of patina from having been around a long time. I have little time for arena-rock bands like Kansas and Foreigner, but I also think that the anti-virtuosity movement that gave us grunge went too far, and the alt-rock scene today is simply not that interesting. (For me, the greatest period of creativity was the 60's, which is just before my generation. We have never had a cluster of new artists to rival Cream, Hendrix, the Doors, Airplane, the Beatles, etc. But they are mostly dead now and certainly aren't playing their hits!) Hence my focus on new acts.
Selling T-shirts by the cartload? Sure. And Taylor Swift causes meltdowns to our economy, but I would not go to one of her concerts if you paid me. The flatness of the current music scene is not a figment of my imagination. Check out this piece I wrote about the music industry, if you haven't seen it already: https://zapatosjam.substack.com/p/the-songwriters-who-ate-america-part My fear is that AI is going to complete the process and eliminate the role of even these songwriters. Thanks for taking the time, and all the best!
Yeah, I'm sorry to be rough. It has occurred to me that those three words in your title have been "the phrase that pays" on Substack this week; and I've seen a lot of people use it in varying senses, including facetiously. And I gotta tell ya, being the only fool out here willing to scrap to defend the validity and legitimacy of my art form does not feel good. Especially when it has to be done with people whose art form i respect quite a lot. But my concern is: quick, easy tropes like this dismissal have a way of becoming "received wisdom" and a self-fulfilling prophecy; and I know too many good people who are working their ever-choppin' asses off out here to counter the idea that everything good in our culture somehow ceased in 1996. Even if what they're doing now isn't sufficiently "interesting", their next project/iteration very well could be; but with the tide of general indifference and discouragement we all face, it could also very well never exist at all. We saw that some with the pandemic, a year + of Exile from live performance sent many good musicians off to try other things, and when it was over they never came back. The industry you describe in the linked article doesn't want us and hasn't for 2 decades, so their disdain is nothing new. We sell Ts because that industry has rendered our music through technology almost free, and by doing so implies that it is also without value. Everything we do costs money to pay everyone around us, yet we're the last ones that money will find. So we're in the clothing business, and the beer business, and whatever else will keep us afloat.
But we're still out here doing it, despite all the decks stacked against us; and I'm here on a writers' platform to stress how incredibly, life-savingly important writers can be to our musical culture. They always have been. Talk is the literal oxygen of a music scene, and every one found to be historic or "great" couldn't have been so without it. So thank you again for contributing so much to build our culture; and I hope you'll find your next "Greats" soon.
Hey Shaggy, I suspect we are more on the same page than you might think. I played piano and sang choral music as a kid, but never had the discipline to pursue music as a career or even hobby. So to me, anyone who has the courage and conviction to get out there and perform has my respect, whether or not they are doing stuff I like.
The fact that rock festivals are headlined by people in their 60s and 70s is not the fault of the younger musicians. It is the fault of a national audience that lacks imagination, and a music industry that prizes predictability over innovation. Yes, I do think much of the rock scene today is flat, but musicians are in part responding to the cultural zeitgeist--the lack of respect for really ambitious writing and playing. It's what you refer to as the self-fulfilling prophecy. I also listed bands I think are stellar exceptions.
I have interviewed people at Fender and Dean, and the market for electric guitars and other "rock" instruments has been in free fall for two decades. Interestingly, it is being saved by girls, and by the international market, especially in Asia. One third of first-time purchasers of electric guitars are now girls, and the driver of innovation and quality in rock instruments is now Japan, not the U.S.
The economics are horrible for musicians, we know that. The whole Swift/Ticketmaster thing was nauseating. No one talked about the fact that a tiny garage band that scores a gig at a professional venue ends up making less than the corporation that sells the tickets. It's disgusting, and that is what Congress should be looking at.
Send me some links to your music. I'm curious what you are doing. Best,
I wish we had a Congress that knew literally anything about the music business, below what they're told by upper-level industry lobbyists. But that'll never happen; bc like a lot of normal people, their interest in music is thinner than wallpaper. I'm not dogging people who are like that; not everyone's gonna live and breathe the stuff like we do. But I fear those are the folks who are easiest for the Nostalgia Industrial Complex to convince that nothing good is being done in rock anymore; bc if they're told that enough, they'll roll with it.
But enough of my neuroses; here's a couple things I do:
Rick Ray is a sort of cult-legend psychedelic rock guitarist in Cleveland; been at it nearly 50 years, I've been his bass guy for 6 of them. This is my favorite one to play:
Hey, those are both cool. On the Ray piece, I can see why it's fun to play--it's really a bass showcase. Interesting mix of styles. The Saints song is great, good throwback guitar solos, solid vocals, nice and heavy but catchy. And I'm impressed with the production quality--it's a very clean mix. In the album photo, which one are you?
Thanks! I didn't play "Looking" on the record, Rick did himself; but i joined right after that album came out, and I'm the only guy that's ever played it live. On the BS album cover, i'm second from right, with the red shirt.
Thank you Shaggy! I am going to check these out after I get back from my physical therapy appointment. So, the problem extends far beyond rock. The big US labels are actually a protected industry (regardless of genre), but most people don't know that. They and our movie industry have successfully blocked a lot of their competition from getting a foothold in the U.S. The victims are foreign artists and smaller acts, both foreign and domesitc. Check these articles out and share with your musician friends. Best,
Wow, impressive spotlight, Charles! Looking forward to your piece on their album of originals! If it's not been said before, it needs to be: You and your Zapato's Jam offer a unique and necessary corner of the 'Stack-verse! International, indie, signed, unsigned, last century, this century....and, the good news: You're really coming into your own, with confidence and a recognizable voice and POV! As the kids would say, "Rock on!" And, turn it up to 11!
Now, to the band......loved your Partridge Fam mention....all that's missing is little Tracy on tambourine! With black nails and tattoos, of course! They're certainly proficient, if not great, and they can only improve as they grow! I dug their "Enter Sandman," and appreciated their more-constrained Starship cover (I think Grace would be impressed, if not somewhat envious).
It was fun to see what their faces looked like without hair flying all about, too! Dug their Janis cover, as well! Fabulous choice to let us see them in 3 radically different surroundings: early beach fair setting, studio vid production, and right proper performance venue!
P.S. We've got a MusicStack Meet tomorrow (Fri) at 10am CT (8 your time, as I recall)...we'd love to see you, Charles!!!
Thanks so much for the encouragement! Re Liliac: It has been interesting watching them evolve and grow, for sure. They first showed up on my radar maybe four years ago. Melody has been invited to solo with a number of big name musicians including Vinnie Appice, with whom she covered a number of Dio and Rainbow songs. Thank you for the reminder about musicStack. Weirdly enough, since you first invited me, I have been travelling every time it was due to take place (every other week, right?). Can you please email me the info to call in again? Thank you!
There may also be die hard music fans getting up there in age who are making music on their own very much off the radar, but who may be worth a listen. I’ll keep you posted 😉
Oh, I agree! I am actually friends with some of those people. Always interested to learn about new ones. thank you!
Can we shamelessly plug here 😬? (I’m still new at Substack and acceptable etiquette)
You know, I appreciate your surfacing new artists like The Warning (also a great Queensryche album title, btw), as well as the UTA namecheck (love them); but I gotta tell ya, all this "rock is dead" conceit is 100% pure rat-manure. For literally every particular niche-taste in rock out there there's at least 2-3 bands of regional/national status; who are filling venues and selling T-shirts by the carload. The apparent disconnect with the "critic community" is that they're being held to standards that are impossible to meet; no one's gonna be able to, on the first few years, match bands of the past that have 30-40 years of people telling you how great they were, in print, repeatedly. Most storied "scenes" and genres of earlier days have been only glorified in hindsight, and the bands in them were qualitatively no different than any band playing in Cleveland tomorrow night. Rock and roll is immediate and about Being There; not standing at a distance with a lorgnette and inspecting it like a sculpture. That's what it was in whatever era you marked as your favorite; and that's what it is now.
What it is not, under any measure, is "dead".
Anyway, thanks for all you do for new bands; it's a hell of a lot more than most media gives us these days.
Hey Shaggy, appreciate the heartfelt comment. I thought it was clear from article that this is a rhetorical question. The title was meant to be provocative. My whole point is that rock isn't dead, but it's most alive in places the mainstream media and music industry aren't looking. Yes, it's about Being There, and for me, personally, that doesn't happen watching a band that has been playing their greatest hits for 40 years. In that, we likely agree. Many of them are overrated, they have just acquired a sort of patina from having been around a long time. I have little time for arena-rock bands like Kansas and Foreigner, but I also think that the anti-virtuosity movement that gave us grunge went too far, and the alt-rock scene today is simply not that interesting. (For me, the greatest period of creativity was the 60's, which is just before my generation. We have never had a cluster of new artists to rival Cream, Hendrix, the Doors, Airplane, the Beatles, etc. But they are mostly dead now and certainly aren't playing their hits!) Hence my focus on new acts.
Selling T-shirts by the cartload? Sure. And Taylor Swift causes meltdowns to our economy, but I would not go to one of her concerts if you paid me. The flatness of the current music scene is not a figment of my imagination. Check out this piece I wrote about the music industry, if you haven't seen it already: https://zapatosjam.substack.com/p/the-songwriters-who-ate-america-part My fear is that AI is going to complete the process and eliminate the role of even these songwriters. Thanks for taking the time, and all the best!
Yeah, I'm sorry to be rough. It has occurred to me that those three words in your title have been "the phrase that pays" on Substack this week; and I've seen a lot of people use it in varying senses, including facetiously. And I gotta tell ya, being the only fool out here willing to scrap to defend the validity and legitimacy of my art form does not feel good. Especially when it has to be done with people whose art form i respect quite a lot. But my concern is: quick, easy tropes like this dismissal have a way of becoming "received wisdom" and a self-fulfilling prophecy; and I know too many good people who are working their ever-choppin' asses off out here to counter the idea that everything good in our culture somehow ceased in 1996. Even if what they're doing now isn't sufficiently "interesting", their next project/iteration very well could be; but with the tide of general indifference and discouragement we all face, it could also very well never exist at all. We saw that some with the pandemic, a year + of Exile from live performance sent many good musicians off to try other things, and when it was over they never came back. The industry you describe in the linked article doesn't want us and hasn't for 2 decades, so their disdain is nothing new. We sell Ts because that industry has rendered our music through technology almost free, and by doing so implies that it is also without value. Everything we do costs money to pay everyone around us, yet we're the last ones that money will find. So we're in the clothing business, and the beer business, and whatever else will keep us afloat.
But we're still out here doing it, despite all the decks stacked against us; and I'm here on a writers' platform to stress how incredibly, life-savingly important writers can be to our musical culture. They always have been. Talk is the literal oxygen of a music scene, and every one found to be historic or "great" couldn't have been so without it. So thank you again for contributing so much to build our culture; and I hope you'll find your next "Greats" soon.
Hey Shaggy, I suspect we are more on the same page than you might think. I played piano and sang choral music as a kid, but never had the discipline to pursue music as a career or even hobby. So to me, anyone who has the courage and conviction to get out there and perform has my respect, whether or not they are doing stuff I like.
The fact that rock festivals are headlined by people in their 60s and 70s is not the fault of the younger musicians. It is the fault of a national audience that lacks imagination, and a music industry that prizes predictability over innovation. Yes, I do think much of the rock scene today is flat, but musicians are in part responding to the cultural zeitgeist--the lack of respect for really ambitious writing and playing. It's what you refer to as the self-fulfilling prophecy. I also listed bands I think are stellar exceptions.
I have interviewed people at Fender and Dean, and the market for electric guitars and other "rock" instruments has been in free fall for two decades. Interestingly, it is being saved by girls, and by the international market, especially in Asia. One third of first-time purchasers of electric guitars are now girls, and the driver of innovation and quality in rock instruments is now Japan, not the U.S.
The economics are horrible for musicians, we know that. The whole Swift/Ticketmaster thing was nauseating. No one talked about the fact that a tiny garage band that scores a gig at a professional venue ends up making less than the corporation that sells the tickets. It's disgusting, and that is what Congress should be looking at.
Send me some links to your music. I'm curious what you are doing. Best,
I wish we had a Congress that knew literally anything about the music business, below what they're told by upper-level industry lobbyists. But that'll never happen; bc like a lot of normal people, their interest in music is thinner than wallpaper. I'm not dogging people who are like that; not everyone's gonna live and breathe the stuff like we do. But I fear those are the folks who are easiest for the Nostalgia Industrial Complex to convince that nothing good is being done in rock anymore; bc if they're told that enough, they'll roll with it.
But enough of my neuroses; here's a couple things I do:
Rick Ray is a sort of cult-legend psychedelic rock guitarist in Cleveland; been at it nearly 50 years, I've been his bass guy for 6 of them. This is my favorite one to play:
https://youtu.be/RVk0eGow6dc
Also here's a newer band I'm in, Bessemer Saints. Hard,bluesy rock with some depth:
https://youtu.be/kpkL5C-OUZk
Thanks for your interest, and patience.
Hey, those are both cool. On the Ray piece, I can see why it's fun to play--it's really a bass showcase. Interesting mix of styles. The Saints song is great, good throwback guitar solos, solid vocals, nice and heavy but catchy. And I'm impressed with the production quality--it's a very clean mix. In the album photo, which one are you?
Thanks! I didn't play "Looking" on the record, Rick did himself; but i joined right after that album came out, and I'm the only guy that's ever played it live. On the BS album cover, i'm second from right, with the red shirt.
Thank you Shaggy! I am going to check these out after I get back from my physical therapy appointment. So, the problem extends far beyond rock. The big US labels are actually a protected industry (regardless of genre), but most people don't know that. They and our movie industry have successfully blocked a lot of their competition from getting a foothold in the U.S. The victims are foreign artists and smaller acts, both foreign and domesitc. Check these articles out and share with your musician friends. Best,
https://medium.com/the-riff/are-you-a-foreign-artist-you-are-officially-not-wanted-here-37ed24868956
https://medium.com/the-riff/how-the-irs-sticks-it-to-foreign-artists-afb10b42c768
Wow, impressive spotlight, Charles! Looking forward to your piece on their album of originals! If it's not been said before, it needs to be: You and your Zapato's Jam offer a unique and necessary corner of the 'Stack-verse! International, indie, signed, unsigned, last century, this century....and, the good news: You're really coming into your own, with confidence and a recognizable voice and POV! As the kids would say, "Rock on!" And, turn it up to 11!
Now, to the band......loved your Partridge Fam mention....all that's missing is little Tracy on tambourine! With black nails and tattoos, of course! They're certainly proficient, if not great, and they can only improve as they grow! I dug their "Enter Sandman," and appreciated their more-constrained Starship cover (I think Grace would be impressed, if not somewhat envious).
It was fun to see what their faces looked like without hair flying all about, too! Dug their Janis cover, as well! Fabulous choice to let us see them in 3 radically different surroundings: early beach fair setting, studio vid production, and right proper performance venue!
P.S. We've got a MusicStack Meet tomorrow (Fri) at 10am CT (8 your time, as I recall)...we'd love to see you, Charles!!!
Thanks so much for the encouragement! Re Liliac: It has been interesting watching them evolve and grow, for sure. They first showed up on my radar maybe four years ago. Melody has been invited to solo with a number of big name musicians including Vinnie Appice, with whom she covered a number of Dio and Rainbow songs. Thank you for the reminder about musicStack. Weirdly enough, since you first invited me, I have been travelling every time it was due to take place (every other week, right?). Can you please email me the info to call in again? Thank you!