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"It's dead, Jim."




> [O'Neal, Kevin W.]  This is one of my hopes/dreams for this tour
>(and commercials, etc.) But.....I doubt this will be the social movement
>we're waiting for.

Kevin:

It IS unlikely, I'll admit. But we're talking about PETE TOWNSHEND here. I
found the Gateway remix of Who Are You on the Lifehouse set quite
interesting. Not quite a new form, perhaps, but getting there (perhaps).

> [O'Neal, Kevin W.]  Well, this begs the question.....What was Grunge
>to rock?

A form of it which owed a lot to The Who and bands like Blue Cheer which in
turned owed a lot to The Who.

> I saw it as RnR with a youthful shot of anger in the
>arm........thus still rock.  Very different, yet also the same.

Right, and even that wasn't as angry as Punk.

> Is it that you're waiting for a whole new genre of music to come out
>and transfix society?  A "movement" like Elvis, Buddy Holly, and then The
>Beatles?

I don't know that I'd call it a movement, but you've got the idea. A form of
music that while based on earlier types (just as Rock was based in Blues,
Country and Jazz) which is none of the above. What Elvis was to Sinatra's
crowd. Will WE like it? Probably not. I can't imagine a Bing Crosby fan
listening to Jailhouse Rock and thinking "It's Hip!" More like: "Damned loud
kid music! Sounds like someone is drowning a cat!" I'm still amazed to this
day that anyone thought Elvis was black. He sounds like a real country boy
to me...

> If so that may have been Hip-hop unfortunately.  But is Hip-hop
>really a new genre, or just RnR or blues broken down to its core

It's a form of R&B, in my undoubtably "broad" definition. And it doesn't
have very much room to grow if you know what I mean, like Rock and Jazz did.
It's too simple and beat-oriented.
BTW, two things I wanted to add to this discussion: IMHO, Jazz peaked very
late (with Dave Brubeck) and Rock as well (Quadrophenia). Jazz is of course
still around, so there's no reason Rock won't coexist with whatever the
mythical new form will be. If you want to call it not dying, I guess I'll
have to go along with you.

> It's so hard to even imagine other non-discovered genres of music.

Impossible, for me, but then I didn't see Disco coming either. If I could
imagine it, I'd do it and make millions. (insert a Mandark laugh here)

>(Rare, but it does actually exist), go get "Get your Ya Ya's out" or "Her
>Satanic Majesties Request".

Two great ones, but I'd say anything between Between The Buttons and Goat's
Head Soup is great Stones, and the singles before that.

>It's just a little stagnant right now.

Derick:

Comatose, if you ask me.

>After all, Pete Himself said
>that bands like The Who were actually taking Rock'n Roll back to america
>as there had been some sort of slump in that field of music and here
>were the Who/Beatles/Kinks/Animals/Stones etc bringing it back !

Yeah, but in a lot of cases (all but The Who, actually) it wasn't that much
different than what had gone before. Chuck Berry with a British accent.
Anyone listening to early Elvis and early Beatles cannot help but be struck
by the similarities. The Stones recorded some stuff in Chess studios in
order to capture the same sound as the Blues artists they were emulating.
Etc. etc.

                           Cheers                              ML