This brings to mind bands such as "Subway to Sally", a German band that experimented with Early Music and Metal combinations. Or "Diamond Fist Werny", who featured bass sax, guitar, and a drum kit (with stunning early digital visual imagery and sometimes ethereal vocals.) Would love to hear more examples of this sort of thing.

Damn kids these days, they don't make the good music like we did when I was their age!

Dave, you really need to hire a 17-year-old to read your articles aloud to you before you cut and paste them from Word into the CMS.

Or maybe just turn the lights out and put the feeble, wheezing remnant of The Stranger's music section to bed.

Could the reduction of music education in public schools be contributing to the lack of instrumental diversity in today's rock music scene? It's easy to get a guitar, some lessons, and hide away for 10 years to practice. Not so easy to learn accordion, vibes, oboe and bagpipes if you have no access to those instruments and an environment in which to learn them.

@3
I think the reduction in music education went hand in hand with the beginning of rock in the first place: all the jazz cats learned their instruments in school bands or orchestras (brass, woodwinds, bass etc), whereas all a rocker needed was some cash and a garage.

Boring, or even bad music isn't a product of those instruments--it's the compositional chops of the composers. People tend to go for the easy comfort sounds because they immediately feel "right" and familiar and because they're often easy--the plethora of songs built off the same three and four chord foundations is part of this.

More music education would be a better way to put new tools--i.e. musical and compositional knowledge, in the hands of future musicians.

"...Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Stooges, Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix Experience, pre-Autobahn Kraftwerk, Et Cetera, Hampton Grease Band, Annette Peacock, CAN, Julie Tippetts, Faust, This Heat, Nico, Neu!, Hovercraft, Boredoms, My Bloody Valentine, Lightning Bolt, Slits, Raincoats, Contortions, Labradford, Wire, Residents, Chrome, 75 Dollar Bill, and Black Dice..."

goddamn, that's a lot of white.

Foreground the human voice. Have something to express, even if it just an evocation or a yearning or a question, but something that can be felt and understood by listeners.
Then strive to be understood, which practically speaking means pay attention to clarity, articulation, simplicity, sincerity. Abandon posturing and irony.
Don't believe me? Go back and listen to the greats from that first generation of rock music, black & white. Crap, Chuck Berry you understand every fucking syllable, ditto Bo Diddly, most of the blues greats.
Strip the sound down tone down the bass and since it is probably impossible to find a drummer who is not a junkie, get one who is a heroin addict and not a meth freak.

Bass, drums, guitar(s), vocals = rock 'n' roll.

Bands with flutes generally suck -- Canned Heat over Jethro Tull, but still. And all the other instruments? Ouch. Very few bands can pull it, but if I want to go see a rock show and there is someone playing the kazoo, or the tuba, or the triangl (?), I'm laughing my head off (either at them, or occasionally with them).

@2, yes.
@7, yes!
@8, yes.

There are tons of great bands, the problem is people (including Dave?) may not have heard them because most people listen to pap or shit that is decades old because kids these days have nostalgia and/or like shit music, and most people (including many music writers) don't get off their ass and find it, they wait for PR folks to send them promos -- and that just doesn't happen anymore.

Have you heard the new(ish) Louder Than Death? Or the new Subsonics record? Giuda? Jackson Politick? Dirty Fences? Sheer Mag?

So, I'm a complete and total outsider to this kind of discussion. I've never cared for rock, or really any kind of modern music; 1949 is the year the music died for me (bonus points if you can guess why). So obviously, I bring an edgy outsider's perspective here :-P

But reading your article put me in mind of why classical music has been in something of a doldrums. And while there are a lot of reasons for why that should be, there's a few things that really come to mind.

Believe it or not, European music used to be rather like it is today. Something would come into style and become all the rage with the kids. The adults would hate it. Then those kids would grow up, the music they liked would become dated and a new generation of composers would step up with something different.

Believe it or not, towards the end of his life, the revered J.S. Bach was well out of the limelight and his music was perhaps not forgotten, but definitely fuddy-duddy by the end of the 18th century.

What happened over the course of the 19th century was the formation of a canon of Great Works, to which pantheon, certain superlative composers (Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.) were added. Certain musical pieces became established as a permanent part of the repertoire, to be interpreted and played, and later recorded, over and over and over again.

Each new generation was now inducted into the same priesthood of music appreciation; familiarity with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (you know the one: duh duh duh DUUUUH) became a marker of cultural literacy. I'd be willing to bet Charles Mudede would tie this to the bourgeosie becoming the dominant class, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyways, new composers could be and were added to the canon as time went by, but by the turn of the 20th century, things were bogging down and new composers having more and more difficulty breaking into the canon. Probably the last one to really do it was Richard Strauss, and most of his best known works were all published before 1920.

Point being, I wonder if rock isn't going through a similar process, happening faster than it did on the classical side of the house because of technology. What are the Beatles and the Stones if not the canonical rock gods of today? And yes, newer artists have come along and earned their spot as the eternal gods of rock as well. But perhaps we're reaching a similar end as that of classical music.

I would suggest that the mere existence of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tells us that this process is already well along the way.

These suggestions to rejuvenate the genre through scrapping even the basic foundation of guitar-bass-drums strikes me as much the same as the kinds of things Schoenberg and his followers were doing with their 12-tone mania: tossing away everything in an attempt to regain an exciting lost youth. Instead, what we end up with is a lot of atonal aridity written by composers supported by universities and foundations whose appeal is very slight even in the small world of classical aficionados.

So maybe we are approaching the end of the line for rock, except for the next generation's music nerd's like me. Rock could well be on the road to being a true classic.

10 Well that was a lovely thoughtful post but I think you are missing a couple of elements of great rock music that make a parallel to classic music not work.

First is, as I mention above, the urgency communicated through the human voice that gets yoked to a rhythmic, uptempo music.
Second is an irresistible rhythm that initiates some type of spontaneous dance response. At least most great early rock had that as an intrinsic component- [American Bandstand with Dick Clark- "it's got a great beat, you can dance to it"]
Neither of those elements can honestly be located in classical music even if you stretch the definition to encompass light opera and flamenco.

you shoulda just wrote "more black people" you coulda finished this article in like 14 seconds.

@12
1, Most live albums suck. Historically, there are a few exceptions: the MC5, Cheap Trick, the Real Kids... But there are bands putting out live stuff now, you just don't know about it apparently.

2, Greatest Hits records suck, for a variety of reasons. but there are plenty of bands that still put them out, you just don't know about them apparently.

Rock gods suck, but they're still out there. Have you heard the pipes on Tina Halladay? Have you heard Dirty Fences? There are plenty of bands with members who rule individually and in the group, but apparently you just don't know about them.

Conclusion: you're criticising shit you don't know about, likely because you (and plenty of others, you're not alone), don't have the time or inclination to dig around and find good shit.

Read @2 again, and think about it.

Suggested band names:
Genre From the Grave
Dragged For Cultural Appropriation
The Ignored

I think it's funny to ask for this to happen in the context of "rock". It strikes me a bit like asking for a trance song not to be so damn repetitive. There are plenty of great bands doing crazy stuff, but they probably aren't going to be billed as "rock" unless they have a guitar, bass, and drums. If you come in the club expecting "rock" and get a flute and marimba combo you're probably not going to be that into it.

Aside from the mis-quoted lyrics that touched off a firestorm at the beginning of the article, I think most of your own (6 year old) article applies

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/03/20/sound-check-chris-jury-of-the-bismarck-vents-about-the-seattle-music-industry

Rock was an outgrowth and evolution of 1950s White teen angst Rock and Roll. It was, at its core, always WASP music. Rock no longer speaks to multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, much more diverse American youth. Maybe there's really nothing that can revive Rock because the demographic it needs no longer exists. The audience for Rock today is a couple of grizzled generations permanently tuned to the classic Rock of their youth.

@18
Didn't say all live records suck, reread what I wrote.
Most greatest hits records do actually suck, but greatest hits records are easier to listen to for some people.
Rock gods do suck. You can have Pearl Jam (ouch!).

See @2. Pine for the "good old days," put down anything new, and miss out on a ton of killer shit. I like shows with fewer people and without old dudes with shitty taste (PJ?) complaining about how things were better "back in the day." Rock on -- or off?

@15

The best band name I've ever heard is a Swedish twee-pop band:

Suburban Kids With Biblical Names

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburban_Kids_with_Biblical_Names

I like a lot of types of music that isn't pop, but is Imagine Dragons really that bad beyond being popular? You could make the argument that that band does experiment with other instruments, rhythms that are not necessarily as rhythmic, and mixes rock with elements of hip-hop (which the cynic could say is just to make themselves more popular) but it sounds like Imagine Dragons is actually following the advice in this article...but gets dismissed out-of-hand.

“Do you believe in rock-n-roll?
Can music save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?”

“You can’t beat two guitars drums bass.”

Yes! More double-necked guitars! Prog will save rock!

Get thee to the garage...