Is loud guitar-based music destined to be "throwback" music from here outwards?

[Embenny]

Everything is a throwback unless you're doing something truly new and innovative.

Guitar-driven 3-or-4-chord songs with a 4/4 time signature had decades in the limelight. Even the "exclusively distorted powerchords" subtypes had decades at the forefront of the musical zeitgeist, and genres relying on that structure still exist. They're just not as popular anymore.

Asking this question is kind of silly. It's like someone asking in 1962 if jazz is destined to be "throwback" music because the top-40 radio and clubs moved on to R&B and rock'n'roll.

Jazz still exists today and some of it would have been unfathomable to someone living in 1962. It'll be the same for electric guitar-driven styles. The people who play guitar music of the past will continue to sound like guitar players of the past, but others will forge new styles regardless of whether or not those styles are topping popular music charts.

[adamrobertt]

Everything is a throwback unless you're doing something truly new and innovative.

Guitar-driven 3-or-4-chord songs with a 4/4 time signature had decades in the limelight. Even the "exclusively distorted powerchords" subtypes had decades at the forefront of the musical zeitgeist, and genres relying on that structure still exist. They're just not as popular anymore.

Asking this question is kind of silly. It's like someone asking in 1962 if jazz is destined to be "throwback" music because the top-40 radio and clubs moved on to R&B and rock'n'roll.

Jazz still exists today and some of it would have been unfathomable to someone living in 1962. It'll be the same for electric guitar-driven styles. The people who play guitar music of the past will continue to sound like guitar players of the past, but others will forge new styles regardless of whether or not those styles are topping popular music charts.

Right. What's happening is just diversification, not elimination.

[Larry Mal]

Guitar-driven 3-or-4-chord songs with a 4/4 time signature had decades in the limelight. Even the "exclusively distorted powerchords" subtypes had decades at the forefront of the musical zeitgeist, and genres relying on that structure still exist. They're just not as popular anymore.

I feel that the guitar had way too much dominance for far too long as it is. How much of that did people really need? Isn't there enough of it already?

[Larry Mal]

To kind of play off this theme a bit, I have always liked punk rock a lot. I like a lot of different kinds of music, though, so I've always like dance music, I like disco a lot.

Punk rock of course was originally a throwback to a more "pure" rock and roll, it was a reaction against the progressive rock and classic rock that was dominating the day. Strip it down, you know? Three chords and the truth and all that. Gone are Rick Wakeman and his fucking capes, gone is Pink Floyd and the rock opera, all that shit. Gone is soloing and Eric Clapton covering Bob Marley and all that stuff.

Three chords and the truth.

Now, the first wave of punk was genuinely exciting, a lot of it put the idea that a song could be interesting in subject matter over musical capability, and that shit works.

But soon it boiled down to the essence that is "hardcore", and I fucking hate hardcore. I hate straight edge. I hate all that shit.

And why? Well, it's boring, deeply conservative music in its own way. It is in a straightjacket of its own doing.

It occurred to me later that most people would like punk or disco, usually not both. But disco was fun and colorful, inclusive and great. It did not have any barriers. Some was electronic, some more soulful, some of it was played by bands and some of it was done in the studio. You'll hear any kind of instrument, flutes, synths, drum machines, horn sections, whatever the fuck worked on the dance floor.

Gay? Black? A former Supreme? European? French and shit? Disco didn't care at all what you were. If you could make people dance, that was the point.

Punk by comparison was not very colorful. People could not get over Bad Brains playing punk while being black. It is mainly notable for what you can't do.

Paul Westerberg of the Replacements said something about how that band played punk and thought that punk meant no rules, but later he found out that there were rules, you had to play fast, you had to wear black, that kind of stuff. I forget the quote, but it always stuck with me and later they started playing the DeFranco Family's "Heartbeat It's A Love Beat" in order to shed the hardcore assholes.

Plus it's a good song and they liked it.

So yeah, in a way, loud guitar based music has always been "throwback" music by design, you know?

When the Clash was doing "Tommy Gun" in 1978 it was designed to be throwback music even then, you know?

[JVG]

It doesn’t really matter what’s considered “throwback” if people are still into it. Millions of people (including me) are still enjoying Bach, Mozart, et.al., but it’s not often derided as “throwback”.

My favourite guitarist is Ritchie Blackmore - definitely out of style, particularly on an offset guitar forum, but i love his work.

It’s great to be passionate, but life’s too short to be a music snob.

[shadowplay]

To kind of play off this theme a bit, I have always liked punk rock a lot. I like a lot of different kinds of music, though, so I've always like dance music, I like disco a lot.

Punk rock of course was originally a throwback to a more "pure" rock and roll, it was a reaction against the progressive rock and classic rock that was dominating the day. Strip it down, you know? Three chords and the truth and all that. Gone are Rick Wakeman and his fucking capes, gone is Pink Floyd and the rock opera, all that shit. Gone is soloing and Eric Clapton covering Bob Marley and all that stuff.

Three chords and the truth.

Now, the first wave of punk was genuinely exciting, a lot of it put the idea that a song could be interesting in subject matter over musical capability, and that shit works.

But soon it boiled down to the essence that is "hardcore", and I fucking hate hardcore. I hate straight edge. I hate all that shit.

And why? Well, it's boring, deeply conservative music in its own way. It is in a straightjacket of its own doing.

It occurred to me later that most people would like punk or disco, usually not both. But disco was fun and colorful, inclusive and great. It did not have any barriers. Some was electronic, some more soulful, some of it was played by bands and some of it was done in the studio. You'll hear any kind of instrument, flutes, synths, drum machines, horn sections, whatever the fuck worked on the dance floor.

Gay? Black? A former Supreme? European? French and shit? Disco didn't care at all what you were. If you could make people dance, that was the point.

Oh Larry here was me all agreeing with you until you said Cerrone was shit but other than that making music for people to come together and dance in delirium is a noble thing. I'd go as far (talking later on) as saying that crowds coming together to dance to music has an almost religious aspect, or perhaps a quasi pagan ritual that harks back to our ancestors banging out a 4/4 on hollow logs as the tribe danced round the fire. Dancing fundamentally changes you and if I'm honest I don't really trust or get non dancers and the women in my life believe this ten fold..

For me punk was most interesting as an insurgent movement, I'd go as far as saying 76-76 was punk and everything afterwards was post punk. I bought the records in 76-77 but for me it only really got going after. The sputum splattered years aren't of much interest to me, what was truly interesting was how punk inspired the truly weird, odd and interesting to crawl out the long grass, It was a period of empowerment.

Obviously it's different in the UK but punk/post punk and disco were an interlocking venn diagram, it's undeniable. You can see here it all over the place from PiL to Killing Joke to Gang of Four in the UK and Lizzy Mercier Descloux and James White and the Blacks in the US and I saw Chic back then and there were other punks in the crowd.

From these seeds and this attitude a huge melting pot of styles began. Of course there was yer typical shaved ape cohort but these were generally part time punks or folk that just didn't fucking get the point of punk and were just fucking rockists (and just as fucking misogynist as pre 76 rawkers) in shop bought bondage trousers because most folk I knew recognised disco as outsider music and bought the records.

Like everything it's not monolithic and I had a bit of an experience seeing Suicide (definite later embraces of disco and released the second album on Ze a fertile label of the cross-pollination between punk and disco) supporting The Clash (always to orthodox for me). The Clash crowd bottled Suicide seemingly hating them for not conforming to the 4 men in a van archetype. Fast forward and one of these bands has an powerful influence on music I still buy and love and sure isn't the fucking Clash.

I think any talk about disco needs to separate the disco 'craze' infested by cargo cult grandees and oven ready commercialism and disco the idea. IMO disco really only got interesting AFTER the disco craze was over. Disco (and reggae but that's another story) threw out shoots into everything from synthpop/minimal wave, to techno, to industril (not the American heavy metal with synths pish) and the methodology of disco essentially became the building blocks of contemporary music. Like punk it was the start of something and only in post punk were the ideas reconciled with the ideals.

I live in Glasgow and the nexus between punk and disco is deeply etched into the city's psyche both through Optimo (arguably the most influential club world wide) and a cohort of bands that probably don't even see the distinction between the genres.

D

[UlricvonCatalyst]

^

Pretty sure Larry was using the term "and shit" to mean "and suchlike", rather than judging the tune he linked to, David.

[UlricvonCatalyst]

As for the thread, I agree this shit - meaning 'kind of thing' - has been done to death on here. My only real takeaway from the late 2020 version is the absurdity of the OP imagining everyone ought to know what "djent" is (haven't a scooby/don't care to find out), and presuming that by dissing heavy guitar bands, David/Shadowplay would necessarily be into Pavement/grunge and/or shoegaze/MBV-type fare. At least that raised a smile.

[Larry Mal]

Correct. I like Cerrone very, very much.

[seenoevil II]

I was just thinking about this idea.

First, pop punk won't die. You drive to the burbs and find a show, it's pop punk/emo etc. It's almost the ethnic music of the burbs now.

I was gonna say that guitar music has been usurped by electronic pop, but really, pop went and stayed electronic in the 80s while rock got its own space to live in. It's own radio stations and charts. But now the industry is a desiccated husk, so there's no room in the mainstream for genre music.

I use the feed of NPRs tiny desk to guage a very wide sample of where music is. I actually despise NPRs music coverage for being more human interest than pure art criticism, but this flaws of theirs means they cover all genres. What I've seen is very little rock, but lots of guitars (especially jazzmasters).

And that makes total sense. The guitar is a fabulous instrument for accompaniment. Folk, soul, country, songwriters of any variety will likely always use guitars because they always have if you include lutes, baroque guitars, mandolins, ukuleles, Afro/Arab instruments, sitar etc. It's a basic and inevitable form factor for human musical expression like the flute or horn or drum.

What I do worry about is the great Cannon losing relevance in the ears and minds of the broader public. That thread that goes from the ether through early rock, soul, r&b, then through proto punk and post punk and into the art music of today.

I heard somewhere that zoomers hate the Beatles. While I'm not a massive Beatles fan myself, this gave me pause as a large part of the mental color pallette we dance with as creators is in the deeply internalized fundamental works that we all share. The Beatles are almost like Bach in that regard.

I'm more scared of loop based music getting too universal. I would hate the mere fact that my songs have sections with different chords progressions becoming a signifier that I'm an obsolete dinosaur making niche reactionary music.

Also, Malkmus dropped Grove Denied last year. An album made mostly in Ableton. I'm not sure if that proves or disproves the OPs point. It's pretty ok though. Anyway.

To answer OPs question. Yeah, totally. For sure. Like Duke Ellington.

[Jaguar018]

The problem for just about anybody who actually plays punk music is that it gets fucking boring after a few months. I feel like that's why many of the early punk bands of the 70s quickly started to go in different directions (including into the ground).

I don't hold it against new bands that keep using the tried-and-true formula of three chords and angst. There is something about hearing music that speaks to you for the first time, and for some people it's punk. But after a few albums of that samey-shit you gotta expand a little bit or you're going to be stuck playing the same stuff forever to the worst kind of gatekeeper fans.

[stevejamsecono]

In response to the OP:

I think not necessarily, but the younger generations need a cleansing from the musical past, a bit. I'd be curious to see what a generation of kids who weren't raised on 60s Rock Canon would do with the tools of guitar. I think we're seeing a BIT of that now, but even Gen Z is affected by the long, long, LONG post-Beatle hangover. I think a kid a decade or two removed from the death of the last of them coming across the early modeling amps might get VERY interesting indeed.

Also honestly, I think a lot of the people who DO do it now don't try hard enough to make it relevant to the moment. There's plenty of 77 punk/retro powerpop bands within my scene of music and I feel like that stuff is deliberately self sabotaging by how unwilling it is not to take on the innovations/sounds/ideas that followed that era. It's a total snooze despite the fact that I'm sure we have very similar record collections at home.

[Larry Mal]

The problem I have is that when I listen to guitar based rock and roll, I tend to always associate it with other bands I've already heard. I do it with my own guitar based music also.

There's just been so much of it that it's virtually impossible not to, and like I say, rock and roll broke an awful lot of ground. That genre really did a lot, you know? Things that no one had sung about before were lumped right in with rock and roll, which as a genre found no subjects off limits.

That being said, though, since so much ground was already broken, it's very hard to stand out now, you know?

[budda12ax7]

This thread made me sad....really sad.

First: the song the OP posted as an example of heavy music was very POP heavy music...kind of like how Mastodon is heavy but pop heavy for mainstream people who are not really into heavy music.

Heavy rock guitar music exists and is doing well. With that being said...the average mainstream music fan is gets their heavy from the Foo Fighters or something like that, but generally speaking pop is the most palatable music with some outliers. People on OSG are not your average music fans and have from what I have seen on here have a large range of musical tastes.

However, if you follow the thread from heavy music of the 50's, 60's, 70's...it's still alive and well. There are modern bands that sound like bands from the 60's and 70's, but please allow yourself to pursue this site: stonerhive.blogspot for the latest heavy music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkPEB1fEUvM
enjoy the contact buzz

[Larry Mal]

That first song that was posted wasn't one of Dio's best, though.