Sunday 20 August 2017

Harking Back To A Better Time Musically

I was too young for the Sex Pistols and Ramones in the 70s but was perfectly placed age-wise in the late 80s and early 90s for Guns 'n' Roses and Nirvana who continue to be celebrated on the chests of teenagers today in the form of t-shirts. 
I regularly see T-shirt's of all four the previously mentioned bands who were doing their thing long before most of the wearers were even born which leads me to think that either these four in particular had such a profound effect on music that almost 40 years later in the case of the Pistols that they are still being listened to or that with the bands around today, the kids just don't have an equivalent.
I come down on the side of the latter because as a teenager i was one of so many teenagers who would sit in a garage with a guitar, practising the riffs from Blitzkreig Bop or Sweet Child o' Mine so who would teenagers try to emulate from the charts today?
Nobody i venture which is why even if they were too young to have experienced the band, decades later Nirvana, Guns 'n' Roses, The Sex Pistol's and The Ramones are still more of a household name as there are no bands or artists around today with the musical impact whose name will be sported on the t-shirts of kids 30 years from now.
I would also throw into the ring the fact that all four of these bands had huge characters with as front-men and today's bands don't, more likely to give a hotel room a bit of a going over with the vacuum then trash it.
The truth is we just don't make rock superstars anymore. The superstars of today, the ones who are sold as personalities, are carefully controlled Simon Cowell type identi-kit pop stars dishing out the standard ballads or cover versions. 
Punk came along to replace bands like ABBA and dislodge Disco and Grunge booted aside the Stock, Aitken and Waterman puppets such as Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue so we can only hope that in the pipeline is something to rudely push aside the Adele's, Rhianna's and Little Mix's of the current pop world who will be long forgotten and not appearing on the chest of anyone in 2047.

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