Old Guys Are Feeling Old

**Janszoon** · 05-20-2009, 10:34 PM

This article "What Will Save Rock 'n' Roll" from cnn.com made me laugh. Steven Van Zandt from the E Street Band and some other old people attempt to make a case for how music isn't as good as it used to be but instead demonstrate that they, like a lot of old farts, just don't deal well with change. The full article is at this link but here are some highlights:

Quote:

"I want to spend just a minute on a topic that never ever gets discussed in the music business -- the music," the Bruce Springsteen guitarist and "Sopranos" star said in a speech to the SXSW music and arts festival in March. "The reason nobody wants to talk about it is because it mostly sucks!

"Who are we kidding here?" he said. "Nobody's buying records? Because they suck!"

He called the speech "A Crisis of Craft," and implored listeners to get back to rock 'n' roll's roots. Learn how to play cover songs, he said. Get people to dance. Harness your working-class energy. Take pride in craft.

Quote:

He's quick to observe that he's not slamming all pop music. There's vibrancy in some hip-hop, he says, and he admires "Idol," particularly when it promotes music history.

"But it's quite an alien world to my traditional rock 'n' roll world," he adds. "It has nothing to do with it."

Within that rock 'n' roll world, he worries. Today's bands, he says, look down on performing covers, and as a result many have gotten lost in a musical wilderness. "The result is an extraordinary amount of mediocrity," he says. "There are no standards to live up to."

Which is part of the problem with rejuvenating rock 'n' roll, says Steve Greenberg, founder of S-Curve Records, which includes alt-rockers Tinted Windows and We The Kings among its acts.

Technology is one problem, he observes. "I think in the old days, in order to even be decent, it took a lot of work," he says. "And today, relatively untalented and uncreative people can actually make rock 'n' roll music that sounds kind of decent. And I think that kind of fools people and causes people to be lazy."