movements die when they leave the colon.

When it basicially becomes so mainstream it is a fashion statement and listened to by people who usually listen to ****.

^what? thats when hot topic gets on board and you get swamped by 13 year olds. recognize! payday!

I think a certain movement lives on a bit after it "dies." By that, I mean that it lives on in either its influence on music or the still-active musicians affiliated with that particular movement.

But I do agree that the trend theory that has been previously stated is plausible and makes sense.

Stereotypical movements such as heavy metal, punk and grunge those movements died when it started to parody themselves. I remember vaguely while growing up that Barbra Walters was doing an interview in Seattle in the mid to early 90's and was decked out in flannel. That was the nail in the coffin for that decade. Metal was perfectly stereotyped in Spinal Tap and brought to a darker light in The Decline of Western Civilization of what was going on at the time. The word movement to is pretty vague. If you're talking about '67 as flower power/psychedelia or '77 the era of punk '85 heavy metal '91 grunge ect. Those "movements" never really died people have taken a great many influences from them to this day and incorporated it in there music. And there's also plenty of revival groups around that do bring back that sound. Granted they're not as popular as they are today.