RT - The Lot..revisited

Holly2003 wrote:
Unless I missed something, we're talking about if rock was dead in the 1980s, not how good the music was. Even so, I disagree with a lot of your personal preferences, but that's not the point. These rock bands/artists were popular. Rock wasn't dead in the 1980s.

I do agree about the Cross though: very bland MOR rawk.

i think it depends upon your own opinion of what "rock" is. For me, it was more or less dead. what wasn't plastic was AOR and what wasn't AOR was derivative. the Cross - did have some high points. one or two decent tunes among the AOR filler. I think Roger desperately wanted to be Springsteen for a year or two - who (ironically) was going through his dullest period during the 80s too.

Fun In Space is the only one I love from beginning to end.

I do quite like MOST of Strange Frontier, Shove It and Happiness. Never could get into Elecric Fire or Fun on Earth.

aristide1 wrote:

Random thoughts:

- The death of John Bonham is not a landmark in rock history.

Of course there were a number of other events around the same time that contributed to the end of rock as a dominating force - namely the death of John Lennon, the launch of MTV, and the decision of FM stations worldwide to switch from experimentation to playlists, making it indistinguishable from AM radio. The album as a medium died by 1980. The Wall was the last album millions of people bought because it was a great album. Everything became about singles after that, like it was in the 1950s. It all came full circle. The album was a great experiment that lasted about 15 years.

But Zeppelin were the biggest band of the 70s, having written the book on rock music for decades to come with their first two albums alone. The end of Zeppelin is the end of an era - this cannot be minimized. The other forces at play just compounded this.

aristide1 wrote:

I've listened Genesis with Gabriel, without Gabriel (not a really bad thing), then without Hackett, and finally without a clue.

ha, funny.

But I'm actually OK with Abacab. Just because the songs are in 4/4 time doesn't mean it's not progressive. There's a reason why literally all of the prog bands were dead by 1981 except for Genesis - they weren't progressing. But Genesis was.

But I agree - the Genesis albums after that are pretty well pop, with the odd exception like Second Home By The Sea, Domino, Driving The Last Spike, Dreaming While You Sleep, and Fading Lights. But they were smart enough to change with the times and make themselves accessible for the MTV era. If you didn't, it was game over.

Holly2003 wrote:

So Guns and Roses weren't a popular rock band in the 1980s? Certainly some of the big rock bands of the 1970s either faded away or changed considerably in the 1980s but to say rock was dead back then is an exaggeration. Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, UFO, Gary Moore, Rush, Status Quo, Whitesnake, Scorpions, Van Halen, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Ozzie and many lesser rock bands were very popular both live and in record sales. This was not necessarily the blues-based rock of Led Zep and The Stones but it was still rock/heavy metal. I agree hair metal by the late 1980s really became a joke (White Lion, Poison, Motley Crue, Stryper etc) and the time was ripe for bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana to shake things up

Of course rock wasn't completely dead. GNR was huge, as were plenty of other bands. But GNR nor any of those other bands you mention were reinventing the wheel in the 80s. Metallica and Iron Maiden were treading new ground, but they were cult bands compared to Zeppelin and The Beatles in decades prior.

In the 80s, people like Michael Jackson and Madonna dominated the scene. Rock still existed, but it wasn't changing the world - MTV was.

Grunge put rock front and centre again, but within a few years boy/girl bands took over after people (and the industry) didn't want to confront the honesty and cynicism head on anymore. It went back to bubble gum.

And the music industry has not sponsored a genuine "movement" since. Except perhaps socially conscious hip-hop by guys like Kendrick Lamar.

Rock started to become uncool when the aforementioned hair bands came to prominence. In 1983, ZZ Top's Eliminator was selling millions. By 1987, White Lion's 'When The Children Cry' was almost a parody of the hair metal ballad that was turning rock music into a joke. Even so, looking at my old concert tickets from back then there were still plenty of good rock bands touring and selling records. Even Kiss. But they suck.