Things change. Bite it. Accept it. Stop moaning. I get it. But still…
When I was growing up, music was something used to define yourself. Your choice in the artist you liked said something about you, something you wanted other people to know.
Quite often, certainly amongst me and my friends, that choice could be obtuse, certainly ‘alternative’. We took great pleasure in discovering someone or something no one else had heard about.
But we also delighted in turning our friends onto that thing. We didn’t always want to keep it all to ourselves. In fact some of the time, we needed to know whether there was something peculiar in liking that thing, whatever it might be. If we could find others who agreed with our point of view, who liked the thing as much as we did, then somehow it made us feel a little less strange, a little less alone.
I’m sure that same behaviour exists today, and you can no doubt trawl through endless Spotify playlists, Instagram stories, TikTok clips, and find any number of artists unknown to most people but who’ve managed to foster a passionate and devoted following.
But the vast majority of people seem to be happier opting for something that is not only mainstream but also wilfully accepts the status quo (especially if sounding like the band of the same name).
Yes, we’re back to the subject of Oasis. But before I’m accused of misanthropic churlishness (let alone envy, jealously, or spite) I have no beef with the band themselves (I’m sure they’re relieved). Nor do I disparage the however-many hundreds of thousands of people enjoying their shows, whether watched from inside the stadiums or on the top of a nearby hill. These are difficult times and anyo ne able to appreciate a few hours of joy isn’t to be knocked for doing so.
It’s just that watching events that in reality seem no different from a football match — beer, bucket hats, and copious swearing — or even a boozed up stroll along the main street of Ayia Napa — feels a long way from what Rock and Roll used to be about.
Rock and Roll was once the domain of people who felt they didn’t fit in, who wanted to rebel from the ‘normal’ way of behaving, who wanted to distinguish themselves from the generation who’d come before.
Elvis was the first example of this, terrorising fundamentalists, pissing off parents, challenging sexual and racial mores. The baton was picked up by The Rolling Stones, not only pissing off parents but pissing against walls, getting mixed up with drugs, satanism, Hells Angels and eventually murder. Bowie came next, playing with the idea of what it meant to be a man, a woman, and anything in between. And finally The Sex Pistols, being furious and filthy, getting beaten up and arrested… one of them dying. That’s what Rock and Roll used to be about. That’s what people believed it to be about.
No longer it seems. The biggest band in Britain offers little more than a mass sing-along. There’s nothing wrong with that. The TV variety show ‘The Good Old Days’ once offered the same.
But that it should be seen as a paragon of ‘attitude’, of ‘rebellion’, is absurd. In reality, the experience is as comfortable as a pair of Bonehead’s moccasins.
One shouldn’t be surprised. It’s been a long time coming. The assimilation of the concept of rebellion of teenage revolution, into something com-modifiable has been an ongoing process for the last 40 years. Ever since corporations recognised the potential of Pop Stars, whether to sell newspapers, perfume, or fizzy drinks, Rock music’s mantle as the voice of dissent has evaporated. Heavy Metal has been neutered and even Hip-Hop is now a self-parody, the few artists of worth still making social statements — NAS, Kendrick Lamar — dwarfed by those happy to rhyme about sex and money.
Ultimately none of this is important. Music is simply a part of the industrial entertainment complex to be filed alongside festivals, city breaks, the Marvel franchise, gymnasiums, the Premier League, and wellness retreats. We shouldn’t expect to find anything intelligent or interesting in any of these places.
Instead music has become an opportunity to turn off the brain, to spend a few hours thinking only about yourself, to become lost in an ‘experience’, albeit one constantly archived on your phone. It’s an opportunity to be you, a version unencumbered by life’s pressures and demands. In doing so, one’s life is reduced to moments, ‘unforgettable’ moments to remind us we’re living, that we’re still alive. Whether silhouetted against a sunset in Goa, or grinning with pals against a vista of exploding fireworks, or even a jumbo-sized video screen, it’s important we’re seen to be part of whatever’s going on.
We don’t want to feel disconnected.
We don’t want to be outsiders.
It’s the one thing that nowadays we’re most afraid of.
Yet once upon a time this is what Rock and Roll used to be about, what it used to represent — a celebration of alienation, of being different, of feeling disconnected.
No more…
Now it’s an arm around the shoulder, a drunken gurn into the lens, an instant upload onto social media.
Like I said, things change, accept it and stop moaning.
But my, what a long and complicated journey we’ve been on.

27/08/2025