KUFO - Rock is crippled and you took the bat to its knees

Rock is crippled and you took the bat to its knees

Here's the problem with Rock music as it stands right now. The people who clamor for legitimacy don't know where to look for it. And since we're dealing with an auditory medium, the fact people are looking at all is kinda screwing us up. What I'm saying is, people call us constantly like "Man, this sucks. That sucks. This stuff sucks."

Yes. We know. Rock sucks. It's sucked ever since Fred Durst got his vampiric incisors in the neck of the beast and sprayed blood all over his avirex and wrung the life out of the cloth for every last drop of vitality the music had finally regained in the mid-nineties. All the damage butt-rock hair-band assholes had done to the legitimacy of the music, substituting superficiality for real chops and songwriting skill? Not only brought back tenfold, but amplified. Rock and Roll added a dose of fratboy stupidity to vapid attentionwhoring and the music suffered greatly. It wasn't that they looked to hip hop for revitalization of the "Bad boy" cliche, it's that they implemented it so badly.

And ever since then, the music has been lost. Or at least the music as we know it here at this station. It's a bunch of generic dudes standing around wearing eau-de-nickelback with the same three lip rings and tattoo sleeves trading spots on the charts with the same generically soulful/screamy/chunky/drop-tuned shit. You gotta wait for the old pros like Reznor and Keenan to roll in to get some quality. And what separates Reznor and Keenan from say, Draiman and Rock (Kid, that is)?

They dont' seem to actively give a shit what they look like, and most of their fans don't care either.

Let's use this as an example: in December, the number 1 song in Rock was "Paralyzer" by Finger Eleven. Our listeners ate it UP. I don't blame them. It's a good song. Just as good as when it was "Take Me Out" by Franz Ferdinand. Now, why did our listeners eat up "Paralyzer" and not "Take Me Out?"

Because Finger Eleven looks like this:

And Franz Ferdinand looks like this:

And as we all know, since most car stereo speakers project an image of the band rocking out directly into your lap with the holographic technology all radios come equipped with, it's how the band looks that is much more important than how it sounds.

Wait, that's right, you don't actually see the band on the radio. But for a lot of you, you'd totally write off Franz Ferdinand because they look like a Gap ad. Regardless of the fact the version of the song you made #1 in the country isn't as good as their original. You wouldn't give em a second glance. You'd probably sneer and call em a bunch of big gay fags.

Which makes total sense. Because this guy, a celebrated multi-platinum god of the kind of Rock you guys have made the most prominent and profitable version of Rock and Roll in the last 10 years, he's the picture of heterosexual virility:

Yeah. compared to this dude right here:

I can see why you'd look at the dude in the fucking FISHNET DOILY TOP and think "totally not gay." Look at him. he's practically glistening with heterosexuality. As a matter of fact, some of the most rocking shit currently available is stuff most of you have already turned your nose up at simply because the people playing it look more like Rivers Cuomo than a fluffer on the set of Bisex Butt Sluts 25. See, You're good with "Paralyzer" because the bassist has dreadlocks and cool tats. Except I DON'T HEAR THOSE THINGS on the record. So I don't care. I don't give a shit if the drummer is bald with a belly and wears cardigans with cargo shorts. Because I can't HEAR that. And as I'm not homophobic, the idea that my rock must only be played by "not gay" people, and that my definition of "not gay" somehow equals "looks like he just pulled out and wiped off on the orgy mask he got when he entered this particular bath-house?" those ideas don't enter in anywhere.

Because I just want my rock to rock, yunno? I don't care where it comes from, and what it looks like. I just want it to be good, and to do what rock music is supposed to do. Tattoos don't make things rock harder. Drop tuning and screaming doesn't make things rock harder by themselves. There's gotta be skill and songwriting craft behind it. Muse gets it. And Killswitch gets it, too. A lot of YOU guys don't get it. Hell, you fuckers killed Metallica. Or at least helped, granted, they put the gun to their own head plenty of times. But yeah, their music stepped sideways, but a step sideways is just a step. So many of you shoved them over the cliff with the force of a hurricane powered by Leonidas himself when Metallica did what again? Let's do a multiple choice here:

a) covered The Misfits
b) introduced a slow song
c) cut their hair
d) changed producers

That's right. The answer is C. The band cut their hair (which was starting to look STUPID, let's be honest) and that's the move that pushed so many of their fans over the edge. The hair wasn't playing guitar. The hair wasn't drumming. And so many of you acted as if it did, and stopped hearing the music. You started LOOKING for the music. And it's when you LOOK that you get stuck in this weird little semi-wasteland of rock we're currently stranded in. Because we're not listening for it. If we were, we'd find a whole lot of interesting, good, rocking stuff. But instead we're LOOKING for it and we're using how these assholes look to validate our own sense of cool, and we're missing all kinds of good stuff in the sort of posturing, pretentious, superficial bullshit that dickheads like Fred Durst made their bread and butter.

If you want good rock back on the radio, you have to stop listening with your eyes, people. Listen with your ears. And don't block those ears up with things like colon. Yunno, from having your head up your ass and stuff. You open your mind and your ears will do likewise. And you just might find yourself throwing devil horns with a lot more frequency than usual.