Alice Cooper: Don't call it rock 'n' roll

[Dave W]

Uh, you think???

And rap stars have a certain set of duds to wear - and a certain number of scantily clad women dancing behind them.
If a rap guy ever wears his ball cap with the brim forward, he'll get drummed out of the genre.
And all the ball caps have to have flat brims.
And female pop stars do their best madonna/Beyonce/Katy Perry costume impressions.
And the guys in country HAVE to wear hats with the brim mashed down in front and back.
And for that matter, blues guys often wear skinny-brim hats.

Seems like every genre has its exploitation/uniform standards.

After discovering him at the Grammy awards, I do enjoy Bruno Mars. He may wear the hat, but he wears one all the time, and he crosses musical boundaries.  And he has actual talent, and can sing!

Bruno Mars!? His talent is that he's a Michael Jackson impersonator! If he didn't look and move like a Hawaiian version of 1980s era Jackson, he'd be nowhere.

And don't get me started about pretty boys in country singing frat-boy pop with a fake twang and contrived lyrics about dirt roads and trucks.

[Pilgrim]

You forgot the guys in the smelly knit skull caps. And all the hip gentile women wearing schmattas that seem to populate the local Whole Foods.

You mean these guys?

[Psycho Bass Guy]

Maybe it's my age, and maybe I'm becoming a curmudgeon, but I see a lot of newer metal, especially that being perpetuated by what are now middle-aged businessmen, morphing into a parasitic market strategy.

That's what happens when something that thrived commercially outside of the mainstream for many years was co-opted BY the very people that drove it underground to start with. The classic metal bands of the 80's are sad self-parodies in many ways, and all but too happy to play pitchmen to their equally middle-aged fans caught in a nostaligia time warp of what life was like before they began enjoying being Madison Avenue-approved neutered sellouts. I had some hope for Anthrax with John Bush and Rob Caggiano, but Scott Ian saw too many dollar signs riding the VH-1 gravy train. Slayer died with Jeff Hanneman, though it had been a zombie for almost two decades already. Megadeth is just irrelevant to reality since Dave Mustaine decided to do a Dennis Miller. And as for Metallica, the legend ended with a tour bus wreck in 1986. I was present for the early forms of death, black metal and grindcore; what's out there now is just a fashion show. IMO, it's a reflection of a lazy society more interested in whining and living in the past than challenging the system anew. The pissed off teenagers of the 80's find demanding change from their world too much of an inconvenience. There are REAL bands making real music out there now with equally real fans, but they're the underground for making more "mainstream" music.

Now, I see bands trolling the gravy train and keeping the cash coming in.

Yup.

And, again, maybe it's just me, but the lyrics are no longer seeking answers and looking for hope, but basically looking downward and giving up. Teen-age angst, depression and despair are a cash cow for a lot of bands that might not have any other viable means of income.  I see metal becoming very exploitive.

See your above statement. It's much easier to re-hash old themes than grow and work for actual change in the world, musically and otherwise.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

And don't get me started about pretty boys in country singing frat-boy pop with a fake twang and contrived lyrics about dirt roads and trucks.

The upside is that the more Nashville has to mine its songwriting past to market third-teir model wannabe's, the more that some of the good of that past creeps through. Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert are George and Tammy on even MORE drugs. That's not to say that I'm a huge fan, but they amuse me.

[Highlander]

You mean these guys?

You hoser...

[Denis]

You hoser...

Toronto skunk. My jurisdiction.

[patman]

I hate the Nashville models that hang a 6 string banjo (banjitar) around their neck and pantomime like they're playing it. The 5 string banjo has a long, unique, perhaps bizarre tradition...none of them are capable of understanding or playing it.

[Dave W]

The upside is that the more Nashville has to mine its songwriting past to market third-teir model wannabe's, the more that some of the good of that past creeps through. Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert are George and Tammy on even MORE drugs. That's not to say that I'm a huge fan, but they amuse me.

True about the past creeping through. Still, it's a pretty bad scene when you realize that Blake and Miranda aren't so bad compared to the likes of Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean or Brantley Gilbert. As Pinkard & Bowden once sang. I'd rather hear a fat girl fart than a pretty boy sing. 

[Psycho Bass Guy]

I keep waiting on Jason Aldean to come out. His music is mediocre soft-pop with Nashville production and proof that marketing can take a doughy, balding closet case with a three note vocal range and make him a "sex symbol."