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Mainstream british guitar music needs a bloody hard kick up the arse
There, got your attention with that cringeworthy thread title.
But seriously, why is it that all of the NME etc's choices for the band too supposedly "take guitar music back into the mainstream are so fucking shite? Why is it that they all have to be twenty three year olds who all look the fucking same from Camden or Shoreditch or wherever the fuck is supposedly some kind of trendy area of fucking London? Why is it that they all have to shove so much fucking reverb on their slightly distorted guitars?
Every year the same. The Vaccines, Spector, Palma Violets. Where does it end? Like, seriously, all of them are just as dull as the supposed shit that has taken its place.
(Just a thing: this is not a thread about the subtler, cleverer or whatever bands that have achieved success recently. Whatever you think of the likes of Alt J, The xx etc, this is not what my juvenile ramblings are railing against Nor am I on about some of the criminally underexposed and underplayed by radio acts that DiS and pitchfork (rightly) champions like Japandroids and Cloud Nothings. I'm talking about the NME's quest for "real rock and roll" to gatecrash the charts or whatever.)
I think part of the problem is that for some reason over the last decade or so these kind of people who keep calling for the great white hopes of rock music have lost touch with half of rock music itself. The gap between the NME readerships tastes and the readership of publications that cover heavier things has massively widened. A decade ago, stuff like Hundred Reasons and Reuben got shitloads of attention alongside The Strokes and The Libertines. But now in terms of new bands, there seems to be a massive gap in the market for an emotionally literate band with huge, catchy hooks that isn't afraid to use powerchords and distortion to help aid their quest for world domination. The kind of bands championed by publications such as kerrang in this vein aren't really up to much either. Pop-punk seems to have dug itself into an overproduced, whiny rut where the only influences bands are allowed to have are Foo Fighters and Fall Out Boy.
Don't you think the state of guitar music would be so much better if publications stopped looking for the new Libertines or You Me At Six and started looking for the next Ash, a band that would quite easily fit between the two demographics? "Real rock and roll" doesn't have to be dull as fuck. It doesn't have to be new, innovative, big, or clever, just something different to the shit that they've been plugging for the last 4 years or so. I don't think anyone would disagree with the fact that 1977 is a far superior album than What Did You Expect From The Vaccines, yet in todays climate far more influence is being taken from the latter.
If on the off chance any of you aren't either ignoring this post or laughing at my idiocy, I'd be happy to start a band playing this kind of stuff with anyone. Perhaps if it took off and people started agreeing with me, Jake Bugg would no longer be the face of up and coming mainstream rock. And don't try and tell me the world wouldn't be a better place for it.