Is rock and roll dead?

As a superannuated rock chick I can only deplore the appalling decline in rock music these days. No excuses for this, I’m getting on a bit, I moan, it’s my job.

Except for rap, with its grunts, mumbles (reminder to self: check hearing aid) and stabbing, deformed fingers that seem to threaten violence, today’s rock/pop seems to have lost a lot of its testosterone.

There seems to be endlessly wailing repetitions about losing 'lurve', finding 'lurve' or never having had 'lurve' (for 'lurve' read 'sex' as today's 'yoof' think this is synonymous and that they invented it apparently - but then, don't we all at that age?)

Surely there can be no way any such drivel is going to become timeless and iconic?

But then as long as the purveyors of this 'formula pop' are photographed clutching semi-naked women or pouting with a finger in their mouths (this is not necessarily sexually stereotypical) and making a small fortune for doing it, why should they worry about musical immortality?

It's not really the artistes who are to blame though, is it? I mean, apart from their unseemly and panting desperation for fame that is.

It is really the greedy svengalis behind them who promote and push them into churning out predictable pap in order to fund their own next Lamborghini Murcielago.

After all as Jack Nicholson's character says in Easy Rider (1969): 'I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace'.

You can tell I feel strongly about this, can't you?

Please try to ignore my curmudgeonly pessimism, even I know there are young people out there who actually listen to the music of their parent's generation in an attempt to find something worth putting their headphones on for.

And not just listen to it, they actively seek it out in preference to the limited range on offer in the charts.

Before you say it, I know there are artists and groups out there who may just produce music that could be tomorrow's classics.

My point is that they are not so thick on the ground as they once were and I seriously doubt whether what they produce really will have such staying power.

Support your local bands.

As I see it the only way to fight back at the rock industry's puppet meisters is to support local bands, you know, the lads down the road ripping it up in the garden shed.

Yes, I know their music is dangerous to the eardrums and it makes your innards vibrate but I believe we should try and stick with it.

You never know, they might get good enough to be signed one day and so start a rock revival. They may even produce the rock classics of the future.

Besides which it would be worth it to get back at the smug manipulators of fame-obsessed kids with doubtful talent.

I think we all suspect that celebrity and talent do not necessarily go hand in hand.

We will all have seen examples of the purely average being feted as the next big thing, the pretty child that is pushed into the limelight. Maybe she/he can even sing, or at least warble emotively which is what passes for singing these days.

But it takes a strong personality to live with the pressure that such avidly sought celebrity puts on people. For a great many of them when their star starts to wane, and it will, their behaviour becomes excessive and radical in compensation.

Few people who have tasted fame and the fickle adulation of the public can ever believe that they will merely become a legend in their own lunchtime.

It might be hard to feel sorry for them when this causes them to react like spoilt brats but we should because they are merely pawns and they have sold their all for a handful of tinsel.

I apologise if this has seemed like a rant. I suppose it was in a way. Anyway, blame it on Steppenwolf.