by Sebastian Ramshackle III

Created on: January 26, 2007   Last Updated: July 15, 2008

Every so often, rock music seems to get into a groove and stick there. We seem to be there now with the same-old same-old populating the charts and the mainstream radio and TV programmes. But underneath this bland veneer, rock music is in great shape. However, you must know the right place to look.

That place is not in the mainstream. As was always the case, there is a lot of really good, innovative music being produced. And, as was always the case, the music industry takes that innovative music, sanitises it, and sells it back to the people who created it (together with the associated sub-culture) in that sanitised form.

This sanitised version is then grabbed hold of by the mass of the audience, and the former rebel artists buy into the mass audience thing, make a lot of money and tend to become flabby imitations of their previous rebellious selves. The true innovators move onto new pastures, but away from the sight of the masses. They are joined by others who reject the flabby version that is being sold to them as the 'real thing', and so the cycle starts again.

This cycle is not new. It happened with rock and roll (think Elvis Pressley). It happened with Merseysound and British invasion that replaced it (think of the bands like the Dave Clarke 5 and the Hollies that didn't survive far into the psychedelic era). It happened with the psychedelic era bands with the gradual transmogrification into stadium rock (think of Genesis and the transition from Jefferson Airplane to Jefferson Starship). Punk became embroiled in its own entrails and then the scene exploded into a million pieces.

Each of those pieces followed its own thread in, seeming, obliviousness of what other pieces were doing. There was very little crossover from one form of music to another as far as the industry was concerned. Commercial radio stations followed suit by sticking to a single form of music. No longer could you have rock, pop, jazz, blues, and soul. not to say a little chanson, on the same show. Fragmentation took over and a self-obsession with the commercial and the safe. Even that which seemed a little radical on the surface, like Britpop and much of the commercial hip-hop scene was little more than repetition of what had gone before. (Think of the Oasis rip-off of the Beatles and the visits to 10 Downing street, and think also of what passes for radical black music on MTV.)

Deep underground, however, things continue to stir. That's where you need to be. Check out the bands that are recording

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