Why is the mainstream media so biased against rock?
This is a bit of a rant, I’m afraid.
Why is the mainstream media so biased against rock? The mainstream press and television seems only seems to acknowledge the existence of two genres of popular music: r’n'b-derived production-line pop masterminded by the likes of Simon Cowell, and largely tuneless ‘indie’ made by people who can’t sing or play, which is presented as the so-called intelligent alternative. This is despite the fact that unfashionable melodic rock acts frequently outsell many of the media darlings of the month.
Look at BBC2’s Later With Jools Holland. This is supposed to showcase the sort of bands who excel at playing live. But I’ve been to 70+ gigs in the last 3 years, while I don’t expect the BBC to cater solely to my taste, not one of the bands I’ve gone to see are bands I could even imagine appearing on the show. Week after week it’s yet more bands with four chords and stupid haircuts all of which sound the same. Put a rock band like The Reasoning or Mostly Autumn or Porcupine Tree on that show and they’d blow that rubbish away. The one band I have seen at a festival who have appeared on the show was Andy Fairweather Low, in the ‘token 60s has-been slot’. And he was the most tediously dull act I’ve seen for years.
And then there’s Metro, the dreadful free newspaper distributed at railway stations in major cities. Every issue has a ‘what’s on’ guide for the city in which they’re distributed. And their featured gigs are always selected by the same person that chooses acts for Later. For example, on Tuesday night, Extreme were playing Manchester Academy 1, Uriah Heep was playing the smaller Academy 2 (the gig I went to), and Fish was playing just up the road at the Albert Hall in Bolton.
So what did Metro list as their featured gigs?
You’ve guessed it - the two obscure indie/’alternative’ bands playing in the smaller Academy 3 and Club Academy. That’s not just a carefully chosen example - they never feature any gigs I go to, whether it’s Porcupine Tree or Marillion playing Academy 1 or even Journey playing the Apollo. I’d love to be wrong, but I bet they won’t mention Mostly Autumn in February either.
November 26th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
There’s a part of me that wants to believe the overblown likes of Emerson, Lake & Palmer soured a good many people on anything with the “progressive” label. Maybe that’s reaching a little too far back, but I get the impression there’s a strong prejudice against anything that smacks of being “pretentious”, “highbrow”, “artsy”, or “self-indulgence” (as if you can’t cite any number of other acts in any number of other genres that commit any or all of those sins).
November 26th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Oh yes, there’s definitely a strong dislike of anything outside the ‘post-punk orthodoxy’. Even though the heyday of punk was 30 years ago.