{"id":1250,"date":"2017-07-02T00:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-07-02T00:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/josephaleo.com\/blog\/?p=1250"},"modified":"2022-01-29T11:52:34","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T19:52:34","slug":"weekly-mix-26-july-2-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/josephaleo.com\/blog\/weekly-mix-26-july-2-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Mix 26: July 2, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

I subscribe to several newsletters but I usually delete them as soon as they hit my inbox because they\u2019re uninteresting or sharing links to other articles. The only newsletter I read from start to finish is\u00a0Bob Lefsetz<\/a>\u2018s newsletter. Lefsetz is a music industry analyst and critic and the reason I read his newsletter while I delete the rest is because he always has a fresh take on things, whether it\u2019s music, politic or sports or just talking about his life.<\/p>\n

Recently Lefsetz\u00a0wrote a response<\/a>\u00a0to an article on the Washington Post about the\u00a0decline of electric guitar sales<\/a>. In short, rock is dead. Or on life support. As Lefsetz pointed out, rock is still around but it has all the relevancy of jazz or folk music. Why? Because rock has been so thoroughly corporatized that rock has been de-fanged. It\u2019s no longer dangerous. Songs are no longer crafted, they\u2019re manufactured on spreadsheets and ProTools and and any spontaneity left over is autotuned out. Not only that, rock has nothing new to say. It\u2019s an exhausted genre. Furthermore, rock is reductive. It simplifies more complex music like blues or folk or Cajun music, etc. But now rock is reductive of rock music. It\u2019s become pablum.<\/p>\n

The only thing fresh and exciting happening in music today is hip hop and electronic music. It\u2019s taking chances. It\u2019s experimenting. Even the stuff you hear on the radio (who even listens to radio these days?) is more inventive than what passes for rock these days.<\/p>\n

The electric guitar is dead. I mourn it\u2019s passing. But to put things in perspective, there was a time when the accordion was\u00a0huge<\/em>. Now it\u2019s an instrument regarded as hokey and old-timey.<\/p>\n