The Readers Guide of Rock

Before I begin, I would like to remind everyone that this is just a personal theory that I have come up with and some of you will disagree. However, I hope some of you will take this theory under your wings and use it to project yourselves to superstardom one day.

If you look at the correlation between what is popular musically and what is viewed as underground music, you will find that what is at one time “underground” will eventually become the “mainstream”. You see, since the 1950's and the emergence of rock and roll, there has been a pattern that has repeated itself. It seems that whatever has been popular in the underground scene in one decade has eventually become popular in the mainstream in the decade that follows. In the 1950's, rock and roll was far from accepted in the eyes of mainstream culture. Songs like “Mr. Sandman” were the epitome of top 40 music in the 50's. Rock and roll in the 1950's was the equivalent of let's say, Broken Social Scene today. In other words, rock and roll was the indie rock of the 1950's. It was being listened to by almost an entire teenage audience. And that was if your parents let you listen to it. But from the time Elvis Presley appeared on the Ed Sullivan show to when the Beatles appeared on the same show nine years later, rock and roll exploded into mainstream culture. For the remainder of the 60's, rock and roll was the dominant form of music. But what was underground in the 60's? Around 1965, experimental art rock bands began to emerge from San Francisco and the UK. I'm not talking about the jam bands that everyone knows about like the Grateful Dead or the Jefferson Airplane. I'm referring to groups like the 13th Floor Elevators, the West Coast Experimental Art Band, and the Soft Machine. These bands were the precursors to what would eventually become known as “prog rock”. And what happened in 1970's? Prog rock took the music world by storm and you couldn't get rid of bands like Yes, Genesis, and Styx. In the 70's, the underground music scene was dominated by rock bands that looked at their music through an electronic way of thinking. Many of these bands were known as “kraut rock”, as the majority of them were German. Examples of these bands include Can, Neu, and most notably Kraftwerk. In the late 70's, David Bowie began to experiment with this style of music, and by the time the 80's rolled around, synth pop and electronic rock bands were all the rage. Throughout the 80's, a phenomenon known as alternative rock was sweeping the underground. Sonic Youth, The Replacements, Husker Du, and Dinosaur Jr. were all bands in this category. The Pixies are known as the defining band of this era. When Nirvana released Nevermind in 1991, alternative rock was brought to the mainstream and it remained a trend through the remainder of the 90's. If you look at what is popular currently, you will find bands like My Chemical Romance, The Mars Volta, and Fall Out Boy. Throughout the 90's, the record labels Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph were very successful in the underground releasing albums by tons of punk and hardcore bands. It seems many of the bands that are hitting the top 40 these days are influenced from the bands of those labels. Refused, a band from that era released an album called the Shape Of Punk To Come in 1998. If you listen to what's on that album and compare it with some of the music that is released today, you can definitely hear that they were very accurate with that title.

Now, you should be able to tell me what will be popular in the 2010-2020 decade. Just use my theory and we will see if I am right in about 10 years time.

Keep on trucking!