Guitar Music In Crisis Pt.II: No More Guitar Heroes?

Who cares if guitar music isn’t part of the mainsteam, and why is pop culture so important in the first place? It’s a fair question, and one I often ask myself. After all, the digital age has allowed increasingly minute niches to flourish, creating tiny economies of scale, leading to an absolute boom of creativity on the fringe.

Whether it’s splicing guitars with African drums or warping together wryd folk with progressive guitar solos, the 21st century has seen the world of the weird and wonderful flourish. In the 70s visionary artists like The Pop Group couldn’t hope to last for more than a couple of years (after all musicians have to pay the bills too) while today a wonderfully eclectic artist like Sufjan Stevens can explore his most grandiose and wilfully challenging conceptions without having to sacrifice his artistic vision or his standard of living. In fact, the niche and reunion market is now so strong now that The Pop Group have been able to reform and tour a range of venues that they could have only dreamt of gracing in their 1979 prime.

Innovation in guitar music is of course alive and well; Animal Collective are transforming their strained notes into reflective aquatic shimmers, Fang Island are struggling to contain their unwieldy spiralling riffage, while even Dave Gilmour would be lost for words, and perhaps a little scared, if he heard Mastadon’s snarling thirteen minute progressive metal marathons.

Simply put, the artistry is there to be found, and it’s as fascinating and exhilarating as ever, the problem, therefore is finding, supporting and encouraging the next generation. The responsibility lies, in part, with the artist, the more they shun the mainstream the more they limit their potential influence.

Why Should We Care: Money Still Talks

Popular Culture or the mainstream is still the primary force for shaping our artistic environment and documenting our cultural/societal movements. The radio waves, music television, and even major Internet sites like YouTube and Spotify shape our collective experience and inform the next generation of artists.

Trends in music have always been direct reactions or responses to popular culture, and the ever-changing zeitgeist. It’s a simple notion, but between 1997-2001 when the Nu-Metal craze came into vogue the sales of Deejay decks rose and the sales of electric guitars dipped nationwide, similarly, during the post-Strokes indie revival that trend was snapped and reversed in the UK. Ask any guitar shop owner and he’ll tell you that when a scene like grunge or a guitarist like Jack White are prevalent in our culture the sales of guitars go up.

Today, Rock isn’t moving from one generation defining trend to the next, Punk isn’t blowing prog aside, and post-punk isn’t rising out of punk’s ashes, as it did in the 70s and 80s, instead we are watching a slow decline, a retraction and a disappearance from the mainstream. Today’s scene isn’t defined by a new sound (sorry Chillwave) but instead by a reunion craze and an obsession with the past. Where the hottest ticket in town is Rage Against The Machine, where seeing Soft Bulletin or Daydream Nation played in full is more important than seeing the next big thing, and where having an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock’s past is more relevant than being able to identify the next big thing.