http://www.jazzwax.com/2011/01/rock-and-roll-1949-2011.html

even if you don't agree with all of this essay, it's thought-provoking. I would have written an obit
for anything new and original called rock music 10 years ago, but Meyers makes a good point that the
Geriatric Stadium Tours (some actually sponsored by Viagara) kept filling the coffers and thus kept
rock in a living-dead zombie state for an extra decade. Personally, I find 60+ rockers spilling out
of their spandex and limping around a stadium with tickets costing over $100 more pathetic than all
the poseurs and copy-cats making up the "new" performers in the genre. At least a few of the "new"
performers are good musicians, worth listening to on that point alone. Rock is definitely a young
man's game, but two generations of young men (and women) have dropped the ball and just fed off the
old carcass. My theory -- rock got suburbanized and where is there any drama or struggle in a
suburban experience, so therefore no cause for new and rebelious musical directions.

Those of us who love rock and jazz, and for that matter blues, and lament the death of anything new
and original in any of those genres can at least revel in the fact that all three styles lived all
or most of their lives in the era of recordings and almost every "for the ages" song was captured on
a musically-satisfying recording at some point. I have enough CDs, LPs and downloads to keep me
rocking for the rest of my days, even if I'm keeping beat from a wheelchair.

-- Tom Fine