The Same Sound You've Always Known

What makes something what it is? What is it that gives anything the defining traits that give it an identity? Is it aesthetic preferences, or is it the fad of the times? How does one stand out among a sea of contemporaries to connect with a wider audience?

This is quickly becoming a lost art. In the world of Cultural Ground Zero, it is quite near a myth, at this point.

Lew us take Rock music. This is a genre of music that came into existence nearly three quarters of a century ago (feel old yet?) as a combination of the Christian music genres of Blues, Country, and Gospel, to form a kind of hootenanny dance music that anyone can get into and is meant for all who want to get on that dance floor to blow off steam. It is no wonder that it quickly gained popularity around the world. Everyone knows about Rock music, it was the biggest genre of music for around half a century for a reason, but it is now known as a relic of its time and is quickly fading away into the background into novelty.

And it happened almost over night. One day it was there, and the next it was gone, replaced by record labels for carefully constructed fads that funnel product off an assembly line and into the ears of those captivated by sources said record companies own. Now all that is left are cheap CD boxsets on Amazon, Spotify playlists, and old music videos with millions of views on YouTube. The music industry is already dead, and it took Rock down with it as it died.

So why is that? Why did the biggest music in the world suddenly fall out of relevance, from out of the garage before ending up back in there again by the end of the century that spawned it in the first place? How can something have such a large and well detailed rise and fall without falling into endless stagnation (Rap), a flash in the pan punchline (Dubstep), or being just plain forgotten (Ska) by the mainstream? If one didn't know any better it would almost seem calculated.

And to be sure, it is calculations, formulas bandied about by "experts" that did eventually lead to its downfall. This is a story that has happened before.

Would you believe if I told you the answer for what killed Rock is the same for what genre fiction was killed for? A combination of genre-fication and misplaced religious worship is what did it in, disconnecting it as a form of art and entertainment. And the fact that you can see it in the above recent quote should show you that it is still very much alive and the reason why the genre cannot make a return as long as cultists exist to hold it back from its true potential. It's audience does not understand it at all. This is what happens when something is not properly gatekept.

But let us get to the subject at hand.

For those unaware, the White Stripes were quite possibly the best rock band of the 2000s decade. After the 1990s had gone so far into the alternative sphere that was beginning to eat its own tail, the genre was beginning to lose focus and fire, much as it had before metal and punk gave it a shot in the arm back in the 1970s. This time, it was losing all connection with its roots for pomp and ego as it had back then, but at the same time as this was when Cultural Ground Zero was happening. Rock was beginning to lose a lot of ground to the payola-backed bubblegum acts that the major labels were pushing. It was dealing with a war on both the inside and out.

Rock music needed more than posturing and attitude to keep up--the Cobain era was long over. It didn't need technicality: Dream Theater's wild success despite lack of any true mainstream penetration should have been a clue to that. No, it didn't need aesthetics or image to reclaim its balance. It needed to remind listeners what made Rock music so endearing to mass audiences in the first place. The genre needed its roots.

Enter the Garage Rock Revival boom of the 2000s, the last time the genre fittingly had any mainstream attention. The Strokes, the Hives, the Black Keys, the Vines, and the White Stripes, were but a few of the bands that made a splash during this era. Yes, returning to the classic "The Xes" band naming was part of their success, the postmodern trend of naming your band a sentence at the time was mostly left to the emo crowd. Nonetheless, the Garage Rock Revival wave was desperately what the genre needed at the time it was starting to fly up its own rear as sales and audience attention was waning. Tradition was on the way out for endless novelty, where it still is today.

The White Stripes formed in 1997 (that's right, the very year of Cultural Ground Zero) with two members, Jack White and Meg White who played at being siblings. They were actually formerly married, but this was part of their schtick. A large part of the White Stripes sound and appeal is formed in their image as traditionalists from another time and place, playing as if the world of music had gone in an entirely different direction than it actually did.

They played blues, but it was informed by the garage, particularly kids who grew up listening to both revivalists like the Lyres and more modern acts of their time like the Replacements. Here you end up with a collision of the early days of rock with what its eventual change over the decades would become by the end of the century. It wrapped into their weird charm, especially for as deliberately luddite as their sound and presentation was. Guitar, vocals, and drums, a key feature of their obsession with the number 3: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, as it is. Jack White being a Catholic features into the songs as Christianity was so instrumental to creating Rock music in the first place. This makes a lot of their more obscure lyrics and sound choices make more sense in retrospect, though still clever enough that you can interpret your own meaning from them.

The number 3 even spread over into their image. Red, white, and black, were the central colors the White Stripes were known for. You can see it in the image above. Just as every song rarely ever had more than three instruments (they were including vocals as an instrument, of course), the band itself never broke from their colors or their code. This helped add to their early mystique, and they never stepped away from it from their formation to their eventual disbandment.

The band put out their first two albums in 1999 and 2000, the self-titled White Stripes and the sophomore De Stijl, quickly gaining a lot of indie cred during a time when mainstream rock was... pretty bad. We can admit that by 1999 Rock music was not at its best anymore. This was that strange era of Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth, when one-hit novelty wonders suddenly overtook the charts as bubblegum began to buy the radio stations. In one corner you had lightweight pop and in the other was post-grunge sludge and misery. It was a battle of two extremes that never should have become extremes in the first place. No balance remained.

But then, in the summer of 2001, the White Stripes released their third (and best) album, White Blood Cells. It was not only a great album: it was also a surprisingly large hit. This was pre-9/11, remember: it was before Bush-era lunacy and pomp from arrogant musicians and yet just after Rock had begun its descent down the charts for its replacement. No one could have called Garage Rock storming the charts, but it did. This album seemingly made the band famous overnight, for being in the right place at the right time and also reminding everyone who made rock music what it was in the first place. And they were no flash in the pan, either.

This is the lead song off the album, the one I played back in the day to convince others that this band was worth listening to. Put yourself back in the summer of 2001 when nu metal and bubblegum was all you would hear on the radio. It does not sound as if it is from that era, and that is why it has managed to age so well.

This album hit for a very good reason, one whose context has been lost by those more concerned with bells and whistles. Let me show you how out of joint this was for the time: White Blood Cells is lean, tight, and powerful. The album is almost exactly 40 minutes long, sixteen songs total, a throwback to before CDs overcluttered albums with filler, guest-stars, and overproduction. Every song is short, concise, and punchy, never overstaying its welcome and keeping it both rooted in traditional styles while also leaning into newer ideas that could only have come in the later days of the 20th century. It is truly justice that it would be the band's third album be the one that broke them out, as the number 3 was so important to them.

This was only the beginning, however.

It was after this that they released their fourth and most popular album in 2003, Elephant, and hit superstardom with it. There they became the titans of the decade they are remembered for being. "The Hardest Button to Button," "Ball & Biscuit," "The Air Near My Fingers," "Black Math," and the mega-hit "Seven Nation Army," are only a few of the classics that adorn its track list. This is a perfect album, easily on par with White Blood Cells, and well deserving of being considered the peak of its era when Rock was on the decline. If you know the White Stripes at all, it is almost certainly because of this album. 

They didn't stop there, though. Somehow the band maintained momentum throughout the rest of the decade. They put out a total of 7 albums (6 LPs and 1 live record) before they finally called it quits in 2011 and moved on to new things. With that, the Garage Rock Revival era petered out and Rock itself faded away.

The White Stripes left quite a legacy behind them, all their releases are still high quality and worth seeking out, transcending their time. They were also a tremendous live act, and are still thought of highly today by those who managed to see them. All in all, they are probably the best overall band in the Garage Rock Revival, and one of the last that mattered culturally.

The reason I am bringing this up is to relate it back to the image with the silly quote at the top of the page. People like that are why Rock music is dead now, and is not in any way ready to rise from the grave. Their religious devotion to technicality and ego fellating goes against every single thing that made Rock connect with the common man in the first place. All they want is to convince themselves they are listening to the best music--they do not love the music for what it is or what it does. It was one of the worst aspects of the time period when music fans on message boards would have to posit themselves as music scholars to explain why it took 5 years and countless bus rides to understand the appeal of OK Computer as if they were some kind of judge in a Roman coliseum deciding over execution. This overwhelming arrogance is what Rock fans became entangled with and it seems to exist to this day.

But let us address the charge.

First, is Meg White a bad drummer? No, she is not. This is not arguable. She does exactly what a drummer is objectively meant to do: she keeps the beat and the minimalist tone that the songs call for. She is not an outlier either. There are no early Rock drummers who play over the top technical fills or rolls the 1960s brought in, so neither does she. This is the point of the band: to reclaim that era and bring its ideas to the modern age. Simplicity is the point. That it is still being argued about to this day is indicative of the undeserved arrogance Rock fans still refuse to exorcise from themselves, and refusal to understand when they are wrong.

It wasn't that those drummers from back then couldn't play like that, most of these guys were Jazz drummers and far beyond even most Metal or Progressive drummers. They didn't play that way because the songs were not about technicality: technicality was not the point of the Blues. The genre was about atmosphere, tone, and mystique. Meg White is emulating these guys because that is what the band's sound is. Without her, it loses all of that feel and the identity of the band is lost. As an example, listen to the stuff Jack White has done without her--it sounds nothing like the White Stripes. This is because her drumming is part of why they were big in the first place. That we still have to point this out over a decade after they disbanded is proof that Rock fans have yet to shed their cultism and obsessions over understanding the genre they purport to love.

Just because she doesn't play fills or rolls like newer drummers are known for doing doesn't make her a bad drummer. Nor is she bad because she plays simply. This isn't how it works. She isn't the drummer for the Shaggs and pretending otherwise is disingenuous. Technicality has nothing to do with the appeal of Rock music and it never has. Johnny Ramone is one of the most influential guitarists of all time and he never played more than a handful of chords and never played a single guitar solo. Wanting to brag about a band purely for the musicianship reeks of childish behavior.

What this comes down to is, once again, paint worship. There is nothing wrong with technicality in a Rock song, but it isn't the point of a song. The song itself is the point. Listen to what the band is doing, not what you wish it was doing instead.

Let us get to the bottom of it. What makes Rock music what it is? Is it guitar solos? No, there are plenty of bands without guitar solos. Is it a double bass drum? No, most bands don't even use them. Is it slap bass or walking basslines? No, that's a minority of bassists. Is it an operatic singer? No, there are plenty of examples of successful bands with untechnical singers. Technicality has nothing to do with what makes Rock music hit with audiences, though it can help depending on the identity of the band in question. It is, nonetheless, not what makes the genre what it is and does not necessarily make a band better. There are plenty of extremely technical bands that can't write a half-decent song to save their lives. The tools are not the point of the craft and we lost that knowledge a long time ago.

One should also mention that popular and well regarded Rock bands have existed without a vocalist, guitar player, bassist, drummer, keys, horns, harmonica, or even plugged or unplugged instruments. You can find plenty of examples of each. Therefore, the instruments themselves do not make the genre or give it an identity.

So what is it?

We can take this question to other arenas. What makes wonder stories what they are? Why did we need to cut them into genres so we could worship the parts we are obsessed with and shun what we don't understand? Because we want to put ourselves over the art itself. We do not want to understand it or connect with it: we want to rule it with an iron fist.

This is the opposite of what Rock is. A Rock band is a group of fellas coming together to make noise in a garage and get the audience moving with a fun sound that excites them. You might have your preferences in sound specifics, instruments, and styles, to get that to happen, but that is the core of what it is. Whatever gets that job done is the core of the genre--the Rock Solid center of it all.

There is no one formula to getting this done, and thinking there was is why the genre is dead now. People can now only operate in manufactured genre clichés and outdated gimmicks in place of reaching across the aisle and grabbing what they can to build their own sound and focus. Technicality can help, as a musician, but it is not why people listen to the songs. They don't listen to be impressed, they listen to be taken somewhere else.

As long as those in the genre refuse to look beyond their narrow scope, to continue in dead end fads and styles that wore out their welcome decades ago, to run off novelty and gimmicks over craft and purpose, then Rock will stay dead.

It isn't just about music, but about everything. Why we insist on holding to rotting 20th century frames at the expense of something more eternal is a mystery for the ages. We aren't here for no reason, therefore what we do can have great meaning.

What makes something what it is? That's a hard thing to define, but it certainly isn't the bells and whistles that come out of it. What makes something what it is goes far deeper under the surface into the center of it all into the core of our being. Unless we keep digging, we'll never find it. This is what makes art so special.

That is, after all, why we're here at all! To create and to grow. We need to keep on doing so. Otherwise we'll never truly find what we are really capable of.

Just don't forget that you sometimes also have to look back to trace your steps, or else get lost in the haze with everything else in the modern world. You can't move on without a clear direction forward, after all. And it is art that can help us find that path we have been seeking so desperately. We just have to keep searching for it.

As always: to those who knock, the door will be opened.

Adventures in a past that isn't quite what you remember!