I’ve run across a couple articles in the past week or so reflecting on fact that rock’s icons are hitting old age, still very much on the scene, and what that means for the fate of the electric guitar. One article, by Guardian writer John Harris, says “Rock music may be uncool, but it’s not dead, as long as it accepts its status as the music of the aging.”

In another, on the website Popmatters, writer Will Layman says “Rock is the new jazz. Sorry, rock.”  He argues that rock has become irrelevant to the mainstream, and that its survival requires accepting a demotion to a niche genre, a move that could potentially strengthen the music in the end. But not make it popular in the way it dominated the music scene 30 or 40 years ago.

In a remarkable moment of self-reflection after watching the debut of “From the Sky Down,” a documentary about their classic 1991 album Achtung Baby, U2′s Bono said: “U2′s been on the verge of irrelevance for 20 years. We’ve dodged and we’ve dived and made some great work along the way and occasional faux pas, but this moment where we’re at, to me, feels really close to the edge of irrelevance. We can be successful, we can play big music in big places, but whether we can play small music, for radio or clubs, remains to be seen. And we have to get to that place again, if we are to survive.”

The big winner at the Grammy’s this year in the rock category were Foo Fighters, a band whose average age is 44. The lead singer, Dave Grohl, got his start in Nirvana almost 30 years ago.

And Lady Gaga’s Grammy nominated single, “Yoü and I,” draws on echoes of 1970s rock band Queen, including a guest appearance from Brian May, Queen’s lead guitarist and now an Astrophysicist and Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.

Thus far the evidence in favor of rock’s irrelevance. Who will argue for rock’s vitality?

 

 

Twenty-five years ago, Living Colour played “Open Letter (To a Landlord),” an anthem exhorting their listeners to commit themselves to vulnerable populations in the inner city, the displaced, the inadequately housed, the — for most 1980s rock fans — invisible persons in urban life.

They are still playing it, and perhaps even better than ever, as shown from this clip from a live show in 2007:

In the United States, discussions and activism about the right to decent housing, a basic human necessity, has expanded from the inner city to the suburbs in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse and the foreclosure epidemic and scandals. Many working class and middle class families have providers who lose their job, or fall a paycheck behind, and soon lose their houses, and have no legal representation or adequate recourse to negotiate with banks.

As I have recounted here at R&T, I have been involved in Occupy Wall Street since last October. In addition to our commitment in the Occupy movement to policies and social practices that combat material, intellectual, psychological, and spiritual poverty, many Occupy sites have committed themselves to helping families who are losing their homes to foreclosure. Here is a story about a recent success in saving the home of the civil rights activist Helen Bailey.

In addition to civilly disobedient actions like occupying foreclosed homes and helping families move back in, Occupy has been visiting foreclosure/auction hearings and singing a song called “Mr (or Mrs) Auctioneer.” The idea is to appeal to the moral sense of the court and the bank to halt the sale of the house and try to go back to the negotiating table with the family. Dozens of arrests have been made of Occupy participants singing at these hearings.

Here is an example from last October:

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