In recent months Vaden and the toadies boys have been getting a lot of extra air time. Perhaps it because they were a underrated band of the mid ninety’s that failed to capture the stature they had locally due to the dying national grunge scene. It seems as the many things rise in fall in popularity and music that even good music is caught in the torrent of duplication and dismissed as another copy of that genre’s pioneering force. Glam Rock was the answer to the 70’s disenfranchisement, whose followers quickly developed the Metal scene in opposition to the flood of copies. Metal stayed underground as pop evolved and became the polar opponent which then again came over populated and commercial. The mix of metal ideology with classic 70’s forms and folk music bore the “Grunge” scene which like all music started in clubs and small national tours to towns like Austin, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Boston, etc that always seem to harbor the underdog of National taste. Soon enough too the world would be overwhelmed with international grunge and rock that would push new listeners to the next new media as grunge became polished and overwhelmed with those that used the format for success. So now we set with even more evolutions of popular music and evolution of the new counter cultures genre de facto from rock, to emo, to 70’s revival, to neo-grunge, to whatever kids at home makes them feel that they are in fact unique and that somewhere someone created music that fit the lifestyle they wanted to live that was different from the rest of the herd.
Sitting on a picnic at Carlos and Charlie’s at 18 years old I had a talk with a fantastic Texan guitarist who at the moment I cant remember his name. It was at the birth of the Burden Brothers. Vaden-Todd Lewis and Taz Bentley’s hellspawn of Texan grunge and Classic rock Mash up the two had created. He was one of 3 guitarist including VTL and Mike from Baboon. Anyway! He said to me, ” I could sit and play like that…”[a new act was ripping into a sweep picking exercise on a electric acoustic with a beat] ” but thats not what gets down to your soul. What really moves someone is deep hitting power full guitar play, from the 70’s to now thats what has made rock last”
And he’s right. In the last decades battle for a stable counter culture Iconic style we have created a hodgepodge of musical styles left over from the different attempts. Rock Radios no longer are able to play the current trend because it is ever evolving in the myspace internet driven culture. instead we are left with new players in a field of stable “good” music. Bands that started in the early 80’s(Chili peppers, Metalica, Toadies) are mixed with those from the 90s and those that break out of the counter pop formula.
This is a 4AM rant… perhaps I’ll polish this turd later…
