Rock music, for the most part, is totally and completely boring. No wonder many young people under 35 don't listen to it. Today's corporate Rock music is for old people.
Average Fuji Rock fan
I just saw the news release for this year's artist line up at Japan's famous summer festival, Fuji Rock. May I say, "Boring!" No. Make that BORING! B-O-R-I-N-G! There's not one new and exciting artist on the top lineup at all... Here's the announced line up for Fuji Rock 2012 so far:
Beady Eye (Oasis retreads - Oasis were OK 20 years ago)
Elvis Costello and the Attractions (Loved Elvis... in 1979!)
Stone Roses (Loved them in the 80s & early 90s - but that's more than 20 years ago)
Radiohead (Ditto to above)
Jack White (White Stripes, Dead Weather, ho hum... At least Dead Weather has been in the last decade)
The Specials (Loved them - When I was a university student)
Buddy Guy (Buddy Guy? Wait! What?)
I said there were no cool new artists on the bill, but I take that back. Galactic is playing. Galactic is cool. Galactic is relatively new and doing something fresh with music.
Galactic - Heart of Steel
But that's about it; Galactic.
Look, I like(d?) rock music as much as the next guy but this playing old artists all the time is just killing rock music (it's already dead?) I certainly loved Elvis Costello and the Attractions. I went to see them in 79 (or was it 80?) in Santa Barbara. The Specials, Stone Roses? Sure. A long time ago. I even saw Buddy Guy play at a 300 person venue in Shibuya called Club Quattro in the late 80s...
I know that Fuji needs to draw an audience and I know that older people are the ones that have the most money, but Jeez Louise, how about at least trying to propagate new artists and new music for the future? There's tons of good new artists... How about playing one or two of them?
I liked these other artists that Fuji has lined up. I've played them all on the radio - a lot. Still do sometimes. But there's no way I am going to pay $1000 USD to spend a weekend with my girlfriend at Fuji Rock watching artists that should be playing in cozy 500 seater venues in downtown Tokyo. Especially since the sound at outdoor festivals is terrible and seeing any band at Fuji Rock is about as fun as lining up at Disneyland for an hour and a half just to ride Dumbo for two minutes.
No thanks.
With a boring line up of old artists that they have set up for this year's Fuji Rock, I'm surprised The Who aren't playing. At least with the Who, you know you'll be getting a tired band on stage that hasn't written any new songs in 35 years. No surprises there...
♫ People try to put us down...
Talking about our ge...ge...geriatrics ♫
I'll make a prediction here:
No more Fuji Rock in 15 years. They can't survive. At this rate their average audience will be on Social Security by then.
With this type of line up, the Fuji Rock fan appeal is, let me put this nicely (or as Spinal Tap's Ian Faith would say) "the band's appeal is not waining... it's becoming 'more selective.'"
Yeah, more selective to people over 45-years-old... Or is that exaggerating? OK. More selective for people over 55!
I'm not a particularly big fan of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson or Adele (actually Adele is okay) but at least these artists appeal to people under 30. The Fuji Rock lineup? What? Is this designed for the geriatric crowd?
Maybe this year's Fuji Rock can get sponsorships from companies that make and sell products that do things like lower cholesterol levels or other companies that sell adult diapers or medicine for constipation.
Oh, did I mention that Fuji Rock's lineup this year is boring?
I also have Kenny Rogers's name in the title of this article. Most people know who Kenny Rogers is. Kenny Rogers is a very famous country music artist in the USA. He might even be the most famous country music artist in history. He has had more than 120 hit singles in his career. What Michael Jackson was to Pop Music, Kenny Rogers was to country music.
But one thing many people don't know was that, at the start of his career, Kenny Rogers was the lead vocalist for a late sixties psychedelic rock band named the First Edition. In fact, the First Edition was a famous group that had several smash hits - on the pop/rock and country music charts in the sixties psychedelic era!
Kenny Rogers' band, the First Edition was formed in 1967 and broke up in 1976. It was then that Kenny Rogers made an important career decision: He dropped pop and rock music for a career in country music because of his age. He thought that rock music was music for young people (it was) and at his age, if he was going to continue in music, he'd have to go the route of country music that found it acceptable to have older artists. Rock was a young person's arena. Country and Western had many popular artists who were in their late sixties, like Ernest Tubb, and some, like Earl Scruggs, who is in his eighties and still performing country music today!
Too bad for Japan's rock music fans that Kenny Rogers quit pop and rock music for a career in country. Now, at his ripe old age of 74 years old, Kenny would fit quite well on the main stage of Fuji Rock....
In fact, Kenny wouldn't even be the oldest one to perform on stage if he were invited to Fuji Rock this year. That would be reserved for Buddy Guy, who is two years older than Kenny Rogers.
Fuji Rock? My what a cool and cutting edge lineup up... If you were born in the 1950s. Pretty soon they'll be having to give senior citizen's discounts for Fuji Rock.
Don't forget to get in line for that... Oh and don't forget, senior citizens get a 20% discount.
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