Gimme Shelter

This afternoon I watched "Gimme Shelter" for the first time. What an amazing take on a rock n' roll band in its prime. Granted the Rolling Stones are nothing but a laughable cash cow these days. But back in the 60s and 70s The Rolling Stones changed the face of music forever. Blues. Rock n' Roll. Country. They covered just about genre and they blasted through songs like no other band then or now.

This fantasic documentary got me thinking about music today. Well, it got me thinking about how vapid music today is. We don't have The Stones, The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen (in his prime), The Kinks, The Replacements or anyone even close. I mean, when was the last time a band really influenced music, the nation or the people.

Who are the best bands going today? Radiohead? C'mon they're the most overrated band in decades. Wilco? They're probably the closest, but they haven't released a moving record in half a decade. That's about it. Radiohead and Wilco are probably the most important bands today and unfortunately, they don't touch any of the bands mentioned above.

With the War in Iraq blazing and the country in desperate need of change, it's amazing that nobody's risen to the forefront in rock n' roll. We need another Rolling Stones. We need Bob Dylan. And what do we have?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You're not the only one with mixed emotions...

Kindly remove Steel Wheels from your Top 10 list, put on Blasting Fonda, and ask Tweedy to forgive you for this blasphemy.

karenychan said...

Give Radiohead some time. I think they have yet to show us their best or what they are capable of. More so than Wilco (sorry!!). And we might not be able to measure the magnitude of their impact on music until we are old and our grandchildren are discovering them like me discovering Dylan, Kinks, Beatles, etc.