The Rock fans are killing the Rock’n’Roll. (No, I’m not talking about Dwayne Johnson, I’m talking about music.)

The Rock’n’Roll was born as a protest style, confronting the Status Quo and the established truths. It has evolved into a lot of sub-styles, each one protesting against some kind of establishment.

Rock itself faced the eurocentric American culture, Heavy Metal and Industrial Rock the social pile, Punk the academic formalism, Progressive Rock the pop music sameness, and so on.

But it was in the beginnings.

The Rock and its sub-styles gradually have been becoming what they formerly fought against: the establishment.

Mainly because of their fans.

Years ago I was in a Rock show at a moto club, and I was realising everyone was staring at me. I asked the waitress why, and she told me it was because of my t-shirt – an Opeth one.

Thereon she asked me what is Opeth, and I told her it’s a Swedish Prog Metal band, first Death Metal, then increasing its Folk inspiration later.

So she said that nobody there was liking those colourful bands.

By “colourful” she meant bands like Hanson, Avril Lavigne, maybe even Coldplay and Maroon 5. Nothing even near like Opeth.

(When I think about “colourful”, come to my mind Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Whitesnake…)

The fact is that those people dressed on classic Rock band merchandising black t-shirt refuse to listen to anything other than what they already know. It leads into a new establishment: the original Rock songs became the Status Quo they was created to knock down.

Another anecdote…

A couple of months ago I left a Progressive Rock Facebook group due to a thread: the members started to define what is and what isn’t Prog.

According to them, Pink Floyd, King Crimson and Hawkwind cannot be called Prog, because they doesn’t sound like classical music. But Rush can, just because they like it.

And the freak show went down on classifying what deserve and what doesn’t the Prog label, so I quit.

When someone says “the Rock is dead” or something like this, I remember those situations. The Rock is really dead, but not because of the media, or the other musical styles; it’s dead only due to its fans.

I myself started to denied the Prog label.

That’s not necessarily bad. The Rock itself is not entirely original: the break down idea has been reborn again and again through the ages. Beethoven did it, it has been in Neo Metal and Prog Metal (before they established too), and now I see it in Post Rock.

So let the music be! (And the protest too.)

Also in Medium.