re: 105.1 in Lafayette is now classic rock

quote:

---

My car has an after market cd player in it. I have the original tape deck, But I lack the time, money, and/or expertise to switch it out. If anyone would like to help me out with it, it would be much appreciated

---

quote:

---

Whereas The Strokes, The White Stripes, and all their retro-minded brethren played out their drama in the national spotlight and enjoyed titles like “the saviors of rock ‘n’ roll,” Japandroids and their generation of rock bands have been relegated to a much smaller stage. The critical difference between these two eras of rock revivalism — one wildly successful, the other relegated to the sidelines of pop culture — lies less in the music itself than in the culture that has shifted and evolved around it.

For instance, the album. Rock music has held onto this artifact more stubbornly than nearly every other genre, despite the fact that overall album sales continue to decline at a precipitous rate thanks to the increased popularity of streaming and customizable playlists. Pop, a genre that places its highest priority on the hit single, has adapted to this trend wholeheartedly, as has hip-hop with its proud tradition of mixtapes. Most of the biggest releases of 2016 played fast and loose with the conventional idea of the “album,” whether it was Kanye West endlessly retooling his Life of Pablo, Chance the Rapper releasing his Coloring Book mixtape for free, or Beyoncé releasing her “visual album,” Lemonade, accompanied by a one-hour film aired on HBO.

---

quote:

---

When talking to Japandroids and several other rock acts with prominent releases coming up, a different theme begins to emerge. All of these artists seem conceptually tied to a more conservative idea of the album, and many of them get noticeably excited when talking about things like cover art and tracklists. “I don’t know if other bands are like this or not, but we have a tendency to start shaping the sequencing even as we’re still recording the album,” says King. “With this one, we had a pretty clear idea of where certain songs were going to be. ‘Arc of Bar’ was going to open Side B, ‘Near to the Wild Heart of Life’ was going to start the album and so on.”

This kind of talk would sound almost like gibberish to today’s casual music fan, who probably hasn’t ever had to flip a vinyl record over to Side B and almost certainly doesn’t care about what kicks off that side. But those who listen more exclusively to rock do seem to share this persistent fetish with the album, as BuzzAngle Music reports that a staggering 63% of vinyl albums sold in 2016 were from the combined rock genres (rock made up less than 10% of total album consumption — a far less impressive but equally telling figure).

---

quote:

---

“There’s nothing exciting,” he argues. “A punk band these days could never be as angsty or as in-your-face as the most pissed-off rap record. No matter what, that album is usually tougher and cooler and more badass than five white kids from some Chicago suburb could ever be. We can keep saying, ‘Ah, I’m pissed off!’ but it falls a little flat. So if that’s what you want, you can get what you need from other types of music.”

---

quote:

---

Surveying the current landscape, one gets the impression that most of the rock records people enjoy or feel anything about came out 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years ago. Vinyl may be in the midst of a rock-fueled renaissance, but most of the records people are buying are so-called “deep catalog” titles released over three years ago. Sure, Radiohead and the marginally electro-rock duo Twenty One Pilots scored some of 2016’s highest sellers, but the rest of the year’s Top 25 is populated by the likes of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, and other rock bands that haven’t existed for decades. While rock listeners continue to favor the genre’s classics over its contemporaries, solo pop and hip-hop artists like Drake and Adele happily smash industry records every year.

The problem and the paradox for rock music isn’t that it’s making no money, but that fans might be mortgaging the genre’s future by investing so many dollars in its past. After all, it’s not as if rock isn’t still an economic powerhouse in terms of live performance. Gross ticket sales from Guns ‘N Roses’ Not in This Lifetime reunion tour exceeded the truly insane figure of $112 million, and that doesn’t even include money made on merch. Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, and The Rolling Stones also enjoyed some of the highest-grossing tours of 2016, which seems to underline an essential point: People are still paying to hear rock music, but the genre’s veteran royalty are the ones reaping the biggest benefits and cashing the biggest paychecks.

---

quote:

---

The gap is only widened by the rise of festivals like Desert Trip (aka “Oldchella”), whose organizers deal with the problem of flagging interest with the simple solution of just … not booking younger rock bands. This would all be well and fair if the more youth-oriented megafestivals like Coachella continued to support younger rock artists in their tiny fonts. They aren’t, and therein lies another reason for the genre’s slow demise.

Perpetually chilled-out indie rockers Real Estate were among the few nominally rock bands to earn a spot on Coachella’s lineup this year, and even they recognize that they’re part of a shrinking niche. “It does seem like there are fewer popular artists on festivals doing the type of thing that we’re doing,” says the band’s bassist, Alex Bleeker, and that’s to say nothing of the festival’s near-total erasure of heavier subgenres like punk and metal.

---

quote:

---

When Real Estate play Coachella in April, they’re not expecting a particularly large or engaged audience. The festival has largely shifted away from guitar-driven rock music in recent years, opting to fill its midsection with more pop, hip-hop, and electronic acts that draw young crowds in bigger numbers. As music festivals continue to shift gears to reflect the tastes of the industry at large, rock artists not named Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, or Arcade Fire are either being blocked out or coming to accept the fact that they occupy a much smaller niche than they once thought.

---

quote:

---

Rock’s bigger issue, and one that actually does have the potential to sink the genre entirely, lies in a different kind of demographic shift.

“When I was taking audio production classes in high school and community college,” Duterte remembers, “I was one of the only students in there who played acoustic instruments.” The multi-instrumentalist who grew up playing trumpet and taught herself guitar at the age of 12 sees herself as an outlier among her generation of musicians, who are moving away from strings, brass, and live percussion and toward a more digitized means of music production.


“People seem to be a lot more interested in electronic-based programs and synths and beats and stuff,” she says. “I see that happening in front of me all the time, and online you’ve got all the electronic artists on Soundcloud.”

Bleeker notices the same trend, and he openly questions if Real Estate would have ever formed if he and his friends had grown up with all the musical options available to them today. “Kids are now using samplers, they’re using computer programs, they’re using synthesizers, and I wonder if that’s what we would have been doing,” he says. “We definitely learned how to play music with each other every Saturday in each others’ basements, learning Pixies songs and then sort of graduating into more esoteric rock music from there. There weren’t really many kids making electronic music, and if you wanted to play in a band, the most natural and immediate thing to do was to get an electric guitar.”

---

quote:

---

I obviously don't know your demographics, but format changes is all about advertisers' money. I asked a friend who worked at a station that changed from newer rock to classic rock. He said " Music for 20 year olds doesn't sell big ticket items. The audience for classic rock does. They buy new cars, houses,diamonds"

---