Who plays such a role nowadays? There are few obvious candidates. Ditto rebels. Marilyn Manson? Eminem? Limp Bizkit? Blink 182? You just know Lou Reed, who as a member of The Velvet Underground helped create alternative music, is getting a good chuckle out of what passes for musical rebellion these days.
Grateful Dead singer Jerry Garcia -- who knew a thing or two about challenging convention -- must be rolling over in his grave.
The death knell of edgy rock music, one might argue, was the economic boom of the 1990s. Rather than lamenting what might have been, Americans were celebrating, as the Dow and NASDAQ zoomed higher. They wanted an appropriate soundtrack for their lifestyle.
Out were groups like Jane's Addiction and Alice in Chains; in were music's equivalent of pap: Hanson, the Spice Girls and enthusiastic midriff-displayers Christina Aguilera and Janet Jackson.
Yet for those of you convinced a recession is afoot, there are at least a couple of negative economic omens in the music industry. One is the work of alternative rock band Staind, which this week has the second-best selling album in the nation, according to Rolling Stone magazine. The band's latest album also is aptly titled Break the Cycle. Perhaps music is a lagging indicator. Maybe the nation's youth aren't angry enough to pick up their guitars. "The consumer and, hence, the general populace, is in a state of denial that the milk and honey days of the bull market are over," explains Bill Feezer, a vice president at Arab Bank in New York. "Everyone's teenager believed themselves to be an ersatz `trust-fund kid' based on the dinner-table conversation and angst and hard work were deleted from the lexicon." Recent recordings by Everclear, a less dour but decidedly edgy band, also hint at rougher economic times. ``Tough times breed good rock music, which may make Everclear's new album pretty darn timely,'' writes People magazine critic Alec Foege.
"The darker, noisier" release "is the perfect soundtrack to a stagnant economy." That's just what we may have in the months ahead, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. "The period of sub-par economic performance, however, is not yet over, and we are not free of the risk that economic weakness will be greater than currently anticipated, and require further policy response," Greenspan said on Wednesday.
Rather than weeding through reams of economic data, Greenspan might consider just turning on the radio.
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