Suggestion

Sometimes I think those Christian Children's Fund commercials would be more effective if they used music by Sepultura.

Obvious

The stupidest thing the rock critics of the late 60's and 70s did was assume that rock n' roll would remain the dominant force in pop music forever. Boomers took it for granted that their music would stand the test of time. Of course, this was wishful thinking, as subsequent generations have developed their own unique musical pathways. Every generation does this, and it's silly to expect that people born in the 40s and 50s were somehow exceptional, that their music was automatically superior to any that came before or after. The more politicized and idealistic among these people even dared hope that the music could be used to rally and radicalize the masses for political action. I suppose this made sense in the context of the late 60's global youth movement that saw radical student and youth-led political movements in Canada, the United States, Czechoslovakia, Japan, France, Vietnam, China, Great Britain and elsewhere. The end result was that the ideal of rock as a force of societal change took on so much import in the minds of many that its meaning in a musical context was lost. A couple of fallacies that resulted from this was the belief that rock and pop were one and the same, and that all truly great rock music must resonate with a mass audience. The reverberations of this generation-wide inability to grasp the musical changes underway are still being felt today. Now, it's hip-hop, dance music and country that dominates the pop charts, and really it's been this way for decades. Most people don't have a clue what they actually like about the music they listen to. Go ahead, ask someone some time. It's like they've never thought about it. The problem is that the bands who really were playing rock music in the musical sense (the only one that matters) of the term were left behind as popular tastes changed. As they pursued their muses down through various spacey, progressive, hard rock, avante garde, proto metal, punk rock, blues and psychedelic avenues and began to evolve away from their source musics, bands focused on musical concerns rather than political posturing. After Vietnam it became less profitable for a band to do so anyways. As time went on through the late 70s, critics declined to champion such bands because of what they weren't: ie, mass cultural forces that could be used to rally the masses. Nevermind that Black Flag, Metallica, Husker Du, The Replacements, Sonic Youth, Soundgarden, The Wipers, Mudhoney, Saint Vitus, the Melvins, Slayer, Motorhead, D.O.A. and many, many others were making rock music that was aesthetically very close to what the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had done in their days... small band music with a focus on the aggressive interplay between a rhythm section and one or two guitar players. I once helped finance a DVD called Such Hawks, Such Hounds At one point legendary Seattle producer Jack Endino says something to the effect that there will always be an audience for heavy rock, but it will never be at the top of the charts. I agree with him, but i still think today's rock writers have a responsibility to document the careers of relevant rock bands from past and present. The flame of rock will keep burning, but it's continued vitality will take rigorous aesthetic thought on our parts. Pretending rock is something it's not doesn't help anyone.