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by Editor Paulo Abrantes 

Maybe this last couple of years weren't the best times for music. Pop-rock music  superstar legends passed away: David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Maurice White, Prince, George Martin, Leon Russell, Leonard Cohen and most recently Chris Cornell, among several others.

 

 

 

 

Running in a parallel time line to all those tragic and sad events we are living nowadays in some kind of revivalism era of 80´s and 90´s rock & roll bands.

 

 

 

We hear on the radio and read in the media about regrouping, reunion shows and so on. Plus, it´s summer time, with music festivals all over the place.

 

 

 

Time to enjoy music, to have fun and maybe to go a little extreme and live on the edge for a few days, even if that edge is not so edgy anymore and a little more for the diagonal side than for the vertical side: no sleep till Monday, like the song, remember? And maybe it is also time to take some beautiful shots along with that live show ride.

 

 

 

 

Among all this rock & roll revivalism we have to ask: has rock grown old?
Let´s face it: somehow, it seems all those rock icons have grown old and so is their audience with them.

 

 

 

Any rock bands from the 80´s or 90´s, playing live this summer just next to your door? You don´t go to the show? It´s OK. because the guy lost his voice; because the guy is no longer fast with his fingers to do that particular guitar lines and hooks you like; because the guy is almost sleeping at the drums and bedtime for him seems to be happening at 7pm; because maybe the guy can not handle so much excitement and may die live on stage with a heart failure; because you still have a lot of respect for him and his music and don’t want to be a witness of a sad event; because what you want to remember is just that other amazing live gig of the same band, 20 years ago.

 

 

We all know the funny classic argumentation line-up for not going.

 

 

But just watch the crowd walking there. You may think: “Time goes by, time flies”!
So, who cares and who wants to think about that stuff?
Why spoil the party? Don´t go for the prize, go for the fun and for the ride.

 

Is Rock still relevant?
Dylan got the Nobel Prize, Springsteen wrote his memoirs, the comebacks are being advertised like they were some kind of cosmic events for human salvation, and major summer festival charts look like a memorial service with all those band reunions for the final last hurrah or a luxury keepsake.

 

Like someone already pointed: nowadays there is no figurehead band you could point to and when people talk about rock music, they have a vision in their head of four or five guys in a band, smoking cigarettes, living on the edge, always being on the road and going wild for a life style daily bases, with leather jackets and tattoos, a band that comes nowhere with enough driving force to take over the culture. Maybe that´s unquestionably over.

If a band like that comes out today, there would be no infrastructure to support it and it would be doomed just before it was born.

 

And if it is so, maybe nowadays it´s just about listening to great music, dressing that beautiful jacket and that one particular t-shirt and having fun for a couple of days.

 

Is Rock´n´Roll old music now?
Like any music that lasts, maybe it´s just for anyone who cares to listen or, like they say, it´s only rock´n´roll but I like it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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