Mark Sultan’s War On Rock ‘N’ Roll
“For a few years now, I have come to a conclusion regarding the music that I have loved forever: Rock N Roll MUST be destroyed. Killed, in order to preserve it and its spirit. I can’t be the only one who has thought this. Or that there was no need for a Gremlins 3-D.
Maybe now is the perfect time, given that anarchy is being co-opted for a surrealist ad-campaign. Maybe it’ll make more sense. Maybe the idea is now as trendy as the entity I am trying to repossess ownership from. Maybe I am a liar, a foolish punk rocker. Maybe my bitching is trendier than everything.
Mark Sultan, ladies and gentlemen.
Sure he may initially come off as a bitter old man, but when you read between the lines, he definitely has a point. Stagnation is the enemy of any art form. And yes, rock and roll is an art form. It comes from a place of purity, a place of love. When The Sonics started out, they didn’t do their thing to sound cool… it’s an extension of their personality. And a band ripping off The Sonics doesn’t do it to sound cool, it’s because this is the music that they love and this is the music that they want to do.
Then again, maybe I’m just speaking for myself and my band, but I think (and I hope) that’s the case MOST OF THE TIME.
Rock n’ Roll’s enemy is not the mainstream. It’s not the record companies. It’s not the ambivalence of a crowd who does not “get” what you’re trying to do.
It is stagnation.
Without evolution, we are doomed to perish, doomed to implode. In the end, it will just suck the fun (the life force… the ether, if you will) out of this thing that we love, this thing that we do.
In order to save rock n’ roll, it needs to be destroyed.
This concept is nothing new, this is why punk happened. This is why “post-punk” happened. People who truly want it to be saved take it in their hands and crush it. While Mark Sultan’s diatribe speaks of him and his music, this just proves the mentality that music is indeed cyclical.
Destroy everything and build something out of it.
Anarchy in the purest (purist) sense.
Evolution = Revolution
-Francis
