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Originally Posted by Necromancer
Why is the term Rock a nebulous thing?
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It's nebulous in the respect that, like any music or any art in general, it's not strictly defined. All categories of music are that way. You sort of broadly classify music into certain genres but the reality is that for any type of music, such as rock and roll, you can't really point to a set of features and diagnostic criteria and say "THAT's what makes it rock and roll". My point was that I don't agree that anything came along and hurt or killed rock and roll, it's just evolved and will continue to evolve. I dont think it has replaced by something else, it's just what it has become.
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Abba was a pop group during the 70s, not a Rock band, and quite the opposite and far from being a hard-core rock and roll band.
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I think you may have entirely missed my point. The point was made by another poster that rock dominated the charts for that period in the seventies and I was pointing out that likely the biggest band of the era was not at all rock and roll, it was a disco-ish glam-pop band (who I happened to like). I believe I said pretty directly that Abba was NOT hard-core rock and roll.
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You stated " whenever you look at music from a past era you're just thinking of the songs/groups that stood the test of time". I can understand that being the case for your average listener.
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But it is there for all to see, explore, and understand ... its called the genealogy of musical genres, which is for the more die-hard music enthusiast.
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Again, I think you may have entirely misunderstood what I was saying. My point was that there's always a tendency to look at music (or anything in general for that matter) from the present as representing some sort of decay/decline from the past golden ages. The reality is that when you do so it is because you are only focusing on the best stuff from those periods of the past. You look at a period spanning ten or twenty years in the distant past and point to all the legends and classics that came from that period and compare that with right now, and think that nowadays is crappy in comparison because there's so much junk being put out now. Again, in reality, there was just as much crap then too. But since you never hear the crap from that era anymore and are just focusing on the best of the best, the tendency is to look back on that particular era as some sort of golden age.
Rock and roll isn't dead, it's just evolving like any music does. And just as much talent is around now as it has always been. Someday they will look back on the 2010's and saying "Boy, those were the days. There was no junk on the radio back then". And the reply will be "what the hell does 'radio' mean?".