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Artist
All Night
12+ albums
stonerStoner RockSouthern RockUSA
about
After a tumultuous period in the late '60s, when the American record industry had to chase trends that emerged organically from artistically and politically engaged music scenes, the major labels finally consolidated their grip over their rock product again. Having isolated their ideal audience -- unreflective teenagers with nothing better to spend their money on than records -- the labels began to churn out corporate rock that embodied the beer-commercial values best suited to catering to that audience's half-baked hedonism while orienting that pleasure-seeking towards the treadmill of endless consumption. Musically, rock was standardized into the most streamlined and accessible version of earlier, more progressive blues-rock -- a washed-out derivation of the Allman Brothers without any of that irritating improvisation or structural innovation. Anything that might make you scratch your head in thought rather than nod it in rhythmic approval was systematically strained out in favor of competent reprises of proven formulas. This bong-friendly music was combined with the kind of lyrics that are specific to rock music: celebrations of drinking, touring, casual sex, and of course, rock itself, which becomes a short-hand method of evoking all of these. Grand Funk's "We're an American Band" the apotheosis of the genre, providing the timeless formulation of the corporate rock band's mission statement: "We come into your town / We help you party down". While nowhere near as polished
