Growing up (hmm...I'm only 18 now, but still...) , I listened more or less solely to
jazz. I sat around after
elementary school and listened to my father's
vinyl copies of
Sonny Rollins,
John Coltrane,
John MacGlaughlin,
Ravi Shenkar,
Herbie Hancock, and
Miles Davis.
I still love that music very much, and although there has been some
underground advancement in the world of jazz, by
musicians like
Pat Metheny,
Medeski, Martin and Wood,
King Crimson and
the Brecker Brothers, i have found that the music that most similarly follows jazz
agression,
technique, and
complexity on a
mainstream level is some of the heaviest, most
agressive music out on the
market.
Bands such as
System of a Down, who incorporates
operatic and
classical influence into their music,
Rage Against the Machine, whose guitar player
Tom Morello has played studio
guitar for everyone from
Jimmy Page to Class of '99,
Soundgarden, whose
deep lyrics and super-complex time signatures and guitar tunings are without equal, and especially
Tool, who play possibly the most complex music on the mainstream market. It's odd for me, to think that possibly the most talented musicians in
rock and roll today also must bear the brunt of the elder generation's attack on modern music. This attack to me seems highly misdirected. If one wants to complain about
modern crappy music, why not attack bands like
Third Eye Blind, who use the same repetative
chord changes in every song, or the
Pop-punk explosion bands like
Blink 182,
NOFX, and
MXPX, who all sound the same and seem to have all the same message, if we could only deduce what it was. I admit that there is a lot of non-musicianship crap in the hardcore market as well, but one must take the good with the bad in all things, yes?