I think that many musicians would benefit from investigating rock and roll. Rock, rhythm and blues, doo wop, folk are mostly considered dead genres today because almost every unique combination of ideas has been done and then done to death. They made rock with orchestra, rock opera, they made rock but angrier and tougher, that's metal, rock but angry and political, that's punk, they made rock but more musically complex, that's progressive rock, they made rock but funkier, that's... Funk, obviously. And by sampling funk, disco, rock and R&B, and adding semi-spoken word poetry to it, that's how hip hop and rap came about.

But the key thing to note here is that rock and roll is the common ancestor of loads of different genres.

But today, even the rock and roll purists can't seem to get stuff correct. It all feels bland and boring, there's no vocal flair, there are few unique instruments or sounds, there's little soul to it! There's no special sauce for these krabby patties!

It's all just re-hash and re-iteration of the same barebones ideas. And this isn't just a problem plaguing rock and its close derivatives, almost all genres today suffer from it!

The best stuff you tend to see now are lone weirdos just tossing random crap together to see what sticks, and one of the common themes about those people is that they're inspired by older music! The closer you get back to that rock and roll root of modern music, the more interesting the music tends to be.

I think that rock and roll is sort of like a building block for music today. Yes, it would be a little gauche to just go back to the 50s and have every genre just be a take on doo-wop. It would be boring, it would be a step back in the history of music, but I think any artist trying to improve their music would be well to study older genres and try to get into them, to understand why they were so famous, and why that music is the root of almost all our music! Then find a takeaway to improve their own stuff!

Thanks for reading! -Dab