A Good Year for the Outlaw

Ozzy, Heart, ZZ Top, and Genesis.

All were honored on VH1 tonight, all performed, in Genesis’ case it was their first appearance together in 15 years, and all had tributes payed to them.

In a recent post, I lamented today’s so-called music masquerading as rock and tonight was a perfect example of what I spoke of. All four of those bands played a different kind of music, from Genesis’ spacey, organ-driven soft/medium rock, to ZZ’s bluesy, boogie, guitar rock, to Heart’s Zeppelin-tinged straight ahead rock, to Ozzy’s metal. And you know what? It’s ALL better than the crap that is out there today.

Paying tribute were Nickelback (to ZZ); Keane (to Genesis): Queens of the Stone Age (to Ozzy) and Alice in Chains w/Gretchen Wilson on lead vocals (to Heart). And they all proved to could play music when they want to. Alice in Chains has long been a good band, and I admit to knowing nothing about the British trio Keane, but Nickelback and the Queens sounded pretty good doing great music (”Sharp Dressed Man” for Nickelback;  “Paranoid” for the Queens). If their albums of today actually sounded like that, they’d be megastars right now, the biggest rock acts on the planet.

So, it’s not that today’s bands can’t emulate legends from the past and the style of rock that sounded great, they’re just not apparently smart enough to actually do it.