Hey Hey My My

It was a mild and breezy summer evening. And as the sun set in the Prairie sky behind me, crunchy, decades-old power chords carried across the football stadium, thrilling young ears and triggering memories in the older ones. Forty-six thousand people from all walks of life – young and old alike – were absolutely elated that AC/DC was back in Winnipeg. A band with timeless radio and cult classics that span nearly four decades was here to do what it does best: rock out. It was my first time seeing the classic rock heroes, and I was just as stoked. But I soon realized I was stuck in the middle of an inter-generational passing of the rock torch. I sat beside a girl in her early teens and her dad, who were singing along to even the seediest of hits like “Whole Lotta Rosie”. And they weren’t the only family there. At this solitary show I finally saw the proof of what I’ve long believed: rock n’ roll is the most resilient genre of popular music; and as the old saying goes, it will never die.

There are standards in rock music like no other. The archetypes who wrote the blueprints will always appeal to 13-year-old kids just as much today as they did 30 years ago. It will always be cool to like Led Zeppelin. There’ll never be another rock guitar god quite like Hendrix. And few contemporary bands will write party anthems as well as AC/DC could. And that’s why people who grew up listening to them will keep bringing their kids to their shows. The rock show is both a cliche and a rite of passage in itself, but at the end of the day it’s still an unforgettable spectacle that people will continue to flock to. A massive, blow-up Rosie doll and cannons to close out the show? I’m glad I didn’t miss out on that.

Cliches aside, as resilient as rock music is, it falls short in versatility. Its glory days brought huge social upheaval with them, but it’s lacked that universal appeal for more than 20 years now. Rap was a new artistic vision created to speak to a growing demographic of young black people. It boomed, and has its own cliches today, but still it draws in new young fans in a way that rock can’t. Rock also can’t get people dancing like electronic music. And its emotion pales hugely in comparison to the heartache in any country twang.

But nothing compares to live rock music. The shows will always sell out. The classics will never get old. They’ll continue to infect the ears of the young for decades to come. I grew up listening to everything – from Metallica and Guns N’ Roses to Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys in the late 1980s. Those tastes branched rapidly like a tree on steroids in the early 1990s, as I started going to shows like Lollapalooza. I still try to keep as much of an open mind as I can to this day when it comes to new music. But I know when it comes time to take my kids to shows, it’ll be to the new generation of classics, like Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, and Tool. Bands that I can count on still being around when I’m in my 40s.