Radio Waves

By Richard Cason

So the theme of this month's "Off Magazine" is "babies", huh?

This seems appropriate enough: Baby New Year has just arrived and some friends of mine welcomed into the world their first child only a few days ago.

The arrival of the New Year is celebrated by millions of people and, of course, the birth of a child is probably the single most important event in anyone's life; but there is a third baby that is born only every few years and it is one that I as a music fan have been expecting for the better part of a decade: The birth of a brand new sound.

You know the one: A sound that has never been heard by a mass audience but will soon burst upon the scene and once again re-define Rock and Roll.

You see, about every nine to ten years, just when you feel as though your mind is going to crack due to the constant exposure to every possible configuration of bubblegum-psuedo- Latin-bon-bon- shakin'-lollipop-lickin'-boy-band- harmonizing-no-talent-Pop-stars,

the kind who make Hanson look like Led Zeppelin, when you cannot possibly take one more dose of it all...your mind will be rescued because the new sound will have been born.

Overnight, people will be turned-on to it. I mean, imagine experiencing a seven-year-long nightmare direct from the bowels of evil itself only to wake-up to a brand new day where all of that commercial ca-ca is suddenly gone. In a flash, all of the boy bands, the teenage female solo acts, the techno, and every other blatant Alternative Pop-Rock act will be so forgotten that no one will even remember to make fun of them.

It will sound so fresh and feel so cleansing that you will have no choice but to accept it.

So you're asking, "OK, Cason, what is this new sound that you speak of"?

Beats me.

Unfortunately, there is no sonogram to detect what this next baby might be. For a while I thought that Rap-Metal might be the one, but with hindsight, I can see that that was much too obvious. Rap is popular, Metal is popular; it was only a question of when record scratches and drum machines would be replaced by power chords and real drums while frontmen would incorporate rapping itself into their vocal style.

This sub-genre went Pop way too quickly and, consequently, everyone is now a Rap-Metal band. Some are legit but just as many have stumbled into it and they are simply milking it for all that they can and I say, Enjoy it, folks, because I promise you that it will not last.

As of this writing, somewhere in the world, an artist is fertilizing the seed of Rock music and the end result will once again take us all by surprise, just as the birth of Rock itself caught an entire nation totally off guard.

In the 1950's, the Blues and Country gave birth to Rock and Roll which gave adults of that era the shock of a lifetime. When straight Rock went as far as it could in the mid-60's, Psychedelia was born, and the music matured. Rock songs no longer needed to use puppy love and milkshakes for subject matter and for the first time, Rock made us socially aware. But, of course, that too acquired a Pop element and finally it had to go. By the end of the decade, largely due to The Band's landmark album, "Music From Big Pink", Rock returned to it's Southern roots (even though all but one member of The Band were Canadian)and the music mellowed...for a while. But just as soon as everything got too mellow, business picked-up with the offspring of leftover Psychedelia and the Blues, once again, and this gave us Heavy Metal. Metal was pretty much the dominant form of Rock until the mid-70's when it hooked-up with elements of Classical music to give us Progressive Rock. Suddenly Rock music contained synthesized orchestras but in the end it was too cerebral for the masses plus it had to vie for attention alongside its distant cousins, Disco and Punk. But all good things end, and Disco was soon dead as was Progressive Rock, leaving Punk as the sole survivor. With the advent of MTV, Punk too went Pop and became New Wave while Hard Rock made a comeback in the form of Pop-oriented Hair Metal. Throughout the1980's these two descendants of the original Rock and Roll would be in a dead heat for the top spot on the charts. The latter part of the '80's would reveal that with the demise of New Wave, Hair Metal becoming more of a self-parody, and the rise of the first boy bands, something had to give.

It wouldn't be until 1991 that yet another incarnation of Rock would come along and wipe the slate clean. In one fell swoop, Grunge buried all of the Hair Metal acts, the first legion of boy bands and that brief uprising of Pop-Rap that no one really cares to remember. Suddenly, MC Hammer was totally uncool and Vanilla Ice...frankly never was cool.

But just four years later, Grunge, the sound of the people, the sound that had purged the earth of all music that was sugarcoated was gaining mainstream radio airplay and would eventually become just another Pop-Rock phase. Who would have ever thought Eddie Vedder's angst-ridden voice would be heard three-to-four times a day right alongside the likes of Britney Spears and *N'SYNC, which leads us right up to the present day.

We wait, and wonder: Where will the next sound come from? Great Britain and Seattle, Washington are but only two places where revolutions in Rock were born. Might it come to us via Cape Girardeau? The West Coast? East Coast? Jupiter?

Nobody knows.

But I do know that somewhere at a club or a bar or a party, there is something so underground and so fresh that's being performed this very moment. I have faith that whatever the new sound is, it will deliver us to salvation. Oddly enough, this new sound will reveal to us who the real artists of the past decade were.

If certain musical acts of the 1990's were not just famous as a direct result of being famous, but true practitioners of their craft, they will have no trouble keeping pace with whatever the new sound will be and they will survive; the phonies (and we know who they are) will be annihilated, pure and simple.

As Tom Petty once said, "Rock and Roll will never die because it's design is flawless".

I guess he is saying that once Rock becomes disgusted with itself, it will always return bigger and badder than before and will re-claim it's rightful position as the dominant form of music just as it has so many times in the past.

Having said more than a mouthful...I think I see something!

It's a head! Push! Push!

Happy Birthday, "OFF!"

Richard Cason can be heard from 7-MID, Monday-Friday

on 100.7 KGMO, on the internet at kgmo.com. Plus, be

sure to check out his website, "CasonLine" at

www.casonline.homepage.com