I don’t really know the Black Keys, other than what I heard a couple of months back in a piece on NPR (for the record, they didn’t sound bad), so I’m not entirely sure of the authority from which BK drummer Patrick Carney speaks in this interview as presented.

But damn, if I don’t pretty much agree with him:

…Rock ‘n’ roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world.
…They became OK with the idea that the biggest rock band in the world is always going to be s**t

Yep, Nickelback is probably the lowest common denomimator sort of quasi-rock band in existence; all the songs sound pretty much the same, though to be fair, they all sound *like Nickelback*. Too bad it’s all mushmouthed delivery of trite platitudes about small town nostalgia and beer-swilling pop philosophy over de-tuned guitars.

But the Nickelback ascendance isn’t the only thing that points to the fact that “rock” doesn’t really exist as a mainstream genre any longer. Perhaps more shocking is this piece from last year indicating that Train’s “Hey Soul Sister” was the highest charting US “rock” song of 2010.

Train.

Train, the band that’s essentially what big-haired 80s party girls dropped Slaughter for once they got a “mom cut” and traded the VW Cabrio for the Explorer with the little line drawing family decals on the back. Train, the band for people who think that post-“Keep the Faith” Bon Jovi is too heavy. This is the demographic measure for “rock” these days?

Mainstream music has apparently passed me by.

The worst bit is that this, for once, isn’t one of those “kids today” nostalgia posts where I pine for “the good old days” – I *know* there’s good and interesting modern stuff out there, it’s just wedged into disused corners of the internet (but not in my local indie record store, who totally didn’t have any copies of the Miracles of Modern Science record I’ve been trying to track down for weeks), it’s just not on terrestrial radio.

But don’t you really wish it was?

Though don’t you wish it was?