That's it everybody. Pack up your guitars.
Rock n' roll relic Gene Simmons of Kiss has said that the final nail has been hammered into the coffin of rock music.
In an interview with Esquire conducted by Simmons' son Nick, Gene criticised the infrastructure of the music industry, claiming that there are no effective support networks for promising bands or musicians like there was in decades past.
When asked to offer some advice to this generation's up and coming young music makers, Simmons explained the roadblocks which he sees as becoming increasingly difficult for musicians to overcome.
"Don't give up your day job is a good piece of advice", Simmons said. "Don't quit your day job is a good piece of advice. When I was coming up, it was not an insurmountable mountain. Once you had a record company on your side, they would fund you, and that also meant when you toured they would give you tour support. There was an entire industry to help the next Beatles, Stones, Prince, Hendrix, to prop them up and support them every step of the way. There are still record companies, and it does apply to pop, rap, and country to an extent. But for performers who are also songwriters - the creators - for rock music, for soul, for the blues - it's finally dead. Rock is finally dead."
Simmons also went on to blame the increase in file-sharing as also being partly responsible for the mire he claims rock music has become over the past few years.
These are heavy-handed claims for Simmons, who a lot of music fans would agree hasn't been on the business side of relevancy in many years. It's not uncommon for older generations to fail to properly comprehend the movements and rhythms contained in the music world if the succeeding generations, but does Gene Simmons have a point here or is this just another example of a rock and roll dinosaur's bitterness at not being deemed relevant anymore?
Answers on a postcard.
