The New Music Marketing Term™ is not only a repackaging euphemism, it represents music that theoretically treads water too. Rehashing the every musical cliché from 50s rock onwards, including rockabilly, folk rock, psychedelic rock, heavy metal, ska, disco, etc. does not make anything new. Mixing many of these genres within an album or a single song does not make you innovative, it makes you a musical blender (brrrrrrr whine rrrrrrrr whine whine brrrrrrrr rrrrrrrr).

Rock traces its roots most directly to the blues, and its characteristic sound of playing flatted or minor thirds and other 'blue notes' over major harmonies. Rock music, as all forms of popular music in the western world, has always revolved around diatonic harmony. Diatonic harmony is the harmonization of the seven unique tones in a major scale or one of its modes (which would include Aeolian, the so-called minor scale or key). Outside of bands like Sonic Youth, with their characteristically dissonant alternate guitar tunings, we rarely hear anything based outside of diatonic harmony. Note that although we sometimes hear pentatonic (five note), modal, or 'blue note' melodies over top, underneath strictly diatonic chords (major, minor, and diminished) are always lurking.

Rock music has been very conservative in its use of rhythm and meter as well. We have been pummeled with the 4/4 forever: the downbeats of 1 and 3 usually represented by the bass drum, and the backbeats of 2 and 4 by the snare - "boom-chick boom-chick." Occasionally you may hear something in rock in 12/8 (again a blues throwback, the so-called shuffle), a beat with a triplet feel. Due to the placement of the bass and snare, however, this usually has the feel of 4/4 with swung eighths. The boom-chick has a reasonably respectable history - the conservatives at the time of the birth of rock 'n' roll claimed the characteristic beat represented the alternate movements of one's hips during the act of sexual intercourse! But enough already! Can we move on? If we are going to make claims to New Music™, can we at least think our way out of this repetitive crap?

Alternative, Nü Metal, etc. rarely step outside of these theoretical boundaries. So what's that about new music again?

Let's examine how exciting things can be when these rules are broken. My so-called "only major label band that matters anymore" is Radiohead. Their most striking examination of off-kilter time signatures came in the chorus of the incredible "Paranoid Android," from OK Computer - the music brilliantly trips over itself again and again, adding to the scary tone of the song. Compare this to the rather "this is an exercise in technical wankery" feel of a band like Dream Theater playing some non-4/4, and you quickly see Radiohead's power. Radiohead went on to masterfully screw with time in future albums, notably "Pyramid Song" from Amnesiac. Their continual digesting and disgorging of musical genres for their own twisted purposes is equally amazing. Having drawn early comparisons to British guitar pop bands such as Catherine Wheel and the Stone Roses as well as American folk rockers (early R.E.M. was a reference I never understood!), Radiohead has proven themselves to be beyond genre with their last three releases. "No Surprises" from OK Computer chugs along in a very Velvet Underground, 60s sort of way, but somehow manages to sound new. "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" from Amnesiac mashes drum 'n' bass (or electronica in general) in the most disrespectful way, while "Life in a Glasshouse" from the same album presents a New Orleans-style funeral dirge. Listeners are left with the feeling that the band are cold, detached, white-coated laboratory scientists from another planet - NOT Earthly parrots. Much has been written about Radiohead's debt to 'truly experimental' bands like Sigur Ros, etc. Of course Radiohead (or anyone else for that matter) isn't original, that is, they didn't evolve in a vacuum. But Radiohead's brilliance is in their absorption of others and their truly unique presentation - a very musical, listenable, refreshing, and experimental package. I'll take that over the (generally) unlistenable masturbation of Sigur Ros any day.

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