For the past few years I've been taking a deep dive into various alternative genres, especially shoegaze and emo.

I initially became interested in that spectrum of rock music in my late teens (circa 2007-09), when I suddenly became aware of the type of music I had been hearing in Hot Topic and Vans Shoes stores- the latter of which is still an association I make to this day. I had also been hearing pop punk like Green Day and the recent wave of garage rock, especially since I had become a White Stripes fan a few years prior.

This stuff was very different from the classic rock I had grown up listening to on the car radio- the likes of Led Zeppelin, The Who, Boston, Queen, and Journey, as well as occasional prog tunes by Yes and Rush. (Full disclosure: 1960s and 1970s rock and pop is still my favorite kind of music, but I like to broaden my horizons.) I'm not entirely sure when and where I had first encountered alt rock- I had heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Weird Al's "Angry White Boy Polka", but other than that, all I can figure is that it was just... around. I couldn't tell you exactly what drew me to it in the first place, either. Maybe it was just different from the blond divas and boy bands everyone else my age was listening to.

I accidentally wrote a T. Rex Christmas song.

My homage to Led Zeppelin. Uses lyrics written around 2002, and a guitar riff from 2010.

This is a rock band from my area. I think they have a lot of potential.

It’s a subtle thing, but I think part of the reason I’m not 100% enamored with ‘90s and ‘00s indie/emo/shoegaze/etc. is that so, so much of the rhythm guitar is just straight downstroked 8th notes throughout the song.

I guess growing up on the syncopation and shuffle of a lot of rock music from the ‘50s to the ‘70s makes me prefer a little more variety.

Here’s a cool promising rock band I saw a couple months ago

Really underrated band

“Mia” by Aerosmith

A lost Bond theme

Music genres get blurry

Part of my never-ending effort to understand the universe is gaining at least a small amount of knowledge of every single music genre that ever existed. Being the kid who grew up listening to K-Earth Oldies, Arrow Classic Rock, and The Beatles albums, this mostly means guitar-oriented rock and pop genres from roughly 1950 to 1990.

After a while, you start to notice that these sub-genres and sub-sub-sub-genres starts to drift into one another as they selectively emphasize and/or subtract elements of music that existed before. Once you get deeply into it, it all becomes a blur, and the shared elements of surf rock, psychedelic, and black metal become apparent and you start to question if the subdivisions are entirely necessary.

This is especially apparent in the punk/alternative spectrum. I notice that there are over a dozen subgenres that essentially are all one iteration or another of revitalizing rock and pop music from about 1965 to 1970 with a subtly different leaning:

I don’t dare claim that these “labels” are completely meaningless, since learning about them is exciting and interesting to me, but making a conscious effort to create music that fits their defintion exactly is a fruitless effort since their defintion is hazy to begin with.

My brain just managed to blend the guitar solos from “Hotel California” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.

There’s not much of a vintage music/oldies/classic rock crowd on Tumblr, is there?