At the end of the 90s, rock music was deep in the doldrums…fans were genuinely worried for its future…and it did look bleak, especially in contrast to how exciting things had been earlier in the decade…

But in ’98 and ’99, rock was under assault on three sides…pop music was king and the whole world had gone crazy for those sounds…then there was rap and hip-hop, which kept getting more popular and stronger every month…and then there was electronica, which was siphoning away rock fans to go dance in a warehouse somewhere…

Like I said, it was dire…and lots of rock fans were despondent…it was around then, when rock music was deep in the doldrums, that I wrote a newspaper op-ed…it was a pep talk of sorts…it was called “Britney Spears, the end is nigh”…

Basically, I said “there are cycles in music that go back to the 1950s…they describe a fight between rock and pop…when one is at its height, the other is at its low in terms of popularity…yes, pop is hot right now, but rock will come back…and of you look at the history of these cycles, rock should be ready for a big comeback in about two years”…

 

Turns out I was right…and the artists to lead the comeback were a bunch of young unknowns with fresh ideas…

 

This is part two of our look at the music of the oughts…I call this episode “the indie revolution”…

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