Anyone else think it's weird that at one point in our recent history, garage rock and "nu metal" were competing for the favor of mainstream rock audiences? I don't think there was ever a point at which two visions of rock music - i.e., rebellious versus "rebellious," unvarnished versus slickly corporatized, bassless bands versus seven-string-drop-C-tuning acts - were so starkly evident in the top 40. Certainly at the time, I remember thinking nothing of hearing Linkin Park follow the White Stripes on my local radio station. In fact, I remember that my own musical tastes would vacillate between one or the other. (Thankfully my senses won out...) Today, of course, there's no serious contender on mainstream radio to today's mainstream "rock" of choice: Coldplay/The Script/The Fray/any number of piano rock bands who hew relentlessly to a diatonic scale and vaguely melancholic-yet-hopeful lyrics...what happened!?
