Fear of the Future

Abstract

There’s currently a dissatisfaction with the apparent smallness and impotence of pop and rock, their seeming inability to offer any sort of crucial blow. When is the Big Thing due? Who’s going to Drop The Bomb? Now secretly, now openly, everyone’s got their ears cocked for this single happening, a future shock in rock, a sign that it’s tomorrow at last. Networks have been constructed nationally to ensure that anyone who wants to can have a pop. Local schemes, a proliferation of examples and icons have tempted a glut of self-expression. And with all the consequent, claustrophobic bustle, all this running-out, the near-blackening of the screen with honest effort, it’s impossible to make out the note of absolute difference, the note that will bring down the walls of Jericho. In spite of a sandstorm of pluralism, all the hard-won resources at our disposal, new space in the media, historical legacy, it seems rather a long while since anything actually ‘happened’, as seemed to be promised. Early-warning systems are primed and alert, but a watched kettle has failed to boil. Or has all the water merely vaporised, into a fog of steam?