Something has happened to rock music. It has splintered. It has consolidated. Tastes have changed. Tastes have reverted. It has become indie, but indie is so corporate. It is anemic, juvenile, and overly concerned with the cantankerous and pontifical music blog scene. I would love to hear something—anything—that lights the mass imagination like 1987’s Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses. Drawing on such classic rock influences as The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, It’s raw and incendiary power single-handedly brought rock-n-roll back from the brink of glam, and arguably opened the door for the grunge age to follow.

Gun’s N’ Roses was far from a pretty band, and their deeply flawed personalities, while gaining them plenty of headlines and notoriety, eventually tore them apart before they could even produce a fourth album. But it was this very quality of imperfection that drew many of their fans to them, and fueled their insanely hook-driven music. They were power-houses, rock-wise, and they left a big, gaping hole in the landscape behind them.

Sure, grunge came in and mopped up the mess GNR made with great efficacy; Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Sound Garden, and Alice In Chains hold fond places in the intelligent rock lovers memory, but when was the last time you heard a young singer say they were inspired to fucking kick the walls down by Eddie Vedder? Or of a kid driven to pick up a guitar and start wailing because of Jerry Cantrell? I’m not saying these guys weren’t good—in fact, they were (and continue to be) fairly brilliant. But one could also argue that if it wasn’t for their (at times) overly-introspective take on life, we could have avoided all this stupid fucking emo bullshit nonsense that just makes a person want to give up on life completely and listen to jazz. For instance, how influenced do you think those snotty pricks, Vampire Weekend, are by THESE lyrics:

Ya get nothin’ for nothin’
If that’s what ya do
Turn around bitch I got a use for you
Besides you ain’t got nothin’ better to do
And I’m bored

That little piece of brilliance was from GNR’s It’s So Easy, and there is something just so beautifully immediate about it’s complete lack of artistry. That’s rock and roll. Accept no imitations. Somebody out there please start making some real music again.