Rock isn't dead. It just smells funny.

Five decades after Decca booted The Beatles out of an audition and assured their manager unequivocally that "guitar groups are on the way out," panic erupted across the blogosphere when it was reported that in 2010 only three of the Top 100 best-selling hits in the UK could be deemed 'rock'. One was a Journey song from the 80's, propelled into the mainstream by Gleeks, one was by Train (nope, me neither) and one by Florence and the PR Machine (who is, let's face it, about as 'rawk' as Cilla Black). Even broadcaster Paul Gambeccini took a swipe at this genre in crisis.

"It's over, in the same way the jazz era is over," he announced, blaming record labels for chasing instant profit rather than investing in artist development. This year, certain music critics seem keener than ever to drive a nail through its coffin as they look in dismay at a Top 40 almost bereft of guitars. As declining sales figures are regurgitated and meaningless pie charts are produced, you'd think from the hysteria that rock's supposed depletion and predicted extinction is about to result in our children being subjected to the aural terror of Nicki Minaj for their remaining days.

You'll have heard Noel Gallagher bemoaning the lack of a unique frontman (presumably he means someone like him) to reinvigorate guitar music.

"That's all rock and roll is; retelling this great fucking story," grunted the soon to be inexplicably crowned Godlike Genius. You remember him. Never one to stray too far from his musical ancestory, he's an egotistical Neanderthal who once played guitar in a Slade tribute act. These days he produces excrement, or albums as he prefers them to be known, remarkable only for their complacency and the fact that each subsequent release is virtually indistinguishable from the previous one. Oh deary me Noel, if it's enthusiasm for guitars you're after, perhaps you could check out the still healthily-attended Download Festival. Black Sabbath are on this year, and they're practically prehistoric. You'd love 'em.
His imbecilic sibling was equally as unenthusiastic in an interview last year.

"I really despise this new fookin' disease of indie fookin' shit, fookin' student music," Liam argued, spitting out mouthfuls of chips and Tennents Super.

Then the drummer from the Kaiser Chiefs (yes, the drummer, ahahahaha) recently tweeted that guitar music "is at an all-time low. Very few bands which started when we did have stood the test of time," he continued, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the hits are eluding them as well.

Finally, someone from The Enemy (Christ knows what his name is, it hardly matters) tweeted: "People are so out of touch it pains me. I've still got the kitchen and bathroom to decorate but looks like we'll have to save music again." Oh, you must remember The Enemy. They're the ones who wrote such seminal, era-defining classics as ... ummmm, Er??? Oh nevermind.

If you think rock is dead, it's more likely that you're guilty of being too selective in what you choose to be exposed to. This is 2012 and it's significantly easier to seek out exciting new music than ever before. If you can't find any good rock bands after just one morning online, then you're simply not trying. Last time I checked, releases from Enter Shikari, The Maccabees, The Black Keys and Tribes were all residing in the upper regions of the album chart, but even if no bands are currently aping U2 and filling stadiums with bloated, crowd-pleasing hits, so what? It may well be the case that musicians as wonderfully weird as The Cocteau Twins or The Cure might get overlooked in today's mainstream, but why should we care whether or not music is designed for mass appeal? Waiting for another Oasis or Nirvana to come along and storm the charts is just daft. Who would you rather your heroes be - Captain Beefheart or Olly Murs?

Spotify, You Tube and, yes, illegal filesharing, mean that using increasingly irrelevant singles chart statistics as a barometer for public taste is inaccurate in itself, but let's remember exactly which guitar bands the nation has clamped to its easily impressed bosom during the last few years. Firstly, there's the sort of sanctimonious, whitewashed, festival-scaling indie that Jo Whiley masturbates over, like Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol. These are bands whose musical arsenals are now brimming with simpering, mid-paced songs about seas rising and tears streaming and lights guiding and bells ringing and choirs singing and lords a-leaping, most of which are now to be forever synonymous with Syco-invented sob stories, Dermot hugs and Glastonbury sets which closely resemble, as one Twitterer put it, "a Nazi rally styled by kindergarten teachers who once did an E."

Then of course there was "landfill indie," basically a glut of offensively bland, aesthetically challenged new-wave-of-nu-beige plagiarists like The Fratellis, The Twang, The Rascals, The View, The Wombats, The Pigeon Detectives, The Feeling, The Automatic, The Courteeners, The Hoosiers, The Holloways and, calm down girls, The Kooks. I'm unable to accentuate the extent of my contempt for The Kooks in simple words, so instead I'll refer you to their Wikipedia page:

"The original members... met as students at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music. The inspiration to form a band came to (Luke) Pritchard as he and (Paul) Garred were out shopping for clothes one day in Primark. Speaking to MTV, Garred said, "We had this vision on how we wanted the band to look and stuff—so we bought some clothes and these hats." With no demo of their material Garred and Pritchard went in search of a gig, and according to Garred, they were able to book their first show simply because the manager liked their hats. "So we went in to get a gig, we don't have a demo, and this guy told us, 'Well, you can't get a gig if you don't have a demo, but I like your hats, so I'm going to give you a gig.'"

OH GOD. SERIOUSLY, JUST FUCK OFF.

Last, and by all means least, there's Scouting For Girls. Oh yes. Scouting For fucking Girls, with their unbearable niceness and tiresome singalongs. A journalist once wrote that Scouting for Girls were "like the sound of Satan's scrotum emptying." Frustratingly, I've never been able to better that description.

You must remember this assembly line of woefully abysmal groups. You'd usually catch them being introduced by unjustifiably enthusiastic TV presenters on late-night Channel 4. Seemingly unaware of how excrutiatingly mediocre they were, too incompetent or intimidated to innovate, simply too blinded by dollar signs to be anything other than adequate, they continued to mass-produce their populist, radio friendly unit shifters, now unwanted anywhere other than the V Festival or Poundland. If, when they say rock is dead, they mean that this formulaic, derivative, post-Libertines form of 'rock', then I say good riddance. Let it die. In fact, stab it until it bleeds. In fact, stab it until it bleeds and then take turns to rape it senseless. In fact, stab it, rape it, set it alight, snort the ashes, then bury whatever remains beside the rotting corpse of Johnny Borrell and crank up the techno.




Want some rock? Let's start with the new Divorce/Jailhouse Fuck split 10-inch on the SixSixSixties Label.







Or perhaps you'd prefer the ferocious riffage of Retox from their 'Ugly Animals' album of last year.







You could download the Maria And The Gay album from their bandcamp page. You can check out the awesome bands which the Italian Beach Babes, Dirty Water, Upset The Rhythm and Sacred Bones labels churn out. Go into a record shop (if you can find one) and buy a record by The Horrors. They released one of the best albums of last year and hardly anyone noticed. Go online and listen to Arabrot, Duchess Says, Odonis Odonis, Wooden Shjips or Bitches.




...



Or Foot Village, Male Bonding, Thee Oh Sees or Iceage.






Or Hella, Sissy and the Blisters, Fidlar, Cerebral Ballzy or Sex Church.






Or go with the NME's tips for glory (if you must) and put your faith in Menswear... I mean, Spector. Quit waiting for punk to happen again. It won't, but music has rarely sounded as exciting as it does now. If you're bored of middle-aged rock nostalgists, tweet about a new and exciting find rather than feigning enthusiasm for festival line-ups which are permanently clogged up with reformed old bands re-enacting an overrated past and topping up the pension fund in the process. Just stop whinging about rock being dead.

It's depressing that the NME persist in allowing mediocre guitar bands to inflict their gloomy outlook on the state of guitar music, rather than dedicating space to the countless creative visionaries that don't get enough exposure. It's a shame they resort to putting pop stars who are actually dead on their front cover. It's a shame that they place additional pressure on new artists to secure a hit by declaring them to be merely an updated version of something that was overhyped last year and has since sunk without trace (This Many Boyfriends are The New Cribs, Binary are The New White Lies, Dry The River are The New Mulligan and O'Hare... and so it goes on). It's a shame they think that The Vaccines are the future. In any case, artists working within genres other than 'rock' are more likely to be the natural successors to people like Bowie or Joy Division precisely because they innovate rather than imitate. They are pushing musical boundaries, not squeezing into a pair of skinny jeans, banging on about the past and reviving cliches which are best left for dead. And they certainly don't HAVE to compete with the homogenous, autotuned flatulence clogging up the charts.

Besides, any journos who remain insistent that there's not enough rock infiltrating the mainstream ought to be careful what they wish for. X Factor runner-up Marcus Collins is about to release a cover of 'Seven Nation Army' by the White Stripes as his debut single.

Now shut up.