Analyzing Rock Music Culture

In his article Characterizing Rock Music Culture: The Case of Heavy Metal, Will Straw discuses the evolution of heavy metal, its audience, and its relation to other sub-genres of rock music. Straw addresses the origins of the heavy metal at the beginning of his article, stating that it spawned from the decomposition of the psychedelic music of the 1960’s as that decade came to an end, along with country rock and symphonic/electronic rock. He then goes into detail about how the music industry changed during the 1970’s, mostly due to its transition from local, independent record labels to larger, nationally known labels, turning the music industry into an oligopoly. This change in how music was created and advertised helped create the culture

Straw, in his discussion of how the oligopolization of the music industry, seemed to suggest that this musical evolution wasn’t actually what caused heavy metal to attract its audience. While it serves no purpose in this article, it could be a very interesting area of study if it we’re fleshed out a little more. For example, at the very beginning, Straw states “ The decomposition of psychedelic music…followed three principal directions” (867). He then names country rock, symphonic/electronic rock, and heavy metal to be these three directions. He never goes into more detail about the other two forms of rock. It would have been interesting if he had not just left it there, but talked more about how this evolution occurred and the differences between these related genres. By comparing these three genres more instead of just briefly mentioning them, Straw could have created an interesting evaluation of what causes music genres to splinter over time and how this change in music represents change in the culture surrounding

It would have been a much stronger article if he had stayed on this subject and dug a little deeper into it. From what he mentioned in the few pages that he covers all of this information, it seems like this “industrialization” of the music industry had a very large influence the people who listened to music at the time. While talking about the changes in the music industry, Straw stats “These developments made more important an audience segment that had been somewhat disenfranchised by movements within rock in the late 1960’s – suburban youth…it was they who where the principal heavy metal constituency” (870). Here Straw is limiting his research to only heavy metal culture, and this causes him to lose an opportunity to discus how this change effected other music cultures as well. If he had gone into more detail about what audiences other genres of music, he may have been able to compare and contrast the statistics of the different audiences to see why certain people are drawn to certain music. Straw could have discussed the similarities that people apart of a certain musical culture had and analyze what causes someone to gravitate towards a certain