The 2000s were the formative decade of my adult life. I went from being a senior in college with a girlfriend of three months on January 1, 2000 to a father of three weeks ten years later (same chick too!). Having gained year-round full-time employment for the first time during the '00s, it was the decade where my music collection and concert-going abilities weren't held back by financial limitations. And, of course, there was Napster, Limewire, and the like at the beginning of the decade, so I could just download any song I wanted, limited only by the quality of my modem. How we consumed music changed cataclysmically during the decade, as digital music and streaming began to take hold, and YouTube picked up the music video torch that MTV dropped. In many ways, thanks to iTunes and other digital music purchasing services, we reverted to the pre-Beatles era, when people bought singles instead of full albums. Now, if you just wanted to buy two songs by an artist, you didn't have to buy the whole CD.
Musically, it was actually a pretty good decade for rock and roll. At the end of the '90s, there was a lot of alt rock, rap metal, nu metal, and post-grunge. In the '00s, those genres spilled over, while the "The" bands brought back punk, garage rock, and rock and roll to the masses, from the Motor City to Sweden. We also had pop punk and emo, metalcore, and a Guns N' Roses album we had been waiting 25 years to hear. When the decade started, the term "indie rock" was reserved for bands that were actually on independent record labels, but by the end of the decade, so-called indie rock bands were topping the charts. And with the return of Lollapalooza in 2005 and the rise of other massive annual music festivals like Coachella and Bonarroo, lesser-known bands that might have previously been relegated to the club circuit could gain a much larger following.
As I do every October, you're gonna meet me in the bathroom for a daily dose of rock, at least on the weekdays. There will be no repeated artists during the course of the month. I'm going to try my best not to repeat songs that I have featured in prior Rocktobers, but I make no promises. As always, the week leading up to Halloween will feature songs with dark, evil, or macabre themes. CoronaVinyl and Retro Video of the Week will be suspended during Rocktober, but Hair Band Friday will continue because Hair Band Friday never stops.
As always, remember that this is Rocktober, so these will all be bands, artists, and songs that rock, even though they may not always be from genres or artists that you would consider "rocking" or "rockers." There will be popular songs, songs that you may never had heard before, and maybe even some bands and artists you've never heard of. Rest assured, though, everything will rock.
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