As of today, rock and roll is dead or it has at least fallen into a deep coma. To me, rock is not simply just a music form; it is the angst of the masses, the anger in our stomachs, and the blood on the stage. Rock is a feeling, which finds the eager listener and sets them free during the few precious moments the song plays. The music used to find me when I turned on my lonesome radio, but in today's endless barrage of mediocre music unleashed upon the world to grab money for the relentlessly greedy record companies, I've been searching blindly to find that special feeling rock carries with it but to no avail.

Since the creation of rock, arguably in the 1950's, musical pitfalls such as this have been seen many times. However, each of these musical plateaus has been elevated to a new level by an amazing new genre of rock. In the late 1960's or 1970's, punk saved the world from what may have been an overly artistic death of rock. When disco ruled the airwaves in the 70's, metal burst in and gave the music-going public something to feel besides bubbles. Grunge killed the detestable hair bands in the early 90's and saved us temporarily from the inescapable abyss of material girl pop.

Today, it seems with no end in sight, the same plagiarism finds its way onto the airwaves and slowly murders rock in the process. Everywhere I go I hear a song that has been played before by another band, giants in their time. If one hears the same song ad-nauseum it will inevitably lose that special feeling which makes rock so amazing. When the biggest selling band is Creed, who are simply trying to resurrect the once mighty grunge, one must wonder if anything new will ever save us from this musical drudgery we face everyday.

Fortunately, since the invention of the phonograph, humans have been able to record sounds, which means while we encounter the odd radio idiocy such as this, we have the ability to escape to the past or dig for indie artists to get our kicks. For today at least, it seems every mainstream band is simply floating in an endless sea of mediocrity. During the history of rock, something has always come to salvage it, so one must wonder if anyone cares enough to save mainstream rock, and if not it may be time to lay this broken giant down for the final time. Though at the moment, the future may seem bleak to the millions of true rock fans out there, do not despair – there could always be a diamond in the rough or a destination around the next corner.