Neither do I.
In an interview with Pure Grain Audio, Kansas guitarist and co-founder Rich Willins talked about the current state of rock music and music in general (as transcribed by Ultimate Guitar). Take a look:
“I don’t know really what rock music is today,” he said. “For me, rock music – listening to the radio, the newest rock things coming, really it was the British invasion that caught my attention.”
The musician added:
“What does radio has to do with what we do anymore? Taylor Swift is talented, but what does that have to do with me? Country isn’t even country anymore. To me, we had our moment in the ’70s.
“There is a living, vibrant, musical scene that flies below the radar of pop radio, and we’ve been living there since the ’80s, and it’s a wonderful place to be.
“It doesn’t care about what’s popular, it doesn’t care about the latest trends, the latest fashion, the latest gossip – we don’t deal in that world. They don’t change, that’s our audience, and that’s who we deal with. We quit beating our heads against the wall about what’s popular 30 years ago.”
Focusing on the band’s latest studio album, 2016’s “The Prelude Implicit,” Rich said that the record reflects the group’s true nature, adding:
“We’ve never been a hit machine, that’s just never been what we do. We’ve stumbled on a couple, ‘Dust in the Wind‘ was a huge hit… ‘Wayward Son,’ when that came out – we weren’t copying a trend, it just became popular.”
I’m just a lucky guy who has chosen metal to live with for a long time. Metal changed my life for good. It made me more confident and stronger. Metalheads are naturally far away from the mass mediocrity and don’t accept impostures from anybody else. Metal is more than music, it’s a life changing oportunity!