Rock music tends to move in cycles between excess and simplicity. These two conflicting forces possibly define the entire history of rock. Flashy early 70s prog-rock gave way to the raw minimalism of punk’s “class of ’77.” In the early 90s, the backlash against makeup-wearing 80s hair bands yielded the teen angst revolution of grunge.
But in 2001, perhaps the situation is not quite so clear. The radio airwaves are populated by everything from nu-metal, to middle-of-the-road “emotional” music (a l