i'm experiencing a bit of a rock revival in my own life thanks to my niece, who is 15, loves rock music (and all kinds of music - her favorite rapper is Tupac and she LOOOOOOOVES Michael Jackson), and is currently teaching herself electric guitar.

i drive her to school every morning (i'm her guardian) and we listen to music. i'm trying to put her on to classic rock music across genres (metal/punk/hardcore/new wave/etc.) and she puts me on to stuff she likes (this morning she picked Deftones - Around The Fur which was something I hadn't listened to before).

today, she was lamenting that there's no music like that anymore that's popular. i agreed and said that i think rock music might be dead. she said she's sure people still do it but now it's hard to find, and i agreed. i was telling her i think it's dead because art sometimes follows advances in tech, and at one point the electric guitar was the highest form of tech in music. but after metal and punk, there was really no NEW ways to play the guitar and synthesizers/samplers became smaller, faster, better so why make the basis of music one instrument when you have all of these "instruments" in a little box at your disposal - that become basically infinite in sound when you add on board effects/filters/etc.

so, am i right? is rock music dead?