"You don't see a lot of difference between the Gin Blossoms and the Byrds"
About this Quote
It lands like a shrug, but it’s really a provocation: if you’re not hearing “a lot of difference” between the Gin Blossoms and the Byrds, you’re either flattening history on purpose or calling out how pop culture already does it for you. Steve Forbert, a songwriter with one foot in the classic-rock lineage and the other in the restless churn of the industry, is poking at the way guitar music gets packaged into eras as if they’re sealed containers.
On paper, the Byrds are myth: folk-rock pioneers, jangly Rickenbackers, counterculture credibility, a band that helped invent a vocabulary. The Gin Blossoms are often filed as ’90s alt-rock radio: clean hooks, heartache with a smirk, a sound engineered for car stereos. Forbert’s line works because it dares you to admit the connective tissue - that signature jangle, the bright chord voicings, the bittersweet melodic DNA - while also exposing how critics and fans fetishize “importance” over experience. If a song hits the same nerve, does provenance matter?
The subtext is a defense of craft against canon. Forbert isn’t necessarily elevating the Gin Blossoms to Byrds status or dragging the Byrds down; he’s questioning why we’re so invested in policing the gap. It’s also a quiet indictment of the rock cycle itself: innovation becomes style, style becomes product, and soon the future sounds suspiciously like a well-mastered past.
On paper, the Byrds are myth: folk-rock pioneers, jangly Rickenbackers, counterculture credibility, a band that helped invent a vocabulary. The Gin Blossoms are often filed as ’90s alt-rock radio: clean hooks, heartache with a smirk, a sound engineered for car stereos. Forbert’s line works because it dares you to admit the connective tissue - that signature jangle, the bright chord voicings, the bittersweet melodic DNA - while also exposing how critics and fans fetishize “importance” over experience. If a song hits the same nerve, does provenance matter?
The subtext is a defense of craft against canon. Forbert isn’t necessarily elevating the Gin Blossoms to Byrds status or dragging the Byrds down; he’s questioning why we’re so invested in policing the gap. It’s also a quiet indictment of the rock cycle itself: innovation becomes style, style becomes product, and soon the future sounds suspiciously like a well-mastered past.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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