And when it comes to mainstage acts suitable for the Big Day Out, he's probably right.
While embracing a wide genre of music, the Big Day Out almost always ends its night with some shredding, soloing, moshing and general head-banging mayhem.
You only have to look at recent albums by stadium-sized, guitar-fired bands to see them embracing dance-friendly electronica trends.
Coldplay's Ghost Stories is hardly going to be a celebratory close to a day of revelry. More like "pass me a tissue". Kasabian's 48:13? A big beat bomb that sounds like your dad DJ-ing a dance party for teens. Even the Black Keys embraced a subtle electronic blueprint on their downer of a new album, Turn Blue.
How about the Rhythm & Vines lineup? In amongst the dance-fired, hip-hop friendly, drop-loving bill, there's hardly a guitar band to be seen.
That's no criticism of the festival -- they're known for rattling ribcages with their bass-friendly bills rather than embracing guitar-shredding antics.
But after I put down the phone, I thought about it a little more. There are some great guitar albums around at the moment -- perhaps you just need to dig a little deeper to find them.
In fact, some of my favourite albums this year are from guitar bands. Try Parquet Courts' slacker masterpiece Sunbathing Animals, Aussie duo DZ Deathrays' Black Rat or Mastodon's Once More Round The Sun. They're full of beer-drinking, fist-pumping anthems that will give you a sore neck in seconds.
Listen to Parquet Courts' Sunbathing Animal here:
Then there's today's TimeOut cover stars Die! Die! Die!, the Kiwi noisemaking trio who love nothing more than shredding eardrums with their abrasive post-punk racket. Their newbie, Swim, comes highly recommended.
Listen to Crystal by Die! Die! Die! here:
Looking further ahead, there's Brit duo Royal Blood, who have caused a major label bidding war with a series of wickedly aggressive singles; moody Kiwi mongrels Jakob, who are releasing their beautiful grind of a fourth album, Sines, in October; and let's not forget the year's biggest guitar album, that's coming out in a matter of weeks.
Listen to Royal Blood's Out Of The Black here:
That would be Shihad's FVEY, a record I was lucky enough to listen to in a Melbourne studio with the band (read the full story next week), and believe me when I say it's going to inspire plenty of back-breaking air guitar performances.
Especially that title track - now that's one ass-kicker of a downtuned riff.
So, the next time anyone tries to tell me rock's "a bit dead", I'm just going to quote the lyrics from Weezer's recent throwback single Back to the Shack to them: "Kick in the door, more hardcore, rockin' out like it's 94 ... "
Sounds like a recipe for a good time to me.
- TimeOut
