Toronto rocker Danko Jones is featured on the cover of Germany's Visions Magazine Accompanying the article is the 3000 word essay Jones wrote on why Rock is NOT dead. An excerpt from the original English version is available below:

"'Rock Is Dead'. It's a statement that elicits a shudder in me. Hearing it openly declared not only startles me as a fan but disturbs me now that it has become my vocation. If nobody wants to hear it, who's gonna hear the riffs that I write? If nobody wants to hear it, will there be anybody left to write riffs that will excite me?

Panic only lasts for a few moments until I remind myself we live in the internet age, where everybody now has a platform to pitch their uninformed opinions to an uninterested crowd. So, when someone posts careless catchphrases like "Rock Is Finally Dead" and I catch wind of it, I remind myself that it isn’t written in stone but rather a transitory slapdash bullshit remark meant only to drive online traffic towards whatever its source is peddling. Most of the time these quotes fail to gain any attention and fall by the wayside. However, in the case of the phrase - "Rock Is Finally Dead", it was uttered by a very influential commandeering figure - Gene Simmons.

Gene Simmons, bassist/singer for the rock band Kiss, despite him being in the public eye for 40 years, has only recently risen to the coveted status of pop-culture talking-head. We can thank reality television and the perpetual need for online content that encourages people like Gene to talk continuously. He’s savvy enough to know full well that the more sensational the statement, the warmer the spotlight. But the spotlight can eventually burn and his tendencies to provoke and prod have cost him dearly in the court of public opinion. His remarks on depression, immigrants, Islam, his open worship of money and his corny gloating over sexual conquests have done much to tarnish his image, leaving him even villainized to some.

When headlines started to emerge back in September of last year with Gene’s proclamation that "Rock Is Finally Dead" in Esquire magazine, the internet exploded with a giant middle finger pointed in his general direction. People were lining up in droves to hurl their epithets at him before even reading the entire article. But when the dust settled and the knee-jerk reactions faded from view, what we were seemingly left with was an innocuous fatherly Gene extolling the new generation and lamenting their lot as have-nots.

Despite it being carefully crafted by the writer to make Gene look compassionate (the writer being Nick Simmons, Gene's son), going so far as to insist he wasn't "an out-of-touch one-percenter" by name-dropping Tame Impala, it still came off more like a publicity stunt meant to improve his dilapidated public persona rather than a genuine gesture of sympathy.

So delusional on the subject he speaks and unaware of the impression he leaves, Gene goes so far as to blame the consumers, the fans themselves, for killing Rock by downloading the music. He even blames the bands if they’ve engaged in downloading too. This is classic ivory-tower-thinking - laying blame on what you see beneath you rather than looking around and above you."

Go to this location for the complete article.

Check out the new song "Do You Wanna Rock" from the new Danko Jones album, Fire Music. 

Yes, we do...