Nothing is as universally liked or cherished as music. Before the age of music the world was a land of chaos and strife, people fighting meaningless wars and petty struggles over simple things like what sort of golden statues you are allowed to build. The world was without harmony, people were husks of thought and meat, and babies were told stories about plagues and wolves instead of being rocked to sleep by power ballads. That was all to change though. In 1931, Les Paul attached a microphone to a kleenex box and invented music, subsequently ending all wars and conflict. Culture prevailed, and it thrives to this day.

Since then we have seen the music landscape evolve into what it is today: a terrifying, thousand-headed beast plated in spinning gold. To look upon it is to be both amazed and horrified, allowing you to die at the same time of both awe-induced hyperventilation and fear-induced terminal pants-shitting.


Fig 1: Music
It is obvious that something must be done. Now, if you just said "we'll just stop listening to music," you could not be more retarded. Even if you were to say that exactly same thing while pouring coffee into a VCR that is hooked up to a machine that punches you in the belly when the VCR detects coffee. And also the VCR is on fire. No stupid, the real answer is simple: music will be re-unified.

How must this happen? The hell if I know. It will probably involve a tribunal, and maybe a sassy black lady will tell everyone to be friends. Who knows. What I DO know is that when it happens, and the dust settles, my stock in the multi-necked guitar market is going to quadruple because music is going to be fucking awesome. My vision (the correct vision) of the band of the future is bright and completely full of lasers.

The Future Band's Roster
With all the great types of music all being combined into one, one would think that the sheer number of instuments now involved would necessitate an army of musicians to be in any one band. Now, while this may be true now, remember that this is the future we are talking about. In the future, along with the development of robots and 12 slice toasters, we will have developed the technology to graft wicked shiny cyborg arms onto our backs. This will allow virtually anyone to play up to 12-15 instruments at once. Remember that guy from Mary Poppins who was a one man band? Imagine him doing 3 times as much, and then imagine 7 of him doing it all at the same time.


Fig 2: AHHHHH. AHHHHHHHH.
Yeah, I'm sorta scared too actually.

The Future Band's Instuments
Just as a viking is nothing without his axe, a musician is nothing without his axe. Excellent metaphors aside though, it is plain to see that the future will no doubt bring some startling and goddamn awesome new instruments. All bands will be required, by law, to have:

-Double Kick Gong: Remember double kick drums? Old school. Nowadays, the only thing worth kicking at 200 BPM will be a pair of 80 foot gongs.
-Keyboard of Ultimate Fun: Think a keyboard, but like 10 times longer. It will also bend up and down, like a roller coaster. The musician will be able to slide down the keys from one end to the other, exciting the crowd. It will also be fun.
-Chain-Guitar: Remember the chain-guns from old FPS games, where the barrel spins around and that makes more bullets happen? Well, attach the same mechanism to a guitar and watch as the guitar's 7 necks rotate at 3000 RPM. This will create a maelstrom of strings which the guitarist will solo on. Of course it will also still shoot bullets, but whatever.
-Strutterlele: It's a ukelele, but it only plays Strutter by Kiss. Best for covers and homages.
-Penis Theremin: Exactly what it sounds like.
-Wah-Wah Harp: Using magic and witchcraft, future humans will develop the ability to hook up a wicked wah wah pedal to a harp. Fuck yeah.

The Future Band's Look
Everyone (that isn't a complete dullard or a drunk) remembers their first kiss. If music was playing at the time, you will probably remember what song was on at the time. Think back, try to remember. Got it? I'm willing to bet that you hate that song right now. That is because all the music from whenever you first laid the lips down was probably written by Phil Collins. And why is this bad? That is right, Phil Collins doesn't have metal enough hair. He gets a 1 on the metal hair scale. No, that is not a metaphor, see for yourself.


Fig 3: Science proves Phil Collins to be unacceptable

The musical excellence that the future will bring will be a direct result of the fact that everyone will have long, flowing locks of untamed genious flowing down and over the necks of their guitars. Also, all bands will have suits completely covered in OLEDs, which will be programmed to flash in time with the music. Also, the suits can be made to display helpful messages, such as directions to the bathrooms or song lyrics. Shows will be both blinding and informative!

The Future Band's Sound

Ultimately, the success of the future band will only partially be decided by the amount of lasers shooting out of their guitars/hair. No, there will be rhythms and grooves and solos and cheesy lyrics about loving people all through the night, and it will be there in spades. People of the future will no doubt be so efficient that not a single second of song-time will be wasted. What will it actually sound like though? That's impossible to know right now. If you would have asked Elvis Presley what music 30 years later would sound like he probably wouldn't have mentioned anything describing Devo or Tupac, and yet those two artists are the definitive cross-section of our radiowaves. Music, like some people's clothing, changes every day. And while we can predict the rise of instruments and outfits and the like, we will never be able to see exactly how the musicians of the future will put it all together.

We will just have to wait and see.*

*In the future, we will be able to see sound because science fucking rules.

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