This weekend was the first weekend of Coachella, the ridiculously popular music festival that takes place in California every April. Besides being quite jealous of all the people who actually got to attend this massive party, when looking at the lineup, I noticed something - you had very few bands that would qualify as "mainstream." Other than the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who closed out the opening weekend last night, the number of bands that get played on the radio was pretty slim. Phoenix - Saturday's closer - had a crossover hit with "1901," but they still aren't exactly the sort of band that gets eaten up by the masses.

The festival was a haven for indie rock fans (assuming the Chili Peppers don't bother them too much), but the bands that supposedly make up "mainstream" rock were just about absent from the proceedings. This begs a question - does anyone know what mainstream rock music really is, or whether or not it really exists anymore. If we were to believe the Billboard charts, or perhaps the opinions who claim to hate anything mainstream, it might be represented by the sort of bands you'd hear on radio stations like The Edge - bands like Shinedown, Theory of A Deadman, and everyone's favorite scapegoat, Nickelback.

But if the notion of mainstream is defined solely by popularity, are any of these bands really all that big? Would any of them be viable as a closing act at a festival like Coachella? Probably not. of course, that's partially because the people who attend Coachella tend to be the same type of people who hate this sort of music. But suppose there were a music festival specifically aimed at fans of so-called Active Rock? Would in draw in the numbers of something like Coachella or Bonnarroo? I doubt it.

The music we refer to as mainstream rock exists on an island - it has almost no crossover fans. You have the people who listen to this music every day, and have no idea what everyone else is talking about when they blast it for it's lack of originality, or uncreative lyrics, and you have the rest of the music world, who wouldn't touch those bands with a 39 and a half foot pole. It's not like this with many other genres. There's a relatively equal number of dedicated hip-hop fans, and people who casually enjoy mainstream rap artists. Same goes for pop and R&B. Even country,long known as a "niche" genre likely has more casual fans than mainstream rock - you'd probably find more casual fans of Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan than you would for Breaking Benjamin or Buckcherry.

So, does this mean indie is the new mainstream? Well, maybe a little, but keep in mind, very few of these bands have hits. Once in awhile you get a fluke like fun., who had two smashes out of nowhere. or you get a band like Mumford & Sons that began life as an allegedly "indie" band before capturing the hearts of the masses at a rather alarming rate. That's the confusing thing - the bands that get played on the radio aren't popular outside of the radio, the bands that have larger followings don't get any airplay. It's left us in an era where rock has no identity, no flagship bands or sounds. It's no-mans-land right now.

There are few rock acts that I would count as being truly "mainstream.". The Chili Peppers would be one, Foo Fighters would be another, then Green Day, U2 as the elder statesmen, and finally, the Black Keys, since they're just about the only band I can think of that has radio hits and an indie following (even if that following began to evaporate the second they started having radio hits). This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it's just worth noting - the term "mainstream" rock tends to be used as a strawman, to describe the dull, unentertaining music swallowed by the masses, but lately that music's following is dwindling rapidly, to the point where it's nothing more than a niche.