yet another earlier post-rock: James Wolcott's July 1975 Circus profile of Todd Rundgren.

Wolcott's penultimate paragraph:

Todd says, "Kids used to go into rock for fame, now it's for money. The proliferation of cheap instruments made it possible for anyone to take up a career in rock." Perhaps he believes that his music has to be majestically thunderous in order to drown out the buzzing of the locusts. When the issue of sexuality in rock came up, Todd said, "Rock right now isn't sexy, it's smutty." All these remarks point to the same conviction: that rock music has become so common (in the bad sense of that word), so repetitive, and so enmeshed in financial interests that its vitality has degenerated into mindlessness. In short, it's time to go beyond rock. What will this post-rock phenomenon be known as? "Why not just call it music?," replied Todd. Common sense has its triumphs.