General

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

vive la insurrection — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:34:10 GMT

Lou Reed Honda Scooter commercial ( A @@$$!! scooter, not even a motorcycle)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaQwlsrFZCA

Hey Hey My My - Here is the story of Johnny Rotten: John Lydon Country Life Butter Commercial (at least it wasn't margerine)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvR2QiJ8wno

There is also the Devo "Whip It" song in the Swiffer Commercial ("Swiff It")- being from Ohio, this one hits particularly close to home

Ouch, some strong evidence right there

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

Marko — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 04:05:33 GMT

That kind of music however, died out as early as the mid-to-late 60s. Right around there was when the British started invading, giving their own take on "rock and roll" which turned into "rock music" (yes, the two are seperate). Around that time came the hippie pestilence, and the psychadelic era. All of that seemed to decline around the mid-to-late seventies, and was further rendered dead by the hipster invasion of the 90s. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the explanation for the terrible, terrible music calling itself "rock" today.

I'd like to elaborate my biggest issue in this text was with the notion Rock and Rock n' Roll are distinct, which I find silly.

Just the explanation above is more than a little bit silly. So you have British invasion bands who are playing Rock n' Roll, but somewhere along the line, they stop to do so, and begin to play Rock music. So up to a certain year the Animals, or the Kinks are a Rock n' Roll act but then they outgrow it and establish a new Rock music genre.

But actually if you look at it closely throughout their existence these bands always have far more in common with Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry than they ever do with prog rock or indie rock bands. So to maintain this notion there is such a thing as Rock music founded by the Beach Boys and the British invasion bands of which Holly and Berry are outside of it, but which includes some Emo acts is ridicilous just on the face of it. Actually Rock if understood in this (silly) picture of all Rock minus early Rock n' Roll is no more narrower genre than Rock as synonymous with all Rock (Rock n' Roll) including, naturally its early Rock n' Roll foundation. Actually this silly insistence on banishing the fathers of Rock n' Roll from Rock n' Roll (= Rock) is completely arbitrary, and doesn't help narrow the term down any, since any term which can subsume the huge difference between prog or elaborate metal to punk and indie, naturally has place for early rock n' roll as well, and right down smack down in the middle of it at that.

This false distinction and unjustified banishment of early Rock n' Roll's grea's from the music they launched stems not from people who played it, or even really understood it, but from critics who only ever wrote about it. Critics were always in love with borderline Rock n' Roll genres, which expanded Rock music, but which never defined it. Most writers take themselves too seriously and therefore were inclined (particularly) to inane deviationists genres of Rock n' Roll. They loved prog, and folk, and indie, and pyschedelic. But they hated and resented the true plumb-line Rock n' Roll acts and therefore felt distant to Berry and Presley to whom the deviationist acts they listened to did not owe as much.

In fact you have from the 1950s right through the end of the Rock n' Roll era a fun-loving, self-consciously juvenile Rock n' Roll acts which trace their lineage in a perfectly straight line to Berry's fist raising rockers and the Beatles' exaggarated self-consciously pathetic ballads. Acts which never thought of Rock as anything other than a shorthand for Rock n' Rolll. Early Rock n' Roll, British Rock n' Roll, huge part of "proto-Punk" and Glam Rock, and 1980s Pop Metal. These were true plumbline Rock n' Roll movements with Folk Rock, Heartland, Punk, Southern, Indie on the one and "Classic" Rock, Progressive Rock, Psychedelic, and latter no-shagging-orcs-and-elves Metal forming its left-wing, and right-wing deviations respectfully.

It's extremely difficult to conclude acts like The Rolling Stones, Slade, Garry Glitter, The New York Dolls, MC5, Ramones, Hanoi Rocks, Pretty Boy Floyd, Tesla, Def Leppard, Guns n' Roses, W.A.S.P. were part of the same genre ("Rock music") as Pink Floyd or John Mellancamp, but at the same time most definetely not of the same genre than Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard. It's not difficult, it's ridicilous. The only ones who attempt to do this are people embarrased about Rock's fun-loving-to-the-point-of-being-slightly-idiotic core.

In fact you will note than in the terms defined by Student Rock indeed died in 1992. That is the year when Rock stopped being a mayor force in music. It is also the end which marked the abrupt end of the last iteration of plumbline Rock n' Roll in the form of Sunset Strip Glam (and associated acts). As long as there was a plumbline movement to motor along the whole breath of Rock music had power, that is including its deviationist forms. But as soon as the core was killed, the deviationists were not able to sustain the momentum on their own, and the phenomena died as a mayor force in contemporary music.

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

Bert — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 03:03:02 GMT

I just thought of this quote from The Black Keys:

Rock & roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world… So they became OK with the idea that the biggest rock band in the world is always going to be shit – therefore you should never try to be the biggest rock band in the world. Fuck that! Rock & roll is the music I feel the most passionately about, and I don’t like to see it fucking ruined and spoon-fed down our throats in this watered-down, post-grunge crap, horrendous shit. When people start lumping us into that kind of shit, it’s like, ‘Fuck you,’ honestly.

Maybe it's just a mass lowering of standards.

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

vive la insurrection — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:46:16 GMT

Forgot:

Sometimes one of these great bands "cracks" the culture (look at my list of favs ad Dylan and those are probably the "uber examples") and there is something of an immediate recognition of something fresh and amazing that leads a person to dig underground, kind of a "conversion experience". Once again, I don't see that now

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

vive la insurrection — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 02:33:35 GMT

let me clarify Bert:

1) I did point out the difference between Rock as a vital culture vs a mainstream music representitive. I do come "from underground", after my initial falling in love with rock via the Beatles, Nirvana, Yardbirds, The Sex Pistols, and The Velvet Underground (all of which are still among my favs) I was essentially a product of the underground scene. I still tend to think most of the best albums and bands of their respective genres are relatively unobscure, and considered "classics" within whatever genre you may choose.

2) I think most of the great "movements", and to a degree music, of rock also represtend by a vital culture - the obvious uber example is Punk: but also think Industrial, Riot Grrl, Metal, Mowtown, Rap, etc, etc - one of the thoughts I was alluding to, is that doesnt quite exist in the same manner.

And as you stated, every thing I said could be a facade, maybe it's I'm not in my early 20's anymore and can't get excited by these things or involved in them - it's just an impression - but it was vaugely in my mind even in my early 20's.

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

Bert — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:28:25 GMT

vive, wouldn't you think this shift could be sort of a facade as far as music goes? In regards to all forms of rock music, I won't deny they can sell, but I've never come across anyone that's into music to only scope out what's generally known, or in other words to pick at the crust without digging into the pie.

When grunge became the thing in the early 90's MTV said "glam metal was dead" (or whatever they said) but it wasn't dead, and grunge wasn't anything really new, it's just to the mass public that doesn't know otherwise that was the truth. How many know the riff for Nirvana's "Come as You Are" was taken from Killing Joke's "Eighties" and KJ tried to sue Nirvana, with maybe even a much more smaller group realizing the riff itself was taken from The Damned's "Life Goes On" (it's compared here).

Point being I think what may direct any shift is actually below the radar contrasted to those who have exhausted what's left on top. Once in a while it becomes prevalent enough or resonates with a mass of people, and someone decides to market it on the whole.

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

vive la insurrection — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:48:19 GMT

Just to not sound like a prophet of gloom:

I think it's still pretty easy to have a good time in most environments and be around exciting things and great people - my overall thrust was there is a paradigm shift and there is a "feel" of cultural exhaustion to the whole ordeal.

As for Europe in the 1890's:

I think its a fairly uncontroversial view, or at least not an eccentric opinion, to take it as a comfortably passive and decadent culture: decadent poets, dandies, bad pop music, Bismark and strong nation states, penny dreadfuls,obnoxious tourists, perfumed invitations, gibson girls, etc

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

Caley McKibbin — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:09:24 GMT

Radio and TV are mere marketing tools. There is a class of people that don't take in either, me included.

Anyway, categorizing music like this seems archaic to me now. It's like categorizing economies as "Roman", "Greek", etc. Recently I've started to use mathematical signal generators. Mixing to me is becoming more akin to doing 3D matrix transformations in OpenGL than anything else. I tend to think of "art" as doing things haphazardly. You can't reduce every existing thing to equations, but you can create anything with equations.

When I get to learning OpenAL in the next few months I will be making my own pure wave generator. If only I had started programming 10 years ago. Lmao.

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

gotlucky — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 03:56:39 GMT

Smiling Dave:

Rap had a prime?

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

Student — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 03:29:29 GMT

I think a better question might be is Rock and Roll still vital as a culture / sub culture, I don't think it has been for at least a decade.

Good point. And I pretty much agree.

Personally, it seems like a comfortably narcisstic, bourgoise "last man" type of culture - it becomes very hard, though it still can be done, to find much in movies (though this was a better couple years for film than usual), music, tv, or "sub cultures" that really truly excites - if our "sub culture" is defined by @##!!!! hipsters, that is not a good thing. This may be representitive of how Europe was in the 1890's.

Perhaps there are signs of cultural exhaustion all around in the US?

Probably true. I didn't think about it that way, but maybe this is all part of one a cultural malaise. I had not thought about parallels to Europe in the 1890's. Of course, I don't know much about the culture of that period.

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

Bert — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 02:28:25 GMT

When it comes to rock and roll and the general conception and bands that people think of, like Led Zepplin and The Beatles, I find them uninteresting. I'll take The Stooges over them any day, and in my opinion The Stooges have more of an embodiment of "rock and roll" than the more popular bands (exhibit A).

I think a defining difference are those who listen to music and those who are into music, and I feel there's a difference and it seems more apparent when I talk about music with people. Some people will put the time into finding more and new bands. While we could speculate based on the top 40 that rock and roll is dead and rap and hip-hop are more marketable, I could also speculate the entire top 40 of rap and hip-hop is also mundane "heard it, seen it, done it" type of music that's being put out. The same with a lot of dubstep and techno artists. It's a bit amusing and frustrating that electonica is a big thing now, when there's artists who've been doing it for the past two decades with an extensive discography and are still relatively unknown to the "club" scene.

Then again I might be in a different loop. Here's my top 6 of 2012.

1. Agalloch - Faustian Echoes
2. Swans - The Seer
3. Cult of Youth - Love Will Prevail
4. Sons of Noel and Adrian - Knots
5. Lust For Youth - Growing Seeds
6. Chelsea Wolfe - Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

Marko — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:51:42 GMT

For a while rythm and blues and rock and roll were thought of as symonymous. Both Berry and Presely talked about the music they were performing as rythm and blues until the latter designation was come up with.

Whoa, not a music historian, I just go by what the original 60s bands mentioned over time.

That's what you get by starting in the 60s. Those aren't the "original bands". They're already 2nd generation.

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

Aristophanes — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:21:38 GMT

Whoa, not a music historian, I just go by what the original 60s bands mentioned over time. Who'd the people you mentioned actually influence? There were probably tons of musicians that made music similar to what become rock that were just not popular. So, Clapton and his ilk say Robert Johnson, guthrie, lead belly, etc. Beatles credit do-op stuff and R&B from te 30's and 40's (Paul listened to classical et al when he was young on account of his dad). Also, no one is disputing the influence of Ella Fitzgerald...it is just hard to transition from melody piano and brass sections to guitar. That is why blues is always credited by the guitar driven rock and roll. I'm sure fats domino and chuck berry would have mentioned more jazzy backgrounds. There aren't many rock and rollers who say, "Oh, the Rat Pack instrumental section really made me want to play music, thus i picked up a guitar."

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

myhumangetsme — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:11:23 GMT

Aristophanes:
BLUES is the foundation for rock not jazz.

Perhaps you should read into the history of rock. Many of the earliest rock n' roll musicians credited rhythm and blues and jump blues, which came more out of the ragtime/swing/boogie woogie lineage than the traditional folk blues. Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five is the band most often mentioned as setting the stage for rock n' roll (and not unjustly), but you could just as easily credit Count Basie or Rosetta Tharpe before them (or Wynonie Harris after them); there's even a decent argument to be made for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

The blues were a part of rock n' roll, but so were a lot of other things.

Re: Is Rock and Roll Dead?

Marko — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:07:33 GMT

When they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Chuck Berry when he was scraping the bottom of the barrel: Roll Over Beethoven, Rock and Roll Music. Started kinda early.

Ever faced a meth addict? He'll babble in-your-face euphoria powerfully, too. Gorillas can grunt even more powerfully. But they too, have nothing in the tank artistically, at least to me.

Mind you you've gonne from It's no good because there is no powerful emotion, to It's no good because it's not artistic. Maybe you didn't express yourself in the best possible way initially.

Also if you come to Rock and Roll on a quest for art that's your perogative, but it was actually built around the notion of fun.