I was discussing this only on Sunday - that the bands I really love had swing, knew where the groove was, but also had real heart - when they sang happy, it lifted you up. When they sang about being down you drew reflectively on a rollup, sipped a scotch and thought "I know exactly what you mean". And they could boogie when boogie was required. And they left space in the music so everyone could breath. And the lyrics bonded with the music seamlessly. And here is a perfect example....

Now I'm not saying such bands don't exist today, but can anyone tell me who they are?

"Stay With me" there is a song that lurches around so perfectly and a number I have been playing a lot recently.

Also Ronnie Lane could swing like a beech, his first three are cracking, good timey, Rock and Roll. I also have his BBc Concert albums which again have that Band-like feel good and loose vibe.

Little Feat-well what can you say tender and sweet and rocking and savage.

Have a listen to bands like Bon Jovi, Oasis, Coldplay etc they sound like they are dancing with club feet. Leaden and Lumpy for sure Patrick. Stodge would be another apt description. Yet inside their heads I am sure they think they "Rock" God help us all!! I blame big stadium rock, with its reliance on throwing big shape gestures and waaay too loud guitars, they haven't a clue

This was meant to be the A-side - miles better than Fool's Gold - and boy does it roll.

A little too much jazz?

This is something that has bothered me for a long time.
Earlier this year Uncut magazine gave away a CD of rock 'n' roll "in the spirit of the Faces":
http://tinyurl.com/5v4rym
I need to give it another listen, but nothing jumped out at me when I first heard it.

I think part of the trouble is that the specific sort of "roll" that we're talking about is a fairly thin thread through pop music history, which means that anyone doing it today is immediately condemned as being retro. I think the swagger element of "roll" is still fairly popular (a possible example being "Hang Me Up To Dry" by Cold War Kids) but the strut and boogie seem to be rare.
I love Primal Scream's Stones/Faces impressions; I bet Jagger/Richards would have loved to have written "Movin' On Up", "Jailbird", "Rocks" or "Country Girl". Having said that, Primal Scream did deserve that very cruel pie chart dissection of their last album by our friends at Word.

Here are a few randomly remembered and relatively recent tracks that seem to me to roll, without being straight Stones/Faces/Southern rock pastiches:

"Chicken Payback" - The Bees ("Listening Man" also rolls)

"Woke Up This Morning" - Alabama 3

"Afro" - Jon Spencer Blue Explosion

Every review of Tinariwen seems to mention that they roll:

Let me make it clear from the off that I agree that the most important thing about popular music is it's feel and it's spontaneity. You shouldn't have to be a virtuoso to play it with spirit and verve.

But knowing your way around what you're making sounds with is a factor in how you deliver it.

Does anyone practise anymore? Watched Coldplay on telly last month and was struck by just how limited the drummer seemed to be in technique. And the guitar player. I have no doubt that the band agreed the arrangements and they're perfectly happy with how they present their musical ideas - it's not as if the themes of the songs and the moods they wish to create cry out for Buddy Rich fills or Steve Vai widdle-diddling. But they just don't play their instruments at all well. You get no feeling of confidence in them that they could stretch things a little, to swing a little even, and improvise something really interesting.

It's always been part of the deal with pop and rock. It's a medium which celebrates its own immediate creativity. Simple ideas are often the best. But the ability to develop those initial ideas into something else earthier and groovier needs a little more. A bit of understanding of the tool that's expressing your heart.

Razorlight's drummer is shit as well.

'Why isn't it yesterday anymore?'?

.....they started to spell jass with zs.

...as pointed out by Twangothan and Andy in above posts. I think Elbow's 'Grounds For Divorce' rocks along handsomely, but 'proper' rock is a dying breed in Britain- hard to pinpoint where this started. There's also few vocalists that match legends like Robert Plant, Rod Stewart, Paul Rodgers, Terry Reid or even David Coverdale (make what you will of Whitesnake but he's a first class vocalist, I think).

Also, many of these 'club footed' UK bands are thrust into big stadiums/festivals fairly quickly and they look embarassingly out of their depth compared to performers from the rest of the world.

I think we're still going through a period where post-punk/new wave is a major influence in rock (especially British rock), so "jagged", "angular" and "choppy" guitars abound which don't usually co-exist with the looseness of "roll".
And so much American rock hasn't yet cleansed itself of grunge, which is perhaps too angry to create the laid-back groove that we're talking about.

Lowell George, Keith Richard, Ron wood and all the rest of them spent their formative years as musicians listening to, and wanting to play like, Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Howlin' wolf, Sam Cooke, Arthur Alexander, Willie Dixon....the list is endless. They absorbed groove and swing as they learned how to play.

(where are you, Fraser?) how to embed this, but I've just been watching Nick Lowe (ex Woodbridge School - yay!) on the wonderful BBC i-Player (my cold insisted I shouldn't stay up until midnight), and I think "I Knew The Bride...." meets the criteria pretty nicely. It starts at about 51:30, but of course you should watch the whole show.

Nice bass....!

I defy your toes not to tap in this masterpiece of swing and timing. Sorry Eddie, more white boys blues.

...that the closest thing there is to these hoary old shouters mentioned above in recent times is that blokey from out of Stereophonics and the blokey out of Reef?
Not a good thing, surely?

The great Frankie Miller?

Their dull, leaden lumpy sound can be heard in the doomy shouty metal that comes out of my son's room.

Could it be that today's practitioners don't listen to black music, unlike their predecessors? That's where the 'roll' came from originally. Today's recording techniques - all click tracks, locking and autotuning - don't help, being designed to cut out any sloppiness

the section toward the end of Ian Macdonald's 'Revolution in the head', entitled 'Chronology', where he suggests that modern records are inferior because of the way they are made. In many cases they are built up layer by layer against a mechanized rhythm, like making it up as you go along, whereas sixties records tended to be mostly made live in the studio predesigned, with the rhythm being found after the melody had been devised. So those old recordings are more rhythmically varied than those of today. The conclusion is that pop has declined in quality, also because lyrical ideas tend to be derived from earlier records but their meaning becomes obscured and there is a staleness - but that's another story. Anyway that's his view , which is contentious, but I tend to agree with it, much as I like plenty of music since those times. It's just an opinion of course.

Some thirty years ago, the roll had to be got rid of. The roll had been responsible for endless, depressing examples of unimaginative, deeply uninteresting sexist drivel - chooglin' an' fooglin' and booglin' down the ol' hah-way wi' mah bay-beh blah blah fucking blah. "Stay with me" is the worst example, but there are too many to name. The 1970s weren't Life On Mars, they were Love Thy Neighbour, and music was no different. Getting rid of the roll (temporarily) was like chemotherapy for pop - painful and horrible, but necessary.

Browsing on the you-tube and I came across this: I think this sort of sums up Patricks conundrum. These old fellas can really play, better, to my mind than in their original version, irrespective of however many erstwhile members have left. Never mind 6 days on the road, more like, especially the bassist, 600 years on the road.......

(Oh, BTW, it's Juicy Lucy)