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Ends of an era...
I posted the below (postulating the end of the 'rock era' and how it might come to be seen/defined in retrospect) in another thread recently, sort of thinking out loud, but I keep thinking about it - hope no-one minds if I regurgitate the subject as a separate thread? I'd be fascinated to hear other opinions...
Most 'eras' can only be ascribed start-end dates, often woolly, sometimes conveniently clear, in retrospect. It is, for instance, fabulously convenient (in retrospect, for commentators) that Lonnie Donegan had his last hit the week before the Beatles had their first - though clearly the 'skiffle era' had pretty much run its course as a general phenomenon a couple of years before that, by 1959/60. The terrorist killing of several members of the Miami Showband in 1976 is always referred to as the end of the Irish showband era, although again it had run its course as a general phenomenon by the end of the '60s. Ike Turner's 'Rocket 88' was the start of rock'n'roll, Elvis going into the army was the end of it. I'm sure everyone has their start/end dates for the 'beat boom', the 'punk era' etc - probably analagous with particular record releases and arguable around those. But I wonder can we define, encompassing all of the above genres, something that could stand scrutiny as the 'rock era'? Some would argue that the Jazz era (1920s+) ended when Duke Ellington died (1974); is there a single living musician whose death would possibly be as convenient a way to encapsulate the 'rock era' (1950-something to ____ ?)
Wizz Jones once said that you could tell when the '60s Brit singer-songwriter boom centred around 'Les Cousins' in Soho ended because, by then (1970), there was no more audience - everyone in the audience was themselves a singer-songwriter. I think we're getting to the point now where there are probably more aspiring musicians/people making records than pure audience with a meaningful engagement to music. Not as easy to prove, mind, as it would have been glancing into Les Cousins and noticing everyone there had a guitar case... Obviously 'rock music' in all its forms continues on, and will do so as far as one can see BUT 'variety' contined long after the 'age of variety' - where it was the defining popular/social entertainment of its day - had ended, withering down to end-of-pier summer season acts and the Chuckle Brothers.
I think the present time may well be defined as something like the 'internet era' - a time when multifarious communications and gadgets defined how society worked/rested/played. I'm sure I'm being too verbose, so I'll stop there...
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end of a thread...
Ah, okay, so it really IS just me that ponders this kind of thing. I'll turn the light off on the way out...
yes, yes
but what do you think of Andrew Collins?
Interesting post, I read and enjoyed it. It feeds into Gordon Byrne's book Alma Cogan to me which looks (sort of) at that transition between variety and pop.
I do ponder these things too
Though I've noticed that posting such ruminations can be a lonely enterprise.
Some might say the rock era ended around 1995 with unashamed backward looking music breaking out all over and ideas running out. Some might suggest the end came with Live Aid as Bono sang those familiar lines from classic rock back catalogue of the past over his own band's song. Yet it goes on still. Then again that might all be far too premature, and rose-coloured spectacle, person of a certain age, 'it was better in my day', thinking, since impressive new music continues to exist.
There is a lot of music coming out, but it remains to be seen what the outcome of digital domination, without much revenue, will really mean, since we're not there yet. In a way there's much more rock being listened to than used to be since all ages are fans, not just the youth. Yes it is a different era now, it is true. Generation gap is not what it was. Music goes on and if rock dies out, well there's plenty of other avenues/styles to explore, happily. Well, I'm not sure it will really die out - the influences will continue to inform new music in some way, and there will remain the interest in hearing old recordings - my nephews discovered the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Pink Floyd, and one has learned to play such tunes as Layla, they also like new bands. Yet it does all seem more like in a museum than it used to. Yet I think it will be a long time before it all stops and becomes something else, unrecognisable from what it once was.
Well worth reposting
My failure to respond to the post wasn't because I didn't think much of it, but because I've been thinking about it.
And, er, I'm still not ready. I'm still at the term-defining stage and I'm stuck on the definition of "rock".
Fantastic: I'm not alone!
Very interesting comments everyone - funny, I'd wondered if Live Aid was maybe an 'end' of something, but hadn't thought about Bono's self-referencing (which perhaps one day someone will suggest in a PhD thesis was the moment a meta-textual dagger entered the heart of pop and we could suddenly all see the joins, or the wizard behind the curtain, or, er, something!).
It's a good point - and I guess you could develop it by showing how pop began to eat itself (with or without irony) after that: from Erasure's 'Abbaesque' EP to all those US alt rockers covering Carpenters songs to the whole 90s boy band thing where all the material seemed to be covers of Bee Gees/Cat Stevens/Bread/etc to the irony-free mainstream hell of now where Simon Cowell builds a temple to a soulless, ultrapolished version of past hits with all those people who sing like Mariah and re-cover all the covers from the 90s. And 'we'(the UK population) somehow let him.
I suppose in a way it's similar to Ant & Dec's revamping (is it with or without irony? who knows?) of all those 70s gameshows, and the 'postmodern' revival of Les Dennis, or Peter Kay walking his fine line between affection and irony with (a) 'Amarillo' and (b) getting Rod/Jane/Freddie, Bobby Davro and the bloke with the ostrich and all those sort of 70s variety types into the video for the following year's '500 Miles' charity record - in all of which a population sort of plays a role in suspending disbelief and imagining it was back in the carefree 70s. Probably quite enjoying the gameshow formats/Les's act/whatever, yet at the same time aware that its something akin to being like people in the 70s who themselves watched 'The Good Old Days' (the faux Victorian Music Hall show) and sang along to 'Down At The Old Bull & Bush' - obviously aware that they were having a night off from modern life by engaging with something that is undeniably of the past/passe.
I think a great deal about pop/rock music has begun to become entombed now in a cultural space similar to that - like a museum, somebody suggested above - where we all know the reference points and everything new is more or less an ever decreasing copy (witttingly or slavishly) of something that's gone before. I find it hard to see or hear Oasis - as were also mentioned above, tellingly - without thinking that here are people literally play-acting the roles of swaggering geezer rock stars, whether consciously or not (nature/nurture debate I guess), and likewise just regurgitating an oevre out of late-period Beatles licks. And I suppose there is a part of society that still wants that role to be filled. But what next - a new band in 10 years who copy the Gallaghers copy?
As for a definition of 'rock', I think by 'rock era' I was referring more to 'all of popular music (inc pop/rock/folk revival/jazz-fusion/blues boom/etc)' as a, er, socio-cultural thing, if you can excuse the term, than setting actual musical genre parameters. It's more to do with, in a nutshell, the huge impact rock/pop/etc had for a sustained period - mid 50s to [when roughly?] - as a major 'thing' in society. Quite how one defines and quantifies that 'thing' is where the real questions are. One could very crudely illustrate it be saying there were X million people rooting for this or that as a Christmas No.1 in the 70s whereas now nobody gives a toss - and I really don't think that's a generational case of 'ee, it were better in my day, lad'. The ubiquity of music - and the sheer number of people recording it - has basically denied anything to do with music any mass impact any more. Likewise, you could say music and musical tribalism was more of a way of life to a greater number of kids in the 50s/60s/70s/80s even, whereas now it seems just another lifestyle accessory among many - and of no perceived monetary value.
Thinking out loud... I wonder should we think of the 'rock era' as synonymous with the 'music business era' or something along those lines? Or the 'business-viable artefact-centred youth-focused musical production era' (!) - that is, a time when significant percentages of society or, if you like, a certain demographic in society, was willing to buy enough shellac/vinyl/cassette/CD artefacts of recorded music to prop up a substantial industry, to warrant prime-time TV shows and sustain a whole parallel print music media (now very much diminished), and indeed to make popular music an attainable career option. A time when (commercially) second division bands like, say, Atomic Rooster or Ashton, Gardner & Dyke or Frankie Miller or T'Pau or the Adventures or whoever could make a bona fide living for several years each out of touring and recording, whereas now it seems you're either a bedroom hobby musician or a paying-to-play aspiring band with few venues/punters or, for a very, very few people, a Snow Patrol or a Coldplay. (Or a Simon Cowell light-entertainment product with a 15 minute career and one splurge of big sales before the audience moves on to the next competition.)
In as nutshell, I don't know if mass communication has tolled the death of the rock era (or the 'viable music business era' or whatever we call it), but it's certainly come along and replaced it. Which answers the question posed 50 years ago by the man who wrote 'Move It'.
Ian Samwell
wrote Move It. He died five years ago last week.
And is eulogised...
...very powerfully at the end of Pete Frame's book on the birth of rock in Britain, 'The Restless Generation'.
Indeed...
I've enthused about The Restless Generation here a couple of times recently.
IMHO, it's a candidate for the most important rock-related book ever written.
It has documented a previously ignored area of British musical history without which we wouldn't be talking on this forum; and he wrote it just in time to capture the memories of those who were there.
If the Vipers van hadn't been held up by traffic outside the 2I's coffee bar on that summer afternoon, would rock music - in the way we understand it - have ever happened?
Blimey Colin!
You cover a lot of ground there, rather impressively. I suppose I'm thinking of rock in particular as I see it as especially limited in terms of where else it can go, and as looking rather redundant, whereas electronica, jazz, dance, folk, pop (in the sense of being strongly hit-focused material) seem to have more future potential left. Maybe. As ever, although the charts (or the pop everyone's heard of, except for those who avoid reality TV like X Factor and never listen to radio 1 or 2 etc) can throw up the exceptional quality item, it's elsewhere, in less obvious places, where you find the most interesing stuff - and that seems to continue. It's all quite complicated. Probably more time and distance needed before we can understand the whole picture - if that's ever really possible.
An age of future Anvils?
Why thank you Sven, very kind of you to say so! I suppose there is rather a lot of still only vaguely connected (needing more time/distance) musing there. But, as far as the continuation of odd bits of interesting music goes, I'm sure you're right - the creativity of a people never ends, it's just that after a period the spotlight moves elsewhere. People still write crime fiction and there are several novelists who do very well out of it, but the 'golden age' of crime fiction will always be the 1930s/40s (or, if one prefers, the late Victorian Conan Doyle-inspired era). I think the 'golden age' of the broad church of rock has, similarly, been and gone - leaving a lesser sea of homages, pastiches and people largely building on those influences, or deemed to be doing so. There is very little new, any more, under the sun - only new ways of presenting old forms (like people 'releasing' new music within computer games/RockBand/Wii this-or-that; call me old fashioned, but that feels like giving an album away with a few coupons from crisp packets, with the ensuing level of perceived value - it's no longer ABOUT the music, the music is just the background to another leisure pursuit).
And, as I said above, I think the nature and expectations of the audience has changed. Take all these spectaculars at the O2 for instance - Prince, Zeppelin, Jackson etc. Are these not people paying Covent Garden type prices with the expectation of seeing 'a big pop/rock show' as they used to be, where the event and the experience are in a way bigger than the artist involved? Ditto, all these old pop/rock people doing whole albums as one-off live presentations (like Sparks doing all 21 of their LPs last year over 21 nights). Is this not akin to the presentation of opera itself - an art form essentially mothballed from the 18th-19th centuries, but still with a just about viable live audience if the ticket prices are hefty enough [record labels almost never fund new studio recordings of opera these days - the sums just don't work] who come for the spectacle?
Older acts can certainly repackage themselves for a few more years of 'big event' styled live shows (I see the Pet Shop Boys are doing very limited, but very big live shows soon), with Jackson styled 'this is it' or Status Quo/Streisand/Sinatra/Meatloaf styled 'this MIGHT be it' spin to maximise the sales and justify the prices, but how will anyone current - in the circumstances in which music and media and attention spans exist today - EVER attain the initial status and quantity of soundtrack-to-your-life back catalogue to subsequently justify those collosal 'opera/event level' shows of the kind we're seeing today? And if they can't reach that level, is there a truly viable level below it which society/media will continue to even notice? Or are we living in an age of (gulp) future Anvils...?
Premature burial?
Pop is different to opera though in that it's still massively, er..., popular in comparison, and you've got the original recordings as primary artifact, so you can manage happily without the performance, this is obvious I guess, but people do want to see the actual artist, that is a large part of what they are willing to pay big sums for - it really is them, the 'legend', up there on the stage. Once the artist has died, as will happen more and more, naturally, will we be willing to see a performance by someone else? It's not really like opera in that sense, well there'll be an audience for a copy, as there is now (tribute bands), but people won't be prepared to pay as much for that, of course, and won't this demand decline over time, with a few exceptions like Beatles?
I don't know, maybe then it'll go more towards people wanting to hear new acts do covers - and the old material will live on, in performance, there. But yeah, there's been a big change in attitude to pop and rock, it is more about the past now, since there's so much of it behind us. You really need new big names to take over form the old, to sustain it, and it's doubtful if that will keep on happening. So, I agree, it will probably become more and more of a marginal thing, for many, seen only of great consequence in it's past glories. Then again, there will still be loads of music around for a long while yet, which continues to mean a lot to people, and, I would add, it always has been a pretty marginal thing for quite a number of individuals.
Death by new carpet...
All fair fair points Sven - I think a very small number of tribute bands are already operating in a sort of opera/re-enactment way - those people who do full-scale 'Lam,b Lies Down' era Genesis shows, where they're all copying moves, let alone music, from old concert film of Gabriel dressed as flowers/lawnmowers/whatever. Ditto, the 'Mahavishnu Project' - a band of variable numbers in the US who periodically 'do' whole Mahavishnu Orchestra albums onstage, most recently 'Visions of the Emerald Beyond' with an 11 piece set-up inc. scoring for string quartet and wind section. They also run an annual 'Vishnu Fest' in New York, where most if not all of the original members have attended as audience (on different days/years!) and, in Jan Hammer's case, even played with their 'interpreters'.
In the MO's case - where their music has already been arranged for and covered on record by a whole slew of string quartets, solo pianists, big bands etc, it has become a kind of modern chamber repertoire. The Beatles music has, of course, long entered the realms of a widely arrangeable canon that crosses boundaries. I guess a very few artists will be immortalised/live on in those ways (ie with their music as a kind of modern equivalent of classical music, interpreted in different forms for decades to come, or like opera/ballet where the whole stage act is faithfully reproduced as an artistic artefact in itself). The vast majority of 'pop' will remain ephemeral, of and for the moment alone.
Somebody - a wise old pub rocker in Belfast who had previously, long ago, had aspirations of being a real rock star playing original music - once told me, during a conversation in the mid 90s about what was beginning to look like a pretty happening new scene based around a particular bar in the town, that "all the best scenes go to hell whenever the bar owner puts a new carpet down". I knew exactly what he meant - and sure enough, the new scene we were talking about thrived and died within a couple of years (but it was great while it lasted), with most of the rest of the music industry blissfully ignoring it. His point was that these things just 'happen' - they can't be bottled or finessed. I'd suggest it's the same vis a vis the government and music - whenever it's possible to get govt grants to be a pop group, state approval within supposed text book frameworks, the game is up. That time is now.
Back in the 90s I had a friend who was being hounded by the dole office because they'd found out he was in an original-music band, striving to make something of himself but it was earning him literally no money at the time in spite of relatively frequent gigs around town. Somehow a local arts TV programme got to hear of it and I was interviewed as a local journo sympathetic to the plight of such people. I didn't realise then that the alternative would be state-sanctioned mediocrity - the music world equivalent of people doing media studies degrees when in fact that world is already open, without any dubious qualification, to survival-of-the-fittest. Just make a few brass-neck calls, get a foot on the ladder, live lean for a while and you're in. Like Johnny Marr said in his Salford lecture, nothing good was ever created BY the industry, it always came from outsiders. Will we get to the point where bands do courses, copy set-text song structures, get govt grants for 6 months, get state-funded websites and produce music with nothing to say? And will anyone be interested in listening? Hmmm....