Entertainment For Lively Minds
Where Wrock Went Wrong - A Wrant
A recent spate of Queentastic postage on this here blog got me to asking myself just why it is that I loathe this cheery bunch of tossy-tressed tunesmiths so very deeply, seeing as how they brought innocent pleasure to millions with their lavish puppet show and good-timey clap-along hits. I can’t really distinguish, for the sake of this think-piece, between them and ELO, who also bring the sharp taste of bile to the back of my throat. Cooling to my theme, I can add Slade, Sweet, Mud, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Abba, Blue Mink, and The Brotherhood Of Man to the list of Armageddon Meltdown. And what the hell - Elton John. And the Radio One Roadshow, and above all Dave Lee Travis. All these well-meaning, massively talented and winsomely charming individuals have a few things in common, including loon pants and wide satin lapels. But it’s not just the woeful laundry and alarming barnets that make me sight down the blade of my kukri with an evil glint in my eye. And it can’t be the music, which at its worst (and best ...) is just harmless pap.
My ire is raised by something much deeper - a sense of betrayal. Back in the late sixties, pop music developed into something far removed from its Tin Pan Alley roots. It became more than just entertainment, more than something to whistle on the way to work. It was part of the times, and not only reflected the mood of disaffected youth but amplified it. It wasn’t music for your mums and dads - this was our music, and we committed to a wild ride without knowing where it was going. Etcetera.
It may be the break-up of the Beatles that created the vacuum, as countless lesser bands searched for the “formula” that had made them great. It may be the fragmentation of the music into niche markets as the music business caught up with what was happening the very second it stopped happening - John Peel used to play Donovan, Blue Cheer, the Byrds, Pentangle, Hendrix, Ravi Shankar and Led Zeppelin without anyone worrying about the flow or alienating the target demographic. It was just music - our music. And it meant more than just the tunes, it had a serious intent - it was part of a world changing for the better.
This was, in retrospect, a naive and privileged point of view. But when the seventies groups started to dominate the UK “hit parade” and the radio and the music weeklies, it felt like we’d suddenly been ripped off, and that something very precious had been stolen from us and replaced by a pantomime mockery, a bunch of grinning satin-breech’d clowns that our mums and dads were happy to peel the sprouts and wash the Cortina to.
I know that those who grew up with this music (and that of every decade since) quite properly love it for what it is, and was. And they must get tired of old fogeys shaking their grey heads in despair. But if someone really can’t see the difference between (say) Hendrix and Queen - even Led Zeppelin (a band who remained true to the sixties) and Queen, or the Beatles and ELO, or The Who and Slade ... if they can’t see that the music didn’t just progress in a linear fashion but actually went very wrong, turning into a caricature of everything the sixties held to be true ... well ... nothing. They just can't.
If some of you are scratching your noggins and asking “d’oh! what’s his point?” - this rant is, if you like, just another way of saying Queen Are Qrap (IMHO!LOL!), but trying to pin down why they are. And its not their fault. They were born of crap times and did their best, but naught availeth them. Nobody is looking around for the New Beethoven and expecting a sublime new symphony every week, so why this continued Pop Music obsession with re-creating, re-ordering, re-modeling and re-packaging what has already achieved its apogee? (note to self - look up "apogee")
Pop isn’t dead. Neither is classical or jazz, but the halcyon days are over, and everything “new” is an echo of the times when the mode of the music changed and shook the walls of the city. That music is still playing. Still as good, still as revolutionary, and above all its still *yours*.
Oops - here’s me bus!
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oh i understand
what your saying is you don't like Queen,well that's much clearer now, Thanks for that. Love and peace. Y'all x
For a moment, I thought "this Burt Kocain chap...
...he's reading my mind!"
Yes, pop reached its apogee in the 1960s, but as you wrote:
"It wasn’t music for your mums and dads - this was our music, and we committed to a wild ride without knowing where it was going. Etcetera."
And we committed to the wild ride, and then we committed to careers and mortgages and marriages and kids, and for our kids it was no more new or exciting or daring than Cliff Michelmore, and what was genuinely bold and exciting became fixated on novelty or shock value.
Which is why there is no New Beethoven (though the Victorians were desperate for Brahms to fulfil the role, in a Bruce Springsteen Future of Rock and Roll kind of way). New artforms for new generations, and some of them last better, or have greater impact, than others.
The thing that saddens me (and I may have mentioned this before) is that my teenage daughter cannot conceive of Pop music voicing opinions or seeking to change the world - that's the legacy of Cowell and indeed Queen and the rest. And that's despite her having been on forced ingestion of Beatles, Stones, Dylan etc all her life...
Right, on with the new week!
I think there's a few strands there
Great post by the way.
I remember that when I started buying music and the music press, in the late seventies, it was all very serious and doomy and given the news through most of that decade its not surprising.
Worth saying that the prelapsarian music press prior to 1977 might have been very earnest and lost in a haze of self-adulation but it was at least adult and to an extent political. And probably as a result only read by a relatively small number of people....
Even though the punks and the later New Wave / Indie crowd didn't really change EVERYTHING it did feel that way at the time and the sheer inventiveness (which isn't synonymous with quality I know) of what was around and even getting into the charts from say 1979 onwards is amazing. Didn't last of course - I blame Simon le Bon and his witless consumerism. And awful videos.
My daughters listen to a lot of new stuff and while I can hear echoes of music from my own youth in some of it, a lot of seems totally fresh to me. Its not all bad news in that you can still hear good stuff but I can't imagine they're making much of a living...
So I reckon what is grinding Burt Kocain's gears is not that the bands ran out of chords or attitudes but that what ultimately WON in the punk & rock wars was the Cheesy Tendency. Much as its often fun and entertaining its essentially conservative and by default its supporting the status quo - a slot that on reflection one wouldn't wish on anyone.
Even though I am a very grumpy old leftie I am actually quite optimistic. I think that there might be some form of revolution on the way, and one which is not guided by the mega-corporations (Google Apple etc are the same old money or rather debt dressed up differently).
Even if its just a matter of our children not being swamped by cheap toys because those days are gone, some inventiveness of thought arising from being unable to sate your desires from the latest consumer shite must be a good sign. Maybe wrock will wrise again...
Mr Kocain
can I just say that I agree with ever word you say. Sadly however, this argument is so little understood. It would appear that all pop is the same to most people and all artists too. The notion that artists or songs could- and should- change something is greeted with a blank expression. I went on a radio show last week to talk about the 'Cliff' thing and tried to put forward an agrument similar to your own and, of course, the Cliff fan didn't understand a word I was saying. Maybe that's to be expected of a Cliff fan. But it's depressing when you get similar responses from fans of more, ahem, supposedly 'aware' acts.
So you don't like them!
They aren't my favourite band by a long way, but you are too harsh. I can think of plenty of more cynical, worthless crap producers than Queen, who, let's remember, were terrific musicians, made great records, were very original, and massively successful. Also, back in the day, they were considered to be a top rock band up there with Zep etc, with cred to burn. Maybe it's better to die than fade away, but I'm not sure looking a bit daft in your advanced years is such a crime.
To your point about the idealism and rock wanting to change things - I am not so sure Queen are any more guilty than any other bands, certainly Zep were hardly hand wringing doers of worthy works. Unscientifically my sense is there are as many political/activist type artists today as there were in the 60s, ie a small minority.
What a bunch of old grumps we have on this blog
For most of the second half of the 20th century, pop music was a form of mass produced entertainment. For brief periods - the mid to late 60s(Beatles etc), the late 70s (punk and its legacy, including the new romantics) and arguably the early 90s (grunge etc) it was a form of music where the creators and innovators dominated - at all other times it has been controlled by the entertainment industry. That's not to say that there wasn't mass-produced pop in those periods I've mentioned, nor that there weren't innovative artists at other times.
I sometimes think Word readers should take off their rose tinted reading glasses...
But if I took off my rose-tinted glasses
I would see nothing.
Great post Burt
and beautifully written too, if I may be so sycophantic (and why not?).
Despite loving Queen as a singles band, I see exactly what you're saying and I agree with almost all of it.
Was there really any difference
between Hendrix and Queen? Much of Jimi's act was showmanship just as much as Freddie's posturing, from playing his guitar with his teeth to setting fire to it. But both the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Queen were technically proficient in a way that few modern bands can only dream of.
Many of the successful bands of the Seventies actually started in the late Sixties either before or just as the Beatles split up. ELO were just as much a natural evolution of the Move in the late 60s as Wings were of the Beatles, if not as tripped out, although I'll admit you can hear Jeff Lynne's musical debt to the Beatles in many of his songs and production.
The 'Oo and Slade occupied different worlds altogether, not so much musically, but fashion wise, Slade originally being skinheads, but both are remembered as fondly by their deafened fans.
Yes, the 70s were of dubious taste fashion-wise and much of the music was as manufactured as todays music, but the 80s and most of the 90s by comparison were the musical vacuum that truly sucked.
I think you've nailed it, there.
A great many successful seventies musicians were originally second-rate sixties musicians who, once success finally came along, hung on for dear life - hence the conservatism.
On the other hand
There was a revolutionary movement in the late 50’s and early 60’s where music from one culture was discovered, westernised and communicated to a post war generation of young people who were ready to grab hold of it with both hands. This coincided with technological developments which enabled wide spread availability of electric instruments (notably of course the guitar).
Over time, this rock n roll thing became diluted by a series of natural merges and transitions into what was essentially "show business". Current evidence suggests that today’s charts have more in common with the clean cut nature of popular music just after the war. It’s all gone full circle.
Queen were a big part of that process. That is not to undermine their role or their music in any way, they were just part of the transition. The fact that their music is very much a part of light entertainment today makes them the perfect example. (West End theatre, Strictly come dancing theme nights etc).
So for the future. We have a relatively bland musical platform that is due a good revolution, and there are signs that a similar cultural merging (this time from Eastern / Asian cultures) is itching to break through in the same way as did the blues back in the 50’s. What’s missing is the generation of people who are motivated to enable this (or any other) musical revolution.
A few campers on the steps of St Paul’s may be indicative of a “movement”, or it could be yet another false dawn.
I wouldn’t be too hard on them. Queen were only giving the public what they wanted!
Big misconception
about the 90s was that we were just trying to emulate the 60s. We weren't - we wanted to go one better. And failed. but we had a go. in my naivety, I didn't want Oasis to be like the Beatles, I wanted them to be even bigger and more significant. It was all about having something inspiring that wasn't in black and white. See also Euro '96
Yes, yes, yes and yes....
That first bit. Exactly what I (at 19 years old) thought of The Stone Roses in 1989. I wanted them to be better than The Beatles, The Stones, Cream and The Who and the bands my Dad rammed down my throat throughout the 80's. The debut album was better than Please Please Me, they wore better clothes and spoke to ME - so no reason why they couldn't do it.
Spot on, Burt, but...
...I have a soft spot for Queen (like Abba) because their operatic nonsense simply moved into my brain and refused to go away, partly as a result of plonking through the songbook with my son on piano and me on guitar and trying to figure it all out. (My kids absolutely adored Queen.)
Apologies if anybody else has made this point above, I'm on the run (not from the law), but there is your music and there's the soundtrack of your life, not necessarily the same thing. All that 70s-tastic stuff that Burt so despises was just there all the time, and it brings memories whether I like the music or not.
Talking of which, I was recently led from a guitar blog to a bizarre clip of a couple of elderly Kiss guys paying tribute to Slade (and others, including Tremeloes with or without Brian Poole!).
From there I took a look at a few clips of Slade live, and boy were they good. I had no idea. All I'd ever seen was Top of the Pops.
It's an interesting list of names that Simmons and
Stanley come out with, but I'm sure that Detroit's Suzi Quatro will be amused to hear herself mentioned as one of a list of "British" artists.
Well...
None more corporate than Kiss - so they will know in their bones that Ms Quatro was backed by the British record companies not by the US ones.
More controversially, this is why U2 and the Cranberries were often called 'British' - a howler if there ever was one - but it was the record companies that were being referred to
Not to mention...
...Chinnichap, which they did.
Another Queen rant?
Another one?
Really?
Slade, Sweet, Mud, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Abba, Blue Mink
Queen?
What's your beef? They all made great pop singles, and your griping and theorising is far more dissonant than anything than even The Brotherhood of Man foisted on us. Sometimes I just get innovation fatigue and I want to put Carla Bley to one side and listen to something that does nothing more than lift my spirits.
You can be fresh and original without tearing up the rule book; that's why Oasis sold records by the shedload to those of us who were old enough to know better, and why the best pop singles sound like you've heard them before.
Jimi Hendrix for one was incapable of making a record that could do the wonderful things that this one does:
I can absolutely see...
...the difference between Queen and Jimi Hendrix, or Queen and Led Zeppelin. It's this: I sometimes feel like putting on a Queen record. I haven't listened to anything by the more "credible" fret-wranglers for years and years, because I realised in my mid-to-late twenties that I was still listening to them because I felt I ought.
Life's too short. I find Zeppelin and Hendrix, in the main, boring as hell. There are a few notable exceptions in their recorded output, sure, but mostly it's a big yawn. To my ears, it's music as sport, music for boys to go "no, but he's an AMAZING guitarist" to, and then to use as a benchmark by which to disparage bands with less "amazing" guitarists.
One of the things that most turns me off about "rock" - a distinction from pop which its fans often insist on - is that sense that it's all terribly serious and important and has a purpose somehow more noble than entertaining people (as if there is any more noble purpose!)
Part of the reason I love pop music in its most general sense is that it's music that brings people together to have a good time and - crucially - dance. It should be inclusive and joyful, even if not explicitly "happy". The minute anything approaching chin-stroking or "serious analysis" starts, I'm off.
Do you know what...
...I had same thought on Friday regarding Led Zep.
They are boring. I only really like one of their songs - Rock n Roll, which is almost their Shiny Happy People. I cannot stand Plant's way of singing and there is a lot of muso-showing off to be heard. I can admire Led Zep but really cannot like them. I can listen to those oft-sampled tracks (can't recall their names) for about a minute and then they bore me.
And Hendrix too.
Queen do have something.
You know one of the things about Robert Plant
Is that he might agree with you - the thing he doesn't like about listening to Zep is his own voice, though he thinks the band are incredible. The music he has made since is certainly out of a different mould and maybe it suits how he sings better.
This isn't your perspective I know but along with so many other stories this makes me like him more, and listen to him when in Rock God mode with a bit more indulgence.
But I might only run to about ten songs of theirs I actually really LIKE
10 songs.
It's about that for me too. Heartbreaker, Immigrant Song, Houses of The Holy, Rock N Roll, Custard Pie, Gallows Pole. Think that's about it. Oh, and I really like that TV performance of Dazed And Confused, but mostly because it's fun to watch John Bonham going ten rounds with a very determined drum kit.
Dazed and Confused...
...to have found myself on the pro-60s end of this discussion.
My MP3 gizmo randomly threw The Lemon Song at me on my way to work this morning and I thought, screw this - I must listen to the whole album instead. When 10 songs was mentioned above I got to seven having just started with that Led Zep 2.
It's aggrieving that because a band/album/era/genre of music has a claim staked on it by the chinstrokers they are no longer perceived to be fun. I air drummed myself stupid in any empty workshop at 8am this morning. The music is fucking good fun.
Though I won't insist that you continue to listen to it, obviously.
As you were.
Queen
I'm not really singling them out. My rant is about the specifically UK "wave" of post-Beatles pop-rock (I included Abba out of personal prejudice - always hated them). Don't take the rant for a Scroogelike grumpiness, either. The music I love makes me very happy indeed. I lump in the groups I do because they exemplify the feeling of betrayal I felt at the time. It seems unproductive to weigh into the comments with a rebuttal of some of the points made - I'm very interested in all of them.
In the seventies my passion for music was mostly satisfied by US acts, who seemed to manage the transition from adolescent frenzy to semi-adult maturity better than most UK bands, and by black music, which managed in spite of disco to remain vital and involving. Reggae and funk pushed my buttons then, and still do. I'm not by any means saying that all music produced after the late sixties is worthless dreck, either.
Abba
The whole Europop thing was a very strange phenomenon indeed.
Some halfway decent tunes there, but English as a second language is never going to sound great as song lyrics.
Abba have
contributed more to the sum of human happiness than most bands I can think of.
You are the dancing queen
Young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat
From the tambourine, oh yeah
You can dance, you can jive
Having the time of your life
Ooh see that girl, watch that scene
Dig in the dancing queen
Not poetry, doesn't completely make sense but still utterly fabulous.
Abso-friggin-lutely.
Without wishing to kick off yet another spurious rock-is-better-than-pop-oh-no-it-isn't thing, I completely agree. (FWIW, I think Cropredy and Popjustice should be able to coexist in happy mutual ignorance: one doesn't threaten the other. But sometimes I get the impression that a tiny minority of the Massive actually feel a bit cross with the poppier end of the spectrum merely for existing, as if RedOne's very presence on the planet is a personal affront to Sandy Denny).
ABBA have made millions of people incredibly happy. They are a Good Thing for that reason alone.
Abba
Is great art to me as much as anything else. There's genius in those records. Never mind all this nonsense about rock being 'important'. Pop (including rock) is an art form and some of it is great, regardless of how it has been made - by angst filled serious young men wanting to express themselves, session musicians following instructions from songwriters, or manufactured groups or whatever. It is possible to see it that way and to just enjoy a record on the radio without thinking about it any further than that, but I think it really deserves serious appreciation as an art form as much as any other.
I'm sure it does.
I'm just personally not interested in that serious appreciation any more, or at least hardly ever. I like the way some music sounds and how it makes me feel, and that's good enough for me. (I have an almost compulsive tendency to over-think things and brood and chew stuff over, and pop music is pretty much the one area where I don't want to do that.)
FWIW, I also think ABBA are great on their own terms, regardless of their wider impact, and the skill and artistry in their records is wonderful. I love them. But I was more saying, whatever you think of their music, their massive positive impact on the sum of human happiness (nicking that one) can't be knocked.
It's all just
music to me, some I like which I listen to, some I don't like which I don't listen to. Ho hum.
*Holds lighter in the air*...
Congratulations
On posting the 500,000th comment on the Word website.
I bet
he wishes it hadn't been posting John Miles "Music".
But at the same time - how apt, what symmetry
Music was after all his first love
And it will be his last
Music of the future
And music of the past
I think I am going to go off somewhere and end it all now
When I was young...
... and impressionable it was quite cool to hate bands like Queen and ELO. They were old school and post-punk bands (Bunnymen, Cure, Simple Minds and U2) were, for me, the order of the day. I couldn't tolerate Queen because their music was so different to the music I liked at the time. In the unlikely event that the Bunnymen had recorded a very camp piano song, with a bit of opera and rock guitar thrown in, I think I'd have killed myself. And how ironic that U2 go global, and make a record with Pavarotti.
Shut up and sing
That seems to be the common reaction to artists these days who do try to use their music or their public persona to voice opinions or "change the world." Just look at what's happened to Bono and Sting ever since they started trying to use their fame to promote certain causes. Younger artists have grown up hearing Bono get ripped to shreds and called all sorts of unpleasant names for his public pronouncements on Africa, etc. The message seems to be, "you're an entertainer, stop telling us what to think."
Still, there are artists who use their music to send political messages: Radiohead, PJ Harvey, ?uestlove and the Roots. But most of those (except Radiohead) are niche artists with small audiences. You could say Lady Gaga's music has a politicized message but then it's not like she's going out on a serious limb by opposing bullying and supporting tolerance (who, really, would stand up and say, "I favor bullying. More people should be bullied.")
Mostly I think the public seems to resent politicized artists more than they want to hear such messages from those artists. Hence the "shut up and sing" sentiment that seems to dominate the culture.
Gaga.
I'll tell you what Gaga's done. She's been a very vocal spokesperson on LGBT issues, in a country which still has large swathes of absolutely entrenched, public, vile, violent homophobia. The level of homophobia which it's common to see espoused by fairly mainstream US politicians and commentators on the right is absolutely horrifying and simply couldn't happen over here.
I think any American public figure who is that famous, sells SO many records to a young audience and is prepared to stick their head above the parapet on an issue which is likely to get her lambasted by some of the most poisonous propaganda machinery on the planet deserves a round of applause.
True
You're right. I shouldn't underestimate the impact of that message. It's funny, though, that Gaga has never really been a target of the right in the U.S. Maybe because Republicans did not want to be perceived to be in favor of bullying? I don't know. But they've never really gone after her. And she's smart enough to stick to criticizing general policies (like "don't ask don't tell") and avoid criticizing particular political parties or politicians.
Interesting, too, how Gaga's message about sexuality has a conservative aspect: In interviews when she talks about these issues she often emphasizes that young people should wait to have sex, make sure they're in love, etc. etc. In some ways, Rihanna has a more extreme feminist message in her music with songs that are hyper sexualized and yet greatly popular, telling young women it's OK and normal to be sexually active and even sexually aggressive. I wonder what the impact of Rihanna's songs is going to be on this young generation growing up hearing her sing about the joys of S&M.
Good point, that.
I don't think it's a consequence of the Constitution or Free Speech. The level of homophobia present in the US simply wouldn't happen here in much the same way that the overt racism in the US never happened here. During WW2, Brits were horrified at the way black GIs were regarded by their white colleagues. Even in the early sixties, when society was more racist, did we have rules about black people having to stand on public transport?
Saying this, I think this was a problem mostly in the Southern states, but I could be wrong.
One other thought
I would guess the level of homophobia is probably worse in the US than in the UK because of the strength of the religious right here.
However, I think the UK still has its share of homophobia if the comments section of the Daily Mail is any indication. Not long ago, I read a story in the DM about Elton John and his partner adopting their first baby. And the comments were pretty hateful. Hiding behind anonymity, any comment praising the two men as parents got tons of red arrows. Any comment saying that their baby needs a mother, not just two fathers, got tons of green arrows.
But yes, some Americans are willing to be embarrassingly overt in their prejudices. And lots of other people -- all over the planet -- are just covert about it.
Definitely true.
I'm not painting the UK as some haven of tolerance, since we absolutely have discrimination and horribleness being forced on people on the grounds of race, gender, sexuality etc etc etc.
The difference isn't so much in the people themselves - although it's true we're generally a much less professedly religious bunch - it's in the expression of these things in public conversations.
No mainstream politico or pundit could get away with being publicly homophobic in the UK. They would be destroyed. Sure, they'd also have some support from the lunatic fringe, but their mainstream career would be over.
Something I find interesting, though. In the UK, we have an established Church which is constitutionally linked to our mechanisms of State. In the US, you have constitutionally guaranteed (for the moment) separation of Church and State.
And yet, over here any politician who bangs on about God renders him or herself more-or-less unelectable. Over there, the reverse is true: you can hardly get elected without public declarations of Christian faith.
Funny that.
Some of the music coming
from Gaga and Rihanna has been excellent - though Gaga's standards appears to have dropped drastically with her current album - but there's no getting away from the fact they sell due to a massive dose of T & A. I find Gaga's 'politicalness' a wee bit hokey myself, that doesn't stop her being a good pop star. The idea behind both of them seems to be Women's Lib = being a stripper. That's progress!
'Tossy-tressed tunesmiths' - love it!
Enjoyed your piece Burt, but hasn't there always been frothy pap pop - Freddie and the Dreamers, Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits? Even in 1968/9, Cliff, Rolf, Engelbert and Des O'Connor were toppermost of the poppermost.
Yes
(comma) but the classic iconic (oh dear), countercultural (oh dear oh dear) bands of the sixties were in response to that - a real anti-pap movement. The pap just came back in force in the post-Fabs UK, masquerading as something it was not.
The 60's - "this was our music"
yeah alright , Grandad.
Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts and thinks what they are listening to is the most vital and invigorating music ever invented, And that the following wave of music is bobbins. And so it goes.....
Put on a new record
Not fair
Not that you were trying to be :-)
He's saying blind nostalgia is actually giving an inaccurate picture of what is was like THEN
There have been a few times when popular music and popular dissent seemed to align. Given what's going on in the world - the 1% stealing the 99%'s money and charging fees, consultancy and punitive interest on the transaction - maybe we're about to see this again. I hope so.
So...
the music that was about making a difference, erm, didn't actually make a difference? And therefore: nadgers to it all, let's stop bleating and have a bloody good, noisy, overblown, pomp-fueled, pointless sing-off instead? In a stadium.
I don't think it made much of a difference
The internet has opened up music far more than the small number of bands that broke through in more idealistic times - and in the early days it was the big companies that broke them.
Thanks as ever for
your comment, Dogface. Another stick you grabbed the wrong end of, in spite of the right end being waved temptingly in your face.
My faith in 'rock'...
...was severely dented after i saw The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle at the movies when I was 17 or 18. After that it was fairly obvious that there wasn't a lot to believe in.
Maybe Wrock did go off the wrails
But this was partially due to 'The Business/Tin Pan Alley (as stated somewhere above) reasserting itself and also the fact the Rock became an industry. It was always about business, but it wasn't particularly well-organised - more of a cottage industry, with loose connections between publishing, recording,distribution and agents.
It was only when corporate interests got hold of it and systemised it that the life got squeezed out and rock/pop settled into a cyclic repetition where the bands were replaceable/interchangeable to a certain extent and trends were mostly industry-driven rather than spontaneously occurring.
Post-Punk (which is not my favourite era), and 'New Romantic' - which were spontaneous to a certain extent (discuss), we had the Industry-driven 'Grunge Explosion' in the USA, Britpop in the UK and a succession of boy/girl bands in 'J-Pop' style - easily manipulated, easily marketed. Also, as we know, a generation came along that was more interested in gaming than music.
Now there are no surprises. Everything gets compared to an older template - music, style, image -the lot. It's easy to become jaded with the volume churned out and the similarity too.
If you want different sound look for different genres, or invest some time in more diverse music forms from around the world (not necessarily 'World Music').
Read Fred Goodman's excellent 'The Mansion On The Hill' to see what happened to Rock in the 70s/80s.
If someone has the definitive date for the appearance....
....of the Stones' tongue logo (it was on a poster apparently in 1970, anyone know the 'exact' date?)....I'd suggest that's yer day, month and year right there.
Or you could just go the easy way and say 31st December '69.
Question.
How do you account for Stevie Wonder, ranger? His 70s output is surely unequaled by anyone bar The Beatles for sheer quality, influence, innovation and beauty. He's without precedent. Innervisions, Songs In The Key Of Life and Talking Book represent, for me, the best run of three albums in the history of recorded music, since I think they probably have no flaws whatsoever and are endlessly rewarding, brilliant and jaw-dropping. Even The Beatles never produced a flawless album, let alone a run of three.
How does that fit into your "everything after the Sixties was shite" thesis?
I suspect you meant to say Tom Waits
Whose "Swordfishtrombones", "Rain Dogs" and "Frank's Wild Years" triplet are arguably the "Best run of three albums in the history of recorded music, since I think they probably have no flaws whatsoever and are endlesslesly rewarding, brilliant and jaw-dropping". And not just that, they do so whilst sounding like a hobo shouting in a bin. Which is clearly the work of a genius.
Ooh. Now I like Tom Waits as much as the next chap...
...but he's no Stevie Wonder, is he? I really, really do love Tom, and I really love those three albums you cite, but he's incapable of the last piece of the "genius" jigsaw which Stevie and the Fabs and only a handful of others have ever done: he's never connected with all that many people.
Stevie and The Beatles are in a different league (and again, let me reiterate that I love Tom Waits). They pushed the boundaries of what popular music could be, they made weird and new music that sounded beamed in from another universe, but crucially that music was capable of being adopted and taken to the hearts of millions and millions of people. They have a massive emotional resonance and an immediacy that Tom, for all his greatness, doesn't and can't have.
He's a great artist. But they're geniuses. And I think that's the difference.
OOAA.
I don't necessarily think
that popularity has much to do with how much of a genius someone is or isn't. Otherwise Justin Bieber and Steps would hold a greater critical acclaim, they connect with the hearts of millions of people. That in itself does not swing the argument one way or the other.
And for all their boundary pushing and changing the face of classical music, I don't see people like Stravinsky or Rimsky-Korsakov selling thousands down at the local Tesco.
A genius Wonder was, regardless of whether or not I like his music, but I don't think that because he sold more he can be said to have pushed as many boundaries as Waits did in the mid 1980s. Stevie took an existing soul template and made it slightly funkier, and then slightly jazzier, writing really good songs. Waits adopted a Harry Partch mentality, inventing instruments, using unexpected sound sources (bones, etc), mixed in music hall, New Orleans blues, country, free jazz, rhumba, spoken word, piano ballads, rock 'n' roll boogie, and odd clanking Marimba to create a sound that was unique to him and him alone.
That's why I think that Waits was the first true genius since the 60s when he came out with those 3 albums. It was a sound that despite being from a number of influences, could have only come from him, which is what made the Beatles and Scott Walker great before him. Let us not forget that as well as genius pieces like "Higher Ground", those three Stevie albums also contained "Isn't She Lovely" and "You Are the Sunshine of my Life", two of the most overly saccharine things ever comitted to acetate. Love songs Jim, but not as we know them. Waits' ode to his wife "Johnsburg, Illinois" is the complete opposite, a man, a piano, and simple lyrics that are from the heart - "I can't live without her and I'm only a boy".
But then as you say, OOAAAWMJHTBR*.
*Other opinions are available as well, mine just happens to be right (He says removing his tongue from his cheek...)
No, you've not understood what I said.
They connected with millions WHILE producing art of the highest quality. That's genius, not the popularity by itself.
(BTW, if you really think that's all Stevie Wonder did, can I recommend a revisit? Your assessment of his achievements is pretty wide of the mark.)
I don't think that's all he did
"Talking Book" has highlights for me in "Maybe Your Baby" and "I Believe". "Living For The City" is one of the greatest soul vocals of all time. "Misstra Know-It-All" is undoubtedly a classic as well.
But for me, the other two previously mentioned are so cheesy it kind of puts a dampener on the genius aspect. They marr the run of supposedly 3 flawless albums. Because I find them to be flaws. (And in the 3 classic album run, you seem to have missed "Fulfillingness' First Finale" which came out in 1974, and I don't think has aged very well. And I stand by what I said about him operating within tighter parameters. All three are definitely "Soul" albums. With funkier, folkier and jazzier bits in them. Waits' 3 are undefinable. And to me, that indicates a genius. Apologies. Agree to disagree and all that.
Superb!
BK you've just given me a very rare early morning laugh out loud moment, and to add insult to injury, I couldn't agree with you more. The very top of the morning to you.
Exception that proves the rule.....
.....also I really like 'Pink Moon' (released 25/2/1972), but the whole thing was a clear case of diminishing returns as the 1970s dragged on.
It also, frankly, saves time!
Bob, Bob, Bob ...
"Even The Beatles never produced a flawless album, let alone a run of three."
There's a comment I couldn't get away with, and anyway, I couldn't sniff that much glue. Come on, Friends Of Bob, pile in with your up arrows for that one! Spot on!
I like Queen.
In my opinion any band that can come up with "Mustapha", "The Prophet's Song" or "Jealousy", and have them as only minor songs in their output deserves respect. Humourous, occasionally poignant, tongue firmly wedged in cheek, they were a fun band, without being cringe-inducing. At least not for me. People always seem to link Abba and Queen in the "But they're fun" brigade. I don't. Abba make my skin crawl, Queen do not.
Ho hum.
Get a load of yourself !
Your OP seems to me to be an articulate way of saying "The music I grew up with was/ is innovative & worthy, whereas the music todays kids are listening to is crap"
Get a load of yourself!
Its all there to be enjoyed (& I write as a 55 year old).
Jack
At least you got the articulate part, so well done. But join Dogface in the wrong-end-of-the-stick line - you'll have to fight him for it because he's a tenacious bugger. What I seem to be saying to you and what I'm saying bear no relation to each other.
Happy enough with that...
I think that yes, I may have gotten the wrong end of the stick WRT the original post.
However, in simplistic terms, I believe each generation believes their era is the best, & feel that is how it should be.
One more thing - I was going to post this seperately, but it feels a better fit here.
Please dont patronise me.
Okay.
But in my post I said (tediously quoting myself): "I know that those who grew up with this music (and that of every decade since) quite properly love it for what it is, and was" which is identical in meaning to (tediously quoting yourself) "each generation believes their era is the best, & feel that is how it should be"' isn't it? We're in total agreement here?
Sorry to patronise. Shitty. But I tend to get a little (a very little - let's keep the perspective) frustrated/exasperated by responses that seem to almost wilfully miss the point of my admittedly hastily-penned piece. Which is - there was a real sense of being betrayed by musicians in post-Beatles UK, and those acts I mentioned - among others - seem to exemplify the cultural difference between the groups of the late sixties, who at the time certainly meant more than just entertainment, and the panto-rock showbiz acts of the early-mid seventies UK. It's often been said that the punk movement of '76 was a revolution against the dinosaurs of the sixties, but those kids weren't listening to that - they were listening to pap-rock, and created bands because they loathed Queen and ELO and (you get the picture).
So there you have it - no sarcasm or patronisantion, just a restatement of my OP in slightly different words, and a fond adieu.
As you were!
I think the problem is a political one
The musicians of the sixties, the late seventies and the mid-nineties did seem to be forging a new way to live - live for art, for self-expression and for personal freedom.
It is just that they proved very poor at living the lifestyle that they promoted. Just like the Catholic Chuch in 15th century (or most churches in the 20th century) - it was a great dream that they sold, but they became more interested in selling the dream than living it.
An academic was on 'Thinking Aloud' on R4 last year and explained that rock was transient as it depended on young people investing their time, energy and imagaginations in the work of others who would inevitably let them down.
They sing 'Money can't buy me love' but it seems that 'love can buy them money' Rather than actually inventing a new style of life, the rock gods of these ages bought mansions, rolls-royces, slept with groupies, consumed drugs and thus became distanced from the sentiments of youth culture that had produced them.
A few, genuinely intelligent individuals tried in their own way to offer real alterntive life-styles (the hippies, 'real' punks, Lennon and Harrison, Dylan, Becker and Fagan, John Peel) but only once they had secured their fortunes in traditional aristocratic fashion with land, houses and luxury possessions. It is this dissonance between the message and the messengers that leads to cynicism and a need to find new heroes - or in Mark Chapman's case to misinterpret the message in 'Catcher in the Rye'
You forgot one
The only Beatle who truly had a major impact in offering society an alternative lifestyle is McCartney. Laugh if you want, but I'm referring of course to vegetarianism. In many ways, his decades of advocacy of meat-free living and animal-rights causes made what had seemed a strange, weird, freakish lifestyle in the early 70s into something that seemed normal and acceptable. Kind of like Nixon going to China, he, by virtue of his nonthreatening persona, was able to introduce millions and millions of people to vegetarianism. Beatles fans who were turned off by Lennon's radical politics or by Harrison's Hari Krishna preachings were introduced to a vegetarian lifestyle because of Paul's rather unassuming, it's-ok-try-it approach. How many people listened to Lennon and gave up their possessions or dedicated their lives to peace? How many people listened to Harrison and joined the Krishnas? Now consider: How many people have eaten Linda McCartney's frozen foods?
Certainly the vegetarian movement had many, many other advocates in the 70s and 80s when it began to come normalized but he was the most famous and you can't underestimate the influence he had globally in bringing this lifestyle to the masses. Affecting how people eat is a political act.
So you reckon Slade and Abba
were shite then? That's fighting talk where I come from...and about a million per cent wrong.
Said it many times before...
I think Slade are one of britains greatest ever bands.
And you're right.
Carry on saying it mate! Not many would disagree.
You are missing so much
... simple as that. You simply haven't understood. Again, and I said this before, just because you don't UNDERSTAND something, does not in itself render it crap.
except for
the current crop of Republican presidential candidates
i don't understand them - but they are crap
I'll respond after I have completed a days work
..with a series of definitions of the word "crap"
Gee, Marky
I simply don't UNDERSTAND your comment. I'm missing so much!
Gents
Please reign in the sarcasm.
Thanks.
I suspect
Ladies put away your handbags may have been more appropriate under the circumstances, if a tad caveman-esque.
BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Just when the yearling of sarcasm burst from the gate of suspect intentions to lead the field of reasoned enquiry!
(RIPS UP BETTING SLIP, FLOUNCES OFF)
rein in
(can i get a job as a sub?)
Have you got your own ball gag?
I have!
A ball walks into a bar...oh.
On board the good ship HMS Wrock
sarcasm reigned on deck. As if some of the replies hadn't been wet enough already.
"Led Zeppelin (a band who remained true to the sixties)"
- this phrase is either wrong or meaningless I can't work out which?
Okay.
I'm putting my afghan coat on here, but as an over-the-shoulder parting remark - Led Zeppelin were a multicultural band, musically speaking. They drew (stole, okay) from a world of musical traditions right from the start. This variety was very much part of the sixties (see my comment about John Peel's playlist). Led Zeppelin were never a formula heavy rock band, of the type that they inspired which flourished in the seventies. So - Led Zeppelin remained true to the sixties.
Hope this helps. If it doesn't, don't sweat it.
This may bring a smile
I like plenty of New music that is out there...But something definitely seems to have been lost..
Wow
So I just watched a clip from last night's Jimmy Fallon late night talk show (you probably don't get that show in the UK). The guest on the show was Republican presidential candidate (and complete nutjob) Michelle Bachmann. As she was introduced and was walking on stage for the interview, the house band on the show (The Roots, led by Questlove) played the Fishbone song "Lying Ass Bitch." Oh. My. God. She clearly didn't know the song.
Rude, yes. On the other hand, if you want musicians to take a stand politically, that's a pretty clear stand. And Questlove (or ?uestlove) has been outspoken on behalf of the OWS movement.
You can see the clip here:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-roots-play-lyin-ass-bitch-for-michele...
Big bang theory - the familiar story
There's a valid point being made here I think. The sixties was an explosion of liberation and revolution, a big bang and pop was an expression of it. That earthquake still has shockwaves and a consequent tsunami that still affects us today. The original counter culture meant something and changed things - certain kinds of music reflected that in ambition, experimentation and progressive (not 'prog') ideas. Each successive generation had their own version of this, gradually lessening in impact until now there's barely a ripple that gets noticed.
Punk was a bitter reaction against what was seen as a failure of the hippies, though as a movement it had quite a lot in common in political intentions - not in the music but in the ideals. It did shake things up to an extent. It had it's significant records. Then came the 'second summer of love', but this was largely a hedonistic scene. Yet there were still political intentions among those who started it all, a desire to make a new society, with rave etc. It didn't do that much to change anything other than music though. Lastly we have Grunge - a rejection of society, musically inventive - and Britpop - arguably a more honest wave in that it acknowledged it was mainly a party. The musical ideas were backward looking, nothing changed that much, nothing about it was particularly political, bit of a fake 'movement' as such, but exciting for those living through it who were the right age. I guess now the music is mostly separate from the revolutionary politics. But there is still a sense of scenes outside the mainstream, with adventurous ideas, it's just harder to identify. But the generation gap has largely gone, everybody remains something of a teenager into adulthood. There's no central shared cultural experience as such. Old records will do as well as new ones for many teenagers.
So it goes that any kind of underground movement has it's dreams of a new world, overturning the old. The original sixties one being the most hopeful and ambitious, being the first and therefore untried, without precedent. But all that shocks and is radical soon becomes absorbed in the mainstream and is watered down and made more showbiz. The movement or scene spreads and becomes more about the drugs and hedonism than anything substantial. The originators who had bigger ideas lose interest, feeling it's all been spoiled and wait for something new to happen.
The naive and youthful dream inevitably fails, though it may produce good things in the process, some of which have lasting value, while also giving rise to less desirable side effects.
There was plenty of tedious old pomposity among those first era records though and plenty of joyous brilliance among the chart 'pap' that is derided here. And there's still a fair bit of ambition and adventurous experimentation among records made now - not afraid to want to be art.
As far as I can see...
It was thus then and it is thus now.In a few years time it will be thus then and it will be thus now also.
Burt, while I can buy in
to much of your thesis, being a teenager of the sixties myself, I'm afraid I just cannot accept that the phrase 'well-meaning, massively talented and winsomely charming individuals' could EVER apply to Dave Lee Travis...