What is rock 'n' roll?

I wanted to take this away from Music recommendations, because I think that this could be the 'chat' part: to discuss, debate and recommend music in a little more depth. It seems I bump into more and more musicheads in TT. Let's party.

And here's something I just read to get the ball rollin': Sex Pistols snub US Hall of Fame, and it got the cogs whirrin' around in my cranium.

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Then I noticed this:
She still don't get it does she?

Dídn't know where to put this really - it's a bit politics and a bit music...

Anyway: have a listen to "Brassed Off: The Miners' Strike" on Radio 2.

It's basically the history of the UK miners' strike as reflected in the popular music and film of the time. Quite a bit of folk, some Billy Bragg, some Style Council... And some magnificent Yorkshire accents

Not sure what to say about this. Is it in the ear of the beholder? Unquestionably not. Like any good art, I firmly believe that there's not so much room for objectivity. When it comes to critiquing, I hate to hear the old saw that "everyone is entitled to their opinion". No they are not, nor should they be. Some people have good taste and some people have appalling taste. Only the people with taste are entitled to advance the art. Michael Bay should be killed. Then again, I can't waste the emotional energy to get frustrated by this sort of thing. You don't like T-Rex? Die happy and stupid for all I care. I'm of the Charles Bukowski school of thought: I prefer people who scream when they burn. Ms. Evans should have told the Pistols to take a swan dive into their own excrement.

The Boss, IMO!

Actually, I think this might be a solid preliminary definition of Rock 'N Roll.

Yes.

But... everybody, no matter how wrong or how bad their taste, is entitled to their own opinion... and will naturally have to suffer for their ignorance, be it in regard or in missing out. Glad I could introduce you to the art of Marc Bolan BTW - good innit?

Please don't tell me anything about Michael Bay, whoever he is. I'm way too hip to have even heard his name (I really do NOT want to find out).

Ms. Evans will never, ever, ever have what it takes to even tell a swan to take a swan dive.


Now that - I like. Especially the Wrigley's Extra Polar Ice gum.

God forbid that the nasty little art terrorist would use just ANY old chewing gum.

Michael Bay is actually a film director and a very bad one. However, he makes the sort of mindless, lowest common denominator entertainment that somehow manages to get the mouth breathers of the world to part with their money. I often hear people say, "I don't want to have to think when I see a movie". Putting aside the notion that this about like saying that you want to eat without having to taste anything, the point is you never have to think when seeing a movie. Mr. Bay, however, does not reward conscious attention to his work. His films do not permit thinking.

But we were discussing rock and roll. Discussion question: What is the difference between punk and rock and roll? Clearly, not all rock and roll is punk, but is all punk rock and roll? What's the difference between punk and heavy metal? Grunge? Does this sort of aesthetic taxonomy even belong in a discussion of rock and roll?

Final point: yes, in terms of one's rights in a free society, everyone IS entitled to their opinion, inasmuch as you can't direct someone not to have their own individual reaction to a particular work of art. However. The unspoken implication in that statement is often that everyone's individual opinion is just as valid as everyone else's. This is absolute nonsense. My sister is free to believe that bland, milqetoast Jason Mraz is worthy of her deep admiration just as resolutely as that opinion is so manifestly wrong. I never want to live in a world where all art is equally valid simply because there's someone out there willing to admire it.

And Michael Bay sucks ass.

I can see both sides to this. I believe there is a certain heirarchy in music where at the top you have brilliance and at the bottem marketing drival/pure noise. However, isn't the beauty of music about how it makes you feel. How you can listen to the guitar part of Innuendo from Queen and sort of feel your heart strings move to the music to the point where it almost hurts? That doesn't always come from the brilliant side of the music chain. That is personal for everybody. Some people may get that from the Sex Pistols where as others get it from...Madonna . Maybe the Madonna folk are not as refined or evolved, but who really cares in the end. Life is short. Just enjoy it.

agree with BG - who gives a shit?

Maybe i'm just a dumb cunt but i don't even understand half of the terminology being used here,




always thought rock n roll was in your heart and whatever moves you, didn't realise it was meant to be an intellectual argument ?

I do think that the beauty of music lies in how it makes you feel. Don't get me wrong, I would never say that critical sophistication is associated with an intellectual appreciation of the technical merits of any particular music. I have a very emotive response to any sort of human experience. I love The Ramones, but no one would say would ever suggest that Johnny's playing is as accomplished as Charlie Christian.

To say that some opinions are less valid than others is not meant to imply that everyone needs to think the same thing. In fact, it means quite the opposite. People with reasoned sensibilities wind up being the true individualists, those who can form their own thoughts and rationally defend their particular tastes. When we all stop thinking or asking questions, we all start to think alike. This is not unenjoyable. Again, quite the opposite. Continually broadening one's horizons, to compare something new against a rich and considered body of experience is an absolute delight.

If I'm honest, the difference between the genres is mostly to do with the haircuts.
For me, if punk is all about controversy and guitars, then Belle & Sebastian are punk rock (you'll get a biting, sweary lyric in a sweet melody).
Mind you, everything is Belle & Sebastian to me right now (the new album is so fantastic, I'm just posessed by it, probably because they now sound even more sparkly but dark, sparkly but dark could actually be a description for me sometimes).
I've been accused by many for my lack of taste, I love Kylie Minogue for example, have all the CDs, her recording career has accompanied my life. I've grown older with Kylie so to speak, lots of memories, good and bad, there. So if some of my errrr electic choices might jar with others, there is a common thread - I like them. And that's enough for me.
Today I have A-Camp, B&S, Cardigans, The Orb, Placebo, Teenage Fanclub, Cool Kids of Death, Split Enz, Gorillaz, Arctic Monkeys and Gram Parsons with me.
Which would make me a trippy-neo-hippy-post-punky-country-goth with a taste for fey pop. Not bad eh?

For the record, I just got done listening to the new Belle & Sebastian album, which I picked up yesterday. Fantastic stuff.

It is marvellous, isn't it? It will have to take some doing to have a better album this year. Makes me want to buy a convertible and drive around in the sun.
It's someone saying thank you when you've held the door open. Or finding 10€ in your coat pocket that you'd forgotten about.
Can't wait for the concert, I shall probably keel over on my crutches but care not a jot.

Maybe those who find beauty in Madonna's music are more highly evolved than the rest of us.

Stick that in your pipe . . .

Wassabeengoingon?

1. "Punk" is just a label for people who need labels and pigeonholes. Bob Dylan was a punk. Jimi Hendrix was a punk. James Brown mixed soul music and punk attitude to give us "Spunk". As Topsy says, Who really cares? The labelling of musical art and categorising it into genres is for people who cannot see that every piece of music is different, even if it comes from the same artist.

2. UpQuark's analogy with food and taste is a very good one. Me, I'm into music with more meat on the bone. I don't care much for McDonald's music.

3. What is good and what is bad? Last time I saw The Cramps was with two other musicians. One left after 3 songs sayin', "This is awful". And he was right, it was brilliantly awful. There is a fine line. Besides, Poison Ivy kept sneering at me so I just wanted her all the more.

4. There are gentlemen and players. No offence, but I think you listen differently when you can play. I used to only sing. I appreciated works like Elvis' delivery on 'Watching The Detectives'. Now I play bass and I hear differently again. I have recently caught The Groove big time, and a magnificent disease it is too.

So here's an invitation to BG, Uppie, Tops and Katrina to come over and rumble through my CD collection. You ready for that?

That's interesting. Maybe that is the way to notice the music vs. the lyrics more. I'll take ya up on the music offer too .

Well that's a given

Makes a big difference when you can play the specific instrument as well.

You actually sound like Alanis Morissette, y'know that?

On a side note, playing classical or acoustic (steel string) guitar improves your musical ear in a different way too (i.e. apart from changing the way you appreciate music), especially when you play sitting down, in which case the guitar is usually leaning against your diaphragm (not the contraceptive, har har).

I have witnessed such a development first hand. The guy in the next room at the dorm wanted to learn to play classical guitar (god I loved the guitar that he had. Mine was a piece of crap). He couldn't carry a tune if his life depended on it but he persevered. 6 months later, he was actually able to start singing with the right note. The change was astounding.

The simple answer to that is that I do, or perhaps I might. The more important question is whether or not someone should or can.


I'm not suggesting that it's meant to be an intellectual argument, but posing the question as to whether or not it can be. And, I don't what sort of music you listen to, but some of the really good stuff ought to hit you a little lower than your heart.

Memo, did your friend actually improve his pitch? I have a friend who loves to sing but has the worst sense of pitch, I'd really like to help him out in this regard but am completely out of ideas.

@ER
Thanks for helping me remember "pitch". That was what I meant. Although all instruments improve your pitch to a certain extent, the guitar has a clear advantage in that respect, as I mentioned in my previous post.

By the way, there ARE methods out there that claim to teach perfect pitch. Never tried them myself, but I know for a fact that with classical guitar playing, you come close enough.

Ah the ever unobtainable "perfect pitch" . . . I have an uncle who has it and a girl I sang in a jazz group with had it. Both were born with it and interestingly both played the viola.

I only wish

Why classical guitare? Is it because of the vibrations? My mother teaches classical guitare and her pitch is better than my cellist father, although a cellist requires better pitch due to the absence of frets. Wonder why that could be.

Sorry Sin, off topic.

On topic I have too much to say to really contribute.

Wanna know a funny thing?

I have never heard anything by Alanis Morissette. But only at the weekend I was reading an interview with a producer and her name came up. Now I really want to hear her first album. I'm curious as to what he was talking about.

Oh dear, I knew I should have kept my mouth shut!

Exactly... I believe acoustic (steel string) guitar also has the same effect, because it all has to do with the guitar contacting your diaphragm, thus transferring the vibrations to your upper torso and improving the way you hear and "interpret" notes. This - the way the body of the guitar vibrates and makes [i]your[/] body vibrate- is also why it is limited to these two types of guitar and not the electric ones.

I love the word resonance. It is the only word that I can think of, that can be spoken as a description of what it means.

Resonance

@memo,

You're right of course. The voice is a delicate instrument which must be warmed, tuned and carefully controlled. It requires a lot of concentration to perfect.

The 2007 Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame inductees have been announced:

• Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
• R.E.M.
• The Ronettes
• Patti Smith
• Van Halen

Not on the list? Iggy Pop and the Stooges. Shut out for the sixth time.

From the Detroit Free Press

And for Patti to maintain credibility, she needs to tell The Hall of Fame to shove it up their arse.

Ah, but Sin, no one will be paying attention to Patti Smith anyway. Everyone will be focused on important matters like whether or not the on-again, off-again members of Van Halen will co-exist on the stage.

Is Depeche Mode in yet?

Van who?

You are a man with no soul.

Rock and Roll is hearing Jumpin' Jack Flash played on a sitar by Ravi Shankar's nephew. Seriously.

UpQuark, you really need to smoke far better weed.

You don't need drugs to get high, my friend, just a box of funky soul and rare grooves.

And Marmite.

Down with dope up with hope.

i've picked up guitar learning again -- slowly, but surely, but i am diligent, anyhow on saturday my beau, who has been playing for 10+ years, says he misses guitar rockbands. he has no inspiration anymore, not like the van halen, bon jovi age. i tend to agree with him. i can appreciate good guitarist although i am not a fan of that genre. what could we listen to today to get inspired (again)? sure, we can pull out the old trusties, but i do like to move with the times too.

is there any "new" hot band out there that could do it? and if they're repertoire consists of mixing and matching G,C,D, then great for me, but boring for him.


p.s. i've never heard of the ronettes or have I?

Don't know if you've heard of the Ronettes, but the world has. "Be My Baby" will not be denied.

Rock and Roll is my son and daughter agreeing that "Everybody knows that you are insane" by the Queens of the Stone Age is better driving music than the "Long Slow Goodbye" by the same band..

geez, it took them that long to get inducted? it's like winning a nobel prize.

Check out Juliette & The Licks. Awesome live.

I think Lemmy said it best. "It's a goddamn shame what they've done to rock 'n' roll."

This is not true, if the electric guitar is played loud enough it will vibrate your torso too,
Off to the Kellar now to get the valves glowing in my Marshall stack, turn it up to 11, and rattle the nachbar's teeth

Smoke on the water...

The term "Rock 'n' Roll" always confuses me because back in the 60's (yes, I'm that old), I thought it referred to the 1950's American stuff - Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, etc etc. But now people seem to use the term for almost any electric-guitar-based music, including stuff that I would call rock, hard rock, blues rock, heavy metal, but not rock 'n' roll. Or am I just way behind the times? I sort of lost the plot of what was going on in music when I came out to Germany back in the mid-70's, and only really started taking an interest again when I started learning to play guitar 4 years ago. So now when I hear the names of bands from the 80s up to today, I haven't a clue which are good and which are bad. Are there any good bands around these days, for someone like me who likes guitar-based rock?

Agreed (you missed out the best stuff: Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Etc.). But, remember when Heavy Metal was Led Zeppelin? Now they are Classic Rock (apparently).

The 80's and 90's were pretty bad times for decent music (not like the flood of quality that came before), and you had to pick your way through the rampant commercialism. I'd recommend The Psychadelic Furs, The The, The Smiths, The Cure, Nirvana as a starting point. I'm sure other members can offer more quality music from the past two decades (it does exist), but my memory is only 3.2kb and I haven't had a coffee yet.

I think that taste in music is a very personal thing and the songs you love, the ones that accompany you or sometimes even define you can be very hard to project to others. So many times in the past I found myself frustratedly trying to explain to someone just why that song grabs my stomach and squeezes, sends electric charges up my spine and makes my eyes hurt from trying to hold back tears. More often than not it’s “yeah, it’s a nice track that,� or “not bad� and I’m screaming inside at this philistine. Can’t they hear that voice, feel it? Can’t they close their eyes and taste that bass line and doesn’t that tiny point of melody freeze their heart and stop their breath.
I’ve had those very personal moments listening to Liz Frazer in the early Cocteau Twins albums, David Sylvian singing about Picasso, Ian McColluch and his Elextrafixion album. I get aggressive to Love Spreads by the Stone Roses or Abandon by That Petrol Emotion and inspired by the melancholy of The Jesus and Mary Chain (and lately BRMC because they picked up the baton). Super Furry Animals border on perfection for me and even Dvorak has me lost in my own swirling world sometimes.
How many people would look at my list and go Who? What, that crap? No way! and how much would I like to answer, just listen to what is underneath, that very subtle current and mood that I sometimes (and snobily), deep down inside, actually think only I can hear.

For some reason which I can't explain, the whole genre of 1950's rock 'n' roll doesn't appeal to me. Maybe I just grew up thinking of it as old, outdated stuff.


I suppose every genre ultimately becomes "Classic" once it stagnates and stops evolving. Like the dinosaurs.

Is there such a thing as "Classic Punk"?


Thanks for the recommendations. Not really too keen on Nirvana myself. Dunno about the others. Anyway, I've had a rummage through the rock part of my CD collection now, and it seems my tastes include (but are not limited to) John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, the original Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green, Cream, Free, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Kinks, Jethro Tull, AC/DC, Osibisa, Led Zeppelin, WIshbone Ash, Blue Oyster Cult, The Stranglers, Thin Lizzy,...

Oh well, I suppose all of that is a bygone era now. Nowadays I don't even know which genre is which, let alone which are the good bands in each genre. Still, if I go stone deaf in my old age, I suppose it won't matter anyway.