Album: Pink Flag
Three Girl Rhumba
In the late 70s several disparate strands of music evolved, foremost among them punk and disco. The punk ethos was DIY: raw, unschooled, and rebellious. Disco on the other hand was the musical embodiment of hedonism, characterized by dance-able tempos, short, catchy melodies, and self-conscious fashion. Marry these genres in unholy matrimony and you have the New Wave.
The first album I ever purchased was by The Village People. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. In retrospect it's not that hard to understand its appeal to 10-year-olds everywhere: a catchy melody, a pulsing bass line, and a flair for the dramatic is a time-honored way to insinuate oneself into the hearts of the weak-kneed, the simple minded, the criminally unmusical, the undiscerning, the spoon fed...and little children. Just ask Spice Girls, Lady Gaga, or Justin Bieber. (Speaking of which, why why why does that smug little kid have to be Canadian? Haven't we contributed enough to the musical shit quotient with Grande Dame Dion and Nickleback?)Several years and a short indoctrination into the school of rock later, I discovered punk. My life changed forever. Like many, the first punk album I ever purchased was The Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks. Passionate, sneering, rebellious, anti-corporate, gob lobbingly anarchistic -- I had never heard anything like it. It's interesting to listen to these old tracks from a modern perspective; frankly they're tame by today's standards. Still, compared to the likes of The Bee Gees, the Sex Pistols and bands of their ilk seemed very dangerous indeed. Incidentally, both of the above songs were released in the same year, 1977.
By the late 70s, disco was nearing the apex of its popularity, while punk, throwing haymakers, attempted to smash into bits the corporate edifice erected between the average person and his music. There was a wide gap between these extremes that needed to be filled, into which the New Wave insinuated itself. Many artists felt a kinship to punk, especially to its philosophical basis, but had the musical chops to create something a little more ambitious. Thus we find Television (Marquee Moon), Elvis Costello and the Attractions (Pump It Up), Talking Heads (Once in a Lifetime), and Devo (Satisfaction) not only giving corporate music the finger but also achieving critical and commercial success. Other New Wave artists veered closer to disco but still professed a love of the punk lifestyle and attitudes; here reside artists like Blondie (Heart of Glass).
My own first tentative forays into this brave new world were at the feet of Gary Numan (Cars), a member of the particularly successful and influential British New Wave scene. I soon ventured further afield, but it wasn't until I was in my early 20s that I found the band that opened my eyes to altogether new vistas: the great Wire. From Wire I made my way to two more of my all-time favorite bands: Gang of Four (At Home He Feels Like a Tourist), and Buzzcocks (Why Can't I Touch It?). To me, these bands sound as current and relevant as ever, and I rarely tire of listening to them.
Hey. You wanna know a secret? My own little admission of shame? I kinda dig that Bee Gees track. Great groove.
I like the post, but, I wanted to mention one thing. You said, "Many artists felt a kinship to punk, especially to its philosophical basis, but had the musical chops to create something a little more ambitious." I completely agree with this statement, about punk. If you don't have the musical chops to back your theoretical revolution, you're pandering to the weak-kneed just as much as any other slave of the system. And to me, then, a lot of the fraction of it that I've heard comes off as picking a fight just to fight, instead of making an educated argument, in punk, in metal, in so much of contemporary "rock."
ReplyDeleteYou have to give credit to these punk artists if you are giving credit to the people who were influenced by their ways of thinking and style and turned it into something more. And even though they don't have the musical ability of some of the later artist, they were able to turn what skills they had into very raw and powerful music. Something that an entire generation found very appealing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, David, you didn't talk much about the group you linked for the song of the day. I'm interested to learn more about them.
I found this site by google-ing "Nijinsky and the Ballet Russe courted public disdain with their at times overtly sexual approach to dance" specifically and it only had one link... so here I am.
ReplyDeleteRight, my point. It may be my simple unnuanced mind speaking here since I am not a musician and have never claimed to be "educated" in popular music. You could even say that I've led a very sheltered life musically. By "educated" I don't mean formal education, in fact, I mean going through the punk era and following up with a good course of Pink Floyd. I've been single tracked for a long time and am extremely weary in my tastes when it comes to stretching out into deeper and darker waters. That's not to say I only like music that is popular because it's safe and popular. I like to argue that I like what I like because I like it. I know it's naive of me to think that through some force of my own I enjoy Matthew Good because of my own conception of what I consider good... the reason I can make this claim is because I'd never heard any MGB until I picked up Beautiful Midnight and fell in love.
Moving on.
Saying what I have, I want to pick a slight bone with this quotation:
"And it's important to note that "rock" music in particular is only in its formative stages. 60 years is a mere blip in the grand scheme of things. What we see in popular music now, therefore, is only the very first tentative steps in terms of artistic venture."
I'm not saying that you're wrong but I am saying that there is a possibility your theory is incomplete. Rock, as a huge umbrella which shelters many sub genres, could be dead as a self-standing genre of its own. This doesn't mean alt rock or metal or any other futuristic offshoot of rock would die off. My main point is that just because rock is 60 years old does not mean it's got a long life ahead of it. Disco came on strong and died off suddenly(as I told K, if I were born twenty years earlier, I probably would have been into disco). What if rock is a long lasting Dadaism which only lasted about a decade then died but could be argued to have been an originating factor to post-structuralism and the rest of that crap (stuff). We wouldn't call post-modernism "Alt-Dadaism" because post-modernism has grown to be bigger than was Dadaism.
Look at it now: http://www.billboard.com/charts#/charts/rock-songs
If you look at that list you could see that four or five of those top "rock" songs of the 09's are not like what you would hear on Rock 102 god forbid. I would say that Phoenix, Muse (on list twice), and Weezer should never be called "rock" because they are alternative to rock... isn't that what they are struggling to break free from? To me, "Alt-Rock" has always meant as an alternative to rock or instead of rock.
In the end, my whole argument can probably be reduced to semantics and word choice. It cannot be denied that Rock in the 60's is very different from rock in the 70's, 80's, 90's, and 00's. Why the fuck do we still call it rock? Do you still hear some of Elvis' undertones in Three Days Grace or Nickleback? Of course not... but they are all rock? Rock is dead but its kids are not.
Hey Scott, thanks for the reply! You make an interesting point, but as far as I'm concerned the notion that technical proficiency is a prerequisite for making art is simply wrong. Further, in my opinion this notion radically mistakes what it means to be an artist and subverts the very nature of the creative process.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment something truly new and unique is created, it is highly unlikely, in and of itself, to be technically proficient. This holds true across the span of artistic fields, but it is particularly evident in music. Think of all of the musical revolutions over the centuries. When Leonin first had the idea to take a unison melody and, radically, situate a second voice above it at the 4th or 5th or octave, he did so without technical proficiency. In fact, the parallel organum he wrote pales in comparison to the more advanced compositional techniques used even a century later; this does not, however, make it any less thrilling to hear. And it's important to note that today Leonin remains one of the most important composers in the history of Western music, while most of his successors have been largely forgotten.
Fast forward through each musical epoch in Western "classical" music and you find the same trope repeated over and over; I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that at the beginning of each new way of thinking about and performing music, we see the same pattern: philosophically rich musical ideas are slowly assimilated into the popular medium, and progress, necessarily, from technically poor to increasingly technically proficient.
In my opinion, we see the same thing in "rock" music. Buddy Holly was by no means a technically proficient musician, and yet he changed the way we listen to music. Later, a whole slew of more technically proficient performers did Buddy Holly better than Buddy Holly did, but it doesn't make his musical contribution any less important. Nor any less enjoyable to listen to, for that matter. Similarly, Bob Dylan was by no means a technically proficient musician (nor even a technically proficient poet, for that matter!), and yet he changed the way we listen to music. And so on, and so on, and so on, through The Beatles, Sam Cooke, The Velvet Underground, Sly and the Family Stone and right up to Johnny Rotten's door.
Are the Sex Pistols musically proficient? No. Does it mean that their music is unartistic? No.
The Sex Pistols tapped into the zeitgeist of a time in which I grew up. England in the mid- to late-70s was a generally bleak and suffocating place for the average person. Unemployment was through the roof, government was in shambles, and the upper classes were clinging desperately to an old social order and an antiquated sense of entitlement and decorum. It is hardly surprising that there emerged a street level musical movement raging to scream "FUCK OFF" across the rooftops.
The sound of punk in the 70s is the sound of a generation of kids questioning the order of the universe, one shitty guitar chord at a time. It is an entirely emotional response; that's what makes it art, in my opinion, and that's why I find it thrilling to hear.
Tapping into my historical examples, I find with punk and its successors exactly the same type of evolution. Technically poor but philosophically rich music becoming increasingly technically proficient as it is assimilated into the popular culture. Bands like Lightning Bolt are the embodiment of this very idea.
It also helps, in my opinion, to turn your formulation on its head. Let's ask the question: is technically proficient, "educated" music necessarily artistic? I hope, backed by a rushing cascade of Yngwie-ish arpeggios, we can agree, resoundingly, that it is not. There is nothing in technique, and education, in and of themselves, that is inherently artistic.
ReplyDeleteKris, I agree with your assessment. In fact I think it pretty much sums up in one sentence what I was trying to articulate in 103 paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteAs for Wire, don't worry. I'll come back to them at some point.
Oh, one last thing Scott. Let me address a couple of minor points. You write that punk "comes off as picking a fight just to fight, instead of making an educated argument." Yes, I agree. There isn't anything educated about punk rock in the 70s, and it does want to pick a fight. But I don't believe that making an educated argument and "playing nice" have anything to do with making art. In fact, I might go so far as to argue that your desire for "educated" art reflects inherent bias, possibly due to a belief in the importance of education in general, and possibly due to your own desire to be an educated musician. Both this desire and this belief are laudable, to be sure! But they are not *necessarily* criteria for making art.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting. Yesterday I was listening to an interview with Steve Reich on CBC Radio's, "Ideas." Reich talked a lot about the climate in so-called classical music when he was a student in the 50s. Berio, Stockhausen, Boulez, and Cage were the order of the day. And, as he put it, if you weren't making music in that form, a music that only a handful of people might even *understand* much less appreciate, then you were considered beneath contempt. From an artistic standpoint, at any rate. Reich had to physically remove himself from the academic world in order to make the music that he wanted to make, music that many, if not most, classical musicians and composers at the time considered "uneducated." In time, as history shows, his ideas became commonplace; in some circles he is considered the most important musician of the 20th century.
Not, of course, that this necessarily has anything to do with punk. But it takes courage to cut across what is considered acceptable. Steve Reich had the sort of courage; The Damned had that sort of courage; Lightning Bolt have that sort of courage. And I'll be the first to acknowledge that just as education isn't a precursor to making art, neither is courage. But I think we can agree that both are admirable. :)
Hey Tyler, thanks for the thoughtful commentary. I don't believe that "rock" music in all of its many guises is in any danger of dying out; nevertheless, I acknowledge your point and accept the fact, humbly, that I don't have a workable crystal ball at my beck and call. :)
ReplyDeleteIn all seriousness, the whole range of what qualifies as "rock" music today makes me believe that it will be around for a very long while in some form or another. Rock music is, at its essence, the music of youth and in many cases the music of rebellion. As long as we've got disenfranchised kids we'll have rock music, in my opinion.
I think what we actually have here is just a difference of terminology. Yours is probably more nuanced than mine in this regard but I suppose if there wasn't someone here to fight you on it then I'd never have the opportunity to make a fool of myself.
ReplyDeleteI have to qualify myself in my comments about rock so as to portray my personal side to the debate. The bands that I consider to be rock are The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, etc. The bands from which the rock grew and evolved into different animals altogether. Is it really fair to call Arcade Fire, Bloc Party, or Radiohead "rock"? What I mean to say is that I don't enjoy Elvis, The Grateful Dead, or the Beatles (God forbid)...especially when the contemporary rock music on the radio stations such as Nickleback, Alice in Chains, Guns n Roses, ACDC, etc are also called rock. You see, I hate those last few bands and resent the fact that Muse, Phoenix, and Radiohead could be considered in the same music genre heading "Rock."
I won't go so far as to say that I wish "rock" would die fucking die... but I like the idea of having MY music tastes labeled as something different from Chad Kroeger's shit on a biscuit.
@Dissident: I think you're getting sidetracked with your irrational desire to have music you dislike be in a different genre than music you like. In all genres of music their are good and bad artists, as well as artists an individual likes and dislikes. I can only draw one conclusion, you want Chad Kroeger. You want him so bad.
ReplyDeleteMy loins yearn...
ReplyDeleteI suppose you're right. It's just unfortunate that he get so much encouragement from industrial media whores.
Moving on.