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Take comfort in what you recognise, distrust the new

00:29 / 18.07.01

The essence of Rock and Roll is often described as being a stripped down, bare bones type of music. Raw, immediate, almost basic. Free of any ‘unnecessary’ embellishment. If not in the instrumentation, then definitely where the structure of the music is concerned. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, middle eighth, verse, chorus. You’ve just got to look at the current ‘saviours of Rock and Roll’ (copyright any music mag you care to name), The Strokes. A good group, certainly, but hardly one that’s pushing the envelope.

Why the distrust of innovation? I’m as guilty as anyone else in this regard. I see the word ‘concept’ associated with a group and my psychedelia alarm goes nuts (for me, the word psychedelia conjures up images of once-great artists releasing meandering wankfests in the mistaken idea that they’re breaking the mould – Sgt Pepper’s, anybody?). I’ve recently become a little worried about the soon-released Super Furries record – widely publicised as the first in a new breed of DVD-albums, with each track having accompanying visuals and the menu screens being a mini-album in their own right, it has the spirit of a concept album from the off. It’s fortunate that SFA are one of the few groups around for whom modernism and originality are innate traits.

Here’s what concerns me most about this. To go back to a previous example, The Strokes are currently being hyped as The Next Big Thing, potential precursors to an exciting new movement. What, if I may be so bold, the fuck? How is this group doing anything that’s exciting in it’s creativity? Have we really reached the stage where (guitar-based) popular music has nothing new to show us? Or is it more the case that on the odd occasions when we are presented with something truly original, something that messes with the R’n’R template and creates a style that’s new, different, exhilarating, we run scared?

No star here laces

00:29 / 18.07.01

I think it is fair to say that wholly guitar-based rock 'n roll music has been pretty well exhausted. Undoubtedly there is almost limitless potential to make new and interesting rock records, but given the sheer volume of back catalogue I doubt any of them could be that immediately different sounding.

But then I'd say that it's unsurprising that rock critics laud a band as unthreatening as the Strokes because in this day and age one would have to be something of a recidivist to be exclusively interested in guitar-based music...

12:37 / 18.07.01

I beg to differ.

But what with all this hopeless, retrogressive guitar music I listen to, I'm feeling too neanderthal to come up with a decent argument.

14:32 / 18.07.01

quote: But what with all this hopeless, retrogressive guitar music I listen to, I'm feeling too neanderthal to come up with a decent argument.

NO! SNAP OUT OF IT! Rage against the dying of the light!

Rock and Punk are not supposed to push the envelope. They're supposed to fuckin' rock! THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT! I don't care if Trail of Dead sound like Sonic Youth - they break stuff! They're passionate! And they're damn cool!

The Strokes are great, from the song I've heard.

No, I'm not a mindless luddite. I like a lot of other stuff as well. If you want stuff that pushes the envelope, I'll record you some Matmos! Otherwise, go listen back to old Van Halen records and realise it's much more fun to make a squalling racket.

Oh... hang on. Matmos do that, too. Their racket is much... colder.

14:52 / 18.07.01

Van Halen? Excuse me?

When I started this thread, I was listening to Home XIV by, um, Home. It struck me that the music press played their usual trick with that album, giving it high marks but about two inches of column space between them, prefering instead to give pages over to Travis or the like. The only reason that I can think of for this is that, Home XIV being a record that tries to do something different with the traditional rock group formula, they decided that the vast majority of people wouldn't be all that interested.

I guess I'm wondering why that should be the case.

Oh, and I've already got the last Matmos album, ta. Electronica (urgh, horrible name, sorry) is a different beast to the one I'm talking about.

[ 18-07-2001: Message edited by: E Randy Donttouchthatdial ]

15:10 / 18.07.01

I think you guys are missing the point, slightly.

First off, popular music at least swings on a pendulum. Nirvana's breakout in the early 90s due to timing more than anything. Most of us were sick of listening to Ace of Base and "12 Inches of Snow," and by this time in Metal bands were basically doing copies of copies of copies of GNR (that band's popularity itself a reaction to the popularity of synth bands and whiny gits like the Smiths - don't take that wrong, I'm a fan). The rise of Electronica in the mid 90s was the natural place to go when, by 1996 (the year that gets my vote for worst music of the 90s) the radio was populated with bands that were a copy of a copy of a copy of either Nirvana or Pearl Jam.

And now, with the popularity of your Britneys, your Christinas, with the mainstream acceptance of Moby, acts such as Kid Rock and Limp Biskit have planted the seeds for a major return of "The Rock," if you will.

Underground, indie rock has been thriving, as most non-mainstream music does when "no one's" paying attention to it.

Rock has been "dead" so many times it's not even funny. But thusfar we've never run out of tunes to create on a piano. Why would we on a guitar? I don't know where rock is going to go next, but I know someone's gonna take us there.

By the way, I realize *I* may be missing the point entirely...

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:14 / 18.07.01

quote:Originally posted by E Randy Donttouchthatdial:
To go back to a previous example, The Strokes are currently being hyped as The Next Big Thing, potential precursors to an exciting new movement. What, if I may be so bold, the fuck? How is this group doing anything that’s exciting in it’s creativity? Have we really reached the stage where (guitar-based) popular music has nothing new to show us? Or is it more the case that on the odd occasions when we are presented with something truly original, something that messes with the R’n’R template and creates a style that’s new, different, exhilarating, we run scared?

There's a lot of truth in the idea that people do tend to run away from the unfamiliar, first time around at least. But this isn't just confined to guitar music by any means... I've met some pretty narrow-minded hip-hop fans, for example.

Although I think I disagree with Tyrone/'Simon''s assertion about the options for guitar-based rock music (okay, he does say "wholly" guitar-based music, but I'm not sure what that means - no drums or bass?), I think he's certainly right about the fact that in this day and age, if you're only listening to guitar-based music, you must be fairly closed-off to new and unfamiliar experiences... Guitar music is generally so dull that even the NME has finally snapped and started putting loads and loads of r'n'b and hip-hop acts on their cover - which is great, although you do want to yell "about fucking time!"

And I think in a funny way this ties in to why people are excited about The Strokes: because when the alternative is Travis or Coldplay, they do seem dangerous and sexy and exciting: we're old timers, Randy, comparatively, and a lot of "the kids" have never seen a bunch of posh sneering drug-addled New York pretty boys in ill-fitting suits before... plus generally in pop music, people have short memories. The fuss over The Strokes reminds me in a funny way of when Oasis first appeared on the scene: you may laugh, but they were five cocky young lads who played raucous, uncomplicated rock'n'roll and looked cool as fuck next to the sorry whiny indie chancers of the day...

Oh, and The Strokes album is pretty darn good.

Ronald Thomas Clontle

16:21 / 18.07.01

Alright, you've hit upon one of my big personal bugbears of the past year or two: how guitar bands seem to become more and more conservative lately. It's true. and I think it is pretty gross..though loads of bands that I think are good are pretty conservative musically (hi, I'm a huge GBV fan), I think that this has as much to do with the people who buy the records as it does with those who make them. It seems that a large percentage of people who are drawn to guitar music are that way because they want something predictable, a paradigm that they feel comfortable with.

Don't get me started on the immense popularity of slow, quiet, pretty music bands that are all the rage in the US indie world now... how frightening is it that the most passive music imaginable is what the smart kids are into? Ugh...all of these indie kids in the US just want to hide from the world...so they listen to this selfabsorbed quiet music with no physicality to it at all. Bad sign, bad sign.

I don't think that rock music is a thing that stopped evolving because it can't go further, because I hear plenty of bands that do push it foward...I think it is a purely cultural thing that keeps the fans and the musicians so damned conservative.

No star here laces

12:05 / 19.07.01

ZenFly - what I was meaning to say was that if you discount your radioheads and your lim bizkits, who are doing new things with rock, but are doing it with non-traditional instruments (synths, samplers and turntables), and look just at trad rock lineups guitar(s), bass and drums) there is room for "new" sounds, but because so much territory has already been covered within this format, they are only going to be "new" in subtle ways, so they may not sound obviously "different"...

18:00 / 19.07.01

Aren't synths, samplers and turntables all fairly old-school now as well?

Couldn't it be argued that the Strokes, who are ripping of Television, are actually being influenced by a more modern sound than a [spits] 'electronica' group who are ripping off Kraftwerk? My copy of Autobahn is, I think, older than my copy of Marquee Moon...

As long as it rocks (or chills, or terrifies, or SOMETHING), who cares how it's produced?

And if you're looking for truly 'new' music, how about the Brian Eno-touted Generative Music? And even that has its roots 25 years ago...

Rock has been 'dying' in the music press for ages - mainly beacuse the music press knows its core readers are indie-loving dullards, and has to push them towards soul, R'n'B or techno (for example) if there aren't enough guitar bands to fill the pages that month. It's bollocks, in my opinion.

[ 19-07-2001: Message edited by: HB ]

23:03 / 19.07.01

Of course, this takes us towards the argument about whether any form of music can truly be considered 'new'.

23:53 / 19.07.01

quote:Originally posted by HB:
Aren't synths, samplers and turntables all fairly old-school now as well?

No. The new generation of synths are incredibly complex compared to old "look, it's a sine wave" ones. Oh, if only I had a spare grand... Anyway, they can produce infinetly more complex tones. We've also got to the technological point where we can do pretty good additive synthesis rather than subtractive synthesis, so expect synths to get more complex any time now.

On a fairy random tangent, Vestax are going to be producing turntables on stands that you can angle to somewhere near 45 degree from flat. Wierd? It gets better - apparently they've developed some kind of new tonearm that will play even if gravity says it should fall down the record. Mmmm... taste the technology.

06:00 / 27.12.05

i'm really glad someone posted this because i thought it may have been just me.......

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:14 / 27.12.05

Of course, this takes us towards the argument about whether any form of music can truly be considered 'new'.

Yeah. When you get down to it, whatever it is that's making it, it's all just vibrations. What matters is whether the vibrations affect you emotionally, or physically, or mentally in a way that makes you go "YEAH!!!"

16:28 / 28.12.05

i meant that i'm glad someone posted about the strokes... well i guess looking at today's scene they certainly had a major influence in it even if they now sound, as cruel fate will have it, not tremendously relevent amidst it all.
i think their new song is ok, most i could say about it.

all music, as has been said on the thread, has precedents, the notion that some lone visionary dreams something up and then single-handedly changes the face of music is just a kind of romantic glamour i think....dreamt up by rock historians lavishing praise after the fact. it all begins with a bit of theft & then putting your own spin on things. i think the point is really, how much of an individual spin you can put on things.

if there are any artists who did everything just totally radically differently, we probably don't listen to them anyway, eg Jandek, and class it as "outsider art".

i think we probably are witnessing such a thing as "the death of the star" as has been posted on other topics & it's a good thing. i virtually came into the world, i guess, feeling that these old guys in the 60s wielding guitars & singing about how many people they could lay, were dinosaurs already.

i can't help but feeling a bit of relish in the whole thing; i don't really know why. for some reason that sense of the total erasure of individuality is very appealing to me, as i was trying to grasp somehow in what I wrote about Test-Icicles.

16:40 / 28.12.05

if we were being totally honest about it, i think a lot of bands to whom we now attribute "originality" or "innovation".. you could easily go back and trace precedents in them. what were the velvet underground? the forms of the pop music of the day merged with ideas from la monte young, with lyrics inspired by the darker strand of the beats.

maybe things have never really worked in great leaps, only little steps, and it's only down the line you realise how far you've travelled.

i'm reminding myself of an essay Derrida wrote on Mallarme, deconstructing the notion of the individual "genius"/subversive. Mallarme was, i think Derrida has it, simply working out possibilities of language that were already implicit within it.

a star or an innovator is i suppose something that we want to create, something that we want to see, or wanted to see at some point at least; the reality of it is probably much different.

16:45 / 28.12.05

rock is evolving. it's embracing the rhythms of dance music. it's more and more willing to face head on, issues of sexuality, in some cases as more than a novelty/selling point. it's doing so more focusedly and intensely than it has in the past. it's deconstructing, in some quarters, the traditional notion of "the song" & its structures. people won't hear that if they are fixated in wanting to hear rock as it used to be.

i like the way too it's more and more being made by people who don't look beautiful or sexually appealing according to common notions of beauty... by people who 20 or 30 years ago couldn't have dreamt of being "stars".

it's killing its gods, and not before time.

14:42 / 04.01.06

Hey, this is my first Barb message! feel free to whittle me down to size if I'm out of line here...

I think rawk has always been made by people who weren't "beautiful" in the same way the models and movie stars of their time were beautiful. OK, so Elvis was gorgeous, but Led Zepp really weren't. Neither were Pink Floyd, Nirvana, AC/DC, Guns'n'Roses etc etc.

On distrust of innovation: to me, it's always seemed as tho' the majority of music press has ignored innovation. I can't remember a single lauded "the best new thing since the last great new thing" that really moved me more than hearing some random ditty that hardly got any press, or was only played in a local nightclub. This could just be my "sticking up for the little people" vibe, but I don't think so.

The cynic within suggests that the music press is worked well by the record industry to push those products thought to be of highest return value. In general people respond better to what they know, or feel comfortable with, so it makes sense from the record labels' point of view to promote something with the ring of familiarity to it. This view works for the majors and to a degree the "mid-level" labels that have a cool, modern, but reasonably established sound.

I realise that most of the journo's in the music press do have a genuine love of music, but being bombarded with more CDs a day than anyone can feasably listen to is going to require some heavy filtering techniques. Freebies, guestlists and hype play their part.

Essentially what I'm saying here is that innovation isn't usually commercially viable; it's a big risk, and an incumbant record giant isn't going to want to rock its profits boat too hard.

at the scarwash

21:41 / 04.01.06

in my own music i'm pretty much bored with rock, but i'm certainly willing to admit that there is a lot of really vital stuff coming out--grindcore and avant metal acts like Melt Banana and The Locust, Thronez and Boris (not new new new, I know, but I mostly listen to am radio static these days, so new to me). That shit rocks. I think what is lacking in vitality is what is on the radio, the people invited on Letterman and the like. They do all sound the same, and wherever they're from the Hives/Strokes/Franz Ferdinands are all trotting out the same old-as-Keith Richards (which is old) why-bother posturing that makes people shoot their radios. It's not even really rock music to me. If that's rock music then MC Hammer is gangsta rap.

Brigade du jour

08:05 / 05.01.06

OK, so Elvis was gorgeous, but Led Zepp really weren't. Neither were Pink Floyd, Nirvana, AC/DC, Guns'n'Roses etc etc.

Might I be so rude as to beg to differ on this point? It just reminds me of something I read (no source, no quote, this is where the ol' semi-photographic memory gets me into trouble with the copyright enforcers!) about how all rock stars are sold on their sexuality. Now I suppose that could be interpreted in a number of ways but one of the ways I like to interpret it is so that in rock'n'roll a raw sexual magnetism is generated between band/singer and audience. Not exclusively in rock'n'roll, perhaps, but I would say most apparently. Granted, not all rock stars are, shall we say, traditionally pretty or handsome or beautiful, but I suspect that if you're in a band it dramatically increases your chances of getting laid. Or at least, enough people believe it get into a band primarily for that reason.

I apologise for rotting a tad, but I just wanted to make the point that sexual attraction often, if not usually, seems to form part of the bond between icon and fan, in rock'n'roll and beyond.

Besides, everyone in Led Zep was actually quite handsome, I think. Except John Bonham, obviously, but he was the drummer.

19:40 / 05.01.06

i do agree, if i'm being blatantly honest. i was tiring a bit of my own shrillness i suppose and i wanted to see the other side of the coin, which i did, and i accepted the premise for a couple of weeks that music is evolving and i tried to see it that way and find evidence to support that claim. i nearly came back with one of my typically flippant replies and added "music is evolving, it's just a shame that it's shite".

there is some decent, more than decent stuff out there at the moment but there is nothing that really gets the pulse racing, delivers a shock of the new & makes you feel that something truly new and exciting and dangerous is taking place. as far as i've heard.

Haus of Mystery

07:33 / 06.01.06

You need to get out more. Start looking. Life beyond the NME and all that.

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:50 / 06.01.06

Also maybe look at your expectations - I'm not talking about lowering them, just allowing them to be a little... wider, really. The shock of the new is all well and good, but I've found that whether I experience something as "new and exciting and dangerous" has as much to do with me as it does with the music itself. Plus "new" and "dangerous" are very much up for debate in any given instance - music that sounds fresh is obviously good, but I don't think one has to demand relentless futurism from music at all times (and that's before we get into the fact that one can hear something and think it's brand new just because one never heard something else that heavily inspired it). As for "dangerous", I think music that self-consciously sets out to be this ends up walking a very fine line - get it wrong and you end up with something like (late period) Marilyn Manson's pantomime cover versions...

Anyway, my point is that music doesn't always have to be about the shock of the new in order to be good, you know? And if you spend your whole time looking for that rather than any other qualities, you can miss a whole lot of stuff.

10:34 / 06.01.06

it doesn't and these points are valid enough.. nevertheless there's nothing there to compare to the first time I heard Miles Davis' work from Bitches' Brew onwards, or the first time i heard the Velvets, Stooges, Birthday Party, any amount of music i could name that had me so excited i could froth at the mouth over it, and still regularly do. Say what ye will. Bloc Party just don't give me that same vibe. Tom Vek is quite cool i guess. And things will pick up when Yeah Yeah Yeahs get back on the scene.

Haus of Mystery

11:24 / 06.01.06

Yeah, but fucking Bloc Party?? If you like Miles Davis, surely you can look further than Bloc party for musical fizz?

11:29 / 06.01.06

Frankly, there's been nothing there to compare to the first time I heard Voodoo Ray eighteen years ago - times change, our relationship to music changes (in many important ways) - but that doesn't stop me loving new music, or recognising its value.

13:05 / 06.01.06

That shit rocks. I think what is lacking in vitality is what is on the radio, the people invited on Letterman and the like. They do all sound the same, and wherever they're from the Hives/Strokes/Franz Ferdinands are all trotting out the same old-as-Keith Richards (which is old) why-bother posturing that makes people shoot their radios.

Yes.

It is my heartfelt belief that there is always more exciting music being made than one person can possibly take in, that no musical genre has EVER "died" and so forth... what changes is media coverage and ensuing level of public interest.

In terms of what for-want-of-a-better-term we'll call "rock music", I think a lot of us are still working on the basis of the media/music consensus that existed during the post-Nirvana '90s when a certain crossover existed between the good/interesting and the popular; I think during those years there was a certain understanding that if a band were doing something particularly striking and cool they'd likely as not get played on night-time Radio One, get mentioned in the NME etc. and maybe even be in with the chance of some PR hype, a TV appearance or a hit single.

Back to the present day, and I'd consider that understanding has gone COMPLETELY out of the window, and we're back to a situation more reminiscent of the '80s where the "rock bands" offered up for mainstream public consumption are largely purveyors of bland, retrogressive crap and of little worth to anyone with a genuine love of music.

Quite WHY the media has become so conservative and uninspired in it's choices is probably something I'll never understand, so I'm not going to go into it now.

And as in the '80s, worthwhile bands and labels of all stripes tend to be the ones who are doing things for themselves on their own level without trying too hard to seek out mainstream recognition.

Unlike in the '80s though, things are cheaper and easier to get off the ground than ever before, and thus there are thousands of them.

So if you're watching Jools Holland or whatever and despairing at the state of modern music, why don't you try looking for some of them?? If you're posting here you're obviously ON THE FUCKING INTERNET, so that's a good start - GO! FIND! Whatever you're looking for, it's out there.