Rock Music - let's be honest

[nomadologist]

rock has really always been interesting to me in two ways. i like the dionysian/proto-punky thing that the stooges et al did. then i like rock's psychedelic turns. anything else i like very strictly on a song by song basis.

 

[dHarry]

See now this is the rub--- artists in either electronic or hip hop/R'n'B fields have been mainstream successful and STILL managed to be cutting edge. Guitar music has been completely unable to do this for a long long time.

When did guitar music ever do this, though? Troggs' et al riffy r&b? Led Zeppelin? Nirvana? Cutting edge guitar music - 60s psych-punk/Velvets/MC5/70s metal?/Stooges/Krautrock/punk & post-punk/US hardcore & math-rock/SY art-rock - was uniformly underground.

 

[Sick Boy]

Another vote for Gang Gang Dance. Saw them a few months ago here in Toronto (to a disappointing-sized crowd!), and was entranced. Hypnotic rhythms, switching up all over the place, awesome sounds (way more than should be able to be produced by 4 people on stage), and a lead singer with awesome presence. I talked to the keyboard player afterwards, and he said that basically, the guitar was used mainly to trigger samples etc, and so I guess that would somewhat discount the rock-ness of the whole thing. Still, great show, and GREAT dancehall played before and after (which totally rewired the way I heard GGD's own rhythms).

There is certainly other 'rock' I listen to. If you're not *too* North American indie averse, there is some interesting stuff there beyond simple new-wave/post-punk copyists. Broken Social Scene, for example, weave all kinds of interesting guitar sounds and textures together into compelling songs. They have a great drummer too. (Aren't you from t.o., sick boy?).

Just thinking about Canadian bands again, I thought I'd point out that I thought that Matthew Good Band were a very, very overlooked mainstream rock band. If only for the fact they had an interesting charismatic frontman who didn't seem to be conforming to any particular trends whatsoever, really good, intelligent lyrics, good musicianship and great pop songs that were extremely honest and genuine in what they set out to accomplish.

 

[Chris]

When did guitar music ever do this, though? Troggs' et al riffy r&b? Led Zeppelin? Nirvana? Cutting edge guitar music - 60s psych-punk/Velvets/MC5/70s metal?/Stooges/Krautrock/punk & post-punk/US hardcore & math-rock/SY art-rock - was uniformly underground.

True, most of the guitar music I'm really into is more rock-as-avante-garde. Real rock music is for yobs to get drunk at the bar to. Granted though, sometimes I'll flip by a classic rock station, and just be taken aback at how powerful some of those 70s arena-rock songs are (as Daft Punk realized years ago). When it comes down to it, "true" rock is just pop, except pop with very rigidly defined rules and qualities, which is why true rock is about as dated and traditional now as country and blues.

 

[gek-opel]

When did guitar music ever do this, though? Troggs' et al riffy r&b? Led Zeppelin? Nirvana? Cutting edge guitar music - 60s psych-punk/Velvets/MC5/70s metal?/Stooges/Krautrock/punk & post-punk/US hardcore & math-rock/SY art-rock - was uniformly underground.

Led Zeppelin and Sabbath were definitely on the cutting edge at the time, and were mainstream-as-fuck, if not house-wife fodder then certainly widely known, well selling and definitively not underground.

 

[Chris]

Yeah, I suppose their influence has become so ubiquitous that it's hard to imagine the mind-fuck they must have been back in the day. Even Chuck Berry was the cutting edge at one point.

 

[tom pr]

In a bit of a rush, but I'll expand later: Geisha.

Best new rock band I've heard in ages. Really good punk songs drenched in white noise and nuts vocals, and on some tracks expand their sound into Godspeed/Slint territory. Their recent album Mondo Dell'Orrore is incredible: http://www.crucialblast.net/geishamondo.html

 

[Slothrop]

Which is why I embrace all these weird/noisy/psych bands coming out. Maybe they're the seed of a new psychedelic, progressive, or experimental style, which down the road, when combined with a more pop sensibility, could actually birth a relatively new form of guitar/rock/pop music. What rock music has lacked for a while now, is real experimentation and a willingness to embrace new technologies and musical forms the way hip hop, rnb, and electronic music has.

I think part of the problem is that guitars having been around for longer means that they tend to attract neophobes as an audience and as players. It's not that there's nothing groundbreaking and poppy (and it's worth bearing in mind that poppiness is as much a feature of the audience than of the music, so talking about everything pop you can do with guitars having been done doesn't really make sense) to do on a guitar, it's more that part of the audience for guitar music listen to it because they want something fairly familiar. Plus you've got the whole culture of indie-rockism that's latently hostile to anything cheesy or poppy.

I guess it's also a problem - as I think Swears has said elsewhere - that once you pick up a guitar you have a whole library of cliches to fall back on if you can't be arsed thinking of anything else. Pick up Total Guitar magazine, learn to strum the chords to Wonderwall, get down to an open mic neight. Although this problem seems to be hitting synths as well - new synths come with a bunch of fairly standard presets and forums like DOA have a bunch of helpful tutorials telling you how to sound exactly like everyone else in your chosen field. And I don't really see how much current software is going to help, since afaict the most popular VSTs are either faithful recreations of classic hardware (or classic types of hardware) or sample players to simulate real instruments as accurately as possible.

If I had to put money on it, I'd guess that the next evolutionary step is going to be software getting as useable and flexible - at the moment there's a lot that's one but not the other - as a guitar or a keyboard so people can mix and match electronic sounds and conventional instruments in a band that's capable of playing live. Sticking guitars in a situation other than a standard guitar band then gets you out of a lot of the cliches of guitar playing and opens up other possibilities, because what the guitarist can do is partly determined by what everyone else is doing.

 

[zhao]

the problem comes in creating something pop-like with guitars, that isn't reductive to some previous formulation but-not-as-good.

I would say that creating non-derivative catchy rock is more than a "problem" but has been an "imposibility" for some time.

again: rock'n'roll as a genre matured in the 1970s, reaching critical mass with the excesses of psych, prog, and punk. a last period of old-age glory combined with "fusion" styles (such as disco-punk or new wave) leading to other genres lasted through the 80s, further abstracting the sound with shoegazer, etc. the last of the light flickered out in the 90s, with grunge being a dying whimper/scream and now all we have are undead copy-cat zombies and putrid walking corpses.

 

[mistersloane]

I think alot of it is about the live context - my nephew has a band Cellar Door and his mates all play at the Gipsy Tavern on Sundays, and they all like Art Brut and Bloc Party as well as Rammstein and Nine Inch Nails and some of the emo bands who I won't talk about - and it's a joy to see them doing their thing, and increasingly I feel rock is about people doing music in a live context for their friends. I'd much rather they do that than BUY records, it's the change from consumer to producer that I think people find difficult.

I'm like all the noise / psych / aaaaaaargh stuff, but I always have. Om do it for me at the moment, even though they're a avatvism.

 

[swears]

I think the major "innovation" of guitar music in the 00s has been to perfectly ape the era it's taking influence from. In the 90s you had a lot of retro stuff, but you could still tell a Britpop record was contemporary from it's production, a certain feel to the track, a particularly modern sensibility in the lyrics, whatever. Now, when you hear Babyshambles or The Strokes, those bands could have been recorded in 1978. You can't quite be quite sure, I heard some old Clash tune on the Radio the other day, one I'd never heard before. And I really couldn't tell whether it was a "new" band that just sounded like them or not. I don't think you had that 10 years ago.

 

[gek-opel]

Not sure about that. The main sound of post-Strokes Indie rock is that constant chugging 8th note down-stroke thing, that lack of strumming, with poor/minimal production or distortion, and using the same technique for rhythm AND lead parts. Whilst this is very much NOT an innovation (its extremely post punk/new wave) its foregrounding as a stylistic affectation (together with the kind of pathetic production non-aesthetic aesthetic) makes it pretty damn easy to pick out 80% of UK indie rock within seconds.

 

[nomadologist]

yeah, The Strokes sound like their guitar sounds could be sequenced from samples on a synth, they're so overproduced. The "fuzz" on the vocals sounds like it's been added after fixing pitches digitally. I wouldn't mistake their music for being made before 1999, let alone 1980. Babyshambles (which for the most part i've refused to even give a second's time to) is negligibly more analog-sounding.


(i still haven't heard om. am i weird?)

 

[gek-opel]

Om? Imagine "Set the controls for the heart of the sun" by Pink Floyd, only with just bass and drums, and some slow stoner/doom kind-of rock bits. Its quite pleasant, but not much more than that.

 

[nomadologist]

oh boy pink floyd. i don't have much use for them after they lost syd barrett. i always think liars end up sounding like pink floyd, as hard as they try to sound krauty.

 

[zhao]

liars is about the only band worth a damn in the current "indie" crowd. to my knowledge.

 

[childrentalking]

been really liking The Goslings for a while now... finally picked up the vinyl reissue of Between the Dead. a way more interesting spin on MBV than say Pluramon. these Stylus reviews say it way better than i have the energy to do right now, but check em out.

 

[nomadologist]

i did PR for liars when they released the second album. i had to get really creative with my use of ellipses on the pull quotes, since most of them began with "unlistenable". i still like that album, though. i like "they don't want your corn, they want your kids."

 

[mistersloane]

I totally murdered 'this dust makes that mud' at work for about six months, it's perfect to do computer work to. In fact, i'ma dig that out right now.

For me, I like rock music that's makes me go 'aaargh' in the morning - Discharge, Bad Brains, Black Flag, Stooges, Gallon Drunk and black metal type stuff.

I like music that I can get stoned to or makes me feel stoned - Spacemen 3, Loop, some Sonic Youthy type stuff. What Clinic album is the best one, in anyone's opinion? I totally poo-pooed them early on, and think maybe I'm wrong in that.

And music that makes you think you're having the best sex ever even when deep down you know that you're not - Skullflower, Sleep, and I'd put OM into that category.

I'm trying to think of other functions of rock music for me at the moment. Lyrically it isn't doing it for me, I think is maybe my main problem with it currently.

(btw I always liked the Spacemen 3 lyrics. I even think they're quite brilliant at times. Conceptual blues. Fab. )

 

[gek-opel]

The simulated lock-groove of "This Dust Makes That Mud" is by far and away the best thing Liars ever did.