Dear emusic …
Dear emusic:
I’m fairly new to the service … and love the alternative angle. I’m not overly amused, however, that I’ll have to pay .10 cents or more per track (per emusic’s new pricing policy) to accommodated a number of newly acquired mainstream tracks by folks like … Michael Jackson. Sure, Miles Davis is cool. But Michael Jackson?
I would be willing to pay .10 cents more to accommodate more German rock bands from the 1970s … or maybe Captain Beefheart … but I’m not sure it’s fair to boost the price of cool off-beat music (which is mostly what I’ll keep downloading) … to accommodate Bruce Springsteen and the Dixie Chicks.
If you told me that my extra cash was going to artists like Sufjan Stevens and record labels like Kill Rock Stars … I’d happily fork over .15 extra cents per track … but my guess is that the extra money–.10 or more cents for every track–will be going into the coffers of companies like Columbia … So if I keep the service and keep downloading the same kind of tracks (the ones that emusic was making a profit from at .30 cents a track), I’ll be helping to support lots of big labels that support lots of crappy music.
How ’bout a new pricing system that matches musical tastes? We can have the Hipster Plan that allows cool people to keep downloading alternative music at .30 cents a track … and then we can have the Middle of the Road Plan that charges .50 cents per track for the less imaginative listener who cannot afford iTunes.
I could go on ….
Disconnected #1: German Rock
How did we miss the good stuff in the mid-to-late-’70s?
Even in the early ’70s when many thought the rock remained vital, a lot of experimental stuff remained unheard or never quite made it to the mainstream. My guess, too, is that this has often been true in rock, even in eras that seemed to embrace experimentation. How many albums did Captain Beefheart ever sell? If this is true, it also seems to suggest that a popular form like rock often has an artsy, avant-garde side that may be 1) no more popular than any other avant-garde, and may 2) reveal that rock never loses it’s vitality: it just goes underground.
If rock remained vital during the mid-to-late-’70s, it’s possible that many people missed it because too little attention was paid to earlier innovators. For instance, in 1971 it’s doubtful that many in the United States had even heard of Faust’s self-titled debut. Most rock fans were more likely listening to Led Zeppelin’s IV or Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells A Story. But while both of these albums were and are considered great albums, I don’t think that either were inserting a lot of new ideas into the rock paradigm.
Faust, on the other hand, was inserting new ideas, even though it was never as much fun as IV or Every Picture, and even while it never really rocked. But because these latter albums and not Faust helped defined what rock was during the early ’70s, there was less chance that a mid-to-late-’70s audience would understand Eno’s ambient pop-rock or Bowie’s musically adventurous Berlin trilogy. Other experimenters–Pere Ubu and Public Information Limited–would be even harder to comprehend in the U.S. Without being able to trace a line from Faust or Can or Cluster to Bowie and Eno, rock from the mid-to-later part of the ’70s looks less imaginative than it should.
Deconstructing The ‘70s
What Gets Pushed to the Side?
A while back, listening to Panora Radio, I had a musical revelation of sorts. I don’t listen to much music online—I find most of it a pain. All my MP3 files have been ripped from my album collection or borrowed from my sister (I only bought my first MP3 player in 2008). … So I don’t go to the internet for music unless it’s to order CDs from Amazon. But I did run across this Pandora site … managed to distract me for most of the day.
To start out, Pandora simply wanted to know what song or artist I wanted to hear. I plugged in—just because I happened to be curious about the group—the Residents. From there, the Pandora program started randomly selecting other tracks from other bands that were just as strange/ experimental as the Residents. The program also allowed me to add more bands to the playlist. There was Faust, Amon Duul II, the Bonzo Dog Band, Mahogany Rush, David Bowie (from his Eno collaborations), and Pink Floyd. There was also a lot of intriguing stuff that I’ll leave out right now because it had nothing to do with the ’70s.
What was (and is) strange to me is that even within the confines of the classic rock I grew up with, and, for much of my life, have continued to listen to, it surprises me—even without considering punk and new wave after ’76—how much stuff never made it onto classic rock playlists. And even when it did (as with Pink Floyd), the material that was played was limited to a handful of the same tracks. It shouldn’t seem surprising then, that many classic rock fans, weaned on the most conservative playlists, would have—in 1978—perferred Dire Straits to Pere Ubu.
Markets, Marxists, and Popular Taste Fascism
If a punk record was played in the forest and no one heard it …
This entry is something of an aside to the last couple of entries …
There’s always been this argument that it’s impossible to truly gauge popular taste in music because there has never been an even playing field. If, in the mid-to-late-’70s, a Pere Ubu track was never played on the radio, how do we know whether anyone would have really preferred Lynyrd Skynyrd? We might assume that most people would prefer Lynyrd Skynyrd, but at the same time, there may be a group of people who would truly prefer Pere Ubu if they had a chance to hear the group.
The flip side of this is that popularity in no way guarantees that something is good or bad. Most critics seem to think that Led Zeppelin’s Presence(1976) and Pink Floyd’s Animals (1977) were solid albums, and while neither album sold as much as IV (1971) or Dark Side of the Moon (1973), they sold well enough (and much better than anything by Pere Ubu). The point is, big name bands at major labels have made good music.
The problem, it seems to me, is not that there would be a “popular,” or that people would prefer one thing to another, but that the popular-in being pushed by the labels with the most money and the radio stations dependent on advertising-becomes fascist in crowding out other forms of expression. If record bins and FM formats are crowded with Boston (1976), Double Vision (1978), and Rumors (1977), there’s no room for Meet the Residents (1974). If we are not familiar with something, we don’t usually go looking for it. And even if we know something exists, it may be difficult to track down.
Odds & Sods, 1975-79
Rock n roll Velveeta ..
I just have a few more days of break … so I want to lay out a few loose ideas around the subject of rock in the mid-to-late-‘70s. The biggest thing I’m thinking of this morning is how bands like Boston become part of the mainstream hegemony by the mid-1970s. In other words, rock, with bands like Boston, became conservative. Yes, they wanted to get high and play rock n roll, but this was rock n roll with no imagination, rock n roll as processed Velveeta.
It’s strange to me how calling a band a rock band automatically ups expectations. If Boston or the Eagles had just called themselves pop bands, if they would’ve never let on that they believed they were creative rock geniuses, then we could have just enjoyed “More Than a Feeling” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling” like we enjoy “Sara Smile.” As rock bands, though, we’re forced to compare them—say, in 1976—to Lou Reed, Patti Smith, the Residents … And even Aerosmith—if you bought the rap about the band being a dumbed-down, American version of the Rolling Stones—had to start looking pretty smart and even fun beside Boston and the Eagles.
Which brings me to one more question: How does one measure out the spaces between these multiple approaches to rock during the mid-to-late-‘70s? Between the nostalgia of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty, and the experimentation of the Residents and Pere Ubu; between the predictability of Boston and the Eagles and the punk assault of Patti Smith and the Ramones; and between the aging rockers who’d run out of steam like Led Zeppelin and the Stones to aging rockers who still gave the impression of having something to say like Neil Young and the Who?
Led Zep’s Last Stand, ‘75-76
Prog meets metal.
One thing that’s always stuck me as odd is whether rock can be said to have musical–as opposed to lyrical–ideas. I think the obvious answer–looking at ’70s’ progressive rock–is of course. But the answer–I think–isn’t always so obvious. It seems that one of the reason’s critics initially hated Led Zeppelin is that–from the point of view of the idealistic ’60s–they were musical cynics. Led Zeppelin II (1969) reduced rock to its worst base elements: rebellion was about little more than partying and getting laid. Forget the Who and the Kinks.
But it sounded good, and later Zep albums expanded on the concept of sound itself. This was taken furthest with songs/ pieces like “Kashmir,” progressive rock filtered through a heavy metal mesh. Who knows or cares what Robert Plant is singing about? It’s the sound of his voice melding with the rock n roll string quartet that matters.
Other songs from ‘75-76 like “Trampled Under Foot” and “Achilles Last Stand” were also extremely long and–for my tastes–boring. I understand that Zep was developing musical ideas in these songs, but I’m unclear how to weigh the rock aesthetics of these songs. I’m always tempted to assert something like–the band, looking for critical respect, pushed past its ability to deliver–but it could be that Led Zeppelin had just used up its best musical ideas by Houses of the Holy (1973). Both “No Quarter” and “The Rain Song” have rich textures that evoke mood; “Trampled Under Foot” and Achilles Last Stand” seem rather primitive in comparison, loud repetitive grooves going nowhere.
FM, 8-Tracks, & LPs
Mainstream rock n roll …
I’d describe my tastes in the mid-to-late-70s as classic or mainstream rock, incorporating mostly what I listened to on AOR … but also including an assortment of 8-tracks that I picked up. At the time, I really didn’t think much about how odd the mixture was or—within my given category of classic rock—how mainstream it was. It was simply what I and my friends listened to and identified with.
A couple things strike me as odd looking back. First, the bizarre mixture of bands. Why would anyone in his or her right mind stick Boston, Styx, and Foreigner in the same format with Led Zeppelin, the Who, and the Rolling Stones? Or Peter Frampton, Kansas, and Queen with the Kinks, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles? I’m not sure that a lot of the newer stuff at the time—say, like, Boston—should have even qualified as rock, but it was all thrown together in the AOR blender and we called it our own.
The second thing that strikes me odd has to do with the limited number of tracks AOR stations would play from any given band. Why did you usually hear the same four or five Lynyrd Skynyrd tracks—“That Smell,” “What’s Your Name,” “Gimme Three Steps,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” and “Free Bird”? Or the same two or three Kinks tracks—“You Really Got Me,” “Sunny Afternoon,” and “Lola”? Part of the problem with “Stairway to Heaven,” then, wasn’t that it was a good or bad song; it was that the AOR stations I was familiar with didn’t play a wider variety of Zeppelin songs. As a result, they played “Stairway to Heaven” too damn much.
Of course the simple solution would’ve been to buy more albums … and I had a list of 5 star albums memorized from the first edition of The Rolling Stone Record Guide. But I was a dumb teen with little cash to spare … so I relied on FM radio which was free.
A Beautiful Corpse: Rock Meditations, 1975-1979
How do you define what rock music is at any given historical moment?
I have a little downtime over the holiday break … so I’d like to lay out or frame—over a half-dozen or so entries—an idea. It basically revolves around a particular period of time—‘75-‘79—and a particular music—rock—and asks: what did rock music have to offer music fans at this juncture of time?
The juncture seems to be the crossroads where whatever had been initiated in rock during the mid-‘60s was either coming to an end or changing. I’ll get more into the traditional narratives of this mid-to-late-‘70s juncture/change later … I’ve also picked this juncture because I came of age as a music listener during this time. The original question then—what did rock have to offer?—is set against a backdrop of familiar narratives on what happened to rock between ’75 and ’79, and against a personal backdrop of my listening habits during that time.
In a way, ’75-’79 seems like a bad time to write about, because it’s been covered so often. But how many folks have more than a rudimentary knowledge of what rock had to offer between ‘75 and ‘79? How many people have dug beneath the clichés to take a fresh look at the clash between classic rock, new wave, and punk? Other questions might include:
1. How did major labels and FM radio limit what kind of rock music was available between ’75 and ‘79?
2. How did the rock press and FM radio frame the rock cannon between ’75 and ‘79?
3. Were there non-mainstream forms of rock available for those industrious enough to find them in the mid-to-late-‘70s?
4. What were the spaces—musical, philosophical—between the various forms of rock during the mid-to-late-‘70s?
5. Is it possible to sum up rock music—what it was, wasn’t—during the mid-to-late-‘70s?
Radio Fodder, 1975-79
Trends is Banality
One reason it’s hard to tell whether classic rock as we had known it since ’65 or so had really gone to hell in a bucket after ’75 was the evolution of FM radio. From my own experience, several trends guaranteed that classic rock would seem pretty out of touch, stale, boring, etc., when compared to the punk and new wave of the era.
1. Dinosaur Rock—FM kept playing new stuff by bands that had been hanging around since the ’60s … which made them ancient by rock standards. The Who, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones. While these bands could still surprise you (The Who By Numbers), there was a sense of diminishing returns as the decade rolled on.
2. Nostalgic Rock—Lots of folks got real excited about Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty around mid-decade (1970s), as though these guys—deep voiced, real men—were the saviors of a dying form. Most of the music and even the lyrics, however, seemed firmly grounded in yesterday.
3. Rock Redux—One thing that helped the AOR format keep growing was a slew of new bands that reduced rock to its most banal elements. Foreigner, Van Halen, Boston. In their hands, rock was either turned into cheesy pop dross or reduced to the grand themes of partying and getting laid.
4. Mainstream Rock—It was hard to tell whether bands like the Eagles, the Steve Miller Band, and Fleetwood Mac embodied or created mainstream pop-rock in the mid-to-late-‘70s. Everything sounded pretty good … but also pretty predictable.
5. Southern Rock—Southern Rock had elements of Rock Redux and Nostalgic Rock … and in the hands of a band like Lynyrd Skynyrd, something worse. The tuneful, gritty music was laced with a cultural conservatism that was disguised as Southern pride. It gave the music an unpleasant (and aggressive) edge that worked against many of the things that rock originally seemed to aspire to.
That doesn’t cover everything … I’ve left out the double album phenomenon (Kiss, Peter Frampton, etc.) and the occasional addition of pseudo-new wave bands (the Knack, the Cars) to playlists. The point is, the classic rock/AOR format seemed to be chocking off the growth of a form (and the personal growth of its listeners) by promoting fairly safe, predictable stuff.
Musical Revelations
What Gets Pushed to the Side?
Yesterday while listening to Pandora Radio, I had a musical revelation. I don’t listen to much music online—I find most of it a pain. All my MP3 files have been ripped from albums or borrowed from my sister (I only bought my first MP3 player last Christmas). … So I don’t go to the internet for music unless it’s to order CDs from Amazon. But I did run across this Pandora site yesterday, and it—along with the Presidential race—managed to distract me for most of the day.
To start out, Pandora simply wanted to know what song or artist I wanted to hear. I plugged in—just because I happened to be curious about the group—the Residents. From there, the Pandora program started randomly selecting other tracks from other bands that were just as strange/ experimental as the Residents. The program also allowed me to add more bands to the playlist. There was Faust, Amon Duul II, the Bonzo Dog Band, Mahogany Rush, David Bowie (from his Eno collaborations), and Pink Floyd. There was also a lot of intriguing stuff that I’ll leave out because it had nothing to do with the ’70s.
What was (and is) strange to me is that even within the confines of the classic rock I grew up and, for much of my life, have continued to listen to, it surprises me—even without considering punk and new wave after ’76—how much stuff never made it onto classic rock playlists. And even when it did (as with Pink Floyd), the material that was played was limited to a handful of the same tracks. It shouldn’t seem surprising then, that many classic rock fans, weaned on the most conservative playlists, would have—in 1978—perferred Dire Straits to Pere Ubu.
