I shoulda added the "supposed to" the freedom thing as well, typing before thinking.
It is supposed to do a lot of things it used to do, but doesnt anymore.
I still don't get it--"Rock is supposed to be about freedom"? Doesn't that freedom include freedom from having to be about anything in particular?
I'm really not trying to pick on you, but I have the same problem with statements like yours as I have with articles like his: I see little sense in what boils down to "I fell in love with [genre x] because it was so dynamic...why did it have to change?"
granted it was a stupid choice of words, but the point I was trying to make is that rock and R&B shared the same bedroom, bathroom, kitchen for years and years from its inception...they needed each other, they were bad ass because of each other, they shared the same audience from an ideological standpoint..they shared a lot, musically and philisophically...you didnt need to be a master musician to be in a punk band, you didnt need to be a master nusician to sing the blues or to scream into a mic how you felt good, felt bad, or how your boss(man) sucked, or what you were gonna do tonight/today/tomorrow, all with rhtyhm. The rhythm was important, the "beat" was from the devil, its what made good kids go bad...this changed obviously. Rock got a low self esteem, it got mopey, the beat didnt matter...and thus, IMO rock stopped "rocking"
ok... in my life... i've known a few sasha's all of whom have been female. But ok.
"Sasha is a male or female given name. It originates as a diminutive version of the Greek names Aleksandr or Aleksandra. This form is especially common in Russia and surrounding countries. Although in Eastern Europe this name is predominantly given to male children, elsewhere, female children are also given the name. In Germany, for example, the civil registry offices only allow the inscription of Sascha for male children in the birth certificates. In the United States though, the name is almost exclusively used for female children, at number 369 in the ranking of US baby names, although it didn't gain popularity until the 1970s. It is also occasionally used as a surname, although this is very rare."
being that Im from america... that should clear that up.
I shoulda added the "supposed to" the freedom thing as well, typing before thinking.
It is supposed to do a lot of things it used to do, but doesnt anymore.
I still don't get it--"Rock is supposed to be about freedom"? Doesn't that freedom include freedom from having to be about anything in particular?
I'm really not trying to pick on you, but I have the same problem with statements like yours as I have with articles like his: I see little sense in what boils down to "I fell in love with [genre x] because it was so dynamic...why did it have to change?"
I actually do think most rock has lost the spirit of freedom that once made it great... not all, there are some out there still doing it, but the vast majority (and pretty much everything you'll be exposed to unless you dig deep) has been formulaic as hell for the past several years.
Whats wrong is not that it continued to change, but that it stopped changing. Dudes now don't even seem aware of much outside of their own microgenres (which have depressingly strict rules regarding song structure and fashion).
There were some good points in the article and some clunkers, in the end I wasn't completely sure where he stood... he should've hashed this out on his own until it was fully formed. Or maybe it should have been two separate articles.
I think the Breihan discussion posted above was actually a bit more interesting.
Suffice to say though, I think many people would agree current indie-rock music - or specifically the bands being spoken of - is at the very least lost for a decent rhythm.
I think he's understating it, I'd say, more importantly, that it lacks feeling. It is dull.
Dude may be right that indie rock is far removed from classic rock that was inspired by black music.
But, he seems to believe or want to portray music as being some kind of strict lineage from blues to rock to indie rock. A lot of indie rock today is not inspired by rock but by more varied sources - jazz - punk - post punk - prog - classical - world - folk. Just because it's been labeled 'indie rock' doesn't mean that the groups set out to make 'rock music' so it's pointless to argue how un-rock like this music is that is barely rock at all to begin with. To bring up Panda Bear or the Fiery Furnaces - these are barely even 'rock' groups.
He also fails to mention the influences of a lot of current indie bands which were already 'white' bands that were parting ways with traditional rock music such as The Velvet Underground, Bowie, Joy Division, The Fall, The Cure, the Smiths. By failing to mention the Velvet Underground he basically blows the whole argument in my opinion.
And what about the 80's? To borrow his term, miscegenation was at an all time low.
I think S F-J is simply trying to make a point about certain recent aspects of "indie" rock as being basically void of sharing its quote "influences" in its music.
the last paragraph sums it up with comparing the "freak folk" guy devandra banhart mentioning his like for cetain r&b musicians, yet his music has very little in the way of exhibiting an influence of soul.
it's like a "rock needs to be rock r&b needs to be r&b" mentality that he views as a sort of segregation, and i don't know if it's really true given the post-punk revival, etc a few years ago that fused funk and punk--- but certainly it is of certain genres of bigger selling "indie" bands. or at least it's a fad ( for the "freak folk/ new weird" and one i don't care much for).
he mentioned the clash and the minutemen as prime examples of a groups that weren't afraid to share their influences in their music rather that just mention their love for it in interviews.
i think, through all his sort of pretensions (and i am a fan of UI, but agree that he is sort of pretensious), he just wishes more musicians weren't afraid to share those influences.
This article was pretty grueling, but it basically seems to me like he's bitching because bands made up of white kids aren't incorporating slapp-bass into their music these days.
This article was pretty grueling, but it basically seems to me like he's bitching because bands made up of white kids aren't incorporating slapp-bass into their music these days.
He doesn't seem ashamed of his longtime history as a member of a slapp-happy rock band (except for his attempts at vocals that is).
damn, am i the only one who thought that article was pretty dead on?
i couldn't care less about splitting hears re: the relative funkiness of !!! or LCD Soundsystems...
i will say, i grew up a rock dude and i go see rock bands now or talk to people who are into "rock" and i have no idea what the fuck is up... thru work, i have seen most of the indie rock bands of the last 5 years like Liars, Fiery Furnaces or Gang Gang Dance and, for the life of me, i have no idea why people would choose to listen to this... they are all exceeding boring, pretentious, and utterly unable to rock... the sad thing is, there are still plenty of rock bands that rock, yet no one seems to care about them... rocking is no longer a prerequisite to be in a rock band, and i think ascribing that to the increased fetishism of Brian Wilson is kind of interesting...
also, he is dead on, most bass players in these rock bands stay FAR from the bass register and have very little semblance of rhythm... i blame Peter Hook and Kim Deal...
i think it was indeed an interesting thought piece that raised some valid points, namely indie rock is a whitewashed, dull, bastardization of rock and roll...
uck, peter hook's whole schtick of "i play bass entirely in the upper register" is cool for him, but when 10,000 indie rock bassists copy it, it blows
I don't think it's so much that he plays in the upper register, as that he tends to play melodies instead of rhythms. JD/NO made an art of using bass as the lead instrument ... I agree it doesn't stand up to being copped very well, if only because you just end up sounding like New Order or Joy Division when you try it.
My main problem with this dude's little essay is that he comes on like some sort of punk-funk chauvinist, and frankly ill informed about a lot of music that he probably just doesn't care for. I hardly think it's Brian Wilson's or Pavement's fault that modern rock music sucks. And blaming it all on a non-adherence of the blacker elements of rock's roots is just silly. Is this guys actually a well known music writer?
I have a cousin theory to the one present by SFJ. Once white music got away from dance oriented beats (for example classic rock is mostly blues based dance music, ergo you can shake your thing to Ramblin, Gamblin Man) starting in the REM era, rock has gotten a lot less compelling. Great bands were able to transcend this trap (like Pavement or early Sleater-Kinney) and make great music. But if you went to see them live people just seemed glued to the floor. Whenever I go and see an indie rock show I always find myself thinking, "let the intense standing begin". Somehow this has hardened into the deeply segregated music world we now live in. In many ways, I think my collecting soul/funk records for the past 20 years is a response to the uptightness I feel in rock music. I just want to let me hair sometimes and white folks are squeezing their butt cheeks too hard.
I'm with Emma Goldman on this one. "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution".
uck, peter hook's whole schtick of "i play bass entirely in the upper register" is cool for him, but when 10,000 indie rock bassists copy it, it blows
I don't think it's so much that he plays in the upper register, as that he tends to play melodies instead of rhythms. JD/NO made an art of using bass as the lead instrument ... I agree it doesn't stand up to being copped very well, if only because you just end up sounding like New Order or Joy Division when you try it.
50/50
i mean, there are PLENTY of bass players who play melodies in the lower registers... think of reggae, most people idenify tracks by humming the bassline...
and there are melodic bass players who play all over the neck (clint conley from mission of burma)
JD/NO did in a way that was so stripped down and simple (and mostly on the top 2 strings) that almost anyone w/ 3 weeks worth of bass lessons could imitate it, and they are beating it to Frickin' death as of late...
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Dude may be right that indie rock is far removed from classic rock that was inspired by black music.
But, he seems to believe or want to portray music as being some kind of strict lineage from blues to rock to indie rock.
I kinda think that lineage was broken in the early 80s, when the likes of Iron Maiden were coming through, heralding the first generation of metal/hard rock bands who'd only ever listened to/been influenced by other metal or hard rock bands. Since then, rock seems to have moved further and further away from its roots in black music, to the point where what S F-J broadly describes as indie rock has been completely shorn of the kind of rhythmic dynamic a rock band has when it has a drummer who'd much rather be playing hard bop.
I remember reading an interview with Angus Young, probably at the turn of the 80's, wherein the interviewer asked him his opinion on what punk had wrought. His response was something like, "Some of it's OK, but none of it's a patch on the likes of Ike & Tina Turner". Not long afterwards, I recall an interview with Steve Harris, where he cited his key influences as the Scorpions and Blue Oyster Cult. Ten years earlier, his contemporaries probably would have namechecked people like Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed or Little Richard.
I think S F-J is simply trying to make a point about certain recent aspects of "indie" rock as being basically void of sharing its quote "influences" in its music.
the last paragraph sums it up with comparing the "freak folk" guy devandra banhart mentioning his like for cetain r&b musicians, yet his music has very little in the way of exhibiting an influence of soul.
I think this depends on how you define "influences". Maybe Kells' influence on Devendra Banhart is reflected in something like a shared fondness for narrative songwriting, an area that folk music and r&b have often simultaneously occupied. It doesn't have to mean an obvious stylistic influence. Often, that's the least interesting definition of the word anyway. When acts talk about how they're influenced by such-and-such an act, it usually means they've tried to copy them, rather than they've listened to what that act's done with things like rhythm, texture, song structure and all that, and tried to apply it to what they do. When I listen to, say, Queens of the Stone Age, I can hear elements of Mingus, Roland Kirk, the Stooges, krautrock, metal, psychedelia, hardcore, surf music, all of which they've skilfully assimilated into their own sound in a way which adds up to an end product which is much more than the sum of their influences. Whether this is anything to do with them being maybe more musically open-minded, or simply down to them being extremely good musicians, I dunno. But, for me at any rate, it makes their records a lot more interesting to listen to than those of just about any of their immediate peers.
Dude may be right that indie rock is far removed from classic rock that was inspired by black music.
But, he seems to believe or want to portray music as being some kind of strict lineage from blues to rock to indie rock.
I kinda think that lineage was broken in the early 80s, when the likes of Iron Maiden were coming through, heralding the first generation of metal/hard rock bands who'd only ever listened to/been influenced by other metal or hard rock bands.
Not really...heavy metal wasn't the only kind of rock you heard in the eighties. I remember synthy new wave groups like Culture Club and ABC (to name two random examples) openly biting from soul music. Singers like Paul Young, too. Now whether they were any good is questionable, but it was evident that they weren't copping licks from Van Halen.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
Dude may be right that indie rock is far removed from classic rock that was inspired by black music.
But, he seems to believe or want to portray music as being some kind of strict lineage from blues to rock to indie rock.
I kinda think that lineage was broken in the early 80s, when the likes of Iron Maiden were coming through, heralding the first generation of metal/hard rock bands who'd only ever listened to/been influenced by other metal or hard rock bands.
Not really...heavy metal wasn't the only kind of rock you heard in the eighties. I remember synthy new wave groups like Culture Club and ABC (to name two random examples) openly biting from soul music. Singers like Paul Young, too. Now whether they were any good is questionable, but it was evident that they weren't copping licks from Van Halen.
OK, I should have specified that I meant the natural predecessors of bands like Iron Maiden. The likes of Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC and Deep Purple all came from a blues/jazz/r&b lineage of sorts, even prog-rockers like Yes. I hear a lot of Wes Montgomery in Steve Howe's playing, and, strange as it may seem given Sabbath's musical direction, Tony Iommi used to cite Django Reinhardt as a big influence/inspiration.
The acts you refer to are arguably more pop-oriented, and you're exactly right about where they were taking their musical pointers from, but those kind of influences used to be much more apparent in hard rock too, and it always struck me that, from the arrival of Maiden on, they began to decline to the point where they eventually seemed to disappear altogether.
Most indie rock kids i know came at it from that direction.. a genre where the funkiest thing you've ever heard is Fugazi.
Kids dont dig deep at all. I was talking to this buddy of mine.. mid twenties guitar player.. he plays in a hardcore band and an instrumental post rock band.. i was talking about Can.. dood did not know them.. the thought that you could be in an instrumental rock band and never heard can boggles my mind... but his touch stone is GSYBE and Mogwai and Tortoise.. that's as far back as dood goes.
from my own personal experiences with hardcore (this is like 15 years ago and alot HAS changed since) there were RULEZ..albiet unwritten but rulez none the less.. and things that were not respected AT all included "funky bass" hell any bass that was melodic.. bass was meant to be POUNDED preferably with a closed fist. Geetar was not for soloing ...well you could get your thurston on but you could not play scales.. especially blues scales. It's strange that hardcore retained the call and response vocals of soul / r&b but the rhthm section was certainly encouraged to steer cleer.
but this comes from YOUTH and naivity.. we dug fugazi / black flag / minor threat / bad brains... we formed a band.. we didnt do RESEARCH we wanted to rock.. it wasnt till i was OUT of bands that i really started doing any sort of looking beyond the new release rack / buying records at bands shows modus.
Most indie rock kids i know came at it from that direction.. a genre where the funkiest thing you've ever heard is Fugazi.
Kids dont dig deep at all. I was talking to this buddy of mine.. mid twenties guitar player.. he plays in a hardcore band and an instrumental post rock band.. i was talking about Can.. dood did not know them.. the thought that you could be in an instrumental rock band and never heard can boggles my mind... but his touch stone is GSYBE and Mogwai and Tortoise.. that's as far back as dood goes.
from my own personal experiences with hardcore (this is like 15 years ago and alot HAS changed since) there were RULEZ..albiet unwritten but rulez none the less.. and things that were not respected AT all included "funky bass" hell any bass that was melodic.. bass was meant to be POUNDED preferably with a closed fist. Geetar was not for soloing ...well you could get your thurston on but you could not play scales.. especially blues scales. It's strange that hardcore retained the call and response vocals of soul / r&b but the rhthm section was certainly encouraged to steer cleer.
but this comes from YOUTH and naivity.. we dug fugazi / black flag / minor threat / bad brains... we formed a band.. we didnt do RESEARCH we wanted to rock.. it wasnt till i was OUT of bands that i really started doing any sort of looking beyond the new release rack / buying records at bands shows modus.
I sort of know what you're talking about.
In the late nineties and early 2000's I used to play in this roots-rock band (meaning rockabilly/garage), and a couple of my bandmates thought (a) my singing and song choices were "too R&B" (!), and (b) at one point I had a drummer who kept playing in a very stiff, unrelaxed, grooveless, well..."white" style, always speeding up the tempos even when the songs didn't call for it. "The songs are too slow!," they'd say.
It was right around that time that there were a lot of similar bands coming up who had more in common with the New Bomb Turks than ? & the Mysterians. And I blame hardcore for THAT, because if you're playing in a band that takes its' cues from fifties and sixties rock & roll, and you're playing with people who think being slow and soulful is a bad thing and you should be more detached and nasally like the hardcore set...something is wrong.
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,913 Posts
I always thought these guys represented a definite step in the right direction.
That "Ultraglide In Black" covers album they had out (did somebody post that here recently?) is a little tough on the ears in places, but I admire the concept, even if the execution doesn't always measure up. Their version of Lou Rawls' "Natural Man" is
Comments
Prog can be funky...
besides mistaking a name which is most commonly a girls name... as a girl.
granted it was a stupid choice of words, but the point I was trying to make is that rock and R&B shared the same bedroom, bathroom, kitchen for years and years from its inception...they needed each other, they were bad ass because of each other, they shared the same audience from an ideological standpoint..they shared a lot, musically and philisophically...you didnt need to be a master musician to be in a punk band, you didnt need to be a master nusician to sing the blues or to scream into a mic how you felt good, felt bad, or how your boss(man) sucked, or what you were gonna do tonight/today/tomorrow, all with rhtyhm. The rhythm was important, the "beat" was from the devil, its what made good kids go bad...this changed obviously. Rock got a low self esteem, it got mopey, the beat didnt matter...and thus, IMO rock stopped "rocking"
Sasha is traditionally a man's name.
"Sasha is a male or female given name. It originates as a diminutive version of the Greek names Aleksandr or Aleksandra. This form is especially common in Russia and surrounding countries. Although in Eastern Europe this name is predominantly given to male children, elsewhere, female children are also given the name. In Germany, for example, the civil registry offices only allow the inscription of Sascha for male children in the birth certificates. In the United States though, the name is almost exclusively used for female children, at number 369 in the ranking of US baby names, although it didn't gain popularity until the 1970s. It is also occasionally used as a surname, although this is very rare."
being that Im from america... that should clear that up.
That's God's America, sir.
I actually do think most rock has lost the spirit of freedom that once made it great... not all, there are some out there still doing it, but the vast majority (and pretty much everything you'll be exposed to unless you dig deep) has been formulaic as hell for the past several years.
Whats wrong is not that it continued to change, but that it stopped changing. Dudes now don't even seem aware of much outside of their own microgenres (which have depressingly strict rules regarding song structure and fashion).
There were some good points in the article and some clunkers, in the end I wasn't completely sure where he stood... he should've hashed this out on his own until it was fully formed. Or maybe it should have been two separate articles.
I think the Breihan discussion posted above was actually a bit more interesting.
Suffice to say though, I think many people would agree current indie-rock music - or specifically the bands being spoken of - is at the very least lost for a decent rhythm.
I think he's understating it, I'd say, more importantly, that it lacks feeling. It is dull.
But, he seems to believe or want to portray music as being some kind of strict lineage from blues to rock to indie rock. A lot of indie rock today is not inspired by rock but by more varied sources - jazz - punk - post punk - prog - classical - world - folk. Just because it's been labeled 'indie rock' doesn't mean that the groups set out to make 'rock music' so it's pointless to argue how un-rock like this music is that is barely rock at all to begin with. To bring up Panda Bear or the Fiery Furnaces - these are barely even 'rock' groups.
He also fails to mention the influences of a lot of current indie bands which were already 'white' bands that were parting ways with traditional rock music such as The Velvet Underground, Bowie, Joy Division, The Fall, The Cure, the Smiths. By failing to mention the Velvet Underground he basically blows the whole argument in my opinion.
And what about the 80's? To borrow his term, miscegenation was at an all time low.
It's not a work of reportage, it's not a screed... it's just a thinkpiece
the last paragraph sums it up with comparing the "freak folk" guy devandra banhart mentioning his like for cetain r&b musicians, yet his music has very little in the way of exhibiting an influence of soul.
it's like a "rock needs to be rock r&b needs to be r&b" mentality that he views as a sort of segregation, and i don't know if it's really true given the post-punk revival, etc a few years ago that fused funk and punk--- but certainly it is of certain genres of bigger selling "indie" bands. or at least it's a fad ( for the "freak folk/ new weird" and one i don't care much for).
he mentioned the clash and the minutemen as prime examples of a groups that weren't afraid to share their influences in their music rather that just mention their love for it in interviews.
i think, through all his sort of pretensions (and i am a fan of UI, but agree that he is sort of pretensious), he just wishes more musicians weren't afraid to share those influences.
He doesn't seem ashamed of his longtime history as a member of a slapp-happy rock band (except for his attempts at vocals that is).
Not really, what with all those synth-pop bands from the UK thinking they were funky.
i couldn't care less about splitting hears re: the relative funkiness of !!! or LCD Soundsystems...
i will say, i grew up a rock dude and i go see rock bands now or talk to people who are into "rock" and i have no idea what the fuck is up... thru work, i have seen most of the indie rock bands of the last 5 years like Liars, Fiery Furnaces or Gang Gang Dance and, for the life of me, i have no idea why people would choose to listen to this... they are all exceeding boring, pretentious, and utterly unable to rock... the sad thing is, there are still plenty of rock bands that rock, yet no one seems to care about them... rocking is no longer a prerequisite to be in a rock band, and i think ascribing that to the increased fetishism of Brian Wilson is kind of interesting...
also, he is dead on, most bass players in these rock bands stay FAR from the bass register and have very little semblance of rhythm... i blame Peter Hook and Kim Deal...
i think it was indeed an interesting thought piece that raised some valid points, namely indie rock is a whitewashed, dull, bastardization of rock and roll...
Both of whom rock.
uck, peter hook's whole schtick of "i play bass entirely in the upper register" is cool for him, but when 10,000 indie rock bassists copy it, it blows
ditto for kim deals, "i play w/ a pick, play only the root notes of chords, and can barely keep time" thing...
I don't think it's so much that he plays in the upper
register, as that he tends to play melodies instead of
rhythms. JD/NO made an art of using bass as the lead
instrument ... I agree it doesn't stand up to being
copped very well, if only because you just end up sounding
like New Order or Joy Division when you try it.
I'm with Emma Goldman on this one. "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution".
50/50
i mean, there are PLENTY of bass players who play melodies in the lower registers... think of reggae, most people idenify tracks by humming the bassline...
and there are melodic bass players who play all over the neck (clint conley from mission of burma)
JD/NO did in a way that was so stripped down and simple (and mostly on the top 2 strings) that almost anyone w/ 3 weeks worth of bass lessons could imitate it, and they are beating it to Frickin' death as of late...
I kinda think that lineage was broken in the early 80s, when the likes of Iron Maiden were coming through, heralding the first generation of metal/hard rock bands who'd only ever listened to/been influenced by other metal or hard rock bands. Since then, rock seems to have moved further and further away from its roots in black music, to the point where what S F-J broadly describes as indie rock has been completely shorn of the kind of rhythmic dynamic a rock band has when it has a drummer who'd much rather be playing hard bop.
I remember reading an interview with Angus Young, probably at the turn of the 80's, wherein the interviewer asked him his opinion on what punk had wrought. His response was something like, "Some of it's OK, but none of it's a patch on the likes of Ike & Tina Turner". Not long afterwards, I recall an interview with Steve Harris, where he cited his key influences as the Scorpions and Blue Oyster Cult. Ten years earlier, his contemporaries probably would have namechecked people like Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed or Little Richard.
I think this depends on how you define "influences". Maybe Kells' influence on Devendra Banhart is reflected in something like a shared fondness for narrative songwriting, an area that folk music and r&b have often simultaneously occupied. It doesn't have to mean an obvious stylistic influence. Often, that's the least interesting definition of the word anyway. When acts talk about how they're influenced by such-and-such an act, it usually means they've tried to copy them, rather than they've listened to what that act's done with things like rhythm, texture, song structure and all that, and tried to apply it to what they do. When I listen to, say, Queens of the Stone Age, I can hear elements of Mingus, Roland Kirk, the Stooges, krautrock, metal, psychedelia, hardcore, surf music, all of which they've skilfully assimilated into their own sound in a way which adds up to an end product which is much more than the sum of their influences. Whether this is anything to do with them being maybe more musically open-minded, or simply down to them being extremely good musicians, I dunno. But, for me at any rate, it makes their records a lot more interesting to listen to than those of just about any of their immediate peers.
Not really...heavy metal wasn't the only kind of rock you heard in the eighties. I remember synthy new wave groups like Culture Club and ABC (to name two random examples) openly biting from soul music. Singers like Paul Young, too. Now whether they were any good is questionable, but it was evident that they weren't copping licks from Van Halen.
OK, I should have specified that I meant the natural predecessors of bands like Iron Maiden. The likes of Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC and Deep Purple all came from a blues/jazz/r&b lineage of sorts, even prog-rockers like Yes. I hear a lot of Wes Montgomery in Steve Howe's playing, and, strange as it may seem given Sabbath's musical direction, Tony Iommi used to cite Django Reinhardt as a big influence/inspiration.
The acts you refer to are arguably more pop-oriented, and you're exactly right about where they were taking their musical pointers from, but those kind of influences used to be much more apparent in hard rock too, and it always struck me that, from the arrival of Maiden on, they began to decline to the point where they eventually seemed to disappear altogether.
What he proposes is true, but his explanation of what he thinks happened or caused it is ridiculous.
Most indie rock kids i know came at it from that direction.. a genre where the funkiest thing you've ever heard is Fugazi.
Kids dont dig deep at all. I was talking to this buddy of mine.. mid twenties guitar player.. he plays in a hardcore band and an instrumental post rock band.. i was talking about Can.. dood did not know them.. the thought that you could be in an instrumental rock band and never heard can boggles my mind... but his touch stone is GSYBE and Mogwai and Tortoise.. that's as far back as dood goes.
from my own personal experiences with hardcore (this is like 15 years ago and alot HAS changed since) there were RULEZ..albiet unwritten but rulez none the less.. and things that were not respected AT all included "funky bass" hell any bass that was melodic.. bass was meant to be POUNDED preferably with a closed fist. Geetar was not for soloing ...well you could get your thurston on but you could not play scales.. especially blues scales. It's strange that hardcore retained the call and response vocals of soul / r&b but the rhthm section was certainly encouraged to steer cleer.
but this comes from YOUTH and naivity.. we dug fugazi / black flag / minor threat / bad brains... we formed a band.. we didnt do RESEARCH we wanted to rock.. it wasnt till i was OUT of bands that i really started doing any sort of looking beyond the new release rack / buying records at bands shows modus.
I sort of know what you're talking about.
In the late nineties and early 2000's I used to play in this roots-rock band (meaning rockabilly/garage), and a couple of my bandmates thought (a) my singing and song choices were "too R&B" (!), and (b) at one point I had a drummer who kept playing in a very stiff, unrelaxed, grooveless, well..."white" style, always speeding up the tempos even when the songs didn't call for it. "The songs are too slow!," they'd say.
It was right around that time that there were a lot of similar bands coming up who had more in common with the New Bomb Turks than ? & the Mysterians. And I blame hardcore for THAT, because if you're playing in a band that takes its' cues from fifties and sixties rock & roll, and you're playing with people who think being slow and soulful is a bad thing and you should be more detached and nasally like the hardcore set...something is wrong.
That "Ultraglide In Black" covers album they had out (did somebody post that here recently?) is a little tough on the ears in places, but I admire the concept, even if the execution doesn't always measure up. Their version of Lou Rawls' "Natural Man" is