A Conversational Guide to … Rock ‘n’ Roll
There you are—stuck at a dinner party, or at an open house for your neighbor kid’s Bar Mitzvah, or dragging yourself to a professional “networking” event, or you’re sitting with your skis in Aspen’s Silver Queen Gondola for the 14 minute ride to the top of the mountain with a couple of German foreign exchange students. If an uneasy silence or retreating from live human interaction with your nose in your smartphone is not the considerate thing to do in these situations, you are faced with the challenge of talking with real human beings.
Conversation was, and still is, a universally acceptable way for people to pass time. Get acquainted. Share the latest news. Find common ground. Dive into a genteel disagreement or dig into a heated argument. Show off how much you know about the topic at hand. Feel the reassuring voices of people nearby. How can you be ready?
I’m here to help. This segment, on rock ‘n’ roll, is first in what I thought would be a series of somewhat inappropriately short conversational guides on big topics. And there may yet be more of these if I ever get around to it. You don’t need to watch any dull documentaries, do any required reading, or pore through Wikipedia to do it. I’ve already done that for you. Being an interesting conversationalist almost never requires any formal training or in-depth knowledge—just a passable grasp of a few key points, a humorous aside or two, and balls of steel.
In the Beginning—Alan Freed, Elvis, and Copping the Originals
Legend has it that Alan Freed, the disk jockey who hosted a radio show on WJW Cleveland called “The Moondog House” which in 1954 was playing black R&B music for the local hip white kids, coined the phrase “Rock ‘n Roll”. Not quite. Jump blues artists in the late ‘40s were using the term frequently in their songs, usually as a metaphor for sex, but on the surface referring to dancing. Not only was Freed sued for stealing the “Moondog” name from a New York street musician, he was also convicted for accepting payola from promoters for playing records on his show. This established two hallowed music trends which continue to this day: a) stealing from black artists, and b) building an audience through shameless hype and infusion of cash.
Elvis was different in that he had genuine talent and a gut feel for a new style soon to be called “Rockabilly”. He took blues/R&B and country standards and revved them up with a straight 4/4 beat up front with a simple bass/guitar rhythm on the side. At the same time, Chuck Berry was defining basic rock lead guitar, and Little Richard and Bo Diddley were adding a heavy beat to New Orleans R&B and urban blues. Buddy Holly introduced the notion of a self-contained rock n’ roll band—which wrote their own songs and used band arrangements that would soon be copied by the British Invasion groups. All these artists built on what was happening in the 40s with Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner, Professor Longhair, The Delmore Brothers, Hank Williams, and a host of others.
Conversational gambits: Fat Elvis death on the throne jokes, knowing obscure Gene Vincent tunes, mentioning the not-so-sly innuendos in “Shake, Rattle & Roll”.
Making Us Care: The British Invasion
And then we kind of forgot about rock ‘n roll by the early 60s, with most of the pioneers of the 50s in the Army, in jail, or dead. Then The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Animals, and The Kinks threw those blues and country roots right back at us with the big beat and the loud guitars. And they were white, young, and energetic. Like Elvis and the teen idols earlier, the teenage girls picked up on it first, but these guys moved forward, incorporating folk from Bob Dylan, old style showtune styles, Indian ragas, anything that reached further and trumped the other guys.
Pop music didn’t get any better than Paul McCartney competing with Brian Wilson—trading blows with the albums Rubber Soul, then Pet Sounds, then Sgt. Pepper, then Smile (almost).
The British groups grew older, their hair grew longer, and together with their American competitors spiraled into a kaleidoscope of sub-genres.
Conversational gambits: Knowing which Beatles tunes Billy Preston played on, pointing out that Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham from the nascent Led Zeppelin played on Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man”, pointing out that the Who were the only British Invasion band to play BOTH the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock.
The 60s Fallout: Garage, Psychedelics, Heavy Metal, Bubblegum, and Singer/Songwriters
The American response to the invasion?
The Byrds electrifying Dylan songs behind a 12-string Rickenbacker lead (like George Harrison uses!), which pioneered country rock.
The Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane coming from a folk/blues background and going full-Monty into free-form rock/jazz, as seen via LSD.
The Doors in LA and the Velvet Underground in NYC drawing us into their dark world of junkies, murderers, transvestites, and mystical desert shamanism, while also crafting some classic tunes.
Frank Zappa doing the same without drugs and becoming in effect the next noteworthy American classical composer—complete with poop jokes.
Moby Grape, and then Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Band tapping into 100 years of country and folk, adding the electricity, and morphing it into roots rock and swamp boogie.
And then for those teenagers too young to get it, there’s the “bubblegum” pop of The Monkees, The Cryan Shames, 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Ohio Express, Three Dog Night, etc. With Neil Diamond, Carole King, Boyce & Hart, Harry Nilsson, Laura Nyro, and Randy Newman writing many of the songs, the new pop hit factories started to peak around 1970.
Conversational gambits: The acid casualties—the story of the Grape’s Skip Spence, going psychotic, trying to chop down the hotel door of his bandmate with an axe, then being committed to Bellevue Mental Hospital for 6 months; Syd Barrett, original guiding light of Pink Floyd, receding into schizophrenia and being kicked out of the band—but inspiring “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “Wish You Were Here” albums later. Or the story of pop phenom Laura Nyro, responsible at age 18 for writing big hits by The 5th Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Three Dog Night—only to be rejected by the Woodstock Generation.
The 70s Sucked But Not Really
In the first half of the 70s, what we now know as Classic Rock was in place—Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Elton John, The Eagles, David Bowie, Steve Miller, Steely Dan, The Rolling Stones, the Allman Brothers, Yes—all polishing up their 60s act and, while still scoring AM radio hits, also being the driving force behind the success of album-oriented FM stations, and played ad-nauseum on Classic Rock radio today.
By the mid-seventies, The Biz was getting further and further away from the rebellious notion of teens practicing in their garage and restless scenesters in the clubs wanting to dance. The backlash was inevitable. It came in part out of the smooth soul that was coming out of Philadelphia with the O’Jays and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. With both first and back beats emphasized, and with a swirling orchestra, it was gaining a big following, particularly in NYC in the underground clubs with blacks and gays and was morphing into what was to be called Disco. The other sound was also coming out of the urban centers from “have-not” young musicians getting back to the basics of loud garage guitar and mechanical-like beats you could dance or fight to. By 1978, both Disco and Punk had gone mainstream, which explains The Bee Gees and Billy Idol.
Conversational gambits: The great 70s one-hit-wonders that made their way into Quentin Tarentino’s body of work, and more recently, the movies American Hustle and Boogie Nights.
The 80s: Alternatives to What?
In the 80’s, Punk morphed into New Wave and then Synth Pop, while Classic Rock also assimilated the back-to-basics stance of punk, with Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Bob Seger. Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince were blending Disco, Funk, and Rock. Again, big bucks were to be made off the popularization of the original (i.e. less commercial) forms. Talking Heads did consistently great work then split up, whereas the other huge acts of the 80s’ peaked and then faded.
Again, there was a refreshing backlash. R.E.M. led a quiet revolution of do-it-yourself bands germinating from local scenes (in their case, Athens, GA), with catchy but edgy tunes that echoed the punk, folk and psychedelic movements of the 60s. The Smiths, U2, The Replacements, Midnight Oil and XTC also helped lead this “alternative” trend, which led to the late ‘80/early 90’s Grunge movement which came out of the Pacific Northwest (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice-in-Chains, Mudhoney, etc.). Geezers like me who were just kids in the 60s responded to this instinctually. Rock had returned.
Conversational gambits: Courtney Love. Was a train wreck in 1992, and still is today. And why did McCartney win a Grammy in 2014 for that throwaway tune with the remaining members of Nirvana? Discuss.
Now: Blurred Lines
Today, everyone is a star, from the faux amateurs of the singing reality shows to the over-hyped extravaganzas at Super Bowl halftime or at The Grammy’s. Hey – there’s Bruno Mars with the Chili Peppers! Over there—Chicago with Robin Thicke! Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams with Stevie Wonder! Don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed much of this stuff and it’s was good to see the AutoTune craze start to fade away. Still, too many artists rely on sex, celebrity and some wizard behind the screen tweaking ProTools on a MacBook to make it all smooth and polished, and you can hear (and smell) the difference.
I have faith that good will win out. Or at least, that there is room for the truly good among the dreck. But this is the way it’s always been. Let us not forget that “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron” from The Royal Guardsmen charted #2 on Billboard, that Bob Dylan made the horrible “Rainy Day Women #12 and #35, and, of course “Disco Duck” hit #1 in 1976. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, amen. But it’s truly amazing to live in these times, as I can grab a wireless handheld device and dial up Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound On My Trail” whether I’m at home or on the road, and it sounds just as immediate and raw as it did when he recorded it in 1937.
Conversational gambits: Anything about American Idol, America’s Got Talent, The Voice, etc. Though I watch none of them, people just eat this shit up.
Steal Globally, Invest Locally
I now have 40K songs in my iPod library, many of which were legitimately ripped from my CDs or transferred from vinyl, but many were also swiped for, um, “temporary evaluation purposes” (by “temporary”, read: until death) from file sharing services. I can’t help it. I basically want everything and know that I can pull almost all of this from subscription streaming sources, but it not the same as sweaty-palm POSSESSION, fer Chrissakes.
What do I do as penance for this egregious (and high volume) sin? I support local (or small, starting out) bands. When I went to the South-by-Southwest Music/Film/Multimedia event (SXSW) in Austin TX, I avoided most of the big names and saw a bunch of small bands I’d hardly heard of. It was a big, crispy-fried bucket of fun. I find Chicago acts that write their own material and are growing their following in clubs like Martyr’s, The Metro, The Vic, or The Hideout. Sometimes, the results are disappointing, but other times, when you’re in a small venue and the band is really hitting in all cylinders, and they and the audience know it, something special happens that you can’t catch in a recording, or expect from a big production stadium show. It reminds me why this is not just a hobby, but a reason to live.
Conversational gambit: Get off the couch, find a good live show, and if you can, chat it up with the members of the band after the show if they’re hanging around the bar. Thank them for doing something great for usually very little money and buy them a round.
