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Re: Rock is not dead, I say



> C'mon!  There's no class distinction when it comes to wankin'!

Scott:

But not talking about it in public.

> Don't forget white Gospel.  It has the sound of Irish music set to guitar

Keets:

I consider that British minstrel. Definitely root Country.

> So what does that make Molly Hatchet?  Eighth rate Allmans?

Jeff:

You're being kind, perhaps. I was in the South for the Southern music
"revolution." You can't imagine what's in between, from Grinder's Switch to
Goose Creek Symphany. You don't want to know.

>Thanks for standing up for Bruce.

He's a Hell of a songwriter, when he's at his best.

> Correction.  Some of its roots come from British (Irish and other Anglo)
> minstrel music.

There's no disagreement here. I just didn't want to write an epic novel,
just an EMail to the list.

>Wow.  You draw some very straight black and white lines in the face of a
>very circular, colorful world

Again, I can write for days about this stuff, but am trying to get it down
to the essence. It's the way you have to do it, draw some generalizations
and bypass some of the less important factors.

>By 'we' do you mean all Who fans, or just you and those who agree with
you?"

It can't be all Who fans; some think WN is their best album.

>This is a whopper of Who-fan bias and not true.

I'm not going to argue with the first part; I've been called a "Who
Chauvinist" before. But it is true, as far as I can determine. I can't see
another major band who had a song with as much influence as MG; it wasn't
DIRECT influence but more of a "well, now we don't have to stay as strict to
the guidelines." Remember in TKAA movie when Pete says something about "four
chords and you'll be up before the board?" Like that. There was no set rule,
but people wrote songs as if there were. I suppose this is harder to
understand in a post-MG world. But music was pretty much traditional before
12/65.

> influence on anything and do not count, right?

Other than a sneaking suspicion that John and Paul checked out all the
up-and-coming bands and rushed into the studio to get that stuff on vinyl
first. No proof of this, of course.
But at the heart of this is: if a band's music isn't heard, how can it be an
influence on a vast amount of other bands?

>toasty.  It might make some sense :-)

You're just trying to get me to take drugs. You bad, bad person you.

>Let's assume that you are right, that The Who's MG is the first ROCK song.

Let's. Let's look at music before and then after 12/65. Using your examples:

Dick Dale and the Deltones - 6 albums of surf punk 1962-1965
The Surfaris - single "Wipeout" 1963

Surf music is based on Chuck Berry. Standard RnR.

The Kingsmen - single "Louie, Louie"  1963

Blues-based, definitely.

The Byrds - album "Mr Tambourine Man" 1965

Folk Rock, but I'd call it RnR.

The Animals - single "House of the Rising Sun"  1964

Blues. Definitely.

The Beatles - movie "Hard Day's Night"  1964

RnR.

The Kinks - single "You Really Got Me"  1964

Well, the weakness in my theory is the Kinks' singles. Call it Pre-Rock. But
the rest of their albums wasn't much different than what the Stones were
doing.

The Yardbirds - single "For Your Love"  1965
Stones - single "Satisfaction"  1965

RnR, the pair of them. Although FYL is working toward Rock. Satisfaction is
pretty standard.

>American.  The basic structure of the song is simple  sped-up talking
blues.

Yeah. That's what I call RnR. Can't do that to MG. To do so, The Who had to
turn it into Memphis Tennessee (re: TKAA soundtrack version).

>How do *you* define ROCK, anyway?

I'd call it the music that came from RnR and evolved to the point where
because the structure of the songs was fluid enough to embrace any sort of
addition, it became the all-encompassing genre rather than a separate
genre...thus forming Glam Rock and Punk Rock and Surf Rock (and Surf Punk)
and so on, and so forth...


  "Slightly more voters--in Florida as
      nationwide--preferred Gore to Bush."
     Chicago Tribune on the definitive recount


               Cheers                 ML