Wednesday 23 April 2008

The great rock'n'roll timeline

It's the lazy hobby of every major rock and pop music magazine or show: over the issues and years, they give us a not-that-detailed timeline for the great rock'n'roll history. That's not a bad thing, quite the opposite, but my goodness, talk about pandering to the lowest common denominator!

Basically, the story goes as follows: rock started with Elvis. Shit, most rags will actually start with The Beatles, and then maybe work back to The King. Along with Mr Presley, there might be a few references to Little Richard, Chuck Berry (thanks to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack only) and Jerry Lee Lewis. If you like Fats Domino, Roy Orbison, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran or Del Shannon, forget looking through Mojo, Q or the NME, they just ain't bovvered. The NME don't seem to remember that anything happened before 1977! And anything pre-Oasis is generally only given the most cursory of glances. Still, I promise not to turn this into an anti-NME rant!

So, they let us know that once upon a time when the world was simpler and less exciting there were rock stars who launched the genre on unsuspecting audiences, breaking down cultural and ethnic barriers along the way, before moving on to the juicier artists of the 60s and 70s. If you are VERY lucky, they will make a brief detour to salute the influence of Jazz (only Coltrane, Davis and Parker of course), Country (don't expect anyone more than Johnny Cash and possibly Hank Williams), Blues (brief nod to Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters) and Soul (thanks to the movie -and the same applies to Cash- we get Ray Charles, plus Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding and maybe Aretha). Hardly exhaustive, barely a footnote even. Considering these were the founding pillars of rock music, it seems bizarre. But rotund black men in suits playing lengthy sax solos, or hairy, uncouth country singers from the least fashionable parts of the USA probably just don't have the sheen the NME and co. require of their artists. Cue the grinning Beatles and the sexy Stones.

Of course, the 60s was (were?) the landmark decade in the history of modern music. This is when music became pop (OK, that started a bit in the 50s), and when rock'n'roll became ROCK. It's the decade of psychedelia, blues revival, Brit invasion (and therefore the birth of -blech- Brit-pop), acid folk/folk-rock and the cult of the singer/songrwriter. So, the timeline goes on: Bob Dylan to The Beatles, Beatles to The Rolling Stones (if it's a British mag, you'll get a drive-by mention of The Who, The Kinks and maybe The Yardbirds), Stones to The Byrds, The Byrds to Clapton, Clapton to Hendrix, Hendrix to Pink Floyd (Barrett-era), Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin and the demise of The Fab Four. Oh, and throw in the Beach Boys somehwere around 1965-66. This is all good, but sure does keep it simple. And yet, I'm not sure many mags will really elaborate on that 60s formula. Some will drop The Hollies and Herman's Hermits into the Brit Invasion chapter (again, only the British rags), yet somehow miss out on the Small Faces, The Moody Blues, Them or The Pretty Things. In the Blues Revival bit you might get a mention for Fleetwood Mac and John Mayall, but mostly it will be all about Cream/Clapton. Psychedelia suffers the most, it's too vague, off-the-wall and adventurous a genre to really appeal to Arctic Monkeys fans, so if you're lucky you'll at best get a quick detour via The Grateful Dead, the Doors and Jefferson Airplane before the journos come screaming back to the more conventional Floyd. And for some reason, Led Zeppelin is ALWAYS held up as the band that dragged us screaming into the post-Beatles rock world. Forget Black Sabbath, Mountain or Free, or the fact that bands were doing far more adventurous stuff YEARS before the New Yardbirds became Led Zep. After all, Led Zeppelin sells. And it's easier to simplify things this way.

And on to the 70s. First, we cry a LOT for departed Jimi, Janis and Jim (maybe not Jim). Then, move on with claims that 1970 or 1971 (depending on the magazine or TV show) was THE YEAR THAT ROCK CHANGED FOREVER (cue images of The Beatles' split and Woodstock - which was in 1969 but who cares?). If you're British, it means things kicked off with Glam (Bolan and Bowie + a dribbling of Elton, Roxy Music, Slade and Gary Glitter - no Cockney Rebel or Mott the Hoople of course, and dream on, Jobriath!), but this little quirk of the British rock scene is completely overlooked if you're from anywhere else. So, cue lots of Prog-rock and Hard rock. The Stones, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Santana, Genesis, more Floyd, more Zeppelin, plus a few tracks from the likes of Yes (although they are VERY unfashionable), Steppenwolf (well, one track, and from the sixties to boot), Free and Blue Oyster Cult ("Don't Fear the Reaper"). Oh, and some more Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.
Then we get to singer/songwriters and country-rock: more Dylan, some James Taylor, Neil Young, CSN, The Eagles, Joan Baez (even though she's crap), Jackson Browne and America (for "Horse with No Name", generally somewhat erroneously derided as a Neil Young rip-off). Plus an occasional walk to the Wild Side to mention Lou Reed.

Then we move on to classic rock (Queen, Springsteen, Tom Petty, Bad Company and Aerosmith), with a bit more Pink Floyd, The Stones and Zeppelin along the way (by now it's really getting silly, and, much as I like those three bands, it's enough to drive you to hatred!) before a massive quantum leap to punk, where, due to epherality of that genre, you actually get quite a large number of bands. The Sex Pistols and The Clash get precedence, of course (are they the Led Zep and Pink Floyd of the Punk world??), but most journos are able to cram in Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Ramones, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Talking Heads as well. And the death of Sid Vicious somehow always contrives to wrap up the decade two years early, after a quick detour at some point (either in 1976 or 1979) via the world of disco. Especially in Britain, where we do love Abba.

The common factor in all this? Most of these bands sold. LOTS. And it's doubly frustrating because the seventies were the most musically fertile years in rock history. I'm not even talking about the obscure wonders hiding behind the cobwebs of seventies rock, such as the supreme Acid-folk of Comus or Simon Finnn. But what about Gene Clark and Gram Parsons, two singer/songwriters whose fusion of country, rock, folk and blues laid the groundwork for so much of the Americana and Alt-country scenes of the next two decades? Or Townes Van Zandt, the ultimate cult songwriter poet, an influence on stars like Steve Earle or Kaith Urban? Or Television, the premier New York punk band, whose arty, jangly guitar rock resonates in the music of the likes of The Strokes and Kings of Leon? Or Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, cult bands who launched the industrial genre? Or Mott the Hoople, surely the best of all the glam rock bands, bar Roxy Music? Or (and I promise this is it!) Van der Graaf Generator, surely the most exciting and genre-defying of all the prog bands, and the band that most successfully melded art and rock? Most of all, the complete lack of any mention of the superbly innovative early seventies German rock (aka. Krautrock), a massive influence on nearly every alt-rock and avant-garde artist and band since, from Brian Eno to PiL, Battles to Wilco? I could go on for a while (I promise I won't!), listing bands who never get more than a foot-note at best in most rock histories yet who deserve more, if only for their influence.

And so on to the 80s. First comes electro-pop, with a nice little look back to salute Kraftwerk (but forget Tangerine Dream), before, after sliding briefly past post-punk and New Wave (cursory mentions of PiL, Blondie, Talking Heads again and maybe gang of Four if you're lucky), and a couple more mentions of Pink FLoyd (for the insipid The Wall) and Bruce Springsteen, we get into the world of MTV and gross, mass-produced pop. Aside from The Cure, U2 and Echo and The Bunnymen, it's mostly sludge, from Madonna to Prince, via Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Cyndi Lauper and Elton John. Geez, thank fuck for Kate Bush, The Smiths and Eurythmics! And then onto hair metal, to collective groans! Despite the great number of truly stunning music made during the eighties (can I just cite Killing Joke, The The, Replacements, Japan, The Human League, David Sylvian, Talk Talk and Sonic Youth?), it's no surprise it is so much-maligned if THIS is what most people were getting exposed to during the satellite TV boom.

The nineties were even more straight-forward: the music rags got lazier in their pursuit of sales, and it seems as if all of them look at 1993 as the year zero of rock, rather than the continuation that it actually was. So we get, in order, Grunge, Brit-pop, more Pop (Boy Bands, Girl Divas and Coldplay) and the new rock of the last ten years. Radiohead have replaced Pink Floyd as the thinking student's band, whilst Led Zeppelin's metal was replaced by Oasis' rip-off rock. And so it continues ad-infinitum. The words "progressive" and "arty" have become taboo, dance is back in fashion, as well as chronic stupidity it sometimes seems (I mean, Brit-pop was all about raves, booze, cigarettes and football, hardly mind-blowing stuff), and most band names start with "The". Plus, every month the NME picks a new "best band in the world", each time sounding just like the previous month's. And most sounding like a blend of The Smiths, Gang of Four and The Stones.
As usual, there have been a whole host of great bands and artists to have graced our ears since 1989, some mainstream (I'm thinking Suede, The Flaming Lips, Jeff Buckley, Alice in Chains, Bloc Party, Interpol and The Manic Street Preachers, among others), some not (Bardo Pond, Jesse Sykes, Fushitsusha, Tenhi, Jesu, Red House Painters, etc.), but the sheer weight of dogma and fashion victimisation is exhausting.

So, this is my railing against the mass. A little look at some alternatives to this set timeline, and the set road most journalists are forcing to embark upon. Rather than the enforced "R'nR-to-Beatles-to-Brit invasion-to-blues rock-to-country rock-to prog-to-heavy metal-to-glam-to-stadium rock-to-electro-to-pop-to grunge-to-Britpop-to-new rock" route, let's head to the ditch. I'm gonna look at and pay hommage to some obscure-to-unknown masterpieces, as well as some great albums by bands that hit the big time only to be left by the wayside of popular acclaim in recent years. Time to bring back Rock's blank generations...

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Phimister/obscure_alternatives__unsung_masterpieces_and_underappreciated_gems

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