Stones! and MIB present; The Big Pop/Rock 'N' Roll Myth Deconstruction Thread.

[MACAQUEINBLACK]

A place for debunking the accepted critical wisdoms that have kept so much enduringly Great and relevant art in the dark, or else consigned to campy cliqueism, for decades.


Names like Lennon/McCartney, Dylan, Hendrix, Jagger/Richards, Page/Plant will not be venerated and fawned over for the sake of it. If their works are to be discussed in this Theatre, let them be discussed for their vital, illuminative qualities, their spiritual and artistic essence, without any of the 'legendary' baggage dragging the thread into cliché or mindless 'golden age' worship, and never placing the subjects in a glass case so that the discussion is stillborn.
Give new life to those works that have been dulled by their ubiquity in the classic-rock canon, let them breathe - hackneyed 'voice of a generation' type commentary will not be indulged.

On the other hand, nor will any artist and their work be dismissed or belittled simply for the sake of misguided iconoclasm that has more to do with wilful reaction to that above-mentioned ubiquity, or with media-influenced surface perceptions of the artist, than the art itself.
Too often, what they tell you to believe an artist is or stands for couldn't be further from the essence of their art, and so an entire creative arc can be dismissed on nothing more than a few preconceptions and a cursory glance.


In this place,

• Lynard Skynard will not be hated on just because they dissed Neil Young on record or because their fans were mostly dumb rednecks who would sodomize new wave nerds in parking-lots to the strains of 'Free Bird' back in the 80's
  
  
• The prolific and too-often overlooked brilliance of writer/producer-driven, studio-created acts such as The Archies will be acknowledged
  
  
• The pre-'65 longplaying works of The Beach Boys will not be dismissed as a few catchy hits padded by a ton of filler
  
  
• Pure-pop and bubblegum music will not be deemed an inherently lower form and dismissed out of hand - nobody will get a pass for slamming a Jonas or Britney record, or any other piece of 'mainstream' product, without a valid, thoughful comment on the music itself
  
  
• The Beatles' back-catalogue will not unquestioningly be accepted as the GOAT of all rock back-catalogues, and its flaws won't just be glossed over for the sake of contributing to the rose-tinted veneration of one important group whose importance and Greatness has been hopelessly over-inflated through the decades by a variety of conspiring factors

In this open-ended, freewheeling discussion process -- a spin-off from exchanges that have taken place in the "Currently Listening" thread -- insight will accrue and we will get somewhat close to the 'truth'.

MUSIC will be discussed with uncynical verve, innocence and excitement by your hosts and anyone else who wishes to join us when the momentum inevitably builds.



1 star away, angry mob. =]

[MACAQUEINBLACK]

Just to get the thread rolling,

One I owe you, Stones!





^^ The HDCD preparation of Neil's 'Time Fades Away' LP, set to be released in late '95 but shelved at the behest of the artist.

Album still has never seen a reissue in the digital era.


Accurate info here.

[led]

I just wanna know your opinion on this article. Is the writer cynic or he has real point?

Bob Dylan: a poet and a poseur. There, I've said it...
By Mark Hudson

'Who wants yesterday's papers?" sang Mick Jagger in one of the Rolling Stones' more callous jibes. He was referring to the disposability of his own girlfriends. Yet the metaphor can serve equally well for the inherent ephemerality of all pop music - not only Jagger's own, but even that of the current sacred cow, Bob Dylan.

Dylan is current only in the sense that he's always been current. The adenoidal folk rocker's heyday may have been a good four decades ago, but his status has remained huge. Yet Martin Scorsese's marathon biographical documentary has created unprecedented excitement around the sixty-something singer-songwriter. The sense of awe it has generated and the apparently universal consensus on Dylan's "greatness" mark a new phase in pop's cultural dominance and in the unreality of the claims made for it.

Where once the fetishistic raking over of the lives and doings of 1960s pop icons was the exclusive province of the specialist music press, it now dominates the mainstream media to the extent that even my 86-year-old father-in-law - a lifelong loather of pop - is starting to wonder if he should take an interest in "this Dylan fellow".

Yet even the best pop music can sustain remarkably little in the way of critical analysis - let alone the endless reinterpretation to which the classics are subjected. But what's worst about the creeping monumentalisation of pop is not just its inherent absurdity, but the way it threatens to smother this music's fragile charms altogether.

We live in a world run by people who came to consciousness during pop's 1960s golden age. Often significantly younger than Dylan, they not only understand the iconic significance of the Fender Stratocaster guitar, they actually own one. It's hardly surprising, then, that the new film's "lost footage" from Dylan's crucial mid-1960s period should have created excitement. Yet there's something about our "air guitar" establishment's endless valorisation of the sounds of its youth that is slightly creepy.

I'm not anti-pop, or even anti-Dylan. His Like a Rolling Stone is one of my favourite pieces of music. Or it was until the American rock critic Greil Marcus decided to write an entire book about it and a panel of rock and film stars voted it the cultural artefact that has most changed the world.

There's something about the very nature of the pop song that makes it unsuited to this kind of clumping endorsement. Pop's roots are in the mercurial joys and anguishes of adolescence. Like a Rolling Stone may be as good as pop gets lyrically, but Dylan's warning to a slumming rich girl doesn't add up to much without his whinily splenetic delivery and the joyous rhythmic surge of the original recording. Once you start weighing it down with a mass of critical baggage, the sparkle goes.

Scorsese's film and Christopher Ricks's often hilarious, convoluted critical tome Dylan's Visions of Sin have reawakened the decades-old debate on Dylan's status as a poet. Yet Dylan's endless namechecking of cultural figures from Dante to Rimbaud amounts to little more than garbled adolescent name-dropping.

Moments of skewed surreal brilliance and nuggets of universal tenderness and wisdom are jumbled in his work with make-weight phrases and cringe-making rhymes. Yet it works as one great shout of post-adolescent self-assertion in which prodigiousness and pretentiousness are all bound up in Dylan's droning and often spectacularly mannered vocal delivery. Once you start to pin Dylan down, it all evaporates.

Indeed, Scorsese's film - a brilliant work - is less an endorsement of Dylan's claims to artistic greatness, than an assertion of just how "pop" he is. Even at his most earnestly folky, Dylan was manicuring his image with a Madonna-like assiduousness. The "lost" footage of his seminal, mid-1960s period, when he supposedly changed the world, reveals the poet and prophet to have been an actor and a rock 'n' roll poseur to rival David Bowie and Mick Jagger at their most flamboyant.

Dylan is undoubtedly a genius, but he's a pop genius. He's got more in common with Kylie Minogue than with Beethoven, and like all pop geniuses he has manifestly failed to carry his greatness into the starker territory of middle age.

So will we still be furiously discussing Dylan's literary standing in 50 years' time? I doubt it. Not only will our current preoccupation with Dylan's historical moment have long since faded, but we'll have learnt to accept that something can be "great", but still part of a popular, oral tradition that may be as disposable as Mick Jagger's newspapers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/p...aid-it....html

[PEBBLES!]

We have been discussing classic Pop/Rock music for quite some time, now, MIB, and the OP is somewhat of a manifestation of the various discussions we've had in our ideological 'struggle' to remove the burnish which ensnares and suffocates the soul of the art, and shakily encapsulates it, within a pretentious bubble. Or, as Dylan wisely accredits Dave Van Ronk - "He can take the essence of the song, and only go after that, not go after the thrills".

Aside from busting lazy & banal reviews, I shall use this thread as a makeshift "currently listening to....." thread, or just shoot-the-bull with whomever about classic & modern Pop/Rock artists.

Just thought I'd attempt to assassinate the filth that is Richie Unterberger and his boorish and 'trite' attempt at a 'review'.

The Beach Boys
Little Deuce Coupe
Capitol Records
1963



Seminal Rock giants, The Beach Boys, 3rd LP release, somewhat hastily-recorded amid record-contract obligations, is a powerful surf-rock LP. This set of trail-blazing, earth-shattering music is among the finest early Beach Boys recordings', along with All Summer Long, Shut Down Vol.2 & Surfin' USA. The LP is laden with the theme of "cars", a notion which evokes and encompasses a broad spectrum of ideas, ostensibly - hope, joy, freedom and friendship. The vocal harmonies of records such as Spirit of America and Car Crazie Cutie are performed to perfection under the guise of Singer/Songwriter/Producer extraordinaire, Brian Wilson. A concept album released 4 years before The Fab Four's Sgt Pepper's ever hit the shelves, Brian Wilson was a record-making genius, ahead of his time, with an unparalleled artistic vision. The four previously released tracks give the album a wholeness, otherwise unattainable if they had been shelved. A momentous album, whose essentials are the title track, Car Crazie Cutie, Spirit of America & Our Car Club.

Stones! Rating: ★★★★

LDC LIVE PERFORMANCE

Line-up

Dennis Wilson - Drums
Al Jardine - Rhythm Guitar
Carl Wilson - Lead Guitar
Brian Wilson - Bass
Mike Love - Lead Vocals

[D-MiZe]

[PEBBLES!]

Just to get the thread rolling,

One I owe you, Stones!





^^ The HDCD preparation of Neil's 'Time Fades Away' LP, set to be released in late '95 but shelved at the behest of the artist.

Album still has never seen a reissue in the digital era.


Accurate info here.

Sweet work, man.

[PEBBLES!]

Ahhhhh, a brilliant example of classic surf-rock. One of my favourites, too. If you ever get a chance to listen to the Pulp Fiction OST, it has a few surf-rock tunes. I'm always reminded of the genre when watching the film.

Here's another favourite of mine that will blow your mind. A Gershwin cover song, also a finer version that the more popular Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong cover, imo.

[PEBBLES!]

Pay close attention to the acapella intro harmony;

[武士道]

Is this of any use?

[PEBBLES!]

Is this of any use?

Great post, mate.








LDC Scans!


http://bjbear71.com/Beach_Boys/Recor...-CD/Photos.png

http://bjbear71.com/Beach_Boys/Album...euceCoupe.html


^^^^ Scroll down for more.



An earlier BB instrumental;