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Rock's appearance vs Jazz's appearance


Simon Weil

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21 minutes ago, Brad said:

With all this discussion, I listened to Rubber Soul yesterday; it wasn’t speaking to me. I guess you have to be in the right mood. 

It works for me. I recently bought this (and some other Beatles CDs) as part of a background thing I'm doing on Rock of that time (I've got the LPs, but somehow I wanted to start fresh) and I found it lived. Sometimes - with other artists - they can sound flat, or, in one case, the whole thing falls to bits and it sounds curiously mechanical. I think frame of mind is part of it.

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On the other hand I listened to Magical Mystery Tour yesterday and really enjoyed that.  My only disappointment was that the album wasn’t longer. 

Did you ever buy the mono box reissued a few years ago. Great sound. Much prefer them in mono than stereo. 

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15 hours ago, Simon Weil said:

Whenever I go up to my dentist (I cycle up), I go past Abbey Road. I actually turn off just before the zebra crossing on the cover of Abbey Road. It's always got a bunch of people standing there - having their pictures taken in the exact same position as the Beatles. Or I guess just being there in this iconic place (as they see it). They come from all over the world, making this updated version of a pilgrimage. There's always guys from Japan or China there.

Biggest selling single in Japan in 1964:

 

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All the 2009 remasters are amazing. As is Love. But none of them come close to the revelation that is the Sgt Pepper remix. 

48 minutes ago, Brad said:

On the other hand I listened to Magical Mystery Tour yesterday and really enjoyed that.  My only disappointment was that the album wasn’t longer. 

Did you ever buy the mono box reissued a few years ago. Great sound. Much prefer them in mono than stereo. 

 

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3 hours ago, Brad said:

On the other hand I listened to Magical Mystery Tour yesterday and really enjoyed that.  My only disappointment was that the album wasn’t longer. 

I agree - I wish the album were longer. On the UK reissue, there's other psychedelia relayed stuff added - but.... Of course this is the "music of the [TV] movie" - and I think the movie is the more satisfying experience - thoroughly flawed, but quite disturbing in parts.  Not at all the "wholesome" Beatles we know.

 

2 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Biggest selling single in Japan in 1964:

I get the feeling you're not quite addressing my point. Which is of the universality of this music. Specifically, it's true that Japanese culture remains Japanese - but it has had a real ad-mixture of Western culture since Meiji times.

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4 hours ago, Brad said:

On the other hand I listened to Magical Mystery Tour yesterday and really enjoyed that.  My only disappointment was that the album wasn’t longer. 

IIRC it was originally released in the UK as two EPs.  Is the cd based on the US Lp release? 

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2 hours ago, Simon Weil said:

I get the feeling you're not quite addressing my point. Which is of the universality of this music. Specifically, it's true that Japanese culture remains Japanese - but it has had a real ad-mixture of Western culture since Meiji times.

Your "point" as I understood it from your initial post was "to see if one could glean any insights as to how new musical forms appear - and thus an insight into how Jazz might have appeared." My counterpoint is that you can't glean any insights from rock's appearance any more that you can glean why Bollywood became popular in India. It just did. It's not a thing that can be gleaned.

FWIW, I have never heard anyone credit the Beatles with kicking off rock & roll's popularity. Rock did not start with the Beatles. It started way further back than that. Chuck Berry is often credited as the first rocker and even that isn't true.

As much as Wikipedia isn't a real encyclopedia, their rock & roll write up is very good and shows some real research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll

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"If you saw the place [The Roundhouse, London October 1966, IT Launch Party. Seminal event in UK Rock History] in daylight you would have been horrified. It was dank, really cold and wet and horrible, but the excitement at the gig was enormous. It was like 'Wow! This is our place'"/Peter Jenner*

The Beatles flip to psychedelia is often put down to Paul McCartney's presence at this gig and related interactions. 'Wow! This is our place' sounds related to Buddy Bolden "calling his children home". Our place...home.

 

*From Days in the Life, Voices From the English Underground/ Jonathon Green p121

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Going back to the original question: Am I the only one here who remembers "the days before rock n' roll"? (As I think VanMorrison once sang.)  In the summer of 1955 there was nothing intellectual about it-- it  was like being hit by a bolt of lightening.  In the summer of 1956 adults were still arguing about whether rock and roll would last and I had an epiphany: I was in a restaurant when someone put Elvis singing "Don't be Cruel" on the juke box and I realized that not only would Rock and Roll last but in 50 years we'd still be listening to many of the same songs.  

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6 hours ago, medjuck said:

Going back to the original question: Am I the only one here who remembers "the days before rock n' roll"? (As I think VanMorrison once sang.)  In the summer of 1955 there was nothing intellectual about it-- it  was like being hit by a bolt of lightening.  In the summer of 1956 adults were still arguing about whether rock and roll would last and I had an epiphany: I was in a restaurant when someone put Elvis singing "Don't be Cruel" on the juke box and I realized that not only would Rock and Roll last but in 50 years we'd still be listening to many of the same songs.  

Yeah. When I was a kid we had all this stuff that, even at that age, and knowing the songs, I thought was complete rubbish on the radio - 'Bimbo' by Jim Reeves; "Zing" by some well known folk group; hundreds of Guy Mitchell records, or so it seemed.

In 1956, I heard Fats Domino's 'I'm in love again' and it was a revelation - even though THAT was a complete rubbishy song, too. Well, the MUSIC wasn't. That BAND! Zowie! But the fact that I heard that real swinging music before I heard Presley or Bill Haley made a hell of a difference to my taste. Rock & Roll to me meant Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Larry Williams, Bo Diddley, the Coasters and the Platters (who I saw live in Bradford). Although I could appreciate Presley, the only one of them white boys I absolutely loved was Jerry Lee Lewis.

Of course, there WAS other good stuff around. Perez Prado's records were very popular and "Cherry pink' was #1 in the US and UK in '55. 'Skokiaan' was on the radio a lot the hear before. Much though I liked that stuff (and still do) it was from somewhere else.

Historically, of course, Presley had the influential position. White Rock & Roll all stemmed from his Sun material and the amazing thing was that those records were made by a band with two guitarists (Presley & Moore) and one bass player (Black). Just a trio with no drums. Looking back at those records from the sixty-odd years later it seems impossible for that music to have been created by a trio with no goddamn drummer.

MG

7 hours ago, Simon Weil said:

"If you saw the place [The Roundhouse, London October 1966, IT Launch Party. Seminal event in UK Rock History] in daylight you would have been horrified. It was dank, really cold and wet and horrible, but the excitement at the gig was enormous. It was like 'Wow! This is our place'"/Peter Jenner*

The Beatles flip to psychedelia is often put down to Paul McCartney's presence at this gig and related interactions. 'Wow! This is our place' sounds related to Buddy Bolden "calling his children home". Our place...home.

 

*From Days in the Life, Voices From the English Underground/ Jonathon Green p121

Did you ever go to the Ealing R&B club on any Saturday evening in 1961-62? Stuff started there, sure 'nuff. Usually there'd be the Alexis Korner band with all sorts of guests sitting in and, if you never saw Mick Jagger and Long John Baldry duetting on 'I got a woman', well, sorry, you missed it. It was in that place that the Rolling Stones got together and took over the gig from Korner when he got a better paying one in the West End. They'd only just been formed and they were real crap - I recall Jagger coughing up his guts after trying to sing Jessie Hill's 'Ooh poo pah doo'.

MG

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"well, sorry, you missed it"

I did miss it. I'm a 70s person. That is to say I came of age (21) in 1974. There is a whole cohort of us who wonder what the 60s were about - because we "weren't there". I question whether the " it" you experienced was necessarily the core "it" of the 60s - After all they named "IT" (International Times)  because they had "it" (Sue Miles "Well, call it IT. We've got IT."/Green p119).

 

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57 minutes ago, Simon Weil said:

"well, sorry, you missed it"

I did miss it. I'm a 70s person. That is to say I came of age (21) in 1974. There is a whole cohort of us who wonder what the 60s were about - because we "weren't there". I question whether the " it" you experienced was necessarily the core "it" of the 60s - After all they named "IT" (International Times)  because they had "it" (Sue Miles "Well, call it IT. We've got IT."/Green p119).

 

You're not that much younger than I am (three years) and I'm a 60s person so how did you miss it, unless you were being facetious. I don't identify with much rock music after the 60s -- not to say that there wasn't some good stuff being made and although I'm way over generalizing, by the mid to late 70s, it seemed like a wasteland. Of course, by that time, I had less time to listen as I was heading to grad school and had other concerns. 

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

"Bimbo" doesn't at all strike me as crap.

What it does strike you as. 

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30 minutes ago, Brad said:
1 hour ago, Simon Weil said:

 

You're not that much younger than I am (three years) and I'm a 60s person so how did you miss it, unless you were being facetious.

Maybe I wasn't old enough to partake of the whole 60s experience is a central way. I mean I was there dancing and listening to the Beatles White Album in 1968, when I was just 15 - so I was "there" in that sense, did feel part of whatever was going on. But, I also felt, say, that Sergeant Peppers wasn't for me (at 13). And I would say there was a general sense of stuff going on which was somewhere else from where I was.

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The first record I imprinted on, I mean, at like 3 or 4 (and it's about the earliest memory I have} was a Jim Reeves 45 of a Roger Miller song. I am not predisposed to reflexively trivializing Jim Reeves, although I can't say that I get the deep global adulation that he inspired (still does?).

 

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8 hours ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

 

In 1956, I heard Fats Domino's 'I'm in love again' and it was a revelation - even though THAT was a complete rubbishy song, too. Well, the MUSIC wasn't. That BAND! Zowie! But the fact that I heard that real swinging music before I heard Presley or Bill Haley made a hell of a difference to my taste. Rock & Roll to me meant Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Larry Williams, Bo Diddley, the Coasters and the Platters (who I saw live in Bradford). Although I could appreciate Presley, the only one of them white boys I absolutely loved was Jerry Lee Lewis.

 

Was My Blue Heaven the flip side of I'm in Love Again or was it just out around the same time?  And how did you avoid hearing Rock Around the Clock in 1955? 

 

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10 hours ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

Historically, of course, Presley had the influential position. White Rock & Roll all stemmed from his Sun material and the amazing thing was that those records were made by a band with two guitarists (Presley & Moore) and one bass player (Black). Just a trio with no drums. Looking back at those records from the sixty-odd years later it seems impossible for that music to have been created by a trio with no goddamn drummer.

Speaking of goddam, those guys were so goddamn sloppy that adding a drummer would have provided the aural equivalent of the Road Runner finally looking down.

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3 hours ago, JSngry said:

Speaking of goddam, those guys were so goddamn sloppy that adding a drummer would have provided the aural equivalent of the Road Runner finally looking down.

Sorry, that one went right by me.

MG

5 hours ago, medjuck said:

Was My Blue Heaven the flip side of I'm in Love Again or was it just out around the same time?  And how did you avoid hearing Rock Around the Clock in 1955? 

 

Yes.

I didn't hear it because it was easy for a twelve year old who liked going out on his bike into the countryside to miss stuff if it wasn't on 'Family favourites' Sunday lunchtimes. Weekday evenings there was Dan Dare on Radio Luxembourg for me and whatever radio programmes my mother and stepfather liked to listen to - Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were ones they liked and some other US radio shows that were repeated here. Was there a Perry Como radio show? My mother was nuts about him, so if there was, that would have been on.

We only had one radio at home and neither TV nor record player.

MG

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