Rock's appearance vs Jazz's appearance

[Simon Weil]

Rock appears in Jazz's history as the competitor that drove it off the popular stage. So it would be rather unusual for Jazz historians to look at the sudden explosion of this competing form in the late 60s and early 70s 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. But it strikes me that Rock is so microscopically recorded in the process of its gestation, that...Well, it might help us make up for the lack of any recordings at all in Jazz's parallel period.

[mikeweil]

Seems to me it has a lot to do with the interests of the recording industry. Or their attitudes - early in the 20th century music of the Carribean was recorded before ragtime or early jazz. Little interest in the music of African Americans in the USA.

Rock was the music of the protesting generation - who wanted to promote that sub-culture?

[Simon Weil]

Rock originated as the music of a subsection (youth) of a section of the majority (white) culture. In the case of groups like the Beatles, it morphed out of pre-existing mass-market white pop. So there was already potential for mass-market sales out there. It wouldn't have been a case of promoting a sub-culture for the entrepreneurs involved (IMO), they just followed the potential for making money as that market exploded.

Rock seems to me what happened when youth of a certain generation came of age and found a music that defined them into their adult years - sort of central to their identity, a mirror. So it became the defining mass market form, because people went on listening to it even when they became adults. Thus it became not a subsection of the majority culture, but its very core.

[paul secor]

In the 50's and into the early 60's it was "cool" for college students and some older teenagers to listen to jazz. That changed in the mid-sixties when rock began to be marketed as more" intellectual", and those young people wanted to see themselves in the music they listened to.

[JSngry]

3 minutes ago, paul secor said:

... and those young people wanted to see themselves in the music they listened to.

One could well argue that this want to see self has devolved into a need, and then further devolve into a total self-absorption, a generation of narcissists if you will. Not just musically either.

[Brad]

I really don't understand many of these comments. I came of age in the 60s and the new music was cool, different. Because we lived overseas I wasn't really exposed to the rock that was developing in the 50s, except Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock (my parents had the record) and it was great stuff. I had one of the first Beatle albums in Brasil and that got me hooked. I just liked it but I liked the Stones even more as I found about them.  However, by the mid 70s I had lost interest in keeping up with the music and bought very little rock after that unless it was cd reissues of lps I had when I was a teenager. It certain didn't define me in my adult years. If anything, it led me to blues, which eventually led me to jazz. 

[Simon Weil]

OK, I'm going to state my underlying idea That is that the appearance of Jazz parallels the appearance of Rock in that it became a form in which some (black) people saw themselves. That when Buddy Bolden would "call his children home", this is what it would amount to - people seeing themselves in his music on a mass cohort level. There was a form of catharsis, where people felt the music spoke for and of them.

[Scott Dolan]

Doesn't that last sentence represent pretty much all music?

[JSngry]

Not necessarily. There's a lot of musics that I find intriguing precisely because I don't "see myself" in them, I see somebody else, something else, something I don't really know but wouldn't mind finding out more about.

[Simon Weil]

43 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Doesn't that last sentence represent pretty much all music?

I guess you can say it's the potential  in art in general - though music does touch the emotions in a particularly immediate way. But I'm talking about a mass cohort thing - that people feel part of a group - that is "we hear ourselves in that". That's a form of social glue - where suddenly there is a "we" where before there was just a bunch of individuals. You can have a musician, who's putting herself into the music - and it can just go out there and nothing happens. Even if it's very good, music can just not hit the spot - or maybe it can be the wrong time (or place) for it to hit the spot.

Edited October 31, 2018 by Simon Weil

[JSngry]

I guess I'll not ask about the implications of a whole ginormous bunch (several generations) of white kids seeing themselves in black music so much so that they evolved it  (in their minds and in their practices) to they point that it "became" theirs...and to the point where further developments in black musics could go so far as to cause open hostility in older generations even as younger generations went though the same things, albeit seemingly with gradually lesser degrees of imperial arrogance.

[Simon Weil]

5 hours ago, JSngry said:

There's a lot of musics that I find intriguing precisely because I don't "see myself" in them, I see somebody else, something else, something I don't really know but wouldn't mind finding out more about.

I can hear something, not particularly like it - but recognise it has something in it of value. So then nothing might happen. I might just stick in a mental box marked "stuff of interest, but not necessarily to me". Then months - or years - or even decades - later, I  decide to open it and delve in. That happened to me recently over the Lifetime Emergency record. The uneasiness of it just suddenly spoke to me.

 

8 hours ago, paul secor said:

in the mid-sixties when rock began to be marketed as more" intellectual",

I actually have a counter experience. I went to a 1964 Beatles Christmas concert. My mother was an intellectual and the Beatles got talked about on the BBC and in the press as comparable to the greats in Classical music. She wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so she gave me this 11th Birthday "treat" - so she could. You couldn't hear a damn thing, just the sound of a (couple of?) thousand screaming teenage girls.   

[felser]

1 hour ago, Simon Weil said:

I can hear something, not particularly like it - but recognise it has something in it of value. So then nothing might happen. I might just stick in a mental box marked "stuff of interest, but not necessarily to me". Then months - or years - or even decades - later, I  decide to open it and delve in. That happened to me recently over the Lifetime Emergency record. The uneasiness of it just suddenly spoke to me.

 

I actually have a counter experience. I went to a 1964 Beatles Christmas concert. My mother was an intellectual and the Beatles got talked about on the BBC and in the press as comparable to the greats in Classical music. She wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so she gave me this 11th Birthday "treat" - so she could. You couldn't hear a *** thing, just the sound of a (couple of?) thousand screaming teenage girls.   

I would argue that the 1964 Beatles were Rock'n'Roll, and that Rock first appeared with Dylan (and the Dylan-inspired Folk Rockers such as the Byrds and what Tom Wilson brilliantly did to S&G's "Sounds of Silence") in 1965.  And that much of the difference was lyrical as opposed to musical.    And 'Help' was a transitional album for the Beatles, and 'Rubber Soul' was a Rock album.  I do realize that I am by necessity over-generalizing, that reality is often resistant to labels.   I also believe that Rock is functionally dead as a mainstream music, and has been for almost 30 years.  It is now a niche music, much like jazz.  I hear "Wooden Ships" and think, yes, that's me.  I hear "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "Disco Inferno" and don't at all relate to it as being me, yet I consider all three to be brilliant works of music.

Edited November 1, 2018 by felser

[Simon Weil]

I probably agree with you about Rubber Soul. But I don't know that it appeared as something suddenly new and different at the time. It's only in retrospect and with the benefit of hindsight that one can say "Yes, that was a Rock record" because it fits in with what we know Rock became. Sergeant Peppers struck me at the time  - aged 13 - as that something new and different. I couldn't say it was Rock (I mean at the time) or what the hell it was. We did have Revolver in the house (again my mother's desire to be in tune with the intellectual happenings of the day), but it seemed relatively conservative and comprehensible to my ears.

Of course, being 13 gives a not-perfect perspective. But, by 15, I was dancing to the newly released White Album - and I think my reaction to that was in line with it being Rock - i.e. it was "serious" and not just pop (or as well as pop).

[Brad]

Rubber Soul was, in my opinion, a transitional album between  Help (and prior albums) and Revolver. There were some songs on there closer to Revolver but some closer to earlier albums.  I don’t see how Revolver could be labeled conservative as it was quite different than anything I’d heard before at that time.  In comparison to Sgt Pepper, I could see that but that’s looking retrospectively. 

Edited November 1, 2018 by Brad

[Scott Dolan]

10 hours ago, Simon Weil said:

 The uneasiness of it just suddenly spoke to me.

 

 

And that underscores my comment above. It either speaks to you, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it may remain a curiosity, but it certainly won't be integrated into your life and listening habits. You won't feel anything for it. You won't tell people, "man, you gotta check this shit out!" 

So yes, all music speaks to/for/of someone. 

[JSngry]

Of course it speaks of somebody and to somebody. But the question is - how does it impact beyond that group, and that to me seems to be a function of how open an individual is to things not like themselves. That's very much a function of the individual, do you welcome difference and unfamiliarity, are you willing to be exposed to it and explore it (and maybe even eventually decide that you really don't care for it, but you've given it a more than fair look and evaluation), or do you just want to leave it alone and get back to further refracting the mirror in which you see yourself?

[Simon Weil]

2 hours ago, Scott Dolan said:

And that underscores my comment above. It either speaks to you, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, it may remain a curiosity, but it certainly won't be integrated into your life and listening habits. You won't feel anything for it. You won't tell people, "man, you gotta check this shit out!" 

So yes, all music speaks to/for/of someone. 

No, that's not how I respond. I hear something that's of value (or not) - that's my core relationship to the music (or anything). There can also be levels of value. I don't hear stuff as a curiosity - it's not part of my aesthetic experience.

 

9 hours ago, Brad said:

I don’t see how Revolver could be labeled conservative as it was quite different than anything I’d heard before at that time.  In comparison to Sgt Pepper,

My  reaction  to Sergeant Peppers was set by the marketing campaign, which had big displays focused around the cover art. This concentrated on the "avant-garde"ness of it - and gave a sense of an abrupt change - which the sometimes psychedelic (as I would now see it) content does confirm.  Revolver came across as something I could fit into my already existing mental boxes. I suppose, if you came right down to it, The White Album would be the only Beatles record I would characterise as unequivocally "Rock". They are a transitional band - one of the core transitional bands on the move between  pop and rock.

I

 

14 minutes ago, JSngry said:

the question is - how does it impact beyond that group, and that to me seems to be a function of how open an individual is to things not like themselves.

There's also a question of the times. In the 60s-70s period, there was a whole cohort of people who were willing to have their preconceptions changed - to whom that idea was a positive good.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Simon Weil

[JSngry]

fwiw, the American & UK version of both Rubber Soul and Revolver are totally different records in terms of impact of concept.

and to fuck the mind a little further, Yesterday... and Today make for a whole other experience that existed only because of proprietary formulations of the marketing laboratory.

If you lived in those times and then only years later heard the official history as opposed to the manufactured history, hey...who knew that Rubber Soul was actually not a "folk-rock" album? I guess the rest of the world!

[Simon Weil]

LOL.

[Brad]

I was living in Barcelona when Rubber Soul was issues so I had the European version. When it comes to Beatles or Stones, I've always preferred the European versions. The American versions were not the "true" ones, imho. 

Re: the White Album, a Beatles album yes, but also, no, as the group was feuding and they each did their own thing, recording their parts separately in the studio. Not sure if this applied to all but it applied to Lennon and McCartney. 

[felser]

37 minutes ago, Brad said:

I was living in Barcelona when Rubber Soul was issues so I had the European version. When it comes to Beatles or Stones, I've always preferred the European versions. The American versions were not the "true" ones, imho. 

Re: the White Album, a Beatles album yes, but also, no, as the group was feuding and they each did their own thing, recording their parts separately in the studio. Not sure if this applied to all but it applied to Lennon and McCartney. 

Another advantage of the European versions was that they had more songs on them!   Agreed on the White Album, it always has seemed like a collection of solo works rather than a group work.  Really not a favorite of mine, I like earlier Beatles. "Please Please Me" through "Paperback Writer" (and the accompanying albums) best.

[JSngry]

3 minutes ago, felser said:

  Agreed on the White Album, it always has seemed like a collection of solo works rather than a group work. 

And yet...immaculate programming and sequencing, each of the four sides essentially an album in itself with beginnings middles and ends, and never any doubt that it's a Beatles record by the end of each side.

See, this shit is so over, and we're still talking about it like there's still progress to be made, evolved opinions that will make the records sound different, be different. Not gonna happen.

This mirror will get older and might crack or get dirty or something, but it's still the same old mirror.

[felser]

27 minutes ago, JSngry said:

And yet...immaculate programming and sequencing, each of the four sides essentially an album in itself with beginnings middles and ends, and never any doubt that it's a Beatles record by the end of each side.

See, this shit is so over, and we're still talking about it like there's still progress to be made, evolved opinions that will make the records sound different, be different. Not gonna happen.

This mirror will get older and might crack or get dirty or something, but it's still the same old mirror.

Does that indict us, or does it indict the past 30 years of popular music?   Was anybody deeply analyzing Rudy Vallee's recorded legacy in 1969?    I don't need the records to be different, I just like to understand them better for what they are in context.  And the  context does evolve. 

[Scott Dolan]

Simon, you stated you could hear something that doesn’t really connect with you, but you can appreciate the artistic value of it. 

If that isn’t the definition of a curiosity, what is? 

Something that is interesting because it is unusual. Or in the case of music, outside of your tastes.