Closed Frontier: Is rock over? "Rock ’n’ roll is to 21st-century America what the Wild West was to 20th-century America: a closed frontier, ripe for mass mythology....Exciting new music still thrives in the subgenres, but modern musicians draw increasing amounts of inspiration from tradition, not originality. The sexagenarian Rolling Stones do serial victory laps around the world, just as an aging Buffalo Bill toured America and Europe in the 1880s and 90s, performing rope and horse tricks alongside Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull."
posted by Sticherbeast
on Apr 3, 2012 -
193 comments
Ye olde rock and roll time machine, part two: recently found
photos of a Stooges performance at a suburban Detroit high school from 1970.
posted by NoMich
on Dec 15, 2011 -
19 comments
A lady, back in 1957, addressing the camera in an elegant evening gown, fit for some grand society ball, had this message for the oldsters: "Now, whatever you think of rock and roll, I think you have to keep a nice, open mind about what the young people go for." She then proceeded to announce Buddy Holly and the Crickets, who obligingly performed their hit
Peggy Sue for the ballroom dancers' pleasure and edification. That same Buddy Holly would've been quite the oldster himself, had he lived to see today, his 75th birthday. So, if you have a little time on your hands today, you might like to learn more about Buddy by viewing
The Real Buddy Holly Story 1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9 and
10. Cause, hey, Buddy was not only one of the most unique and vital voices of the early days of rock'n'roll, but he wore the same glasses that every other hipster in Berlin is wearing
right now.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Sep 7, 2011 -
60 comments
Jerry Leiber, one of the greatest rock and roll songwriters to ever ply the trade,
has died aged 78. Along with songwriting partner Mike Stoller, he was responsible for so many hits, including but not limited to:
Love Potion No. 9 by The Coasters,
Stand By Me by Ben E. King,
Hound Dog by Big Mama Thornton, later
popularised by Elvis Presley, and, solo, in conjunction with Phil Spector,
Spanish Harlem, as sung by Aretha Franklin.
posted by Len
on Aug 22, 2011 -
63 comments
Pop quiz! What do these musicians have in common: Lou Reed, E Street
Band keyboardists Roy Bittan and Danny Federici, rhythm section Andrew Bodnar and Stephen
Goulding of The Rumour, dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, erstwhile
SNL bandleader G.E. Smith, session horn section the Brecker Brothers, LaBelle alum Nona Hendryx, guitar virtuoso Adrian Belew, and David Johansen of the New York Dolls? Answer: they were (most of) the studio band on the 1981 album
Escape Artist by
Garland Jeffreys. Which raises the question,
"Garland who?" [more inside]
posted by FelliniBlank
on Jul 19, 2011 -
22 comments
Inside Pop - The Rock Revolution is a CBS News special, broadcast in April 1967. The show was hosted by Leonard Bernstein and is probably one of the first examples of pop music being examined as a 'serious' art form. The film features many scenes shot in Los Angeles in late 1966, including interviews with Frank Zappa and Graham Nash, as well as the now legendary Brian Wilson solo performance of "Surf's Up." (MLYT) [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator
on Apr 29, 2011 -
15 comments
1. Tin Huey T-Shirt.
2. A silk-screened poster from the Sept. 22, 2000, Mary Timony (of Helium) concert in Oberlin, Ohio.
3. "Crazy Rhythms" by the Feelies (on white vinyl).
4. A big-ass dining room table.
5. The Futon.
6. One audio MiniDisc of the Black Keys' first live performance, July 2002.
7. 7. One black-and-white photo of Patrick and me, taken in 2003, at Apple Studios.
A marriage, and divorce, in seven mementos.
posted by Horace Rumpole
on Mar 3, 2011 -
28 comments
"Having vaulted from the fringes of pop culture into the mainstream after a newly atomic America became obsessed with films about mutants and aliens, SF literature matured and flowered throughout the '60s and beyond, just as rock 'n' roll did the same.
It was inevitable that the two would mix."
posted by gman
on Jun 23, 2010 -
47 comments
My Beat Club has a whole ton of classic rock perfomance videos, mostly from old German TV shows
Musikladen and
Beat Club. Among the videos on offer are
Small Faces' Tin Soldier,
Chuck Berry's School Days,
Ike & Tina Turner's River Deep, Mountain High,
The Who's My Generation,
Country Joe McDonald's I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag,
The Everly Brothers' All I Have to Do is Dream,
The Ramones' Sheena is a Punk Rocker,
Mungo Jerry's In the Summertime,
T. Rex's 20th Century Boy,
New York Dolls' Looking for a Kiss,
The Byrds' So You Want to Be a Rock n' Roll Star,
Thin Lizzy's Whiskey in the Jar,
Slade's We'll Bring the House Down,
The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Purple Haze and so much, much more!
posted by Kattullus
on Jul 29, 2009 -
30 comments
Whether you want to learn to lace shoes, tie shoelaces, stop shoelaces from coming undone, calculate shoelace lengths or even repair aglets,
Ian's Shoelace Site has the answer!
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Jun 27, 2008 -
22 comments
WFMU's The Hound has been delighting record geeks for the past few decades with sets of some of the wildest, wooliest rockabilly, R&B, blues, gospel, garage rock, and punk that can be dug out of crates. His site offers
full podcasts, and individual mp3's under the
show links, and organized by
artist, and
title.
Bo Diddley singing to Kruschev! Blues songs about the Kinsey report! The Cashmere's talking about the hop! Brownie McGee singing about baseball's integration! Roughly 4 million variations on 'The Twist!' And that;s just the tip of this glorious iceberg.
[more inside]
posted by jonmc
on Nov 18, 2007 -
12 comments
NickCaveFilter: Fifty years ago this very day,
Nicholas Edward Cave [
previously] crawled from the womb and started to plot. At 16 he formed his first band which evolved quickly into the
Boys Next Door [
Shivers]. This in turn mutated into
the Birthday Party (1980) who terrorised the post-punk soundscape in Australia and the UK [
Release the Bats |
Nick the Stripper]. The
Birthday Party relocated to England and in 1984 the band imploded in an orgy of drugs and booze. Shortly after
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were born [The Ship Song -
video &
solo live | The Mercy Seat -
video &
live |
Where the Wild Roses Grow], and 23 years and 11 studio albums later (not to mention a
best selling book, a
great screenplay,
some acting and several soundtrack projects) he is still going strong. But, instead of sitting on his musical laurels he decided to get back to basics and, in 2006,
grew a huge moustache and formed
Grinderman – a four piece with a primeval hybrid Birthday Party/Bad Seeds sound [
No Pussy Blues |
Honey Bee]. Fellow Mefites, I ask you to raise a glass to
Mr. Cave… And, especially if you are not familiar to his work, don’t forget to “look inside” for my primer on the enigma that is Nick Cave, one of the
finest song-writers on the face of this miserable planet.
[more inside]
posted by the_very_hungry_caterpillar
on Sep 22, 2007 -
98 comments
Christs, Communists, & Rock 'n' Roll is an excellent introduction to a tradition of anti-rock writings and recordings by the Religious Right. In the 1960s, there was
David Noebel who wrote
Communism, Hypnotism, & the Beatles and
The Marxist Minstrels. In the early 1970s,
Reverend Riblett constructs a seven-foot cross out of rock music records and sets it aflame with gasoline. Michael Mills finds
hidden Satanic messages in Bow Wow Wow and the Grateful Dead, while Bob Larson valiantly
debates Mandy, a 13-year-old fan of the Cure. The motherlode is probably the
cassettes of John Todd, who traveled the fundamentalist circuit in the 1970s claiming to be a former witch and a member of the Illuminati, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. (more inside)
posted by jonp72
on Aug 20, 2007 -
31 comments
Cracked Pepper by ccc and ill chemist is a mash-up of The Beatles'
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and an amazing array of songs you know. While not quite on par with the focus and sheer audacity of DangerMouse's
Grey Album, Cracked Pepper is a smart, rich, and rewarding listen. Available track by track or as a torrent.
See inside for tracks sampled.
posted by saguaro
on Jul 30, 2007 -
35 comments
“We consider the 'primitive' music of blues singers such as Leadbelly to be more authentic than that of the Monkees.
But all pop musicians are fakes . . . Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor . . . have turned out their personal record collections to produce a persuasive defence of inauthenticity as the defining characteristic of great popular music[.]” (
via)
posted by jason's_planet
on Apr 20, 2007 -
144 comments
On the occasion of her induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, punk poet and musician
Patti Smith (no, not this
Patti Smith) offers eloquent reflections on the benediction she received from her late husband Fred "Sonic" Smith of MC5, the future of rebellion, and her own question: "
Am I a worthy recipient?." Yes, Patti, you are. Some
sound and video...
posted by twsf
on Mar 12, 2007 -
51 comments
The Beatles are Bigger than Jesus. It was 41 years ago today, that the Evening Standard published
a Maureen Cleave interview with John Lennon, in which he declared the Beatles
“more popular than Jesus”. Later in July, DATEbook, an American teen mag, printed only the Jesus statement and nothing else from the interview. The firestorm of reaction in the US was immediate. Radio stations nationwide, but particularly in the South and in the Midwest,
banned the playing of Beatles records [Real Audio]. Death threats against all of the Fab Four poured in. In Cleveland, a preacher threatened to excommunicate any member of his congregation who listened to the Beatles, and in the South, the Ku Klux Klan burned the Beatles in effigy and nailed Beatles albums to burning crosses. On August 11, Lennon held a press conference in Chicago, where he apologized,
sort of [Real Audio]. The press conference was on the eve of the Beatles’ last tour of their career. Many say this epsiode, as well as the riots that accompanied their tour of the Philippines (also in July), as well as the accumulated stress of being on top of the world for nearly four years at that point, precipitated
the beginning of the end of the Beatles.
Is it true though? Are the Beatles bigger than Jesus? Though this was unanswerable in 1966, thanks to the magic of the web, we do know the answer today:
according to Google, the answer is no. Still,
other views persist.
posted by psmealey
on Mar 4, 2007 -
71 comments
On May 14th, 1967, the new British pop group The Pink Floyd makes one of their first ever TV appearances. Despite a stellar performance of the song Astronomy Domine, the pretentious host of the show, Hans Keller, has nothing good to say about the band. During the
interview (youtube, performance comes first, interview starts about 5:50 in.
transcript here.), he chastises the band for their "continuous repetition", "terribly loud" volume, and their "proportionately a bit boring" sound.
However, it seems that all Hans' show will ever be remembered for is
this single interview. Pink Floyd, on the other hand.. Well, we all know what happened to
them. Syd Barrett, on the other hand,
was not so lucky.
posted by Afroblanco
on May 29, 2006 -
67 comments
Vault Radio. Remember
Wolfgang's Vault? They've now started releasing the massive amounts of music that they discovered via FM-quality 128k stream. The
current rotation isn't huge (not much worse than commercial radio), but there's a lot of great stuff on there that you've never heard before, presumably.
posted by bigmike
on Feb 10, 2006 -
9 comments
Wolfgang's Vault :
Bill Graham, of
Fillmore fame, was born Wolfgang Grajonca in Berlin. He grew up to invent, more or less, the modern rock 'n' roll promotion industry. He also had an eye for the future, stashing away
posters,
T-shirts,
backstage passes,
tickets, and
photography for posterity (us).
Now, 15 years after his death, you have him to thank not only for
$350 Rolling Stones tickets but also for
$3800 Rolling Stones posters.
Purchased from
Satan at a crossroads Clear Channel a few years back, the vault also contains a bunch of audio and video
that Clear Channel didn't know it had and which we may or may not ever get to experience.
posted by bigmike
on Jan 6, 2006 -
13 comments
Jim Capaldi, legendary rock & roll drummer and Hall of Fame inductee, died Friday at the age of 60 after a brief fight with stomach cancer.
posted by geeknik
on Jan 29, 2005 -
8 comments
The Brill Building , located at 1619 Broadway in the heart of New York's music district, is a name synonymous with an approach to songwriting that changed the course of music. Housing legendary songwriters like Carole King, Jerry Leiber, Neil Sedaka, and Burt Bacharach, the Brill Building created some of the
greatest hits of the
rock'n'roll era. [more inside]
posted by rocket88
on Dec 29, 2004 -
11 comments
Bobby Fuller was a Texas based rock and roll singer best known for the immortal rebel anthem
"I Fought The Law,". Considered by many to be the heir to Buddy Holly as the king of Texas Rock, he built on Holly's style with songs like the aforementioned "...Law," "Jenny Lee," "Love's Made A Fool Of You," and the 2 1/2 minute masterpiece "Let Her Dance." And then it ended,
at age 22, in very
weird circumstances. Over the years, interest in Fuller and his work has ebbed and flowed, and plenty of
archival material surfaced, but the mystery of his death remains unsolved, although many have
speculated. Ann odd end for a footnote character in rick history, but who was bound for more
posted by jonmc
on May 7, 2004 -
16 comments
