what was good about rock music?

mvuent

Void Dweller
that makes it pretty difficult to understand what was good about rock music, then. I'm not sticking up for rock, it's just, where to begin?
just thought it was funny how the premise of that thread was asking luka about rock 'n' roll but he denied having any knowledge of it like he was being interrogated.
 

other_life

bioconfused

what other instruments sound better when played kind of shittily? is that unique to the guitar?
The voice can sometimes sound better when someone can't really sing.
tago mago -can in general- isnt really about the guitar though. its about everything else. percussion if you had to single out one element.

file under 'what was so great about rock and roll' and why it's good that this is a separate thread from the guitar sonics one. the guitar is not always the crucial thing even in records/groups who's usual praise is 'they pushed the guitar forward'. it's a synergy of often less-than-technically impressive/less-than-Avant musicianship (and writing) that becomes world-eating
 

other_life

bioconfused
though in the same instance what makes -rock and roll- different from say funk is that the guitar does fill out the midrange and is melodically/harmonically dominant
 

other_life

bioconfused
and yet if you leave the guitar by itself and explore what it can do without being grounded by the rhythm section you are no longer making rock and roll, either. guitar sonics alone does not rock and roll make
 

other_life

bioconfused
if rock and roll, understood as an umbrella, was a proliferation of languages from a single family, is it harder today to branch off a new one? is it still possible? was it necessary to turn away from rock and roll, is the sense of its exhaustion a real one or conventional?
 

other_life

bioconfused
third posted this and it feels like the perfect example of what i mean when i say the guitar is a lot of but crucially not all of rock and roll


the bass is actually the harmonically dominant element here, the rhythm section pushes the guitars to the back and this androgyne voice floats over all of it. as a piece of music, it consists of a series of turns, shifts in speed and direction, a sudden downshift that builds back up speed, a turn to the left which is not slow but also not sharp nor really sudden. it shifts from blues soloing to a chord progression that has the feeling of a ballad.
 

other_life

bioconfused
and the fact that a small combo of musicians working in a popular form made something that dynamic and sonically -tight- is what makes/made rock and roll great.
 

other_life

bioconfused

another example of a tune where the guitars have that 'insane sonics' thing going for them but where the bass is actually the dominant thing. i also consider this evidence that the lyrics and songwriting/the ambivalence of emotion are undervalued in people's discussions of my bloody valentine as opposed to discussing the Avant Guitar aspect so much that there's no longer anything to talk about there.
 

luka

Well-known member
Funny how all three of you got a friends terrible music rather than, eg, Kayleigh tries on new lingerie haul.
 
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