Feel free to email me or post to this thread and I will start a new R&R PING list and post it in my profile.
ROCK & ROLL PING!
Posted on 07/09/2004 1:17:06 PM PDT by qam1
Like any organized religion, rock 'n' roll has its own dogma.
Rolling Stone magazine is the gospel.
Any male singer with big lips is worth glorifying.
To be a true guitar player, one must learn the intro to "Stairway to Heaven."
Elvis Presley was, is and always will be king.
With those tenets come a slew of albums as holy as the Bible. "Born in the U.S.A.," "Tommy," "The Dark Side of the Moon" and - amen, hallelujah - "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."
But it's time, says a restless group of music critics, to look those canons straight in their beady little platinum eyes and flick them off their pedestals.
In the new book, "Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics," that's exactly what they do: debunk - no, annihilate - the myth of rock ¹n' roll righteousness.
"Rock 'n' roll's the devil's music, right? So it's absurd to treat it like a religion and have this canon that it's made of saints that we can't criticize," the book's creator and co-editor Jim DeRogatis says in that jaded, edgy tone only a rock music critic can get away with.
Thirty-four music writers - mostly in their 20s and 30s and mostly under the Spin/Rolling Stone readers' radar - took on the challenge of debunking society-in-general's cherished albums.
"Call it a spirited assault on a pantheon that has been foisted upon us, or a defiant rejection of the hegemonic view of rock history espoused by the critics who preceded us," DeRogatis writes in the introduction.
One of the book's contributors is Leanne Potts, a former Tribune reporter who now writes about pop culture for Albuquerque's morning newspaper.
Her target of choice? Lynyrd Skynyrd's debut album "Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd."
What? How could one of the most memorable rock albums in history, one that includes "Gimme Three Steps," "Simple Man" and "Free Bird" - hello! "Free Bird"! - be on anyone's worst-album ever list?
For Potts, 38, her contempt for the 1973 album is less about its sound - although she writes that Ronnie Van Zant's lyrics "lack the sort of telling details that make a good song great" - and more about the Southern stigma that came with it.
"I didn't like the whole American-by-birth, Southern-by-grace-of-God ethos that had come to be associated with Southern rock bands like Skynyrd," writes Potts, who was born and raised in Alabama.
"I wanted none of Skynyrd's talk of down-home values. It sounded like Moral Majority code speak, and this teenaged member of Greenpeace and fan of musical minimalists such as the Ramones and Devo was having none of this Confederate-flag-waving, axe-wielding mob of rednecks in bell-bottoms."
And just like that, Potts buzz-saws through an institution no critic has had the gall to berate under his or her breath, let alone in a much-anticipated 300-page paperback - a book that received tyrannical criticism on the Internet weeks before its release.
Potts admits she was only 7 when the album came out and didn't start listening to it intently until she was 15 - a ploy to impress her Skynyrd die-hard boyfriend.
But she resents the notion that just because she didn't grow up with the baby boomers, she wouldn't know what Lynyrd Skynyrd or any other music of the time was all about.
"It sticks in my craw that rock is so skewed to the boomers," Potts says. "Like 'You don't know; you weren't there,' in this condescending tone, like we were born too late.
"Skynyrd's album is the one I thought of partly because of the southern connection. Because they were classic rock and because I lived in the South, they were gods. They were always there."
One of the writers - DeRogatis' wife, Carmel Carrillo - chose not to efface an album. She instead came up with a list of songs each of her ex-boyfriends cherished, therefore killing their idols.
It's important to note that just because the writers protest their least favorite album doesn't mean they dislike that band. DeRogatis, for example, who targets the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," says one of his all-time favorite albums is the Fab Four's "Revolver."
The majority of the book is criticism of albums from the '60s and '70s, a few '80s and '90s releases, and one from 2003.
So what's the gripe with classic rock?
"The business of canonizing things is a real particular baby boomer trait," DeRogatis says from his home office in Chicago. "It's the generation most reluctant to give up their youth and their place in history.
"Gen X never believed the hype."
DeRogatis, a 39-year-old pop music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, shopped the book's concept for a couple of years but soon realized publishers weren't interested in books of all-negative reviews.
"But one of my favorite books is my colleague Roger Ebert's collection of all his pans," says DeRogatis, who finally landed with Barricade Books. "When I read a negative review it makes me think about my own perspective. I'm looking for another idea. I'm looking to be challenged."
Delve into DeRogatis' history as a writer, and it's no wonder he took on such an edgy project. According to reports, in 1996 DeRogatis was fired as a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine for writing a blazing critique of a Hootie and the Blowfish album. His review was replaced by a much happier one.
"I'll confess that in the midst of editing this collection, I had a brief crisis of conscience when I wondered if this book was too much of a childish exercise - the rock-critic equivalent of the bratty kid wiping his snot on the blackboard in feeble protestation of the injustices of third-grade life," he writes.
But in the end, "Kill Your Idols" happened, and DeRogatis "couldn't be prouder."
"It was a labor of love," he says. "It's an odd thing to say about a book about bands these writers hate."
So does even DeRogatis have his own sacred cows?
"I may have had a problem if someone in the book tried to take apart Kraftwerk or Black Sabbath or Velvet Underground," he admits.
For Potts, two of her all-time favorite albums are U2's "The Joshua Tree," and Nirvana's "Nevermind" - two albums that showed up in the book.
But she's OK with it.
"I love the spirit of argument," she says. "I don't understand people who get angry about music. Part of the benefit of music is we sit around and talk about it."
*** TARGETED IDOLS
The following albums are taken to pasture in "Kill Your Idols."
"Pet Sounds," the Beach Boys (1966)
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," the Beatles (1967)
"Smile," the Beach Boys (1967)
"Sweetheart of the Rodeo," the Byrds (1968)
"Tommy," the Who (1969)
"Kick Out the Jams," the MC5 (1969)
"Trout Mask Replica," Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band (1969)
"Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs," Derek and the Dominos (1970)
"Ram," Paul and Linda McCartney (1971)
"Untitled ('IV')," Led Zeppelin (1971)
"Harvest," Neil Young (1972)
"Exile on Main St.," the Rolling Stones (1972)
"Desperado," the Eagles (1973)
"Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd," Lynyrd Skynyrd (1973)
"The Dark Side of the Moon," Pink Floyd (1973)
"GP/Grievous Angel," Gram Parsons (1973/1974; rereleased in 1990)
"Blood on the Tracks," Bob Dylan (1975)
"Born to Run," Bruce Springsteen (1975)
"Horses," Patti Smith (1975)
"Exodus," Bob Marley & the Wailers (1977)
"Rumours," Fleetwood Mac (1977)
"Never Mind the Bollocks . . . Here's the Sex Pistols," the Sex Pistols (1977)
"Double Fantasy," John Lennon/Yoko Ono (1980)
"Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables," Dead Kennedys (1980)
"Imperial Bedroom," Elvis Costello and the Attractions (1982)
"Born in the U.S.A.," Bruce Springsteen (1984)
"The Best of the Doors," the Doors (1985)
"The Joshua Tree," U2 (1987)
"It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back," Public Enemy (1988)
"Nevermind," Nirvana (1991)
"Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," Smashing Pumpkins (1995)
"OK Computer," Radiohead (1997)
"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," Wilco (2003)
"Fleetwood Mac - Rumours"
I really don't care about tomorrow, so long as Fleetwood Mac doesn't release any more albums today, tomorrow or the next day.
"Everything you need to know in order to accurately classify obnoxious, imperious liberal twits, and put them into the correct taxonomic order."
Liberalius homobnoxo subsapien. . .
Sorry, a war is an event, and in your own words, generations are 20 years, and they have nothing to do with places or events.
Rumours will always have a special place in my heart. Not because it's great music, but the timing of it. When I was younger, it was the THE makeout album. You could tell how well a date was going by what base you were at by what track was playing. All those steamy windows and the cassette in the deck just conditioned me I guess.
The real problem is that when the Gen X,Y,Zs stopped writing and playing rock and started their own imbecilic type of music, they were too intellectually challenged to come up with a new name for it. Therefore they confuse their crap with Rock and it befuddles them.
When our generation invented Rock & Roll, we invented a name for it, when our parents generation invented Beebop they invented a name for it, when their parents generation invented Swing, they also invented the name for it.
The alphabet generations can come up with their own term or shut the French up.
So9
I spent many a night parked in my Camero with steamy windows and licking Banana Split and Wild Cherry flavored lip gloss from my girlfriend's lips while Fleetwood Mac played on the cassette player.
I suppose it's something that you had to be there-not to appropriate words from the great Peter Frampton-for.
Today, I suppose that most people just associate that group with obnoxious, repetitive songs that are played on a seemingly endless loop at "classic rock" stations like Q104.3
I hear you brother. Whatever our generation is named, that's definately a shared moment.
Ehhh, I think Jimi Hendrix was the greatest and B.B. King, Eddie Van Halen and Eric Clapton all fall in behind him. My personal favorite is Eddie. Who else had guitar tricks so original and so cool that he had to turn his back on the audience so that they couldn't see and figure out what he was doing? NOBODY was doing the stuff that Eddie was doing, and that makes him my favorite.
That's my problem with a lot of Led Zep. It's not the music, but the endless repitition.
Actually, I chose my screen name because I enjoy talk radio of all stripes (even the Beeb is a guilty pleasure). I thought, when joining FR, that I'd found some other folks who listen to talk radio.
The fact that I'm a fool for Thom Yorke is secondary. : )
Excuse me for a moment.
(Repeated retching sounds heard near my personal computer. Vomit-inducing mention of noxiously liberal git passes by. I do not blow chunks.)
Man, couldn't you have at least picked an idiot whose music, is...well...good?
Like Morissey?
Ah, he thought you named yourself after the band, Radiohead.
But...ev-ry one...en-joys, a-noth-er sp-in of "Stai-r-way to Hea-ven".
Camp Granada LyricsOne other bit of trivia. Not sure if it's true, but it sure fits. Why did the band KISS choose that name (always in ALL CAPS, as an acronym should be)?hello mudda, hello fadda here i am at camp granada camp is very entertaining they say we'll have some fun when it stops raining i went hiking with joe spivy he developed poison ivy you remeber leonard skinner he got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner all the counslers hate the waiters and the lake has alligators and the head coach wants no sissies so he reads to us from something called uylesses i dont want this, should i scare ya but my bunk mate has malaria you remember jeffery hardy they're about to organize a seaching party take me home, o mudda fudda take me home, i hate granada don't leave me out in the forest where i might get eaten by a bear take me home, i promise i will not make noise or mess the house with other boys o please don't make me stay i've been here one whole day dearest fadda, darling mudda how's my precious little brudda let me come home, if you miss me i would even let aunt bertha hug and kiss me wait a minute, it stopped hailing guys are swimming, gals are sailing playing base ball, gee that's bedda mudda fudda kindly disregard this letter!
Kings In Satan's Service
I don't listen to what the style critics say (not when they are praising things in Rolling Stone or damning them or damning them because they were praised in Rolling Stoned).
I agree that some of those albums are overrated or certain songs have been so overplayed that you can't listen to the album as it was originally conceived.
I'd also understand better where these critics were coming from if they listed their 10 favorite albums, 5 favorite bands, and 5 favorite singles. If you don't know what they "like" how can you respect their opinion of what sucks?
It's like hearing a lefty tell you why President Bush is such an antiChrist incarnate and then you slowly learn that the writer is an atheist, lesbian, socialist, who gets violently ill when the scent of cooked meat even comes near her plate in a kitchen.
Feel free to email me or post to this thread and I will start a new R&R PING list and post it in my profile.
ROCK & ROLL PING!
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