I heard "Sweet Child of Mine" on the radio the other day, and a really odd thought came into my mind. It occured to me that Janis Joplin would have sounded pretty good singing that. Yeah, it has a little more grit than what she did, but the vocal style isn't all that different.
I then remembered a funny incident in college. A friend of mine (Aaron, whatever happened to him?) and I were talking about G N'R and he mentioned that he did a pretty good Axl impersonation. He slid open the sliding glass doors and belted out a couple of lines from "Welcome to the Jungle." With the echo of his voice dying, he thought for a second and then belted out some lines from "Everything's coming up Roses" and it was a dead on Ethel Merman rendition. The two weren't all that different, much more a matter of degree than anything else. We both cracked up pretty good over that one. Who would've thunk it? I wonder how Axl would sound with some old Ethel Merman standards?
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Dance music and purgatory
Disco was everywhere in the late 70's. Every time you turned on the radio in 1978, you were bound to hear Donna Summer, the Bee Gees, or maybe even one of Diana Ross' last hurrahs. Then almost overnight it seemed, it disappeared. It was almost totally dropped from the radio. Not only that, everyone denied that they liked disco. It had been the hottest thing going and then suddenly no one would admit that they had listened to it.
Disco is one of the more extreme examples of popular music. I say extreme because of the rapidity it was disavowed. Whenever tastes change, musical genres are left behind. How many people do you know that listen to popular music from the 20's? But there was something special about disco... I grew up listening to 50's and 60's music in the 70's and 80's and up until recently, the exact same music could be found in any large FM market. Why was I able to listen to music from the 50's whenever I wanted to but was unable to hear disco on the radio for 20 years?
Well, it isn't exactly true that I couldn't hear disco after 1979, you could but they called it something else. "Dance Music" was the name of the new genre. People have been dancing to music ever since there was music, so why was this type called "Dance Music" and not just popular? It was because of the dreaded Disco appellation... The basic structure of disco was still popular, but you couldn't sell that any more, and no one would be caught dead dancing to it...
The new dance music didn't have as much cocaine to its sound, and they substituted synthesizers and electronic drums, but the basic structure was the same. The songs tended to be just as long as the disco era ones (compare dance hits from the late 70's and early 80's to the 60's). There was also a slightly different vibe. Disco had come out of the gay clubs in NYC, the new dance music was more influenced by the sounds of "the street" in the form of the nascent hip-hop movement.
The result? A song like "Let the Music Play" by Shannon.
There were all sorts of variations, but the electronic end of things came to their zenith in groups like Depeche Mode and New Order.
Both of these songs were released in 1983. With the possible exception of guitar, all of the instruments had been replaced by electronic ones. The result was a rather mechanical as opposed to disco's organic sound. This was actually an advantage to the new music. Disco had the same basic feel to it, but it was somewhat hidden underneath all of those strings and fancy arrangements. The new music embraced the vibe and it felt more honest... While vapidity was possible in either genre, the better groups used the mechanical sound as a way to get a point across. New Order, Depeche Mode, and Gang of Four ("Capital, it Fails us Now" "We Live, as We Dream, Alone") all did a great job of using the medium as part of their message.
There's a tale (I don't know where I heard this from, but it sounds believable enough) about Depeche Mode taking this to its limit. On at least one of the stops on their tour for "Music for the Masses," they ended the show by setting up their sequencers and synthesizers to play their groove. Keep in mind that these songs could top out at around 20 minutes or so in order to keep people dancing... Anyway, they set this song up to play and jammed along for a while and then left. The music continued to play and play and play until one of the roadies pulled the plug. They got it, and that's why they're still around and all of those other groups aren't.
I find that disco is fun to listen to once in a while, but it's mostly just that. A couple of Blondie tunes took disco as far as it could be taken and those are a different story... The dance music of the early 80's has had a longer lasting impression. I've had several dreams when that sort of music has featured prominently. In them, some people I know and I are stuck in a club/bar/meeting place with that music blaring. We always act like we're having fun, we think we should be having fun, but we aren't. Not only that, we don't seem to know or understand how to leave. We are stuck there bored, deafened, and confused. I refer to these as my "purgatory" dreams. That music seems very appropriate to that scene. It is soulless, way too long, and totally dehumanizing.
I'm not saying I don't "get" that music, or even that I don't like some of it, but I do think it has an effect on me, and I don't think it's a good one...
Disco is one of the more extreme examples of popular music. I say extreme because of the rapidity it was disavowed. Whenever tastes change, musical genres are left behind. How many people do you know that listen to popular music from the 20's? But there was something special about disco... I grew up listening to 50's and 60's music in the 70's and 80's and up until recently, the exact same music could be found in any large FM market. Why was I able to listen to music from the 50's whenever I wanted to but was unable to hear disco on the radio for 20 years?
Well, it isn't exactly true that I couldn't hear disco after 1979, you could but they called it something else. "Dance Music" was the name of the new genre. People have been dancing to music ever since there was music, so why was this type called "Dance Music" and not just popular? It was because of the dreaded Disco appellation... The basic structure of disco was still popular, but you couldn't sell that any more, and no one would be caught dead dancing to it...
The new dance music didn't have as much cocaine to its sound, and they substituted synthesizers and electronic drums, but the basic structure was the same. The songs tended to be just as long as the disco era ones (compare dance hits from the late 70's and early 80's to the 60's). There was also a slightly different vibe. Disco had come out of the gay clubs in NYC, the new dance music was more influenced by the sounds of "the street" in the form of the nascent hip-hop movement.
The result? A song like "Let the Music Play" by Shannon.
There were all sorts of variations, but the electronic end of things came to their zenith in groups like Depeche Mode and New Order.
Both of these songs were released in 1983. With the possible exception of guitar, all of the instruments had been replaced by electronic ones. The result was a rather mechanical as opposed to disco's organic sound. This was actually an advantage to the new music. Disco had the same basic feel to it, but it was somewhat hidden underneath all of those strings and fancy arrangements. The new music embraced the vibe and it felt more honest... While vapidity was possible in either genre, the better groups used the mechanical sound as a way to get a point across. New Order, Depeche Mode, and Gang of Four ("Capital, it Fails us Now" "We Live, as We Dream, Alone") all did a great job of using the medium as part of their message.
There's a tale (I don't know where I heard this from, but it sounds believable enough) about Depeche Mode taking this to its limit. On at least one of the stops on their tour for "Music for the Masses," they ended the show by setting up their sequencers and synthesizers to play their groove. Keep in mind that these songs could top out at around 20 minutes or so in order to keep people dancing... Anyway, they set this song up to play and jammed along for a while and then left. The music continued to play and play and play until one of the roadies pulled the plug. They got it, and that's why they're still around and all of those other groups aren't.
I find that disco is fun to listen to once in a while, but it's mostly just that. A couple of Blondie tunes took disco as far as it could be taken and those are a different story... The dance music of the early 80's has had a longer lasting impression. I've had several dreams when that sort of music has featured prominently. In them, some people I know and I are stuck in a club/bar/meeting place with that music blaring. We always act like we're having fun, we think we should be having fun, but we aren't. Not only that, we don't seem to know or understand how to leave. We are stuck there bored, deafened, and confused. I refer to these as my "purgatory" dreams. That music seems very appropriate to that scene. It is soulless, way too long, and totally dehumanizing.
I'm not saying I don't "get" that music, or even that I don't like some of it, but I do think it has an effect on me, and I don't think it's a good one...
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