BartCop got to thinking about how bad the music is now and how good
it was in our youth and the whys and wherefores thereof. Why did it suddenly
get so good from the mediocre music that proceeded it and what happened
to cause us to
slide into Kid Rock and Eminem? Also, to relive those moments and that
music.
Many have said there is only two kinds of music - Rock, and Roll.
This is incorrect. There is only two kinds of music, Good & Bad.
When it’s good there is nothing in life that is better, not drugs,
not sex, not food or anything.
The only thing that comes close perhaps is holding your new born child
in your arms for the first time,
however after raising it for a while that feeling will soon wear off
but the music remains.
When music’s bad there are few things worse in life. Bad music ranks
right up there with child molestation
and politicians as the scum of the earth. Music is the universal language.
Everybody on the planet has his
own little tune in the back of his mind. If aliens landed tomorrow
and ask us why they shouldn’t do the human race
in for all the trouble and agony we cause one another the only thing
we could say is listen to this, Da da da daaaa!
For all our genius the best thing we do is music. To the lucky few it
comes easily, most have to sweat blood to achieve it.
So where did all this great music come from and in such a short time?
How did we go from boom chick to hard rock
and metal over night? Did the Gods bless us or what? Yes and no.
I have heard several learned supposedly intelligent people say it came
from the Kinks, but Bob Seger and my own band
The Bounty Hunters were playing it well before them and no I didn’t
invent it. Go back a hundred years and listen to Tchaikovsky and you can
hear it. Go back another 75 years to Beethoven and you can hear it. Go
back 150 years to
Bach and that heavy music is being played. Don’t believe me? Give a
listen to Fugue and Toccata in D minor.
Can you hear it? So the boomers didn’t invent it but reinvented
it.
Why in that time and place? Simple the largest generation in history
was coming of age.
We had been brought up on primitive rock. A music that came to be with
the blending of Boogie Woogie,
Blues and Country Swing. And why did they come together? World War
II. People had seen too much,
had done too much and their souls were crying out for something more.
Suddenly after they knew the truth
about life Glenn Miller wasn’t cutting it anymore. The sparks
were lit but they wouldn’t for the most part
be brought to fruition by that generation but by their children.
Rock and Roll isn’t an upper class sound. It comes from the working
class.
A good example of this might be President Clinton who blows a pretty
mean sax for a white boy
and Emperor Smirk who couldn’t play a C chord if his life depended
on it. He’d just have daddy hire a band
and then ignore it to talk about himself. Think about all those great
bands and they are almost to a man from
working class backgrounds. The Beatles, The Stones, Zeppelin, Mountain,
Hendrix, Joplin, Creedence,
Deep Purple, Aerosmith, the list goes on and on.
So what you have in the late 60s & early 70’s is a generation raised
on Rock & Roll, from working class backgrounds,
coming of age while the world had gone mad. Did we mention a little
thing called Viet Nam that preyed on everybody’s
mind for most of the day? An era when the government went out of its
way to kill it’s citizens and try and make the rest
into it’s willing slaves not to mention the Civil Rights marches, which
were a revolt of the slaves.
It was a time when the old polite music wasn’t cutting it.
The old music that hinted at the truth, rather than coming out
and saying it.
No longer would you have to read between the lines.
If you’re about to die you might as well scream out the truth for all
to hear!
When I was a kid there was a garage band on every block. Had things
worked out we would have been a nation
of musicians, instead of what we’ve all become. The reason I became
a DJ was I finally realized I would never play
the guitar like Eric Clapton or Leslie West or Pete Townshend. The
career plans to teach Political Science went
down the drain as I thought if I couldn’t play it on the guitar I could
certainly play it on the radio. I got hooked on music
as an infant and by the time I reached adulthood I just had to have
my daily fix. The reason "Groupies" got to be so
popular, other than the fact that night after night beautiful women
were throwing themselves at you and variety is the
spice of life is that women couldn’t understand that although their
man loved them dearly he loved his music even more.
As soon as the lady figured that out the marriage was over. Music is
a very powerful force.
I had planned to present a top 25 list of the best albums of that day
and age but any list is to a point subjective.
As I watched VH-1 give their Top 100 albums of Rock & Roll the
first thing I noticed was that 30 or 40%
weren’t even Rock albums to begin with. They were Pop and had really
nothing to do with Rock.
It’s like Kid Rock, he wouldn’t know a Rock song if it jumped up and
bit him on the ass!
The second thing I noticed was that they didn’t have a clue about the
correct order.
Sure I could say that these albums sold X amount but what does that
mean. It means that generally
those songs were the most commercial and that is often just another
word for garbage.
There is a saying in the music "Business" that if you throw enough shit
up against the wall some of it is bound to stick,
(see Disco). So you can’t really use Billboard as a guide. And I certainly
could give you my thoughts as to the top
25 or 50 albums of that period but my opinion would be just that, even
though I’ve spent my life involved with music.
So instead I’ll give you the best albums of that day and age and you
can put them in your favorite order.
For the youngsters who weren’t raised on this, as your Mama didn’t
dance and your Daddy didn’t Rock and Roll,
get a paper and pencil and write these down and then run, do not walk
to the store and buy them if you can.
For you ‘Old Fogies’ the same thing may apply, it could easily lower
your blood pressure a few dozen points.
The bands were an easy choice, the albums however were not when all
of these bands with a couple exceptions
put out a lot of great music. I limited my choices to albums that made
a difference and were produced in this time
frame. For the most part these are hard rock albums with a few important
exceptions. They all had a major effect
on the music and the soul of that generation so without further ado
and in alphabetical order here are my choices.
Aerosmith
Get Your Wings
The
Beatles
Abbey Road
Black
Sabbath
Paranoid
Joe
Cocker
Mad Dogs & Englishmen
Chicago
Chicago II
Alice
Cooper
Love It To Death
Cream
Goodbye
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Cosmo’s Factory
Crosy, Stiils, Nash & Young
Four Way Street
Deep
Purple
Machine Head
The Doobie Brothers
Toulouse Street
The
Doors
The Doors
Bob
Dylan
Highway 61 Revisited
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Brain Salad Surgery
Firesign Theatre
I Think We’re All Bozo’s On This Bus**
Eagles
The Eagles
Foghat
Foghat
Grand Funk Railroad
Live Album
The Grateful Dead
Working Man’s Dead
Uriah
Heap
Demon & Wizards
Jimi
Hendrix
Electric Ladyland
Humble
Pie
Smokin’
Iron
Butterfly
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida *
Janis Joplin/BBHC
Cheap Thrills
Jefferson Airplane
Surrealistic Pillow
King
Crimson
Court Of The Crimson King
Led
Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Moody
Blues
Days Of Future Passed
Mountain
Nantucket Sleigh Ride
Pink
Floyd
Meddle
The Rolling Stones
Sticky Fingers
Bob
Seger
Smokin’ O.P’s
Steely
Dan
Can’t Buy A Thrill
Steppenwolf
16 Greatest Hits
Ten Years After
Recorded Live
Jethro
Tull
Aqualung
Various
Easy Rider
The
Who
Tommy
Yes
Fragile
Frank
Zappa
200 Motels
*Translation : Ain’ta Gotta No Weeda
**Non-music: But my generations answer to Shakespeare
I’m absolutely; positively sure I left out your favorite album. That’s
the
trouble with making lists. The point of this whole exercise was to
show that
in a short period of time the musical world spawned a huge number of
geniuses and some of the most memorable music of the century, music
that is
all but gone today. Sure you got a new Aerosmith, you get the occasional
new
Ozzie, hell we even got a new Steely Dan last year but they are few
and far
between and where are the youngsters? When this generation is dead
will the
music die as well? If it does that will be a major loss to mankind,
as would
the loss of Beethoven or Bach.
"Rock Is Dead, Long Live Rock!" … The Who
©2001 Uncle Ernie
http://issues.uncle-ernie.com
*
* Nice
web page, Ernie.
bc