Categorizing music is usually a futile and annoying pursuit so I am going to talk about some music without naming a style or genre. Last night I got the urge to listen to some music I haven't heard for quite a while--this is one of the good things about YouTube, you can indulge almost any urge. Here is what I listened to:
What these clips all have in common is that they are live performances with no lip-syncing, no backup dancers, no fancy pyrotechnics and, most importantly, they blend music traditions with creativity. One of the roots of Cream was the blues of Robert Johnson and the second and third clips also reflect that. PJ Harvey is a different kettle of fish, but her unique creativity also uses some traditional elements such as the driving energy of rock and roll. Jimi Hendrix also has some obvious roots, though he developed the electric guitar in new directions. I like this music because it is what I think of as the "real thing." These days one gets the distinct impression that the whole point of music is to attract listeners, sell tickets, influence fashion and most of all, make money. All that is ok, but it is not what I think of as the "real thing." And oh boy, do I ever want to avoid using the word "authentic!" But to me, the difference between this kind of music, which is just straight from the shoulder and damn the torpedoes, and the other kind of music, which is contrived, self-conscious, aimed at manipulating certain effects, insincere, phony and substanceless is perfectly obvious. And I don't think it is just a matter of taste, or is it?
What do you think?
12 comments:
I went down a youtube rabbit hole as well last night and ended up listening to Rick Beato interviewing musician/producer Steven Wilson. Found it surprisingly interesting -- and relevant to this post. He talked about how most modern recordings are done with a click trick and musicians recording their parts separately (which I sort of knew), whereas in the 60s/70s bands played together in a room and knew how their sound interconnected. When he remixed certain old albums he said he was surprised how often the audio quality of a part sounded inadequate by itself, yet sounded brilliant when put with the other parts. He also talked how thrilling it was listening to recordings without click track, where there was flexibility in tempo. His various comments suggest to me that the creative process is now mostly in the studio, whereas before creating music was mostly done outside the studio, then the band came in ready -- he expressed surprise at how bands used to record an album in just days or weeks (I was surprised by his surprise...)
When I think about it, a number of the bands I followed as a teenager only existed in recordings -- they never performed.
If I were to trace a crude history, it would seem that, at first, recording was an extension of performance, then the two became increasingly separate arts (like theatre and cinema), and then, in many styles, performance became an extension of recording, to the extent that much of what we hear is pre-recorded and/or filtered through complicated pre-determined effects.
I think Steven's post is accurate, although even in the late 60s you were starting to see bands essentially camp in the studio working out half finished songs. A related point is that in looking at live clips or DVDs of rock concerts, often the live versions were better than on the records. For example I never liked The Who's Tommy LP but I was amazed by the live version of parts of it included on their Kilburn concert DVD. I don't think that is possible today regarding the music, aside from the ancillary stage spectacle.
One other point I would make concerning pop etc music is that only with a great Album does it begin to approximate classical music. It is not easy to say the least to create 35-45 minutes of consistently interesting music even in a pop album of songs. Frank Sinatra was of course the main originator of the Album concept in pop music.
I'm reminded of some comments recently on a new movie where some of the actors' scenes were entirely in front of a green screen with no interaction with the other actors. And the result was as sterile as you would imagine. The Beatles were the first to really compose in the studio, but towards the end they gave that up and longed for the dynamics of live performance again. What has happened with a lot of the stadium performances seems to be the reconstruction of the sterility of the studio on a big stage with light shows, dancers and prerecorded tracks. George Martin made the comment once that while Ringo was not the most steady of drummers, he always seemed to make minute tempo adjustments in the right place! Well, duh!
My favorite performer is Grigory Sokolov who simply refuses to make studio recordings.
I think the Sokolov discography indicates that the switch to only live concert recording occurred after year 2001, possibly later. I have a several studio LPs and CDs of him recorded before 2000.
https://www.discogs.com/artist/1408150-Grigory-Sokolov
I did not know that about Sinatra, interesting.
At one point in the interview Wilson says the drummer Bill Bruford couldn't maintain a tempo but was very exciting because of it. I rather suspect Bruford could have if he wanted. Tempo manipulation is apparently so eccentric an idea in the post-click track world that those who do it are deficient...
Maury, I see what you mean. I wasn't aware of these recordings. They all seem to be Russian? I have some older CDs on the Naive label, but they are all recordings of concerts, not studio recordings.
I was listening to Sokolov play some Rameau the other day and really, every beat has its own length.
I have heard or read somewhere that in many jazz contexts the person who is supposed to keep time is the bassist because the drummer may be on, behind, or ahead of the beat for expressive purposes but I heard that from only a couple of drummers I've known and am not sure how pervasive that practice is.
A drummer told me that before he switched to using click tracks Phil Collins was often all over the beat but that didn't keep him from being a pretty good drummer.
Bryan,
Yes Sokolov up to the fall of the Soviet Union was on Melodiya the official record label of the USSR. Angel US and EMI UK would often license and reissue Melodiya on their own labels. I have a 1976 US Angel LP of Sokolov playing the Hammerklavier Sonata as well as a Melodiya LP with him playing Carnaval. I also have a later CD. After 1990 I think he moved to Italy and made some CDs with Euro labels. Sometime after 2001 he stopped making studio recordings and just has live concerts issued on CD and now LP again. Deutsche Grammophon has a LP reissue program currently for several of his live concert performances. And yes that is not a typo. These are LPs some of which are gatefolds with 2 LPs. It's a great irony that the CD with its perfect sound forever is fading faster than the LP it supposedly replaced.
The Hatchet/Steven,
The Drums and Bass generally are a functional unit in a rock or jazz band. If you change one or the other player the rhythm is going to change for the entire band. For example The Rolling Stones were still recognizably the Stones as long as Wyman and Watts were playing together. They could swap out Brian Jones with Mick Taylor and then Ronnie Wood but when Wyman left the old Stones rhythm was lost. It's impossible to notate the subtle interplay which separates a great rhythm section with a generic one. Maybe Bryan since he was in a band for a couple of years might have some experience with this.
Thanks, Maury, for filling in some gaps in my knowledge of Sokolov's career. I watched a documentary about him once, but this information was lacking. There was mention of a bad experience he had with recording early on and the implication was that he had avoided recording studios ever since. But not true!
Yes, I have experience as both a bass player and a six-string electric player in rock and blues bands (as well as in playing bass in what you might call "cocktail" music), but this was all in my formative years so I doubt I have much to say. On the other hand, if you listen to those two Cream clips, or better, the whole CD release of the 2005 Royal Albert Hall concerts, you can hear an extraordinary interaction between three masters of rhythm--Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker particularly, but Eric Clapton as well. There are places where all three of them float into a syncopation so extreme that the listener loses their sense of the location of the beat. But they know and unerringly hit it at the next rhythmic node.
Yes, what The Rolling Stones always had over the Beatles was the best rhythm section in rock and roll. The bass and drums were the engine of the band.
I had an interesting experience with a click track once. A composer I knew had written a piece for three guitars that the ensemble (who had commissioned the work) could not quite play due to its rhythmic character. The composer, Anthony Genge, could write music using basically quarters and eighth notes that was so unusual that it always caught you by surprise. I had always had an affinity for his music so he asked me to make a recording for him, playing all three parts. Of course we had to use a click track and he had to change notes with fermatas into notes with specific lengths. Oh, and the piece also used quarter tones. Years ago I put up a post with the recording:
https://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2013/02/anthony-genge-streams-i.html
Thanks for your reply Bryan. My question would be as a bassist did you position yourself near the drums? Also I would check out the Cream playing Crossroads live. Much better than the album.
I think the issue of the Bass-Drums unit in rock and hard bop jazz (and related jazz such as jazz funk) to be a very interesting one, often glossed over. This is the one musical aspect that is basically beyond the reach of classical music because the notation is almost impossible. There are a set of logical possibilities: 1.effective integration of Bass and Drums; 2. effective contrast between Bass and Drums; 3. effective Bass/generic Drums; 4. effective Drums/generic Bass 5. ineffective Bass and Drums.
The Stones are the obvious example of #1 although Cream is close. I would say the Jefferson Airplane with Casady and Dryden, the Grateful Dead of the late 60s and The Beatles are examples of #2. The Byrds are the obvious example of #3 with Chris Hillman on Bass and Mike Clarke on Drums. There are quite a few examples of #4 where the Drummer is better than the Bass player. The two great examples in jazz IMO are Art Blakey and Tony Williams who could function without a top Bassist. Of course #5 is the graveyard of rock and jazz bands who never were.
As for the click track, Bowie with Eno in the 70s were already using that although fortunately more obviously for the soundscape tracks than the rock tracks. It's a deadening feature of modern pop which IMO has little to recommend it and I am forced to listen through it for whatever few synth pop albums I like.
As I mentioned, my experience as a bass player was fairly brief, roughly from 1966 to 1970 and during that time I did not have the opportunity to work with a really capable drummer. So I can't really contribute anything. Since I became a classical guitarist I have not touched an electric bass because it would destroy my nails!
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