Who cares what you say? You dislike the music and have no interest in it yet claim to be an expert. I think you're just being contrary. Which I understand, being contrary is amusing. But don't expect to be taken seriously.
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Is Rock and Roll Dead???
- Thread starter Andyman
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Who cares what you say? You dislike the music and have no interest in it yet claim to be an expert. I think you're just being contrary. Which I understand, being contrary is amusing. But don't expect to be taken seriously.
I guess not. I don't have any of her recordings. Not saying I would not like her if I heard her. Most of my music is European. I own probably 1600 CDs. Do you like Dino Saluzzi? Jan Garbarek? Egberto Gismonti? Ralph Towner? Bobo Stenson?
As far as expertise is concerned, I was around when rock n roll was born, and I used to listen to the radio every night as a child. It was a big Korting radio.
I remember Ricky Nelson, the Platters, the Supremes, Jan & Dean, Bobby Darin, Paul Anka, all those sorts of acts. At the time, rock n roll was only a small part of pop music. I didn't really like Little Richard but I knew who he was. We have come almost full circle now, with teenage solo acts once again becoming prominent, if not actually dominant, in terms of record sales and concert ticket sales.
http://youtu.be/S1i5coU-0_Q
Who needs Sarah Vaughn when you've got Anna Oxa?
http://youtu.be/PHReNQORofw
http://youtu.be/itfqwqFvPx4
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shacky
Addicted Member
Ditto! Best to ignore such contrarians :yes:
Contrarian? Contrarian to what? I probably have more music and more kinds of music than most of you here. I am not the one with narrow musical tastes. I have an enormous collection of CDs of all types, but little hard rock of any era. I do have Surrealistic Pillow though!
I have everything from Portugese Fado to Edie Brickell to Blue Nile to Paul Simon to Over the Rhine to A Flock of Seagulls to Yello and Falco.
I own a lot of classical too. You could hardly find anyone less contrarian. But I do know that rock n roll died long long ago. I'm shocked that the question is even being asked.
As we get older our tastes change and mature, sometime radically. Don't you find it odd that singers like Rod Stewart and Brian Ferry have turned to singing old standards?
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You're being a contrarian to the label of contrarian.
One thing that has happened is that the instrumental accompaniment for pop songs has changed over the decades, from strings and harps and upright bass, piano in the 50s, to a more 'rockish' accompaniment, with electric guitars, big drum kits, and synthesizers. Pianos and violins may still be heard, but the rock instruments are the commonest.
Robinhawaii
Super Member
I think every time someone declares an art form "dead" it is done so to spur a revival. Sometimes I don't think it is an artist's fault for failing to obtain a cultlike following, I think many listeners have become so fickle it is almost impossible today. Which also may have to do with the sheer number of signed artists producing music. if you think back to the early beginnings of rock, almost every song made back then has been heard by everyone over the age of 40 at least once in their lifetime. My wife is about twenty years younger than me, and she always asks me how I know the words to songs from the 40's-70's when I was born in 1967.
Also with the ease of self-production today, many craft made albums are available in genres that producers would not touch twenty years ago. It's out there you just have to find it.
Take care,
Rob
Also with the ease of self-production today, many craft made albums are available in genres that producers would not touch twenty years ago. It's out there you just have to find it.
Take care,
Rob
chicks
Lunatic Member
Since you singled out 1955 as a "bad" year musically, here's a list of albums from that year. The stuff the adults were listening to. I own 80% of the albums on this list, would purchase the remaining few before any R&R I can think of. But that's just me... Not a bad year for music at all, IMO.
In 1955, 1,615 albums and 4,542 pop singles were released in the US.
At the Cafe Bohemia, Vol. 1 – The Jazz Messengers
At the Cafe Bohemia, Vol. 2 – The Jazz Messengers
Day Dreams – Doris Day
Blue Moods – Miles Davis
Clifford Brown with Strings – Clifford Brown
Cloud 7 – Tony Bennett
Concert by the Sea – Erroll Garner
Dinner in Caracas – Aldemaro Romero
Doris Day in Hollywood – Doris Day
Happy Holiday – Jo Stafford
The Hi-Lo's, I Presume – The Hi-Lo’s
In a Blue Mood – Kay Starr
In a Romantic Mood – Oscar Peterson
In the Land of Hi-Fi – Sarah Vaughan
In the Wee Small Hours – Frank Sinatra
Julie Is Her Name – Julie London
Love Me or Leave Me – Doris Day
Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant – Betty Carter and Ray Bryant
Memory Songs – Jo Stafford
Miles Davis Volume 1 – Miles Davis
Miles Davis Volume 2 – Miles Davis
Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet – Miles Davis
The Misty Miss Christy – June Christy
Musings of Miles – Miles Davis
Noël Coward at Las Vegas – Noël Coward
Oklahoma! – Original Broadway Cast
Oscar Peterson Plays Count Basie – Oscar Peterson
The One, the Only Kay Starr – Kay Starr
Quintet/Sextet – Miles Davis
Satch Plays Fats – Louis Armstrong
Soft and Sentimental – Jo Stafford
Songs of Scotland – Jo Stafford
Songs from Pete Kelly's Blues – Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald
Starring Sammy Davis, Jr. - Sammy Davis, Jr.
Study in Brown – Clifford Brown and Max Roach
Thelonious Monk plays the Music of Duke Ellington – Thelonious Monk
In 1955, 1,615 albums and 4,542 pop singles were released in the US.
At the Cafe Bohemia, Vol. 1 – The Jazz Messengers
At the Cafe Bohemia, Vol. 2 – The Jazz Messengers
Day Dreams – Doris Day
Blue Moods – Miles Davis
Clifford Brown with Strings – Clifford Brown
Cloud 7 – Tony Bennett
Concert by the Sea – Erroll Garner
Dinner in Caracas – Aldemaro Romero
Doris Day in Hollywood – Doris Day
Happy Holiday – Jo Stafford
The Hi-Lo's, I Presume – The Hi-Lo’s
In a Blue Mood – Kay Starr
In a Romantic Mood – Oscar Peterson
In the Land of Hi-Fi – Sarah Vaughan
In the Wee Small Hours – Frank Sinatra
Julie Is Her Name – Julie London
Love Me or Leave Me – Doris Day
Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant – Betty Carter and Ray Bryant
Memory Songs – Jo Stafford
Miles Davis Volume 1 – Miles Davis
Miles Davis Volume 2 – Miles Davis
Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet – Miles Davis
The Misty Miss Christy – June Christy
Musings of Miles – Miles Davis
Noël Coward at Las Vegas – Noël Coward
Oklahoma! – Original Broadway Cast
Oscar Peterson Plays Count Basie – Oscar Peterson
The One, the Only Kay Starr – Kay Starr
Quintet/Sextet – Miles Davis
Satch Plays Fats – Louis Armstrong
Soft and Sentimental – Jo Stafford
Songs of Scotland – Jo Stafford
Songs from Pete Kelly's Blues – Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald
Starring Sammy Davis, Jr. - Sammy Davis, Jr.
Study in Brown – Clifford Brown and Max Roach
Thelonious Monk plays the Music of Duke Ellington – Thelonious Monk
Well let's just say not much of this sort of thing suits my taste.
Rock n roll was dance music.
In the late 50s and into the mid-sixties teenage girls would buy singles and dance to them in their bedrooms, sometimes with slumber-party friends. Then they would go to sock-hops and dance with boys and girls.
There were 'dance crazes' in the late 50s to mid-60s: the twist, the hully-gully, the swim, the fly, the mashed potato, the watusi, the Bristol stomp, etc. All of this faded away after about 1967. I remember colleges having dances, again the last of these was probably around the late 1960s.
The Beatles almost single-handedly did this in, for better or worse.
Rock n roll was kids' music, sold as singles, to dance to. Adults bought albums of more sedate music (Julie London, Andre Kostelanetz, etc.
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KrisM
Lunatic Member
It was still alive in the summer of 2012, too. Unless something has killed it since then.
I was going to post a link to a rockin' band called Trole, but I bet it wouldn't go over too well.
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I know that you've already indirectly expressed your displeasure for some punk rock by expressing your displeasure for loud music with screaming (not all of punk involves screaming, but some of it does). But the thing is that punk was actually harkening back to that era of rock that you like so much. The punks were also bored of rock that you just sit in a room or stand around and listen to, and they were interested in channeling the energy and raucousness of the late 50s and early 60s rock. But they also liked things loud and fast...so the music was sped up, and the dancing was also sped up. I'm certain that some people here will not view pogoing, slamdancing, etc. as "dancing," but I would disagree. Regardless, the point is the music made the kids get off their feet and start moving again, even if it wasn't stereotypically scripted dancing like it was in the 50s and 60s. It was about the energy and the give-and-take between audience and performer.
Perhaps there was that raw energy, but that was all it had in common with Bill Haley (not that I liked that stuff as such).
Can you name the last teenage dance craze? (not disco!).
It was disco that revived dancing, not punk. Between about 1967 and 1975, dancing kind of faded away.
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Electro-clash, then the dance-rock indie that's been dominating the college charts since the beginning the last decade, starting with the Strokes and continuing on through MGMT then on to today.
I mean after 1966 or so, not disco. And I'm speaking of dances, not music. Stuff like the fly, the hully-gully, the locomotion, etc.
Here's the history:
http://www.the60sofficialsite.com/Dance_Crazes_of_the_60s.html
Look what I found!
http://www.shsu.edu/~lis_fwh/book/brill_building/Dance Crazes2.htm
"Rock 'n' roll originated as a populist form of dance music."
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For about 3 minutes, the Macarena was loved by teens before their parents and Al Gore started doing it.
Supposedly the horse riding thing that PSY does in the Gangham Style video is catching on with kids.
I really don't understand the fixation on specific, scripted dances. People still dance, they just don't do specific, scripted dances like they used to as much anymore. That doesn't mean that people still don't dance to music. People have been dancing for thousands of years.
My argument is that 'rock n roll' died with the dancing, around the late 1960s. The Beatles were largely responsible for this.
Line dancing came on with disco, and was a separate phenomenon., though there was the stroll earlier on
btlefn1
Well-Known Member
You are defining "dancing" as narrowly as you are trying to define "rock 'n' roll." One of the things that rock 'n' roll did was break down the "rules" of what constituted "dancing." Anyone could get up on a dance floor and freely move to the music. You didn't have to conform to a particular defined "dance" like the ones you've named. I was a teenager in those years (graduated from HS in '73) and I went to plenty of school dances and there was plenty of dancing. I disagree that rock music suddenly was just "listening" music after '67. I went out a lot in the late '90s to listen to a bar band that I thought was really good. They played everything from Dion to Ozzie and they could pack the dance floor.
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