It’s coming, Townspeople! This weekend the first mix CDs will go in the mail! The media is on notice! The world will be watching! We’ll all be listening!
April 19, 2007 – The popular rock music discussion blog, Rock Town Hall, will be launching its new web-based reality series, Hear Factor, on Monday, April 30.
Rock Town Hall ups the risk, danger and excitement of Fear Factor, with a death-defying music-based version. Hardcore music fans, many spending 30 or more years forming tastes and opinions, will be FORCED to endure three days of listening to only a mix CD of tunes they have expressed a disdain for. (The mixes will be compiled by fans of that particular music.) Contestants will be required to daily diary their harrowing experiences.
“The only support they will have are from Lifelines provided by fellow Townspersons (members of the blog) who will be allowed to provide reference points, influences and comparisons to music that might make it easier for the contestant,” said blog founder, Mr. Moderator.
“We have gone to great length to ensure that our contest is safe. Rigorous physical, hearing and psychological testing have been performed. Release of Liability forms have also been collected”, said a representative known only as The Back Office.
Tonight Townsman Saturnismine checks in with his long-promised piece on the future of psychedelic music. Turn off your mind, relax, and read along. I think you’ll dig what he has to say!
Let’s quibble over definitions. We find psychedelia’s genesis in mid-60s pop with The Beatles leading the way. The meandering syrup of “I’m Only Sleeping” and “Rain” ripened into psyche on “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “Strawberry Fields”, “Lucy in the Sky”, and “I Am the Walrus”. We speak of a music that is by turns mimetic of altered states of consciousness or nostalgic of an idealized childhood. Maybe it’s a sort of a sonic equivalent of Lewis Carrol’s words or Dali’s images. Other themes may include space travel or “aeroplane” imagery. Psyche was a music at the interstices of developments in recording, the coming of age of a generation, and other arch practitioners: Piper-era Floyd.
But is this all? I hope I’m being too limiting.
Is this all there is?
Sure, other bands came and went, especially in the ’80s: Plasticland, The 3 O’Clock, Rain Parade. The Dukes of Stratosphere were so much fun that XTC imported some of their side project’s flavor for their most commercially successful albums, Skylarking and Oranges and Lemons, complete with Yellow Submarine-inspired cover art. None of them, however, really did much to expand the vocabulary of the field.
Since then, more bands have tried on psyche for size, too. No need for a list. You know their names. But maybe you haven’t heard of Silver Sunshine.
If not, listen to this song, which is pretty representative of their eponymous debut album.
Psyche done well, wouldn’t you say? However, upon hearing such an efficient compendium of “by the numbers” psyche clichés, I wondered to myself:
Do I ever again need to hear a new song with lyrics about someone’s uncle or “auntie” (or granny)…riding a bicycle…to the park…or in the sky…with “lots of colors”…on a Sunday…where we can play…or paint…a song sung in an exaggerated British accent that’s either pinched to sound like John Lennon on “I’m Only Sleeping” or distorted to sound John on the second half of “Tomorrow Never Knows”…and which ends with an explosion? I don’t know. But….
As I complained in our recent “biggest disappointment” thread: psyche suggested so many creative possibilities, but its practitioners gave us so little. Seemingly overnight, the most successful devices of the genre ossified into empty convention. But why? And what happened to all those possibilities? What does the future hold for psyche? Continue reading »
In rock’s nascent days, lurking not too far in the shadows behind the leather jacket, the DA, the hot rod, and the hot chick, was the motorcycle. Like the leather jacket, the cycle’s iconic power can be traced back to Marlon Brando’s role in The Wild Bunch.
Hot rods remained the vehicle of choice through the years when Chuck Berry was motovatin’, while soul and British Invasion artists of the first half of the ’60s did most of their commuting by foot and train. In the second half of the ’60s, however, thanks to Roger Corman‘s exploitation flicks and hippie-era interest in exploring the wide-open spaces of the United States, the motorcycle came to light as the vehicle of choice for rock ‘n rollers.
The opening images of one of the two most influential movies of my lifetime was accompanied by rock’s finest motorcycle song ever!
For reasons still unclear to me to this day, my parents and the parents of friends of mine from down the block took us all to see a drive-in double feature of Hell’s Angels on Wheels with Easy Rider. I must have been 5 or 6 years old. This was in the days when your could shove 8 people into a station wagon, with kids fighting for the highly valued seats that flipped up and faced looking out the back window. I still recall a bad biker dude in a WWI German helmet and a guy getting shot right between the eyes – shattering his rectangular Granny glasses – to end Hell’s Angels on Wheels. Yes! Then came Easy Rider, with choppers, kick-ass sideburns and facial hair, the leather football helmet, and “Born to Be Wild”. Yes! From that night forward I developed a crystal clear lifetime goal that, to be honest, exists in some form to this day: I wanted to be a hippie.*
*As part of this plan, I wanted to ride a chopper. Over the next couple of years I saved money to buy a mini-bike. My Mom was totally against it, but I kept saving. I was a week away from trying to get my Dad to make the case that I should be allowed to get one when a motocycle-riding neighbor from around the corner flipped his bike and died instantly. Just as fast I decided to cap my hippie accoutrements at big sideburns, a Fu Manchu, and a fringed suede jacket. Continue reading »
Songwriters within the Halls of Rock, have you ever tried to write a prog-rock song? Seriously, even as a joke. I’m curious to hear about your experiences. One of the things that always fascinates me about prog-rock is the mysterious process that must go into writing a 10-minute opus, with 72 changes in tempo, key, etc. Please share, and please feel free to arrange to send me an example of your recorded composition. Perhaps we can develop your experiences into a little songwriting workshop on the art of prog-rock songwriting. Thanks.
Costello will also delve into his past tonight (April 17) as the inaugural guest in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame educational series about songwriting, “The Craft.” Historian and ex-Del Fuegos member Dr. Warren Zanes will interview Costello in Las Vegas for future broadcast on the Hall’s Web site at a future date.
Good grief! It’s not enough that Elvis Costello is reissuing his back catalog for the 17th time, that the 30th anniversary of the relatively boring My Aim Is True is being feted, that he’s going to be conducting an educational series on songwriting with Dr. Warren Zanes (Doctor, heal thyself!), but to top it all off, Elvis is going to be collaborating with Twyla Tharp. What’s left for the guy, getting into the action on those Andy Partridge/Robert Schneider/Robyn Hithcock telecollaborations? An excursion into world music? Joining Ratdog?
