{"id":325,"date":"2007-03-01T09:57:44","date_gmt":"2007-03-01T13:57:44","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-11-18T13:04:50","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T17:04:50","slug":"oats-on-humor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/oats-on-humor\/","title":{"rendered":"Oats on Humor in Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9gJxiQrPd_k?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nDoes humor belong in music? Emphatically, I say <strong><em>Yes<\/em><\/strong>. Bear in mind, I\u2019m among the RTH contingent that not only considers <strong>Randy Newman<\/strong> one of the Greats, but also he believes that through humor he gets to the kind of truths that Serious-Minded Rockers couldn\u2019t even come close to grazing. If you\u2019re not down with Newman \u2013 he is an acquired taste \u2013 you should know I feel the same about <strong>The Kinks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Remember, when I mean humor in music, I don\u2019t mean novelty songs. The key isn\u2019t so much making jokes as it is comic timing. And in fact, I\u2019d argue many of the Accepted Greats of Rock possess this gift: <strong>Dylan<\/strong>, <strong>The Beatles<\/strong>, <strong>The Who<\/strong>, <strong>The Stones<\/strong>. (\u201cBaby better come back, maybe next week\/\u2019Cause you see I\u2019m on a losing streak\u201d is down to comic timing.)<\/p>\n<p>I lean, then, towards humor that is expressed conversationally in music. So, the elephant in the room, <strong>Frank Zappa<\/strong>, doesn\u2019t really register for me. His comic timing doesn\u2019t strike me as tuned to the rhythms of speech as much as the rhythms of the hyperactive xylophone part or crazy time signature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Does humor belong in music? Emphatically, I say Yes. Bear in mind, I\u2019m among the RTH contingent that not only considers Randy Newman one of the Greats, but also he believes that through humor he gets to the kind of truths that Serious-Minded Rockers couldn\u2019t even come close to grazing. If you\u2019re not down with <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/oats-on-humor\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[377],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}