Friday, December 4th is the final Bandcamp Friday of 2020. Just like it has on the first Friday of each month since March, from midnight to midnight PST, Bandcamp will waive their revenue share in order to help artists and labels impacted by the pandemic. Please support the musicians you love by purchasing music or merch through the platform.
Last time I wrote a bit about how rock and roll became the elder-statesman of the pop music world: respected, influential, but well past its prime. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the rock history narratives that were sold over the decades, narratives that a new generation of writers and critics are beginning to either flesh out or unravel. Reading Nelson George’s The Death of Rhythm and Blues, and Hip Hop America in particular informed a lot of these thoughts.
Rock’s place as a dominant cultural force died sometime during the mid-1990s. There are many reasons why. But one of the biggest was the realization that one of the genre’s founding beliefs – that rock, as a progressive force, would change the world – was nothing more than a myth.
To be fair, rock was the catalyst of several massive cultural shifts. Early rock artists embraced what passed, at the time, as pro-sex, anti-authoritarian messages. The music cast off the emotional and physical repressions of the past, capturing the sense of freedom that baby boomer teens (a new phenomenon) wanted.
In this pursuit, rock helped break down racial barriers, sometimes quite literally. When Chuck Berry or Little Richard rolled into town, it was not unheard of for local authorities to run a rope or literally painting a line down the middle of an auditorium to separate Black and white fans. Once the music started, these boundaries were often obliterated as kids rushed the stage or started dancing, overcome by the power of the music.
By the close of the 1960s, rock was feeling itself. Dylan’s fabled “going electric” moment effectively weaponized rock, fusing folk’s political consciousness to a popular genre previously concerned with girls, cars and cutting a cool figure. Woodstock, the mythic mass gathering of like-minded young folks brought together by music and a shared communal world view, was proof that this was a way of life that could scale. Rock was now the de facto pop and few could argue against its vast cultural impact.
A lot of the artists who helped build that influence coasted off of it in the decades to come. Others, like John Lennon and George Harrison, turned outward, adopting a more global world view. Their efforts were supersized in the 1980s when the Boomtown Rats’ Bob Geldof and Ultravox’s Midge Ure staged Live Aid and the charity single “Do They Know its Christmas?” to help combat famine in Europe. Their efforts raised $150 million, and inspired a number of well-intentioned copycats, notably “We Are the World,” and “Tears are Not Enough.”
The 1990s were the pinnacle of rock’s cultural sway. Bill Clinton, the Rock and Roll President had swagger, played sax and famously used Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” as his theme song. The anti-establishment had become the establishment.
There were, of course, many exceptions to this narrative: individuals, groups, labels, and entire social movements who stood in opposition to or completely outside of rock’s mainstream. But this was the story that came to define rock and as a musical genre and cultural force.
Clinton turned out to be far less representative the peace and love generation of the 1960s (he didn’t inhale), than the embodiment of what they’d become in the decades that followed: middle-aged, centre-left, individualistic and safe.
The billion-dollar music industry that rock had spawned, once run by colourful characters with creative ideas and eccentric world views, had been thoroughly consolidated and corporatized.
Notably, it was an industry increasingly buoyed by sales of dance and rap music. Rock exposed mainstream, mostly white listeners, to Black artists and musical traditions, and played a role in breaking down racial barriers. But throughout the second half of the 20th century (and into the 21st), the music industry would routinely marginalize racialized artists.
R&B, soul, funk, dance and hip-hop artists were often “genre-ized,” relegated to genre specific radio stations and charts while white artists and producers “borrowed” ideas these artists had pioneered and adapt them for more mainstream (ie: white) tastes. For years, a debate has raged about whether or not MTV had an official policy against playing music videos by Black artists in its early years. The fact that it even seems plausible tells you a lot about low the bar was set for welcoming Black voices into the mainstream.
While music’s biggest stars were singing ham-fisted tributes to the Power of Music, it was these genres that were putting a spotlight on the day-to-day realities of people of colour and different gender and sexual identities, groups who were growing in both number and their own level of influence.
Today that influence is seen in how artists of colour have been the most effective and creative in responding to the deep social and political divisions in the U.S. And it’s why dance music and hip hop are so baked into the DNA of today’s artists. For most of their lifetime, it’s the only music that been willing to reflect their experiences.
Next time: Sex and drugs and rock and roll.
Kool Kids Music Recos Club
“What if Avril Lavigne made a record with Beat Happening/K Records/lo-fi guru Calvin Johnson?” is a pretty accurate way to describe Toronto duo Triples. Sisters Eva and Madeline have been putting out singles and EPs for a few years now, culminating in last year’s charming Big Time. I was really hoping to see them live this year, but then *gestures broadly* all of this happened. Sigh…
Kiwi Jr. are a band I did get to see this year, part of a Long Winter show back in January when they were still promoting last year’s excellent Football Money. The Toronto band have since signed with Sub Pop and are releasing their next album, which includes “Cooler Returns” (the video for which explains singer Jeremy Gaudet, replicates "the most accurate version possible of what Kiwi Jr. shows once looked like”) in January.
Montreal-based BackxWash, is a black, trans hip hop artist who likes to spit overtop of Black Sabbath riffs. She walked away with this year’s Polaris Music Prize, for God Has Nothing to Do With This, Leave Him Out of It. Matt Bobkin wrote a great cover story about her for Exclaim! back in the summer. She is a singular and prolific artist (who deserves every accolade she gets.
Bristol group Pet Shimmers began life as one of several musical outlets for Oliver Wilde before blossoming into a full blown band. Their brand of bedroom indie rock feels like a 2020 update of early Animal Collective and Fiery Furnaces, mixing a range of styles into an off-kilter tunes that full of hooks that shouldn't be hooks. They dropped two records in 2020, Face Down in Meta and Trash Earthers, both well worth your listening energy.
Though she’s only 30, Lydia Loveless has sat at the intersection of country and punk for almost a decade. I was a particular fan of her third record, Somewhere Else. Following an acrimonious split with Bloodshot Records, whose co-owner’s partner she accused of years of “casual predation,” Loveless chose to release her latest on her own Honey, You’re Going to be Late Records. Daughter lacks the barnstorming energy of some of her earlier work, but maintains the grit and twang while maturing her sound.
While it doesn’t quite match the heights of last year’s breakthrough, Pony, it’s hard to fault mysterious (and presciently dressed) country crooner Orville Peck from enjoying a victory lap like “Legends Never Die,” his duet with none other than Shania Twain. Look at the swagger on these two. 👀
Kool Kids Music Preservation Club
If you (like me) were a music nerd back in the mid-2000s, it was extremely uncool to like mainstream pop music. This had been The Way for decades. Then poptimism, the idea that pop music should be given the same critical assessment as rock music (as opposed to being dismissed wholesale), changed all that.
Sidebar: someone could and should write a book about poptimism’s rise (HMU book publishers).
My personal Come to Pop moment came from two records. The first was the Swedish version of Robyn’s 2005 self-titled record (still a banger). The other was Anniemal by Norwegian singer Annie. “Heartbeat” in particular was a game changer, it’s bass line seemingly mimicking an actual heartbeat.
For a while I would have put the two Scandinavian singers on equal footing, but Robyn really eclipsed Annie when she began rolling out the Body Talk EPs in 2010. It had taken Annie five years to produce a follow up, to Anniemal and another 11 for her thrid album, Dark Hearts which just came out in October. It’s received pretty good reviews so far (I have yet to really dig into it). But it’s doubtful that anything will ever match the rush I get everytime I hear the build that runs through the first verse and chorus of “Heartbeat.”
Hit up koolkidsmusicclub@gmail.com for questions, criticisms and submissions.