Vote for 2013 Rock & Roll HOF Inductees

[uwe]

I liked Lester Bangs, Cameron Crowe and Julie Burchill - not sure whether anyone of them knew how to play a single note, but they sure could write even when they were slagging off bands I like. I have repeatedly bought albums on the basis of reviews slagging them off  (in an entertaining way), that's how I got into Judas Priest of which Julie wrote "an acted studded with macho symbols, but devoid of any true virility". She was obviously disturbed by the fact that Robert Halford was not singing for her and her gender - this was in 1979 when Halford's homosexuality was still a well-kept secret. But Julie noticed something.

[nofi]

i think you could put ralph gleason at the top of your list. also leonard feather for mostly jazz although gleason wrote about jazz as well. lester bangs was entertaining even when writing about lou reed in their love/hate thing they had going on. lester was actually in a band for awile, don't remember the name. i loved creem and crawdaddy back in the day but alas....boy howdy!

[uwe]

Bangs once wrote a very insightful article on heavy rock/heavy metal where he disproved the then popular allegation that all "heavy rock/heavy metal sounds the same". His theory was "only to the unaccustomed ear" and then went on to show how much it had in fact diversified and that Deep Purple had more to do with Cream than with Led Zeppelin (he saw Gillan inspired by Jack Bruce), that Sabbath (I personally find that the first two Sabbath albums sound like Cream on downers) was another thing altogether. And that a band such as Mothers Finest merged black and white music more intensively than any other strain of popular music. He had really given it some thought even though he lumped Deep Purple and Uriah Heep stylewise together (which can be forgiven however due to some similarities in their sound, even DP mebers thought that UH emulated their sound).

[uwe]

Voted for Purps, Rush, Chic and Randy Newman plus someone I forgot (Heart?). Rush and Purple lead, Chic is last and Randy Newman way back - that ain't right!

[Pilgrim]

Newman is a fantastic song writer with a brilliant gift of satire (ref: "Burn On," a reference to the Cuyahoga River catching fire, which opens the movie Major League with the lyrics "Cleveland, city of light, city of magic" and "Burn on, big river, burn on.." ) but he's not nearly as rock & roll as the others.

[uwe]

Rock & Roll, for me, is a synonym for music with blues, gospel, soul and country roots (however far away), though other influences such as folk and classical may come in, and any attempts to delineate "rock" from "pop" pretty much fail. Rock is generally more guitar oriented, but who would say that Keith Emerson stabbing his B3 with a knife wasn't rock? And we all know that the lead guitar solos on ELP records were kinda mixed into the background. And if you listen to a Chic song and can't hear how Nile Rodger's guitar playing is driving along the song, go get a hearing aid.



Whether Chic is rock or not is comprehensively answered at 2.53 here:



And Bernard Edwards was such a darn cool player, no two ways about it.

I listen to Rory Gallagher followed by Ultravox followed by Taylor Swift followed by Bobby Womack



followed by The Darkness followed by Saga followed by the new Dylan in the car and, CD for CD, never does the thought cross my mind once that it might not be "rock" I'm listening to. With my volume, anything is rock.  

And please cast your votes what this is: R'n'B, pop or rock or all three?

[Pilgrim]

Thanks, Uwe.  I have never really listened carefully to the bass line on Le Freak before - man, what a NICE job of holding down the groove, and it's a very funky sound.  Love it!

As to the En Vogue number - IMO it's on the rock side of pop.  It helps to close your eyes and NOT watch the video, and when I do that I categorize it as rock.  The drum solo reminds me of a cut on the old James Gang album.  The guitar and bass are plenty aggressive enough for rock.

BTW - at 3:40 or so into that cut, there's a shot of the bass player and he appears to have a Vox Phantom bass - the headstock is Vox and the body has that irregular paddle shape.

[uwe]

Welcome to the club. I used to hate Chic in the seventies. I thought it was banal crap.

But then, in the early eighties - I was young and needed the money - I took a job as a DJ and announcer in a peep show in the Frankfurt red light district (actually just a few hundred yards away from my office today, I haven't moved much except in floors!) and of course they had all these Chic, Sister Sledge, Diana Ross and David Bowie - Let's Dance records I had to listen to intensively now for hours on end (watching porn videos on twelve different computer screens simultaneously - also part of my job in case a video cabin had technical issues - gets boring quickly, let me tell you from limp experience!). And I did start listening ... what is the bass doing, what is the guitar doing, how do they interact, why does the Diana Ross backing sound similar to the Sisters Sledge one (I didn't yet know how much Edwards and Rodgers populated disco records at the time). And look, hear and behold, I realized that the music isn't crap at all.

And when late one night after work I heard this in a disco in 1983 and immediately liked it (a Nile Rodgers style blatant rip-off, but I'm not aware that it is him playing)



I realized that Deep Purple and Judas Priest are maybe not the be- and end-all of all things music much as I like them to this day!  

[patman]

just saw the live Chic cut...that's Bill Holloman on sax...didn't hear him play much, but he's killer on keys, trumpet, and he's pretty darn good on bass (great time, and great walking skills)...he is unbelievable on tenor sax.