We sing the praises of the noteworthy performance, adhering to the original arrangement or popularized interpretation. Through a progression from tolerance, to acceptance, to exploitation, much like the trip Blues and Jazz made during previous decades, we have embraced improvisation to the point of Jam Band Marketability.
Regardless of direction, earning praise ultimately involves measuring audience sophistication and expectation. Recording lends itself to either approach because those elusive pseudo-productive masterpieces at times happen with no premeditation. The magic written must still transfer from raw files to the machine, and during that intervention, without warning, Semper Paratus mates, and the capture is paramount.
There are thousands of all-time great moments in Rock music. There are published lists, anthologies, and almanacs that describe everything from a Big Bang birth in Memphis to undeniably defining moments throughout time; events, life stories, and mortality. Generations of celebration, atonement, and narrative have been mightily served and magnetically preserved by artists lucky enough to capture their own.
Recording momentary details and the truth by the music using any mechanism, be it shutter, tape, or pencil in hand is key. To step through the door, one must turn on or be turned on because the machine rolling keeps the momentary experience from slipping away. Musical flashes run just like the nighttime ideas you neglect to jot down.
The argument is that pretentiousness as such compromises the academic aspect of the art and overcomplicates creation. The answer, flawlessly ringing as true as a perfect algorithm, is to try to habitually record everything played. Stated simply, if you record it, you’ve got it. No question, that it could be gone forever.
Rock was once a virgin, as was technology. The magic released between 1964 and 1974 offered commercial crossover; groundbreaking successes, earthy and pure. Today, there is hip-hop. Yesterday, there was hip-hop. Note-for-note and lyric-for-lyric, in a never-ending daisy chain of influence, the nervous eaters and the eaten, share at any given time, both the top and bottom of the proverbial food chain.
Elvis eating Blues – The Beatles eating Elvis – Everyone eating The Beatles. All who rise to the surface prove innovation hasn’t died, even though innovation remains as difficult an achievement today as it ever was. The industry is smothered in consumerism like never, operationally guided by the whims of the finicky public, typically dollar volatile. Let us thank Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, and all their followers, for at least trying to save us; Grunge … Alternative, and that is good company.
Categorical subtitles assigned to Rock music are meant to convey style. Once history, however, style degenerates in the name of progress. Modifiers and descriptors turn to time and placeholders, and age renames the subgenre with a decade-encompassing numeric label, representing simply the space in time; sixties rock, seventies, eighties, nineties rock, and beyond. The low-end decade we’re just graduating from is going to be tough to name: We are in a millennium bottom end, man.
As each decade of Rock reflects the maturation by generation and internationality, they also note periods of regression and defeat. How did The Black Crows ever defeat the Southern Rock moniker syndrome? A strong continuum in Rock music is as much the celebration today as it ever was. But then, wait, some A/R representative hears a Hit! There must be at least one hit on an album. And what the hit is, is chosen by the executives. Sometimes the choice matches the artist’s, but not always.
Its rudimental development in the sixties and seventies offered a wealth of recorded goodness, stretching, and pioneering. Today, astonishingly enough, we hear more of the same. Rock continues to soothe, heal, and excite the young, and to just may defy, exploit, and shock the old, as well. It still moves, it still rocks and its market remains open. The feedback factor is the secret. The Rock audience is as diverse and independent as the talent. And a lot of times, success blooms when they completely connect.
Yes, Rock music eats other music, but it also coexists with and compliments it all perfectly. It always has. Channels have expanded to a point where Rock has commercially proliferated into every media. True to the core, with each transfer, tribute and sample, and even advertisements. Rock continues to pick fights with the tunnel-visional via lyric unorthodox, and foreign sound commercialized.
The Rock vibe is as strong and diverse as ever. No Hope – No Fear has adapted positively, and Pop has gotten downright nasty while remaining some lace and fluff, too. Rock can fuel a house party, and it can also co-spawn or support internationally powerful socio-political activism. The genre is eventual, yet timeless, manifested by growth and limitlessness.
The reason is the inherent characteristic to remain open to redefinition, reuse, and repetitive interpretation. Musicians have a better time adjusting the rules fitting better the time, than do Congress over our outdated Constitution.
Captured in a moment, up or down, in the raw, in bloom, even to imaged perfection, illustrated that records that break rules are priceless.