"What's interesting about rock 'n' roll is that its truly radical aspect occurs at the level of sound. ‘Tutti Frutti’ is far more revolutionary than Lennon's 'Woman Is the Nigger of the World,' and the sound of Dylan's voice changed more people's ideas about the world than his political message did."
- Robert Ray
"My argument has always been that the way rock works, both in terms of its emotional effectiveness but also in terms of its politics, is at the level of sound. No matter how powerful you think “Ohio” is, in terms of politics “Tutti Frutti” is more politically profound."
- Robert Ray
Having trouble correlating these righteous remarks with the barely-there quality of the sound of Ray's band The Vulgar Boatmen - The Feelies clarified to a consomme that barely touches the sides as it goes down.
Thinking more generally about this vague area of music - college rock (Ray is an actual college professor) and Amerindie.... Hoboken as haven on Earth.... The Feelies, Camper Van Beethoven, Miracle Legion, Yo La Tengo.... a sensibility big in the Eighties, as a reaction-formation against mainstream rock, but one that endures as a strain to this day
Is it that America is still a Puritan nation at heart?
How else to explain this musical preference for frugality of means and modesty of mode? The Quakerish premium on egalitarianism - the person onstage has no more of a voice than you do. A dislike of drama that taps into the deep Puritan tradition of anti-theatricality.
This taste formation doesn't go in for 'thickness'... it recoils from texturitis.... Performers can never be too self-effacing.
Which is why Scrawl, say, got a better critical reception than Throwing Muses
Why the Mekons were always more of a cause here than Morrissey & Marr
I think it's less a reflection of Puritanism than the simple fact that the bands you've listed were aesthetically (not literally, except in YLT's case) rooted in folk, jazz, and scenes inflected by them like SF psych - that's where the egalitarianism, (mostly) unhyped sound, and the suspicion of flash and visual (as opposed to musical) drama comes from.
ReplyDeleteAs you've noted, there were UK equivalents in electric folk, Canetbury-type prog, and later sharpened roots acts like the Mekons
Rather than reaching back to the Puritans, you could explore this as a phenomenon of New England WASP repression, but that would include a lot of superficially outre NYC scenesters like Thurston Moore (this really comes through in his recent autobio: he appears to have no real friends, band members like Ranaldo and Shelly included, and Gordon was his first and only serious girlfriend until he started cheating on her at 50 - he mainly communicates through bands he likes)