Post by darkstar on Jan 26, 2006 17:25:31 GMT
January 24, 2006
OP-ED News
Progressive Rock / Progressive Thought - Part 4
1967: the Summer of Love Continues
by Mark S. Tucker
With this installment, "PR / PT" turns a bit more into a stroll down Baby Boomers’ Memory Lane. It’s still the run-up to an exposition on progressive music as an avenue of neoclassicalism yet unrecognized, but the background gathered in the build-up will help illuminate some of the claims soon to be made.
In retrospect, it’s rather amazing that an urge to the expression of psychedelic consciousness was so prevalent all at once, but it indeed was. 1967 was the Summer of Love, in no small part due to drugs, and music has e’er been a constant companion in any aesthete’s hedonisms - hence, like a virus, the new mode spread like wildfire. Previous years evidenced a certain amount of preparatory work but little truly explained the explosion of evolutionary sensibilities now burgeoning. The Beatles, Stones, and Animals weren’t the only biggies setting trends. Dionysus Alive, Jim Morrison, had been primed and ready to go since birth. Lodged in the Doors, he needed no prompting to conduct an eroto-agitprop campaign against the Establishment and its constrictions.
The group debuted in an eponymous LP which remained vital and influential for decades - in fact, still continues so in many ways. Backed by a hugely talented trio (Ray Manzarek on keyboards, Robbie Krieger on guitar, John Densmore on drums), Morrison delivered some of the modern era’s best poetry in a gruff voice reeking of musk, marijuana, and whiskey. Lacking an iota of self-consciousness, he also presented a one-man theatrework of dramaturgy, imbuing those bleak glass-edged words with kinetic visual emphasis. Two songs that would dominate charts and year-end Top 500 countdowns for what seemed like forever, “The End” and “Light My Fire”, had extended improv sections taking a backseat to no one - not the Jefferson Airplane, not the upcoming Led Zeppelin, not even Hendrix. Both tunes grabbed musical norms and twisted brilliant variations from them. Anarchy was a large part, drugs were prominent, sex was a byword (“Light My Fire” didn’t translate to “Let’s look deeply into each other’s eyes”), music was the vehicle, and L.A. was the place.
But not exclusively nor all that influentially. San Francisco dominated the youth music scene, the mecca whence Jefferson Airplane and the Fillmore groups held hash-wafted court, encouraging a highly socialized, participatory, artistic communalism. Got a guitar? Like to get looped? Hate the Establishment? Come on in!! This, of course, was the truly dangerous part, this “damnable” socialistic trend amongst “degenerate artists” encouraging an entire generation to dethrone the status quo. How dare they? Well, they did and the war was on. The irony, of course, lay in the yet-to-be discovered fact that the CIA had created, refined, and infiltrated into the landscape the very substance that would blow up in its collective face. They’d wanted to test LSD’s uses as a social control device and it would turn out to be perhaps the largest mistake in their entire misbegotten history. Business and government thereafter worked frenziedly to exterminate the outfall, and still do.
But the Airplane took full advantage of the scenario and emitted Surrealistic Pillow, becoming a leading edge in psych-rock, perhaps the edge, what with their heightened exposure. What separated them from much of the herd was superb control, a discerning amalgamation process much too often a mere sloppy bacchanal in other hands. Jorma Kaukonen wielded his distorted guitar, and the entire group wrote, as if a paintbrush in the hands of an opiated Vermeer. Kaukonen’s axe didn’t merely squeel, fuzz up, and moan, the sounds being coaxed out fell quickly under leash, casting refined light and shadows within each tune. Few LPs could be said to equal what happened in this elpee or its mate in ‘68, Crown of Creation. Pillow’s success caused After Bathing at Baxter’s to be rushed out the same year, but it lacked focus and discipline; a live affair, it revealed the group’s many extemporaneous weaknesses a little too lucidly. Nonetheless, all knocked heads together to weave the height of the ensemble’s strengths in studio. Later, they’d find even greater monetary success, rebirthed as the Jefferson Starship, but never again return to the artistic zeniths of this period.
Eric Clapton was also there at the beginning and would remain active long after most everyone else had exhausted their storehouses, folded up the tents, and gone home. In 1966, exiting the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s bluesrock combo, he got together with the angelically gifted Jack Bruce and one of rock’s all-time most powerful drummers, Ginger Baker, forming Cream. Fresh Cream resulted and sold well, an unparalleled fusion of blues, rock, and psych, but it was 67’s Disraeli Gears that assured the short-lived group’s fame, with the timeless (and, later, far too covered) ”Sunshine of Your Love”. Clapton’s long complicated solos, highly wrenched sound, and rubicund backing chords so entranced audiences that England became littered with “Clapton is God!” slogans spray-painted all over Her Majesty’s real estate. “Tales of Brave Ulysses” picked up the talking-narrative experimentation while backing flasetto vocals, soon to be trademarked by progrock, lifted singing norms up into the clouds (traveling back to quite old precedents, too). Pete Brown, an unoffical member of the band, supplied the kind of strange and ethereal lyrics Keith Reid was producing over in Procol Harum...
...who released the immortal “Whiter Shade of Pale” and incorporated a large backgrounded classical sense, especially in the instrumental “Repent Walpurgis”, with its generously stolen riffs, a lachrymose dirge plunging into a unique five-part crescendoed finale. Procol’s forté established itself in a highly formalist setting but dropped in the martial rock and roll beat along with swirling organs, stately piano, and a dismayingly muzzled Robin Trower on guitar (made up for when he went solo). The group would never be pigeonholable but tended to be most readily accepted by the nascent prog audience. Next year, they’d issue some startlingly psychedelic prog but, this year, they were content to test the waters and imprint their singular style.
Even country music would come in for the treatment. In the 50s, rock incorporated a number of elements of the country it and the blues each partially birthed from, but the 60s would be more serious and splinter in a dram of drugly tunesmithing. Buffalo Springfield trotted out two key albums, Buffalo Springfield and Buffalo Springfield Again, which tore the lid off the country terbacky pouch and dragged the form kicking and screaming over into rock. The transformation would work so well that trad practitioners thereafter looked to rock for future cues and successes. Springfield’s first album carried their biggest hit, “For What Its Worth”, an anthem to the times, and the odd but brilliant “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing”, an unlikely mix of croon, rock, lounge, EZ Listening, and country, a tune bafflingly never picked up as a standard.
Again, however, opened into a great grungy rocker, “Mr. Soul”, and closed with the rootsily progressive “Broken Arrow”, a song presaging what the Vanilla Fudge would employ heavily: crosscut pastiching. A background orchestra sweetened the mix, a flapper era interlude closed it out, and listeners were left to scratch their heads. What did it mean? Ah, but that was a part of the equation: existential mysteries abounded in everyday life and music would now include them. This was not new - Dodge, Wuorinen, Subotnick, and the electronicists were likewise exploring the shadows - but few rockers were hip to that edge of the art, so the ingredient progressed differently here.
This would provoke the question: where was jazz, what was its part? The style had always had its effect, especially in the fact that many jazzers participated in rock studio work, supplying chops the rockers lacked, but Chicago Transit Authority, one LP away from abbreviating its unwieldy sobriquet, boldly influxed a set of horns as permanent and prominent staples, issuing the stunning Chicago Transit Authority, a sprawling 2-LP work loaded with improv, mixed media, and the 7-minute guitar freakout, “Free Form Guitar”, wherein Terry Kath had a chance to flex his muscles, causing Jimi Hendrix, with whom they toured, to blurt out that Kath was his superior. Untrue, of course, but even the exaggeration gave a good insight into the gentleman’s prowess - allowed only here, only this once, later harshly subordinated to a hitmaking imperative.
The year wasn’t done, though.
Next: Winding up ‘67, Falling into ‘68.
-------------------
Mark S. Tucker, a critic, has written for numerous magazines and presently writes for Perfect Sound Forever on-line, as well as this forum. He can be reached at progdawg@hotmail.com. This article is originally published at opednews.com. Copyright Mark S. Tucker, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_mark_s___060124_progressive_rock__2f_p.htm
OP-ED News
Progressive Rock / Progressive Thought - Part 4
1967: the Summer of Love Continues
by Mark S. Tucker
With this installment, "PR / PT" turns a bit more into a stroll down Baby Boomers’ Memory Lane. It’s still the run-up to an exposition on progressive music as an avenue of neoclassicalism yet unrecognized, but the background gathered in the build-up will help illuminate some of the claims soon to be made.
In retrospect, it’s rather amazing that an urge to the expression of psychedelic consciousness was so prevalent all at once, but it indeed was. 1967 was the Summer of Love, in no small part due to drugs, and music has e’er been a constant companion in any aesthete’s hedonisms - hence, like a virus, the new mode spread like wildfire. Previous years evidenced a certain amount of preparatory work but little truly explained the explosion of evolutionary sensibilities now burgeoning. The Beatles, Stones, and Animals weren’t the only biggies setting trends. Dionysus Alive, Jim Morrison, had been primed and ready to go since birth. Lodged in the Doors, he needed no prompting to conduct an eroto-agitprop campaign against the Establishment and its constrictions.
The group debuted in an eponymous LP which remained vital and influential for decades - in fact, still continues so in many ways. Backed by a hugely talented trio (Ray Manzarek on keyboards, Robbie Krieger on guitar, John Densmore on drums), Morrison delivered some of the modern era’s best poetry in a gruff voice reeking of musk, marijuana, and whiskey. Lacking an iota of self-consciousness, he also presented a one-man theatrework of dramaturgy, imbuing those bleak glass-edged words with kinetic visual emphasis. Two songs that would dominate charts and year-end Top 500 countdowns for what seemed like forever, “The End” and “Light My Fire”, had extended improv sections taking a backseat to no one - not the Jefferson Airplane, not the upcoming Led Zeppelin, not even Hendrix. Both tunes grabbed musical norms and twisted brilliant variations from them. Anarchy was a large part, drugs were prominent, sex was a byword (“Light My Fire” didn’t translate to “Let’s look deeply into each other’s eyes”), music was the vehicle, and L.A. was the place.
But not exclusively nor all that influentially. San Francisco dominated the youth music scene, the mecca whence Jefferson Airplane and the Fillmore groups held hash-wafted court, encouraging a highly socialized, participatory, artistic communalism. Got a guitar? Like to get looped? Hate the Establishment? Come on in!! This, of course, was the truly dangerous part, this “damnable” socialistic trend amongst “degenerate artists” encouraging an entire generation to dethrone the status quo. How dare they? Well, they did and the war was on. The irony, of course, lay in the yet-to-be discovered fact that the CIA had created, refined, and infiltrated into the landscape the very substance that would blow up in its collective face. They’d wanted to test LSD’s uses as a social control device and it would turn out to be perhaps the largest mistake in their entire misbegotten history. Business and government thereafter worked frenziedly to exterminate the outfall, and still do.
But the Airplane took full advantage of the scenario and emitted Surrealistic Pillow, becoming a leading edge in psych-rock, perhaps the edge, what with their heightened exposure. What separated them from much of the herd was superb control, a discerning amalgamation process much too often a mere sloppy bacchanal in other hands. Jorma Kaukonen wielded his distorted guitar, and the entire group wrote, as if a paintbrush in the hands of an opiated Vermeer. Kaukonen’s axe didn’t merely squeel, fuzz up, and moan, the sounds being coaxed out fell quickly under leash, casting refined light and shadows within each tune. Few LPs could be said to equal what happened in this elpee or its mate in ‘68, Crown of Creation. Pillow’s success caused After Bathing at Baxter’s to be rushed out the same year, but it lacked focus and discipline; a live affair, it revealed the group’s many extemporaneous weaknesses a little too lucidly. Nonetheless, all knocked heads together to weave the height of the ensemble’s strengths in studio. Later, they’d find even greater monetary success, rebirthed as the Jefferson Starship, but never again return to the artistic zeniths of this period.
Eric Clapton was also there at the beginning and would remain active long after most everyone else had exhausted their storehouses, folded up the tents, and gone home. In 1966, exiting the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s bluesrock combo, he got together with the angelically gifted Jack Bruce and one of rock’s all-time most powerful drummers, Ginger Baker, forming Cream. Fresh Cream resulted and sold well, an unparalleled fusion of blues, rock, and psych, but it was 67’s Disraeli Gears that assured the short-lived group’s fame, with the timeless (and, later, far too covered) ”Sunshine of Your Love”. Clapton’s long complicated solos, highly wrenched sound, and rubicund backing chords so entranced audiences that England became littered with “Clapton is God!” slogans spray-painted all over Her Majesty’s real estate. “Tales of Brave Ulysses” picked up the talking-narrative experimentation while backing flasetto vocals, soon to be trademarked by progrock, lifted singing norms up into the clouds (traveling back to quite old precedents, too). Pete Brown, an unoffical member of the band, supplied the kind of strange and ethereal lyrics Keith Reid was producing over in Procol Harum...
...who released the immortal “Whiter Shade of Pale” and incorporated a large backgrounded classical sense, especially in the instrumental “Repent Walpurgis”, with its generously stolen riffs, a lachrymose dirge plunging into a unique five-part crescendoed finale. Procol’s forté established itself in a highly formalist setting but dropped in the martial rock and roll beat along with swirling organs, stately piano, and a dismayingly muzzled Robin Trower on guitar (made up for when he went solo). The group would never be pigeonholable but tended to be most readily accepted by the nascent prog audience. Next year, they’d issue some startlingly psychedelic prog but, this year, they were content to test the waters and imprint their singular style.
Even country music would come in for the treatment. In the 50s, rock incorporated a number of elements of the country it and the blues each partially birthed from, but the 60s would be more serious and splinter in a dram of drugly tunesmithing. Buffalo Springfield trotted out two key albums, Buffalo Springfield and Buffalo Springfield Again, which tore the lid off the country terbacky pouch and dragged the form kicking and screaming over into rock. The transformation would work so well that trad practitioners thereafter looked to rock for future cues and successes. Springfield’s first album carried their biggest hit, “For What Its Worth”, an anthem to the times, and the odd but brilliant “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing”, an unlikely mix of croon, rock, lounge, EZ Listening, and country, a tune bafflingly never picked up as a standard.
Again, however, opened into a great grungy rocker, “Mr. Soul”, and closed with the rootsily progressive “Broken Arrow”, a song presaging what the Vanilla Fudge would employ heavily: crosscut pastiching. A background orchestra sweetened the mix, a flapper era interlude closed it out, and listeners were left to scratch their heads. What did it mean? Ah, but that was a part of the equation: existential mysteries abounded in everyday life and music would now include them. This was not new - Dodge, Wuorinen, Subotnick, and the electronicists were likewise exploring the shadows - but few rockers were hip to that edge of the art, so the ingredient progressed differently here.
This would provoke the question: where was jazz, what was its part? The style had always had its effect, especially in the fact that many jazzers participated in rock studio work, supplying chops the rockers lacked, but Chicago Transit Authority, one LP away from abbreviating its unwieldy sobriquet, boldly influxed a set of horns as permanent and prominent staples, issuing the stunning Chicago Transit Authority, a sprawling 2-LP work loaded with improv, mixed media, and the 7-minute guitar freakout, “Free Form Guitar”, wherein Terry Kath had a chance to flex his muscles, causing Jimi Hendrix, with whom they toured, to blurt out that Kath was his superior. Untrue, of course, but even the exaggeration gave a good insight into the gentleman’s prowess - allowed only here, only this once, later harshly subordinated to a hitmaking imperative.
The year wasn’t done, though.
Next: Winding up ‘67, Falling into ‘68.
-------------------
Mark S. Tucker, a critic, has written for numerous magazines and presently writes for Perfect Sound Forever on-line, as well as this forum. He can be reached at progdawg@hotmail.com. This article is originally published at opednews.com. Copyright Mark S. Tucker, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.
www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_mark_s___060124_progressive_rock__2f_p.htm