Obnoxious Music To Banish Unwanted Guests

I know what you mean by Prince not being categorized! Actually, he WAS pressured by WB. He only did "Little Red Corvette" as a calculated move to get him on the pop charts. That's when he entered the conciencenes of the mass audience. The first single from the "1999" album was the title track *1999*. It was only re-released again after "Little Red Corvette" was a smash hit.

It is also difficult to explain why the Pointer Sisters even had a country hit in the early 70s (Fairytale) and remained popular with black audiences. Or, how the Isley Brothers can rock hard and still not crossover to pop audiences much.

What I find interesting to anyone who studies the charts is that the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys charted more than once on the R&B charts, but the Beatles never charted once!

If I can offer at least one explaination of why blacks distanced themselves from rock is that when the British found it it slowly started to get faster, louder, and the heavy rhythm slowly sunk into the background while screeching guitar solos took over.

 

Yeah, the solos may have been screaching but, were they really that different from things guys like B.B. King and John Lee Hooker were doing? For that matter, how the heck did the majority of black listeners end up so distanced from blues like that and leave guys like B. B. and Hooker having their carreers supported by a predominantly white audience?

 

The most sure-fire way that I have ever found to get rid of people is to play BERLIN by Lou Reed at a volume just loud enough that they cannot ignore the lyrics and refuse to play anything else until it is over. Probably the most depressing gauranteed-to-bring-you-down album ever recorded. Even the band that worked on it was wrecked by the time it was finished.

Although every once in a while you'll get someone who is just blown away by it and wants to talk about the music. But sometimes that can be a good thing ...

 

Yes, it is a rather depressing album, but it is great. Put that on while I'm around and you may never be able to get rid of me.

 

When whites discovered rock in the 50s, it took one direction while blues took another. I'm trying very hard not to say it now, but race is a big factor in this. When whites caught on to rock & roll, blacks started to move away from it. This was when whites "cleaned up" the lyrics and tried to make it more palatable to white sensabilities by lightening up on the rhythm and speeding it up to remove the implications of sex. "Tutti-Frutti", "Shake, Rattle & Roll" and "Hound Dog" come to mind. Whites then moved, or tried to move away from rock in the late 50s, early 60s with the teen idols and old guard crooners. Then Motown came and tried to bridge the gap again. The Brits came and went back to the blues. Groups like the Dave Clark Five and The Beatles didn't really appeal to blacks. Blacks didn't lose the blues because it was in the soul music. But, as I stated before, blacks just didn't care for the music being played faster. Listen to the old 60s records by everybody. Music made by blacks had the heavy rhythm and was dancable. Music made by whites was faster and de-emphasized the rhythm. Sure, Vanilla Fudge's version of "You Keep Me Hanging On" was much more soulful than the original. So much soulful that you could could taste the butter dripping! But, you couldn't DANCE or make out to it. The psychadelic instrumentation also was a turnoff to many. It wasn't just a louder, distorted guitar, it was what it represented. Most blacks didn't relate to the hippie culture. The social concerns were different. After the assassination of MLK Jr., there was little going back.

I have to stop now bcause the issue is getting too deep.

 

Yes, perhaps it is getting a little too deep for this forum and certainly WAY off topic. Let's just spare everyone and nip it in the bud right now. Just for the record though, I do understand and agree with your thoughts. It's just too bad everything has to be so, er, black and white , but thus is the world in which we live.

 

I can't delete my post.

 

I don't think you (or I) should delete this post.

If it seems like it's getting too heated (which it doesn't) then it can always be locked.

Anyways, let's not get too paranoid about having deep discussions, ok?

Carry on!

HZ

 

<<Originally posted by dwmann
The most sure-fire way that I have ever found to get rid of people is to play BERLIN by Lou Reed at a volume just loud enough that they cannot ignore the lyrics and refuse to play anything else until it is over. Probably the most depressing gauranteed-to-bring-you-down album ever recorded. Even the band that worked on it was wrecked by the time it was finished.

Although every once in a while you'll get someone who is just blown away by it and wants to talk about the music. But sometimes that can be a good thing ... >>


Speaking of Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground had a couple of potential room-clearing cuts in "Heroin" and "Sister Ray."

Ripple

 

> Obnoxious Music To Banish Unwanted Guests

Does anyone else think Pink Floyd's "The Dogs of War" is obnoxious? Whenever I've listened to "A Momentary Lapse of Reason," I have to turn that song down. The vocal is wretched.

Ripple

 

speaking of "heroin" I once bet a friend $10 I could whisle any tune he could name, and he tried to slide "heroin" in as a ringer. By the time I reached the part where Reed is singing "when I put a spike into my arm and it shoots up the dropper's neck" and the music starts building, he was sitting there with his mouth hanging open. I won $10.

I realize this has nothing to do with the topic, but it IS an amusing anecdote.

 

Personally, I think anything released with "Pink Floyd" on it that does not include Roger Waters sounds obnoxious, although I might enjoy this same music if it said "David Gilmour" on it.

I would feel the same about a Paul McCartney album that said "The Beatles" on it, even if Ringo was playing drums. Thankfully, Paul has better taste.

 

Anita Pointer even had a country hit duet with Earl Thomas Conley back in 1986 called "Too Many Times" which is very much R&B influenced.

 

I think just about about anything can clear a room depending on whom that room is filled with. For instance, a good friend of mine who is really a Metal-Head would run kicking and screaming if you put on a Lou Reed or Bob Dylan album, or Brit Pop like, say, The Charlatans UK or Oasis, even the harder, edgier Brit Pop like Ride or Blur would have them in a fit. I've seen it happen, fortunately my friends tastes have broadened ever so slightly because of me in these past 8 years that I've known him.

 

Country music will many times cause me to leave. To me, almost anything made after 1980 sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.