Tweet
So;
Anyone else watching this? It's pretty good, but I kinda recommend seeing "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey" first, since it ties in with a lot of the ideas he started in that film.
Today was the "shock rockers." Interesting stuff, and it was neat to see two of my favourite musicians acknowledged somewhere: Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Arthur Brown. (He even interviews Brown.)
I wish someone would do this sort of thing for other genres of music. It's interesting to see the back story to things, and it'd be interesting to see how it all ties together.
One of the things I find interesting are the "artistic bottlenecks;" dead ends for a genre. You end up doing the same stuff over and over until it dies, or someone has a breakthrough and creates something genuinely new.... in which case it can no longer be referred to by the old term. Stuff like the "hair metal" guys. Nothing wrong with it and at one time it WAS something new and bold, but thematicly it's limited and it burned out pretty quick.
....a LOT of stuff ends up as a bottleneck; disco, certain genres of country, the last 15 years of rap. Actually, a lot of media bottleneck: who else is tired of whiney, emo monsters? (I was sick of it back in the 80's....)
There's a couple points from the series itself that I disagree with:
-A lot of proponents referred to "grunge" as being particularly intelligent. I didn't find it so. Introspective, yes but not particularly insigtful.
-There was a notion that it'd be tough to be a shock rocker these days, since people have seen it all... but really shocking people isn't just about the visceral; anything that disagrees with current opinion will have that effect. (How many folks nowadays would be outraged by Screamin' Jay's voodoo priest bit?) I found it funny that it was suggested nothing less than a suicide on stage would shock a modern audience, considering that was Alice Cooper's bit 40 years ago.
Don C.
Anyone else watching this? It's pretty good, but I kinda recommend seeing "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey" first, since it ties in with a lot of the ideas he started in that film.
Today was the "shock rockers." Interesting stuff, and it was neat to see two of my favourite musicians acknowledged somewhere: Screamin' Jay Hawkins and Arthur Brown. (He even interviews Brown.)
I wish someone would do this sort of thing for other genres of music. It's interesting to see the back story to things, and it'd be interesting to see how it all ties together.
One of the things I find interesting are the "artistic bottlenecks;" dead ends for a genre. You end up doing the same stuff over and over until it dies, or someone has a breakthrough and creates something genuinely new.... in which case it can no longer be referred to by the old term. Stuff like the "hair metal" guys. Nothing wrong with it and at one time it WAS something new and bold, but thematicly it's limited and it burned out pretty quick.
....a LOT of stuff ends up as a bottleneck; disco, certain genres of country, the last 15 years of rap. Actually, a lot of media bottleneck: who else is tired of whiney, emo monsters? (I was sick of it back in the 80's....)
There's a couple points from the series itself that I disagree with:
-A lot of proponents referred to "grunge" as being particularly intelligent. I didn't find it so. Introspective, yes but not particularly insigtful.
-There was a notion that it'd be tough to be a shock rocker these days, since people have seen it all... but really shocking people isn't just about the visceral; anything that disagrees with current opinion will have that effect. (How many folks nowadays would be outraged by Screamin' Jay's voodoo priest bit?) I found it funny that it was suggested nothing less than a suicide on stage would shock a modern audience, considering that was Alice Cooper's bit 40 years ago.
Don C.