I was reading the Rolling Stone interviews with John Lennon over the weekend and there's a bit where he's talking about blues and early rock and roll [before it got progressive, etc]. It occurred to me that what he says here is true for the pure drop. That the tunes are like furniture -- they're functional or, as Lennon says of rock and roll or blues, the music is a "chair"-- not a designer chair, but a chair that's meant to be sat upon. Blues, like a well played tune, doesn't need any "enhancement" or arrangement...it doesn't need to be made *palatable* by being prettified. In other words, it's the thing iteself. I think too Lennon may be implying that it's also easy to get lost and stray away from what the music is supposed to do. And we have seen many samples of that in the last while in 'celtic' music. Be interested in your thoughts....
"Rock and roll then [the 50s] was real, everything else was unreal. The thing about rock and roll, good rock and roll–whatever good means and all that sh it–is that it’s real and realism gets through to you despite yourself. You recognize something in it which is true, like all true art. Whatever art is, readers. OK. If it’s real, it’s simple usually, and if it’s simple, it’s true. Something like that.....The Blues are beautiful because it’s simpler and because it’s real. It’s not perverted or thought about: It’s not a concept, it is a chair; not a design for a chair but the first chair. The chair is for sitting on, not for looking at or being appreciated. You sit on that music."
Did Lennon make unreal music for most of his life, then? Was there any real music before R&R in the 50's? What music of any consequence existed before blues as we know it i.e. before the late 19th, early 20th century? (not much, in my opinion). R&R is based on early blues and country so to say that nothing real existed before the 50's is a bit surreal. All anybody can do is take the soul of the music and interpret it in their own way. If you haven't got the life-based experiences of the early bluesmen then you can't do justice to the songs, what you can do is use the musical template to fit your own particular set of circumstances, John Lennon and many others made a career of doing this and doing it very, very well. The pure drop scenario is a romantic vision that cannot be replicated in a different world.
Good point strayaway. Lennon seemed to be ignoring all that came before record companies figured out they could repackage African American music and sell it.
I know it's Wiki, but I still found it amusing, especially the last line.
"...The immediate origins of rock and roll lie in the late 1940s and early 1950s through a mixing together of various popular musical genres of the time. These included blues, country music, R&B, folk music, and gospel music.
However, elements of rock and roll can be heard in many "hillbilly" and "race" music records of the 1920s and 1930s. Often music was usually relegated to "race music" outlets (music industry code for rhythm and blues stations) and was rarely heard by mainstream white audiences. A few black rhythm and blues musicians, notably Louis Jordan, the Mills Brothers, and The Ink Spots, achieved crossover success; in some cases (such as Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie") this success was achieved with songs written by white songwriters. The Western swing genre in the 1930s, generally played by white musicians, also shared similarities with rock and roll, and in turn directly influenced rockabilly and rock and roll, as can be heard, for example, on Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" (1957).
Going back even further, rock and roll can trace one lineage to the old Five Points, Manhattan district of mid-19th century New York City, the scene of the first fusion of heavily rhythmic African shuffles and sand dances with melody-driven European genres, particularly the Irish jig[4]..."
...which follows the same origins of tap dance, the combining of African with Celtic dance forms in urban America, and the development of forms of American dance, the Appalachian flat foot and it's ancestor, sean-nos.
Whoa, holy off-topic Batman. I like Lennon's general idea of worrying about what the chair looks like, whether or not it has a cup holder, or a place to store the remote, etc.
Strayaway
What would we make of the approch then of a group like The Chieftans to the tunes vs. someone like Patrick Kelly? It seems to me that even in The Chieftans 1-4 we're already straying into leaving "chair-ness" and getting into "arrangements" [something that drives me a bt crazy about Chieftans albums in general...perhaps it's a legacy of O'Riada?]
Well, I'm not sure if we are supposed to be discussing Lennons comments or the history of music but it's fair to say that African music was at the very roots of all R&R/blues that has been played for the last century, I don't know if anybody on here is familiar with the desert-blues music from Mali by groups such as Tinariwen but the structures of the songs are age old and not too different to modern day R&R. Ry Cooder could tell you a lot more about it than me. Far be it for me to get political but it's worth stating that most real music resulted from oppression of the poor underclasses and, as you all know, that just wouldn't happen in today's peaceful and harmonious society! The citizens if Iraq and Afghanistan would surely agree.
With ref. to the Irish Jig, all I can say is that it's not as crazy a suggestion as you might think, so, think and then think again.
So if you're white and privileged (compared to many people on the globe) and relatively speaking undowntrodden does that preclude you from making real music? But then the 21st century has its own special forms of oppression. They're just better hidden.
mtodd, I am not a huge fan of the Chieftains or their arrangements, much too contrived for my tastes. For what it's worth, I believe they took the basic template (and did it well) and then took the cash, as indeed did many others. My view is that ITM music has a core principal which should remain at the forefront and not be embellished to the point of irrelevence, if Mr. Moloney thinks a full orchestra of violins, bassoons and timpani make it better, he's just missing the point, and he's not a great piper either.
I'm with you strayaway. I'm glad you confirmed for me my private hunches/takes on the music...but when I first started out you know I thought of them as the "real deal" along with a lot of other c. twilighty groups....it was only later, a few years into it, when other people, some of whom are on this list, including the generosity of Kenny and Ceolachan, pointed me in other directions. For which I am grateful.
mtodd, again. I don't know of any privileged people of any skin colour making real music today, sure, plenty try and play it but that's a different thing.
"I don't know of any privileged people of any skin colour making real music today, sure, plenty try and play it but that's a different thing."
strayaway....and, to be frank, that worries me a bit about this music [itm]....but, like the U.S. judge said about porn "I don't know what it is, but I know it when I see it" I suppose you recognize real musical authenticity [chairness] when oneyou hear even if trying to define it is hopeless...despite who's playing it.
By making music, I mean people who create it based on their own life experiences. Privilege and power are not in any way conducive to making music that matters, I'm not saying that there aren't people making great music today, there are many and I'm not saying that it's wrong for people to play the music created by others, again there are many brilliant practitioners, in ITM the substance is in the soul of the original (whenever it was written) and it's the duty of those who play it to understand that. Then, and only then, as I've already said, fit that into your own circumstance. We cannot even hope to fully understand the mind of the composer but we can at least try and ensure that our rendition carries an essence of authority and authenticity. Tunes, stories, songs and poems are a testament to the time they were written, a history lesson of sadness, regret, bitterness, betrayal and occasionally, great joy. Don't sing the words or play the notes before you acquaint yourself with the background.
I'm going to listen to some Dylan now, a man who knows how to borrow from musical history and re-interpret it for today.
Everyone always thinks that the music that influenced them in their youth was the 'real deal' and everything else a sad imitation. That opinion is more a product of youthful arrogance than musical truth. Young John was just more articulate than most in making his case, genius that he was.....
Calling it "Youthful arrogance" is just an unfair accusation.
Musical truth has an independant meaning for absolutely every listener and performer. What mtodd is showing is Lennon's opinion of the music, and giving his opinion on how accurate he feels it is. Lennon's "articulate" metaphors are just the way he was...How he stated his case.
Calling it "youthful arrogance" is just robbing young people of their right to an opinion.
I know "sense comes with age" and all that, but that's not to say every young person follows only one musical influence.
I am not saying young people should not have a right to their opinions, only that those opinions are wrong more often than they would like to believe!
Of course, if what hair I had left wasn't turning grey, I might have a different opinion on that issue myself!
ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
I was reading the Rolling Stone interviews with John Lennon over the weekend and there's a bit where he's talking about blues and early rock and roll [before it got progressive, etc]. It occurred to me that what he says here is true for the pure drop. That the tunes are like furniture -- they're functional or, as Lennon says of rock and roll or blues, the music is a "chair"-- not a designer chair, but a chair that's meant to be sat upon. Blues, like a well played tune, doesn't need any "enhancement" or arrangement...it doesn't need to be made *palatable* by being prettified. In other words, it's the thing iteself. I think too Lennon may be implying that it's also easy to get lost and stray away from what the music is supposed to do. And we have seen many samples of that in the last while in 'celtic' music. Be interested in your thoughts....
"Rock and roll then [the 50s] was real, everything else was unreal. The thing about rock and roll, good rock and roll–whatever good means and all that sh it–is that it’s real and realism gets through to you despite yourself. You recognize something in it which is true, like all true art. Whatever art is, readers. OK. If it’s real, it’s simple usually, and if it’s simple, it’s true. Something like that.....The Blues are beautiful because it’s simpler and because it’s real. It’s not perverted or thought about: It’s not a concept, it is a chair; not a design for a chair but the first chair. The chair is for sitting on, not for looking at or being appreciated. You sit on that music."
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
Did Lennon make unreal music for most of his life, then? Was there any real music before R&R in the 50's? What music of any consequence existed before blues as we know it i.e. before the late 19th, early 20th century? (not much, in my opinion). R&R is based on early blues and country so to say that nothing real existed before the 50's is a bit surreal. All anybody can do is take the soul of the music and interpret it in their own way. If you haven't got the life-based experiences of the early bluesmen then you can't do justice to the songs, what you can do is use the musical template to fit your own particular set of circumstances, John Lennon and many others made a career of doing this and doing it very, very well. The pure drop scenario is a romantic vision that cannot be replicated in a different world.
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by strayaway
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
Good point strayaway. Lennon seemed to be ignoring all that came before record companies figured out they could repackage African American music and sell it.
I know it's Wiki, but I still found it amusing, especially the last line.
"...The immediate origins of rock and roll lie in the late 1940s and early 1950s through a mixing together of various popular musical genres of the time. These included blues, country music, R&B, folk music, and gospel music.
However, elements of rock and roll can be heard in many "hillbilly" and "race" music records of the 1920s and 1930s. Often music was usually relegated to "race music" outlets (music industry code for rhythm and blues stations) and was rarely heard by mainstream white audiences. A few black rhythm and blues musicians, notably Louis Jordan, the Mills Brothers, and The Ink Spots, achieved crossover success; in some cases (such as Jordan's "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie") this success was achieved with songs written by white songwriters. The Western swing genre in the 1930s, generally played by white musicians, also shared similarities with rock and roll, and in turn directly influenced rockabilly and rock and roll, as can be heard, for example, on Elvis Presley's "Jailhouse Rock" (1957).
Going back even further, rock and roll can trace one lineage to the old Five Points, Manhattan district of mid-19th century New York City, the scene of the first fusion of heavily rhythmic African shuffles and sand dances with melody-driven European genres, particularly the Irish jig[4]..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
...which follows the same origins of tap dance, the combining of African with Celtic dance forms in urban America, and the development of forms of American dance, the Appalachian flat foot and it's ancestor, sean-nos.
Whoa, holy off-topic Batman. I like Lennon's general idea of worrying about what the chair looks like, whether or not it has a cup holder, or a place to store the remote, etc.
It's just a chair, sit on it, I guess?
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by SWFL Fiddler
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
Strayaway
What would we make of the approch then of a group like The Chieftans to the tunes vs. someone like Patrick Kelly? It seems to me that even in The Chieftans 1-4 we're already straying into leaving "chair-ness" and getting into "arrangements" [something that drives me a bt crazy about Chieftans albums in general...perhaps it's a legacy of O'Riada?]
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
Well, I'm not sure if we are supposed to be discussing Lennons comments or the history of music but it's fair to say that African music was at the very roots of all R&R/blues that has been played for the last century, I don't know if anybody on here is familiar with the desert-blues music from Mali by groups such as Tinariwen but the structures of the songs are age old and not too different to modern day R&R. Ry Cooder could tell you a lot more about it than me. Far be it for me to get political but it's worth stating that most real music resulted from oppression of the poor underclasses and, as you all know, that just wouldn't happen in today's peaceful and harmonious society! The citizens if Iraq and Afghanistan would surely agree.
With ref. to the Irish Jig, all I can say is that it's not as crazy a suggestion as you might think, so, think and then think again.
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by strayaway
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
So if you're white and privileged (compared to many people on the globe) and relatively speaking undowntrodden does that preclude you from making real music? But then the 21st century has its own special forms of oppression. They're just better hidden.
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
Lennon was surely talking about how the music viscerally affected him as a young man, not some bloody music history course
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by Bren
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
mtodd, I am not a huge fan of the Chieftains or their arrangements, much too contrived for my tastes. For what it's worth, I believe they took the basic template (and did it well) and then took the cash, as indeed did many others. My view is that ITM music has a core principal which should remain at the forefront and not be embellished to the point of irrelevence, if Mr. Moloney thinks a full orchestra of violins, bassoons and timpani make it better, he's just missing the point, and he's not a great piper either.
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by strayaway
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
I'm with you strayaway. I'm glad you confirmed for me my private hunches/takes on the music...but when I first started out you know I thought of them as the "real deal" along with a lot of other c. twilighty groups....it was only later, a few years into it, when other people, some of whom are on this list, including the generosity of Kenny and Ceolachan, pointed me in other directions. For which I am grateful.
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
mtodd, again. I don't know of any privileged people of any skin colour making real music today, sure, plenty try and play it but that's a different thing.
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by strayaway
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
"I don't know of any privileged people of any skin colour making real music today, sure, plenty try and play it but that's a different thing."
strayaway....and, to be frank, that worries me a bit about this music [itm]....but, like the U.S. judge said about porn "I don't know what it is, but I know it when I see it" I suppose you recognize real musical authenticity [chairness] when oneyou hear even if trying to define it is hopeless...despite who's playing it.
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by skin&bow
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
By making music, I mean people who create it based on their own life experiences. Privilege and power are not in any way conducive to making music that matters, I'm not saying that there aren't people making great music today, there are many and I'm not saying that it's wrong for people to play the music created by others, again there are many brilliant practitioners, in ITM the substance is in the soul of the original (whenever it was written) and it's the duty of those who play it to understand that. Then, and only then, as I've already said, fit that into your own circumstance. We cannot even hope to fully understand the mind of the composer but we can at least try and ensure that our rendition carries an essence of authority and authenticity. Tunes, stories, songs and poems are a testament to the time they were written, a history lesson of sadness, regret, bitterness, betrayal and occasionally, great joy. Don't sing the words or play the notes before you acquaint yourself with the background.
I'm going to listen to some Dylan now, a man who knows how to borrow from musical history and re-interpret it for today.
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by strayaway
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
John Lennon smoked a lot of pot back then...
# Posted on April 20th 2009 by kennedy
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
Everyone always thinks that the music that influenced them in their youth was the 'real deal' and everything else a sad imitation. That opinion is more a product of youthful arrogance than musical truth. Young John was just more articulate than most in making his case, genius that he was.....
# Posted on April 21st 2009 by AlBrown
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
He was talking about musical chairs, the game.
# Posted on April 21st 2009 by mcknowall
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
Calling it "Youthful arrogance" is just an unfair accusation.
Musical truth has an independant meaning for absolutely every listener and performer. What mtodd is showing is Lennon's opinion of the music, and giving his opinion on how accurate he feels it is. Lennon's "articulate" metaphors are just the way he was...How he stated his case.
Calling it "youthful arrogance" is just robbing young people of their right to an opinion.
I know "sense comes with age" and all that, but that's not to say every young person follows only one musical influence.
# Posted on April 21st 2009 by jlocky
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
I watched a special on Chuck Berry last night. He claimed he grew up living in a mostly white suburb listening to Frank Sinatra and Pat Boone.
John Lennon says" If they didn't call it Rock 'n Roll; they would have to call it Chuck Berry."
.....and I did it my way!
# Posted on April 21st 2009 by Lint - upon - Tweed
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
I am not saying young people should not have a right to their opinions, only that those opinions are wrong more often than they would like to believe!
Of course, if what hair I had left wasn't turning grey, I might have a different opinion on that issue myself!
# Posted on April 22nd 2009 by AlBrown
Re: ITM, chairs, John Lennon and rock & rolll...
Fair enough!
# Posted on April 22nd 2009 by jlocky