Psychozoic Hymnal 3 - 60's
Paul Revere and the Raiders
Notationally, they were an American dance‐bar band who later heard The Beatles. They broke out, but that’s not going to put them in the Hymnal. Mr. Revere was the keyboard player, but dropped the Lewis through‐boogie, went Spike Jones, often switching to organ, tripping the boards off of other instruments, pointing bass or guitar, inserting comments, or sometimes set his piano on fire. So, no layered lock‐step—a group dynamic gave the band members space for cross‐fire. Bass, guitar, sax, they took the space—with inventions and thefts like double‐tracked guitars, twangs that are more than you think, or a bassline that descends against the melody
The Who
Everything about The Who stood out. The drummer unleashed commentary that sounds like falling rocks. The lead singer was more of a cocky stage‐showman than anything derived from rock history. The guitar spluttered unerringly rhythmic. The bass‐player didn’t thinken or hint, he bounded about leading the way. They were “high‐energy” and could roll where they liked. Despite the reputation, they were notable—especially drums, guitar and on studio work—for not playing when there was nothing to say, which sometimes went on for bars or songs. All of which, while not technically smug, crashed out tunes with clean outlines of line and lyric unbreached then or now. Gained it’s own sincere audience, which sat badly with the Art, while expression became blocked in it’s intensity. Best to avoid could‐have‐beens (‘Eminence Front’) and was‐intendeds (‘Lifehouse’) for one‐track miraculousness (‘Happy Jack’)
Cream
They came together from different groups, and started with a detailed stew of Brit blues. Their ideas also emerged as form—Joe Carducci noted their material sometimes psyched out. But when Jack Bruce was composing he used classical training to build mountainous, formally inventive basslines, from which he sang or drove melodic fragments like a bird craw. It took Ginger Baker, who would move up and down his drum kit, playing inner rhythms, to move this—nothing I’ve heard of Jack Bruce after has replaced Ginger Baker. They played in a way they liked, unlocked from the old roles. Some of this work became the base for hard rock and metal. Overrated for skill, compiled but otherwise undiscussed for achievement, underrated for the stark, difficult, Bruce form
Jimi Hendrix Experience
What this is about is the group Jimi Hendrix made in London, The Experience. A freed‐up three‐piece like Cream, but a big reform. The drums here do not support, go up and down the kit (not much sideways) to push and pull the beat as much as color, so make a twin lead with the melody. While the guitar plays through, chord to melodic fragment, so makes rhythm. The bass revs through the cross‐fire, sometimes all that’s holding shape—a new take on who does what. Some has been made about the Bob Dylan influence in the lyrics, but the lines are sung off of those shapes, more like Cream. On songs adapted from all kinds of jump blues, harmony styles, and early psych‐guitar. Despite good chart placings, a step where rock significantly cleaves from pop, and guitar FX have distracted from how sharp and intelligent this was.
The Stooges
They took the backbeat construction that had developed from high school bands, stripped it out. Removed the pop (so perhaps the singer’s name—at least they had one). Nothing but exploration of the drum, bass and guitar lines. Figuring noise was core to making the thing move, they worked with maxed‐out stacks and art‐ideas to make this happen—also with John Cale, David Bowie, Scott Thurston and others. Songs shaped in the same way, blood‐pain of adolescence braced up with art. But surfaced here the risk—people, especially writers, took them for the power and, what with their bare few dollars and down the white lines of powder, soon it was hard to cleave art from a train‐crash. Evidence from the end says they were both.
United States Of America
In defiance of all that can be deduced about how to generate rock, The United States Of America were assembled by a (then) music conceptualist. Far as I know they only existed for a few months, and only to get the LP made then play a few gigs. But maybe togetherness was on a plane because, as J.C. marked, the rhythm section was ‘startlingly hot’. On top, they had the gadgets of the age—ring modulators, voltage control filters, delay FX, all the rest—and somehow this got slotted down alongside Dorothy Moskowitz’s riveting vocals. Other efforts had been made that year, like the art‐cross Pierre Henry’s Psyché Rock and The Beatles outreach on Sgt. Pepper, but nobody had pinned electronics into an essentially rock framework. Joseph Byrd later said, “…we knew almost nothing…”, which likely helped.