Psychozoic Hymnal 3 - 60's
Stax
A record label based in Memphis, America. In this case label means musical identity. They had a recording studio (an old movie theatre), a shop, and most important a house band with only a few alternative members who played together for the best of eight years. A singer would came to the studio, songs from anyplace, then the rithm section would figure moves. The singer and song slot into the house style—the horns, after a few nails into the beat, would slash comment, or sometimes an organ or piano would grind in the tension, while a guitar twanged to drive the song along. It was called R&B by writers, even by those at the company, but the bold form was at least a branch aside. That rithmic base into the song was solid rock, and rolled some—it wasn’t primary, but in the air. Other song and producer outfits can lay on their claims, or borrow sounds, but never grasp this. The setup unravelled on contracts, treatment of personnel, and sophistication. As true bands will.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
I’m not well read, never come across anything that speaks about those times. But, after The Beatles, the little groups of the period had realised that anything would pass. And the avants had been messing with long guitar, until they realized it was good for flipping your brick. Into this came and grew Creedence Clearwater Revival. A dense and inventive rithm section, very San Francisco or even ’60’s, but the group tightened up to three minute tracks, as the psych guitar started to go bluesy and sometimes acoustic. At the same time, though not the first, they moved into an old‐time songwriting that went original by firing from current topics. Bands could get away with a lot back then, so this went up big as pop. Reliable rock, a unique sound, not enough for musical construct, but no question one of the great rock‐based pop constructs.
The Rolling Stones
Muddle swamps the Rolling Stones, or maybe swamp is what they always were? Originally allied with a blues offshoot of British Jazz, their aim was electric blues from Chicago. At the time odd, their interests became wider as they developed a then‐modern song‐writing concern which had it’s moments, especially when progressive. Supported by production and pop moves, which sat awry from their murk. By the time they lost that, along with Brian Jones, they had developed into one of the only bands outside America that could play something like the Mule. While their drummer was a fence‐and‐rail jazz guy, and the singer drawled with drama‐class enunciation and dissipation. By the late seventies, they tightened into basic rock moves. Then hired director‐engineers. Joe Carducci, somewhere, mentioned that the lead guitarist rode too much on the rithm section. Swirls of influence drift in the swamp, pulling music here and there. Melody sinks and rises. It moves round like it might be rock, but for different reasons.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan’s work has seeped into musical streams that were and are maybe still pop music. His initial stance as ‘folk singer’ was revealed by the electric move to be the work of an archivist with original takes. The so‐called ‘electric‐rock’ phase enabled, through rock music simultaneity, surreal musical constructions which had been only implicit in the folk pastiche. After that he pastiched further musics, so opened the way for numerous solo artistes to follow these whims. Most often these art‐soloists aim at the ‘authenticity’ of Bob Dylan’s ‘country’ move, though sometimes took on the surreality of the 1960’s work—Rod Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Jackson, John Lydon, Tori Amos and so forth. There’s a structural, if not aural, argument that the ‘electric’ phase was an opener for the David Bowie art‐show. Like David Bowie, Bob Dylan hooked into rock bands sometimes, but was never of it. All of it, one way or another, has adventure and pop heft, but rock it is not.
Velvet Underground
There is nothing committed to rock in the Velvet Underground. Scraping violas alongside electric guitars—interlaced with pop melody and instrumental arrangement on top. There may be mild rock here and there, but rolling is little more than, on a few tracks live, building speed or instrumental interplay through ten minutes. Not to say the group is not engaging—Mo Tucker’s drumming is often noted as essential, figured best as a minimal and original percussive prop, and songwriter Lou Reed’s guitar is imaginative non‐blues bent notes. They used the rock format to explore compositional layers, so Joe Carducci called them as one of two ‘inspired folk abusers’. To call them Rock music is a difference in terms, to call them ‘powerful’ is to scrounge credit. LaMonte Young, Warhol and the rest doesn’t make them a contribution to Western Art, but a fun and thorough compaction of those possibilities into Rock‐Pop form.
Moby Grape
Here is a band with multiple songwriters who created exceptional songs, though they could fall down on jokes, packed into three minutes. Moreover, the band, though they sometimes arranged clever, was hot and to purpose. This was proved, after the first album, by a jam doubled with Pepper affair. No doubt the management problems buckled them, but most commentary, including Robert Christgau (who can do better), is set on hectoring someone—the band/managers/fans—for blowing out the promo‐drive. Subsequent work shows the snappy rithm section (from San Francisco? No) and three guitar alternatives were no accident. Sharp as rock, the first album is undisputedly unmatched pop… if not unmatched as rock, it is outstanding in how the rock format can represent and inform other forms.