What does it mean for a piece of music to "rock"?

Hence ballads are never "hits," even when they sit atop the charts. And songs like "Slates, Slags, Etc" would be "hits" even if they only sold 12 copies.

And thus, borderline nonsensical statements such as

"'I Am the Walrus' 'rocks' harder, but 'Hey Bulldog' is a bigger 'hit'"

are made possible.

PS Y'all have heard of the Rock, Rot, or Rule [sic] thing, right?

presumably.

(1) Scott Walker is good, therefore:
(1a) he rocks.
(1b) he rocks me.

(2) Scott Walker is good, but does not rock.

(3) Scott Walker is not good, but he does rock.

(4) Scott Walker neither rocks nor is good.

(5) Scott Walker does not rock therefore he is not good.

What is Christgau's position? Is it (4) or (5)?

It's Raining Today: The Scott Walker Story (1967-1970) [Razor & Tie, 1996]
Nothing I'd read about this L.A. wannabe turned moody Brit teenthrob--going back to Nik Cohn's Rock From the
Beginning, which pegged him as "top-heavy and maudlin" in 1968--prepared me for how purely godawful he'd be.
We're talking Anthony Newley without the voice muscles, "MacArthur Park" as light-programme boilerplate, a male
Vera Lynn for late bloomers who found Paul McCartney too r&b. Go ahead, believe Nick Cave, Oasis, Foetus, and, I
cannot tell a lie, compiler Marshall Crenshaw. But I'm warning you--when I gave him the benefit of the doubt, all I got
was this lousy review. C-

this thread was motivated by chuck eddy constantly using "it rocks" or "it doesn't rock" as a critical heuristic but getting his panties in a huge twist when i asked him to explain what that means. i thought it was odd for a critic to take it as self-evident, as eddy apparently does -- it seems like a foundational aspect of his aesthetic that he doesn't or didn't care to analyze. the best he could do IIRC is to rattle off bands that do and don't rock, which is not exactly helpful. i wish i could find the thread(s) where this confrontation (?!) took place.

this particular thread never really got off the ground, really, but the question still stands. what does it mean "to rock" in a musical sense -- that is, what formal components of music generally qualify something as "rocking" in some intersubjective way?

i still think eddy is a shitty critic btw. hugs!

there was this promo cd sonic youth sent to lol college radio around the time of 'sonic nurse' which had snippets of like luigi varese & borbetomagus with thurston moore and i think some other sonic youths doing radio links between them, all along the lines of "that was xenakis, from persepolis ... definitely rocks hard"

amateurist would you like to listen to a three hour podcast celebrating his existence

because there is one of those

and you can listen to it

and it will only take three hours

of your life

you will be only three hours closer to your own personal death

you should be looking for your answers in chuck berry not chuck eddy

and when you look back after the bullet hits and you think 'oh god, i never saw the northern lights ... i never rode a horse ... i never finished proust'

HEY XPOST

you can say 'at least i spent three hours listening to a podcast about chuck eddy'

(the bullet that hits will be from when you shoot yourself in the face immediately after listening to a three hour podcast celebrating chuck eddy)

No one man owns rock because rock music is a universal language, spoken and understood by all.
You see, rock is a feeling that no one can understand really unless you're deep into the vibe of rock.

"Lady, if you have to ask..."

No one man owns rock because rock music is a universal language, spoken and understood by all.
You see, rock is a feeling that no one can understand really unless you're deep into the vibe of rock.

― blapplebees (crüt), Friday, August 5, 2011 11:16 AM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark

are you serious? i mean, this actually seemed to be eddy's position, which seems an untenable one for a guy who (allegedly) makes a living trying to get people to understand and appreciate music. (it's also a sadly anti-intellectual position IMO.)

thomp: haha. yeah, i think i'll pass on the podcast. but it's cool that people like him so much. i've got no problem with that.

also i'm not sure the sentinelese would understand this "universal language" of rock.

I think it basically means you could play air-guitar to it (note that this doesn't require actual guitars in the music).

Without wishing to distract too heavily from amateurist's very real question, how is a piece of music different "rocks" than when it "choogles"?

In my subjective view, a "choogle" is more of a boogie - it insinuates itself. Something that rocks kind of explodes onto the scene.

to rock = it makes you want to move in an overtly expressive way.

well the rock aesthetic is anti-intellectual so that may be why some ppl are wary of approaching it in a non-visceral way

I mean, I think the traditional academic definition of the "rock" sound is pretty dead-on: an emphasis on the rhythm section with a rhythm either based on a strong backbeat or heavy syncopation, with a (mostly) blues-based harmonic structure. rowdy soundin'.

there is a very subtle spectrum between something that rocks and something that choogles/swings/bops/grooves/whateveryouplease

plus a minimum tempo
xp

rock music dropped the swing, then dropped the bop, and later picked up the groove, but it never stopped rockin, with intermittent chooglin

if you believe creedence clearwater revival (and really, there's no reason not to given their impressive academic credentials), chooglin' is also some form of locomotion.

as in, "chooglin' on down to new orleans"

blah blah family resemblances blah blah

This is like asking what makes pizza " delicious"

lol i cant believe amt is still carrying this beef around with him. i remember the great what-is-rock wars of 03 - heres the thing, if you're so interested in chuck's definition of it, just read his shit for a while and it becomes easy to anticipate what he will find to be 'rockin' after a while

tbh i can count on one hand the number of rock critics who i think dont deserve to be thrown on a giant barge and floated out to the middle of the arctic ocean where they'll have to kill and skin each other to create mounds of blubber they can survive off of, and chuck's one of them

TamTam will u marry me?

rock is its own reward

read his shit

This is like asking what makes pizza " delicious"

― fappin' duke (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, August 5, 2011 11:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

how so?

does tetzuki akiyama rock?

lol tam tam shill

some irritating troll somewhere

^^ missed amateurist display name opportunity

MUSIC CRITCS ARE THE ART OF PRETEND FORGETFULLNESS

Cootie Williams on swing: "Define it? I'd rather tackle Einstein's theory!" Holding one man's feet to the fire on what it means to rock seems sort of obsessive. Probably the best you can ask of a non-musician is to give examples, and he's been more than accommodating.

tbh chuck's writing style and circular logic drive me nuts a lot of the time and i kind of enjoy amt's archnemesis thing w/ him but this "rock" debate is just pointless

actually i don't care what chuck's opinion on this topic is. he was just the impetus to ask the question. i don't think he takes the concept for granted any more than anyone else, really.

sorry for being so grumpy these past few days! i've been stressed IRL.

I would be pretty stressed too if I didn't even know what rock was

Rock is cowbell

Rock is tin he spaces between the beats

Rock is a ham hock in your milkshake.

Not precisely, but Marcus has made more or less the same point: "If the artist made a record intending to convince all right-thinking people to send money to the I.R.A., but the record is in Swedish and nobody can know that, it's sort of pointless to discuss the guy's intentions. What you really have to discuss is what is it like to hear a record in Swedish, and does it have a good beat?"

I like the idea that no one could conceivably understand a song that was written in Swedish.

actually it's just an english-language record running backward

This is like asking what makes pizza " delicious"

― fappin' duke (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, August 5, 2011 11:47 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is that because the answer is obvious and/or because the question isn't worth asking?

b/c the simplest answer is that pizza is delicious because it is sweet and salty and fatty. but a lot of foods are those things, and chances are we wouldn't find all of them delicious. i guess i find some questions interesting that other people don't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvABt2uXRzY

if you gotta ask, you'll never know.

rot

styx rocks

ranking ac/dc songs that say 'rock' in them