So what is this BUTT ROCK, anyway?

Been wondering about this lately, based on a few conversations here and elsewhere.

The phrase has been in circulation since at least the early 90s. Near as I can suss, some folks use it to refer specifically to relatively square 4/4 I-IV-V rock'n'roll like AC/DC and the Stones, and other folks use it to refer generically to 80s hair band output of any stripe (e.g. shout at the devil, pour some sugar on me, sister christian, winger).

I've tended to use it as a self-conscious term of endearment for brutishly simple caveman stuff that goes straight to the lizard brain and lights up the pleasure centers in spite of all pretense to sophistication.

where pop flirts and jazz seduces and neo-classical shred dazzles, butt rock saunters up, gives you a big, boozy grin, and just goes down on you.

by that measure, the Troggs would be the primordial source of all butt-rock and AC/DC would be standard-bearer... plenty of hairspray stuff would fall outside the lines, early Cult no, mid-period Cult yes, Chrissie no, Joan yes, Pat sometimes, Saturation-era Urge Overkill definitely, etc etc.

(note that if it works better in an arena than a bar it's cock rock and not the same)

no answers here, but Dave Q is basically OTM as usual: Butt-rock World Cup

itt put butt in the band name

some erudite notions here but mostly inference: Hair-Metal slash "Butt-Rock" Guitar Solo Muso Advice Please

http://artruch.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/buttrock.jpg

I was with you until the last sentence. Is Grand Funk butt- or cock- rock? I wasn't around to hear them in either an arena or a bar, but I know they played both. They seem like they could go either way. xxxpost

bill, i'm working it out as i go here... imho butt-rock scales up to arena size just fine, but cock-rock in a bar is ridiculous (note: i've seen some amazing zep cover acts in bars on the sunset strip, and they rocked hard... but were slightly ridiculous)

definitely butt rock: bad company

Matt Cameron on butt rock (KERRANG, April 4, 1992)

"Right now we're playing our songs as straight-ahead butt-rock, which seems to be the only way of communicating with arena crowds... Butt-rock is just the stupidest, basic, three-chord rock that you can possibly play, and it works with big crowds like this who don't know you as a band."

was Soundgarden the most butt rock of the big grunge bands? or i guess maybe Pearl Jam?

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Butt

is motorhead butt rock

soundgarden pretty much defined themselves against what they saw as butt rock (hardcore NO BOOGIE rule enforced vigorously early on - Hiro, Kim and Matt are all on record on this, and their approach to riffs bears this out)

from AC/DC to Nickelback... the butt has fallen with age

I never heard the phrase "butt rock" until the past few years, and it always seemed to be used the way the far less descriptive and more annoying "rawk" had been being used for a while -- i.e., by people who I didn't get the idea had much use for hard rock / '70s boogie bands in the first place. May have misinterpreted that, though. That said, I kind of like how it sounds anyway. (And I swear I also heard somebody use it to describe Feedtime once, for some reason.) (Had no idea people associated it with hair bands, whose rock frequently lacked buttness -- though Britney Fox would be an obvious exception, and maybe occasional Ratt/Kix/Cinderella moments.)

dying here picturing dour young soundgarden in the practice space intensely pointing at the NO BOOGIE sign posted on the wall anytime someone gets a little too fonky

xp Also, where do Spinal Tap's "Big Bottom," Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls," and AC/DC's "Whole Lotta Rosie" fit into this?

"is motorhead butt rock"

If AC/DC is, motorhead has to be.

Speaking of motorhead, they played R.A.M.O.N.E.S. on XM on my way to work today. What a great song.

Duke Jupter ftw

http://www.dukejupiter.com/images/band1980.jpg

Oops, that's Duke Jupiter

@xhuxk i'm fully in agreement, including feeling sort of square for fussing over the term's transition to generic for lolhairbands.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=buttrock

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=butt+rock

@some dude: i think that's pretty otm though i get the impression they knew how to have a good time too... "Sub Pop Rock City" is intentional butt rock

@kornrulez OMG DUKE JUPITER ROCHESTER NY 4VR <3 <3 <3

hypothesis: if you can name the drummer, it's probably not butt rock

if ilx is full of faux-twitter reply posts a few months from now i'm blaming you, just to be clear

but but but it works #ilxetiquette

http://www.woodytone.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/chickenfoot_guitarworld-230x300.jpg

Is Chickenfoot the right answer?

the butt plus ultra...

http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Loverboy-Get-Lucky.jpg

butt rock is rock music that makes you do the dance where you stick your butt out and wave it around duh

I was waiting for that!

^ er, xpost in re classic album cover

Butt in leather pants = ultimate butt rock

i also think of this stuff as workingman's rock. to the extent the lyrics are about anything other than girls, partying and rock'n'roll, they have a lot of casual references to clock-punching, bossmen, weekends, etc -- the stuff of 1970s blue-collar union-dues life.

but sort of the peak of that life, when a high-school diploma and 40 hours a week could get you a ranch house, one of those rickety backyard playground sets and some beer money for friday night.

So Bachman-Turner Overdrive are the real blueprint, then?

can't spell butt rock without BTO

i was also thinkin this dude

http://dummidumbwit.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/611865.jpg

Okay, I get it. Growing up in Michigan in the '70s, we just called this stuff "rock." (But if kids want to put a "butt" in it now, fine with me.)

but sort of the peak of that life, when a high-school diploma and 40 hours a week could get you a ranch house, one of those rickety backyard playground sets and some beer money for friday night.

yes!

and rolling it around a little you can see traces of the anxiety over that loss playing itself out in Nickelback... the bravado's dialed up, but it's in direct proportion to the nostalgia and powerlessness, and the bluff is more transparent than ever.

- are we having fun yet?
- something's gotta go wrong cuz i'm feeling way too damn good
- someday, somehow, gotta make it all right but not right now
- look at this photograph, every time i do it makes me laugh, every time i do it makes me...

Tommy Shaw's blue collar man is angry and forward looking, even when he closes his eyes. Chad Kroeger's is sullen, self-dramatizing, given to fits of drunken megalomania, and looking for a more powerful woman to either save him or put him in his place.

lol "Nobody Wants To Be The Last One There: Butt Rock and the Elegiac Mode in Nickelback"

jack white might be the best latter-day practitioner, but he had to sort of wrap it in arch indieness to make it fly.

I'd say Kid Rock (or even Toby Keith) more than Jack White (who I like, don't get my wrong; just get the idea his music has less butt than he lets on.)

Really, not gonna belabor the point because it always pisses people off, but if you're talking Seger/BTO/Bad Company-type buttness, Nashville is really where it wound up.

montgomery buttry

definitely. on some other thread i think i talked about how country is the last bastion of white-american-male swagger. although like roger says about nickelback, there's a lot of defensiveness now even in the nashville swagger. it's a swagger as much in-spite-of as because-of -- where the '70s stuff had a real fuck-you confidence about it.

Well, that may be a difference between the '70s and the '00s. (I hear plenty of defensiveness in Jack White, too -- the indie archness you refer to. And I'd say Toby comes off pretty darn confident, most of the time. Though yeah, defensive too, obviously.)

And honestly, Seger's "Feel Like A Number" (the most obvious song where he talks about working the 9 to 5 for the bossman) isn't all confident swagger either -- I mean, look at its title!

Kid Rock is meta-butt rock. He's way too self-aware of his own butt-ness.

xposting a lot here!

not sure about seger... there's a strand running through but by the time he hits AOR it's also some of his weakest stuff (Katmandu, Strut, Old Time Rock and Roll etc) and feels like schtick.

The stuff that hits is all... well there's that nostalgia again, lament for the lost strength of youth, swagger all swagger'd out now... (plus mostly ballads).

- Beautiful Loser
- Feel Like A Number
- Hollywood Nights
- Night Moves
- Mainstreet
- Roll Me Away
- We've Got Tonight
- Against The Wind
- Like A Rock

Don't necessarily disagree with Kid Rock being too self-aware about his butt, actually.

xp And if you want defensiveness, BTO's "Blue Collar" is total Silent Majority stuff (sorry, I've been reading Nixonland):

Walk your street
And I'll walk mine
And should we meet
Would you spare me some time
Cuz you should see my world
Meet my kind
Before you judge our minds
Blue Collar

So I think you might be overstating '70s swagger, at least a little.

the ironic pose is Kid Rock's genx birthright but he actually feels pretty right on, esp. stuff like "I Am The Bullgod"

I'm like a train I roll hard lettin off much steam
In the Carhart flannel and dusty jeans baby
I never was cool with James Dean
But I be hanging tough with my man Jim Beam...

I wanna flood the world with my twisted thoughts
You can bet all day but I can't be bought
Uh Break it up let's tie one on
I gotta get set to go and cut the lawn
So I grab my walkman but before I cut
I go behind the garage and fire it up

(ugh i hate lyrics-based crit but whattyagonnado?)

So I think you might be overstating '70s swagger, at least a little.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Sort of fair. Swagger is a front for anxiety almost by definition, i'n'it? But in Nickelback BOTH get turned up to 11 along with the dual rectifiers and downtuned PRS.

yeah i was thinking about "feel like a number." there's a lot of defensiveness there. it still sounds liberating though. carrying on the rock'n'roll rebellion narrative that i think ran out of steam sometime in the '80s -- superseded by punk/postpunk and hip-hop on the one hand, and co-opted by "classic rock" and car commercials on the other, until it could be safely pressed into service as a voice of reactionary establishmentarianism in nashville. (and i know that's a huge simplification, and even the most reactionary nashville songs aren't necessarily establishmentarian, but basically i think the music followed the political contours of white middle-class american life -- from cultural dominance to uncertainty to a sort of rear-guard defensiveness.)

so the butt-rock era was really the era when that slice of the population (epimotized among other things by a lot of the dudes in dazed and confused) was at its political-economic height. they had reason to swagger, at least for a little while -- the threats to their dominance were maybe already obvious, but they were still on top.

Seger's "Her Strut" is the very essence of unselfconsciously functional buttness. but where does "Lady Sniff" by the Butthole Surfers fit in?

The name Bunny Brains conjures images of crazed music arising from cramped quarters and players probably naked and on amphetamines. It all makes sense when the disc starts, until they settle into the organ-ground, dinosaur dirge-groove of the nine minute "You're A Stud." Bunny Brains are a rolling-thunder basement band with ancient prog rhythms and Weenlike bombast, and some entertaining butt-rock tendencies on, for instance, "Kukla, Fran and Bunny."
Patrick Barber PUNCTURE

butt rock vs cock rock

I'm new to the concept of butt rock, but some of these glam/cock rock bands seem to miss the mark. I would imagine butt rock to have plenty of boogie in there, like Molly Hatchet's Flirting With Disaster.

In fact, upon further reflection, Molly Hatchet seem to be a prime exponent of the butt rock genre.

put a donk butt on it

In fact, upon further reflection, Molly Hatchet seem to be a prime exponent of the butt rock genre.

Being massively effective in stadiums is part of it. Molly Hatchet was one of the big US stadium bands for a time.

Plus they were massively foul-looking mostly ensuring that the women in the audience were the of the show-us-your-tits wimmen as property demographic. Contrast this with Keith Urban, also bing in stadiums, who has rather emphatically gone for very few guys but all girls who like to cuddle him slice.

http://www.mtv.com/onair/beavisandbutthead/personality_images/relaunch_crops/281x211_tom.jpg
One of them calls himself Butt-hole.. the other one's name is Joe I think..

I don't know what's happening to me. I've got this thing about Loverboy right now.
http://baseballsnatcher.mlblogs.com/Loverboy-GetLucky1981.jpg

I mean, I understand, this is really embarassing. But their greatest hits is just hitting my spot right now.

LOLOLOL I didn't know Tipsy Mothra posted it before I did! LOLOLOLOL

Okay I've read about 75% of this thread and there are some major LOLZ posts going on here. One thing I will say is that the original post by rogermexico needs to sortof be put in a plaque or something as I think it is a milestone significant contribution to ILM. I had never heard of "butt rock" until the late 90's but I think the idea of its inclusion of hair metal was pretty obvious.

I do think though, that if Spinal Tap's "Big Bottom" is not a part of this, then we've totally missed the point. Thanks dudes.

Also, I would like to know, in all innocence, if people think Journey is butt rock or not. Because if they are, I'm going to be really disillusioned and disappointed.

Journey were melodic (half-assed?) semi-butt rock.

Thanks, I think that's just about what I wanted to hear.

Please someone stop me before I start posting Loverboy You Tube videos on this thread. Please. They had synths, dude! ("Take Me To The Top"!) They were WAY ahead of the rest because of this simple fact. But I can't bear it. I'm going to die of embarassment over them.

Yeah, butt-rock has always been sort of meat and potatoes to me, which rules out the likes of Journey or Boston. "Godzilla" by BOC is sort of meta-butt-rock as well, since it's so funny. But if "Godzilla" weren't taking the piss, and were 30% less funky, it would be total butt-rock.

Foreigner gets pretty butt-y at times, but again - too slick. Molly Hatchet seem OTM. Grand Funk, BTO. Deep Purple is sort of ur-butt-rock. If Sabbath had far fewer hooks, it'd be more butt, too. Kiss is totally butt ("I was Made for Loving You" is butt-disco!). Hank Williams, Jr. is like butt-country.

All the stoner metal acts course with butt-DNA as well. Kyuss, Fu Manchu ... butt-rock in the rear view mirror may be closer than it appears.

"UFO's "Only You Can Rock Me," "Natural Thing," "Too Hot to Handle" and "Rock Bottom" fit here. "

those are some killer tunes

butt rock vs cock rock

Can't it be both?

When Trace Adkins isn't doing his sensitive ballads or I came to God stuff, he seems to be in the territory of butt rock

Plus he did "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk," which if not sonically full-on butt-rock per se' is certainly as butt-oriented a country hit as has ever existed.

And honestly, Seger's "Feel Like A Number" (the most obvious song where he talks about working the 9 to 5 for the bossman) isn't all confident swagger either -- I mean, look at its title!

― xhuxk, Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Spent some time with this one (goddamn can dude sing his balls off or what?) and despite the refrain, it's really a kick-against-the-pricks cri de couer sort of thing i'n'it? cataloging the long list of daily insults in order to reject and rise above. it's sort of straightforwardly heroic.

All the stoner metal acts course with butt-DNA as well. Kyuss, Fu Manchu ... butt-rock in the rear view mirror may be closer than it appears

Yeah, they have it. But it doesn't always express for the butt rock protein. You need a singer with some command to do this. Fu Manchu doesn't have one. Well, technically, he's a 'singer.' and the sentiment and aim is there.

i always thought of butt rock as metal-prog for some reason, like the stuff the kid w/ a mullet and a megadeth t-shirt in jr. high probably listened to. it was an easy insulting association to make at the time, people who listen to "butt rock" when you're a teenager are poorer than you amirite? now i pretty much wish i had been friends w/ that kid

in my mind, the Channel 101 guys are already hard at work on a successor to Yacht Rock centered around butt rock

butt rock vs cock rock

Can't it be both?

nah, that's totally gay

butt frock would be a good band name tho

LOLOL Damn straight! It'd have to be a band of trannies, though I think.

"Honky Tonk Badonkadonk," which if not sonically full-on butt-rock per se' is certainly as butt-oriented a country hit as has ever existed.

Not quite a hit, but Alejandro Escavedo's "I Like Her Better When She Walks Away" was covered by Los Lonely Boys and it ended up on GW Bush's ipod. When Alejandro heard about it he refused to play the song live anymore.

Best AE song imho; another thing GWB ruined for the rest of us.

Silent Majority finds creative new uses for classic butt-rock:

Rock anthems like "We're Not Gonna Take it" and "Takin' Care of Business" swirled with chants for states' rights. Protester signs blasted mortgage bailouts; others compared President Barack Obama and legislators to Somali pirates.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/04/16/0416teaparties.html

Randy Bachman leaves BTO behind; retains butt:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

"...states right's"

Cue descriptor for southern bigots/IRS deniers, cultural warriors, Ted Nugent crazies, etc

Very exclusionary by nature, strangely, does not exclude butt rocking.

More modern-day country butt:

Rolling Country 2009 Thread

Isn't "butt rock" classic-type rock that doesn't get enough respect because :

1) It's too commercial or "slick" / inauthentic

2) You can dance to it

3) It "rocks" anyway

I don't know if it came up above but I recall the term "Butt Rock" being used when I visited Seattle several times during the Grunge days. The locals who were more into the indie side of things would use the term - somewhat derisively, I felt, in most cases, or at least with an air of superiority - in describing local music that owed more to metal than to indie-punk.

That was the only time and place I recall hearing it, at any rate.

yeah, i've lived in seattle since the grunge era, and "buttrock" did once have a great deal of currency hereabouts. iirc, it was a term both of derision and (sometimes) of grudging affection, but its precise meaning wasn't all that clearly nailed down.

for the most part, it seemed to refer to the less heroically engorged end of the camaro rock spectrum. like you had preening, highly styled and flamboyant cock rock over here (zeppelin, van halen, 80s hair bands, colorful spandex & codpiece combos), and mustachioed, meat & potatoes bar-band buttrock over there (foghat, BTO, REO speedwagon, boston). otoh, it was also indiscriminately applied to any kind of 80s hard rock with obvious roots in the 70s.

i really want to be in a butt rock band!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2glFe0sY_y4

I think of this as butt rock. Am I right or wrong? In either case, this is great, why did so many try if they can't achieve this?

see, that's the thing. i have two butt rocks in my mind. on the one type is 70s & 80s bar-band boogie w/ a bottom end and big fat fucking muttonchop action, like "space truckin'" and "slow ride". the other hand is schmaltzy 80s dug milk like yr saga and "turn me loose" or even "sister christian". seems like the common conception tends towards the latter butt, and maybe that's for the best, as that type shit otherwise lacks a proper name.

problem i have with that is that "slow ride" actually sounds like a butt rocking, like the type of rock a butt would enjoy or even make on its own time. less so saga and europe, et al, who seem better described as poodle rockers.

I would like to think that "Black Betty" is the mos buttrockingest song ever done. The Ram Jam version, natch.

^ understands

Latter Day Butt Rock Protein

long distance bridal registry protein?

disagree with xhukx about "Her Strut" above; it sounds like Seger doing AC/DC. but I dunno, maybe that's stiff too? certainly boys with stiffies. love to watch her strut!

"Her Strut" is excellent....always a fave of this devil rock fan. I'm researching "butt-rock" again...fans online point again to peacock rockers like Loverboy and Scorpions. I'm fond of this definition, because I remember that in high school we had a soft spot for the mullet rockers who dabbled in new wave. Seemed to be a cult building around them (as opposed to burnout rock).

Thanks to Spotify, I can locate shitloads of "rocker" bands tainted by new wave music, hair gel, and synths. I found compiling a playlist rather painful, though. I mean, it's like exploring an urban sewer....is it worth the stench to come up with a few gems...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EChz4nq-1Pk

I think Sirius XM would do well to add a Butt Rock channel.

I think that's kind of what Classic Vinyl and 70's Rewind already are.

canonical ILM butt rock analysis: The most buttrockin' song on Buddy Blue's list of the top 50 Butt Rock Anthems (search term: buttrock)

Living in small town southern Minnesota in the late 70s I saw this Iowa band a couple times, and had completely forgotten about them for the for the last 40 years. I think I may still have this song on a 45.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKKq7naXsu0

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-09-15/maren-morris-the-bridge-nashville-country-music-leaving

“After the Trump years, people’s biases were on full display. It just revealed who people really were and that they were proud to be misogynistic and racist and homophobic and transphobic. All these things were being celebrated, and it was weirdly dovetailing with this hyper-masculine branch of country music. I call it butt rock.”