Not swinging with a vengeance: Robert Christgau on new wave disco and hard bop, 1978

His descriptions are something I'd apply to things that really were wild, and still sound so today (e.g. James Chance, Mars).

accurate, though more accurate for soul jazz. to my ears hard bop is more of a self-contained style or subgenre. the "head" arrangements on vintage Blue Note albums are catchy and pop-accessible, and they're inspired by big band swing as often as honking sax R&B. and the hard bop repertoire draw heavily on 30s and 40s standards and rarely on the rhythm and blues charts. of course vocalists were rare to non-existent in both soul jazz and hard bop, but instrumental R&B was pretty big at the same time. so it's all connected or coalesced.

# Ramones [Sire, 1976] A
# Ramones Leave Home [Sire, 1977] A
# Rocket to Russia [Sire, 1977] A
# Road to Ruin [Sire, 1978] A

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/indc/what/what.html

"One of the two reasons for the resurgence of so-called white rock—and let's note here that the frontman of list-topping Bloc Party is not white—is the decline of electronica, rock's principal competitor on the British charts for the last 20 years. Another, I suspect, is that NME's readership has gotten younger and is thus less inclined toward eclecticism. And there's one more possibility: sheer fatigue at the range of new subgenres, cross-pollinations, and over-hyped trends that will expire in a year or two."

Of course, all of this can be chaulked up to the non-specificity of terms. What constitutes new wave? If he had thrown one band example in there, we could've debated the merits of his argument. Instead I plugged in a few random names and all of a sudden we're debating whether or not he liked The Ramones.

>younger and thus less inclined toward eclecticism<

huh?

I don't know about that.

Chuck, I am interested in others people's responses. I just thought Christgau could help flesh things out more.

I do NOT agree with the attached online column by Mark Jenkins, and e-mailed him so, but I thought it was provocative enough that you and others might find it of interest. Jenkins was defining "eclecticism" by suggesting that older listeners were more interested in Japanese space-rock, obscure '60s English folk, or Indian ragas than young NME readers who he says and the NME chartsuggests like the Bloc Party and Kaiser Chiefs. ???

I'm not sure why that would matter, anyway. It seems like the important distinction would be whether the Ramones had more in common with the Beach Boys than with, say, Yes or Led Zeppelin. Which they probably did, though that still doesn't necessarily mean they sounded like early rock'n'roll. Maybe they were just inspired by the stuff (as were Led Zeppelin --it's been along time since we did the stroll and since the book of love -- and maybe even Yes, obviously, but in different ways) (hey, the opening of "Going for the One" is totally rockabilly!) (and Linda Ronstadt, who is mentioned in the paragraphs above, probably covered as much early rock'n'roll as the Ramones did).

(The only sense in which I really understand "swing" though is basically a technical one where a pair of eighth notes is subdivided so the first is accented more heavily and held for longer than the second. Does it have another meaning, beyond just a general feel that's usually a result of this approach?)

3xpost

>I do NOT agree with the attached online column by Mark Jenkins<

Good to hear, because, damn, what a dimwit:

>Music with rhythm and melody, and lyrics that express the agonies, pleasures, and uncertainties of adolescence. That's rock, mostly.<

Well, yeah, if you include teen-pop, hip-hop, r&b, country, metal, etc, as "rock" (which neither Jenkins nor the NME charts seem to do.)

Compared to "Teddy Bear," no, it doesn't. But compared to "Blitzkreig Bop" (or most of Pink Flag) it sorta does. Xgau's right that, for the most part, the new wave bands stripped away even more of the lingering old-time rock and roll trappings and replaced swing (being just just behind/ahead of the rhythm) with "drive" or "intensity" or something.

Where I think he got it wrong is that while I appreciate the disco love, I'm not really sure disco "swings." But I think of anything with four-on-the-floor as not swinging by definition. How wrong am I?

There's a harmonic aspect to it...usually jazz musicians soloing in 8th note lines straighten out their eighth notes over what the rhythm section is playing (or else it would just sound riki-tiki), but it still swings because of what they're playing.

The rhythmic thing gets complicated too, because a lot of stuff I think of as swinging and having a really good feel is closer to straight 8ths than triplets (like a lot of New Orleans music or Tony Williams), but wouldn't sound right if it was for ex. programmed in straight 8ths. It also has a lot to do with different instruments playing with different feels against each other (i.e. you can still swing 8th notes over a straight feel and vice versa).

It matters if you think, as I do, that new wave did revive rock-'n'-roll verities. To argue otherwise seems wrong-headed. But as I noted in my last post, Christgau sees this as more shaded than the excerpt lets on.

After reading the full text of the article, I have to say it's a good write and a good read that ends on a bad note; an attempt to paint all of new wave (which was so disparate by 1978 it could no longer be housed under the punk moniker) with a broad brush (WHITENESS), combined with a reaching historical comparison (one that he readily admits is flawed). It'd be interesting to know if he still thinks his new wave / bebop analogy is valid.

Greil Marcus top Pazz & Jop pick for 1978: Bryan Ferry's The Bride Stripped Bare. I'm not sure why that strikes me as just plain odd.

And Edward, I really think "punk" could be said to have revived rock-'n'-roll verities, while the specific "new wave" bands Xgau specifically lists don't -- the Talking Heads and Wire definitely do not sound more "rock 'n' roll" than the Pistols or the Dictators or the Heartbreakers. Television, maybe, but Xgau might've considered them new wave too.

And xpost, yeah, Tim, you're right (Eddie Cochran is also how I should've put it)

Here's a recent excerpt from his review of a movie doc on Arthur Killer Kane of the New York Dolls

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0543,fxgau,69413,20.html
by Robert Christgau
October 26th, 2005

"Arthur couldn't breathe and play bass at the same time," someone says early on, whereupon someone else explains that this is literal—Kane would take a deep breath, play a barrage of notes, stop, take another breath, etc. Kane's technique did improve. But his limitations were a precondition of the punk forcebeat; he influenced Dee Dee Ramone, who had more chops, and Sid Vicious, who didn't."

xpost

This thread has officially yielded to critspeak jargonese.

And Edward, I really think "punk" could be said to have revived rock-'n'-roll verities, while the specific "new wave" bands Xgau specifically lists don't -- the Talking Heads and Wire definitely do not sound more "rock 'n' roll" than the Pistols or the Dictators or the Heartbreakers. Television, maybe, but Xgau might've considered them new wave too.

Alex, if you read my first post in this thread, that's exactly what I said - then Chuck weighed in that the terms new wave and punk were probably interchangeable in '78. Christgau does start his article with, "Given my pure mania for what must now be called new wave--punk, I will never forget you--the fifth or sixth annual Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll ought to feel like a triumph, and in some ways it does."

It's still unclear. Christgau seems to be talking about the herky-jerk of spazs like Devo or Pere Ubu or Talking Heads or No New York when he talks about "too forced, too frantic", but that doesn't follow on from "new wave reviving the rock-'n'-roll verities." Did people actually think Pere Ubu were reviving rock-'n'-roll?

Maybe he was reacting to the confusion about what was going down at the time and trying to make sense of it all. '76 - '78 certainly was a heady time for music. I'm more inclined to think he was trying to generalize what was a pretty varied scene to make his larger point; which seems to be, don't ignore other types of music because punk / new wave is such a compelling force.

Isn't there some Bangs piece where he talks about the relatively subtle differences between The Beatles "Helter Skelter" and Teenage Jesus & The Jerks?

But they were! I mean, they were adding all sorts of different elements into the pot, noisy synths and postmodern alienation and weirdo vocals and all that good stuff, but listen to "Final Solution" and "Summertime Blues" back to back and tell me you don't see a direct sylistic lineage/homage. Less so after they got all the Laughner stuff outta their systems and not at all by the Thompson era, but the singles through as late as New Picnic Time - that is unquestionably rock and roll! A LOT of early punk was definitely modernized rock and roll, with all the rhythmic character that term implies.

yeah, I thought the vengeance thing was pretty clear (and a good phrase, actually.) Not just intensity -- *pissed-off* intensity (which, right, may not've always applied to Blondie or Talking Heads! And Blondie definitely had plenty of swing in their music, from the start. And they had moments that sounded like old-time r'n'r, too.)

"Swing" doesn't just mean syncopation. Hard bop didn't just have more extreme syncopation (which it didn't, always), it was a more drastic stylistic shift away from the prevalent style than perhaps other genreic shifts had been, and a lot of its development was dependent on making more of these kinds of shifts. It wasn't just working a small variation on what most people were listening to, it tried in some way to describe an opposite--"with a vengence" doesn't just mean "in a hostile fashion," it's shorthand for this kind of change.

So to say that "new wave" bands swung with a vengence, that doesn't necessarily mean that they got mean. In the new wave context, the narrative of rock is a series of eruptions followed by a slow (d)evolution into the hated "arena-rock," which is like agression ex post facto, drained of energy, just kind of lurching around in a parody of its previously fiesty self. So in a way, swinging away from this would necessarily entail not being agressive, not being angry young things. And it's precisely those bands mentioned above, Blondie and the Talking Heads, plus Devo and a few other collaborators, that have stood the test of time to my ears, whereas their angrier colleagues, who unless I miss my guess are the ones xgau favored, have become cliches. But at the time, the cartoony part of the Ramones, say, was their cheeriness, their pep, the stuff that set them most drastically apart from teh bloat. I think xgau's complaining about this and setting up disco as a perhaps purer expression of this kind, a much more drastic swing, one that ditches the old verities entirely instead of trying to adapt them to a new, oppositional standpoint.

I think he puts it in a kind of odious way--I also like to talk about white music and black music because I think they're useful categories but I think there's simply no way not to sense a value judgment in his application of those labels--but it's a valid point.

Again, where do you get the idea that he's just talking about those sorts of bands?

And doesn't he say earlier (in that other passage you quoted) that what's being revived isn't so much the *sound* of early rock'n'roll as its "wit and temper"? Why would that not necessarily apply to Pere Ubu? (I mean, I'm not saying I agree with it; I'm not sure the wit and temper of early rock''n'roll ever went away; it's all through early '70s hard rock, which didn't especially sound like Elvis Presley, either. But I'm not shocked somebody might think otherwise.)

Actually, he loved Blondie and Talking Heads (and the Ramones and the Vibrators -- that's who his "pure mania" line comes from - and Television and, a year later, the B-52s), so I'm not sure why you think he prefered the angry ones. (Though yeah, "pissed-off" was a bit of a reduction on my part, I do admit that.) And Bob was never a particularly huge fan of hardcore (which hadn't happened yet).

Wow, you REALLY read between lines. Actually, he prefered the Ramones to most disco, and I'm pretty sure their cheeriness and pep is part of why he loved them. Again, what makes you think he's saying that?

An interesting question is whether it retained its strengths, the wit and temper of early r&r, even its "agressive whiteness," after it mutated.

And James Chance didn't?

So let's exculde Chance and substitute instead DNA, Mars, Teenage Jesus, Red Transistor. Now we're talking forced / frantic with a definite disconnect from any verities, rock 'n' roll or otherwise. Even Devo covering "Satisfaction" was more involved with fucking the corpse than honoring the past.

Side note; part of why Christgau never liked hardcore may have to do with its jacking up of punk / new wave rhythms to blinding speed, losing any sort of connection to a "natural" (read: danceable) rhythm. After Minor Threat or Bad Brains, The Ramones sound like they're playing in slow motion.

What's interesting is how the herky-jerk merged with dance / funk and produced the likes of Gang of Four, Au Pairs, Bush Tetras, and Killing Joke. Which I think points up the difficulty of breaking things down into white rhythm / black rhythm. Even during the disco era, electro-dance music became both very white (Kraftwerk, Moroder, Depeche Mode) and very black (Afrika Baambata, Cameo, hiphop) and cross-pollinated all over the place, even grafting with hardcore to form the nadir of Atari Teenage Riot (who I once saw open for the Wu-Tang Clan). So where does this leave LCD Soundsystem (aside from Grammy nominated)?

I'd also like to throw in that The Ramones, Patti Smith, The Clash, Talking Heads, and Elvis Costello get played on classic rock stations. Granted, not as much as Neil Young, Rolling Stones, and The Beatles, but they get played without much notice by the freedom rock brethren. Matter of fact, I've known construction workers jamming on Crue and Bad Company to crank up the radio when "I Wanna Be Sedated" comes on. Now, if DNA or Mars came on (or even James Chance) the radio would probably go "out da freakin' windah," as we used to say in Jersey. The bands' acceptance is a long-term populist perspective, and one that Christgau didn't have in '78 because of the market's unwillingness to embrace punk at the time it was actually happening.

There were extremes like Suicide or the Screamers. But The Ramones' approach was more typical. I recall most everyone I knew in these very loosely, later-described 'scenes' as liking The Commodores and soul groups with that James Brown sort of discipline. And everyone loved disco--no matter how much they publicly bitched about lifestyle issues--for the same reasons--mainly, the robotic pulse that could be reapplied to other situations.

In general, I distrust any notions of 'authenticity' and think arguing for it seems kind of anti-rock. I loved The Ramones for their great songs and brilliant intuitive sense of theater.

I don't think nearly enough people compare [name rock act] with, say, Liza Minelli. Depeche Mode comes to mind.

Tim, interesting you should bring up Hell. I put together "The Evolution of 'Love Comes in Spurts'" for another thread, but it's germane here. A zip file with 4 versions of "Love Comes In Spurts":

http://s54.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=20VZ6UBWDIKOA24HRKA7V7NW15

1973 - Neon Boys (beta version of Television) - At this point the song has a Velvet Underground feel to it. I guess "the groove" was still cool, nothing frantic here.

1975 - The Heartbreakers - From a demo session when Hell was in the group. The song's punkier, it demonstrates the distance that had been traveled in just 2 years, and it's much more accomplished rhythmically than say, oh, anything off the first Ramones album.

1977 - The Voidoids - By the time Hell committed this to vinyl for posterity, he had updated it, ostensibly to keep up with these new wave whippersnappers with their herky-jerk rhythms. Same song but Quine / Julian's staccato guitar interplay ensures you'd sprain something while dancing to it.

1977 - Heartbreakers again - The song was so good Thunders kept playing it (as "One Track Mind") even after Hell left. This version from L.A.M.F. sounds practically traditional after The Voidoids' bravura disco roboto.

2 years is an eternity! i have no argument. just wanted to point that out.

What created a neat friction was the way people were simultaneously reacting against those verities in terms of style and, for lack of a less pretentious word, puilisophy, they were also very much in thrall to certain aspects of those verities.

My group, The Quick (now available on inTunes!) and Blondie and The Jam in particular were utterly obsessed with mod Brit pop. And of course The Ramones were all about the Brill Building aesthetic.

This may be too tangential, but as A&R guys were freaked by all this music, as tame as it seems now, the goal became to find ways to control it--which often meant bringing in producers, who brought in their click tracks and time code generators which already somewhat technically challenged drummers struggled to play in time to. (The idea of BPM as marketing tool was new.) Which added more stiffness to performances.

Which is why I say they had more in common with The Beach Boys than The Theoretical Girls. The Ramones were about reviving the verities of sub three minute pure pop bliss. Their style was aggressive but the form was very much classic rock 'n' roll, bubblegum pop even. It wasn't their franticness, or emotional vacuity, or whiteness, that isolated them from success in '78 - the market (not to mention the music industry) just plain wasn't ready, for reasons no clearer today than in 1978 when Christgau was (soul-)searching for answers.

The click track stuff is not tangential, it's a really interesting wrinkle. Perhaps why, for all their rep as fast players, the first Ramones album sounds positively plodding?

But yeah--click tracks = sheer hell (until you get used to learning how to play around them.)

revive.

Sorry if I'm repeating anything on here, but in the 70s Guide, he quoted John Piccarella's definition of "forcebeat," something like "...faster than your body thinks it should": a bit against the grain, and reasons for that might well include renewing the vows, "the rock 'n' roll verities," by renewing the thrilling encounter and re-adjustment, rather than just rocking along in a complacent way, incl complacent boredom or even/especially misery, with auto-responses, pos and neg, wearing down the same way. So, even if we just go back to Jazz Appreciation verities like "swing was more for dancing, bop was more for listening"--we still run into all these dicey terms (which were always mostly for the convenience of us retailers, 'preciate it!)And once you teach or provide the possible possibilty of a new/re-newed way to dance, or swing or thrill (incl electric Miles, and later Dancing In Your Head/Body Meta-era Ornette,at the same time as no wave and early post-punk)then that begins to be taken for granted too, even as its thrill falls into its own kind of k-hole, followed sometimes by the automatic response of collectors like me (thanked again by retailers like me)But mainly the previous idea goes with the more idealistic side of punk-new-no-wave-post-punk etc, and there's also harshness, rigor for its own sake, or for a gnostic, spirit vs. body ideal, or blasting your glare through a world of assholes, or for "I've suffered for my music--now it's your turn," as Neil Innes summed it up. Not that all of these can't be honed as ideals, against the grain

But anyway I think that's what xgau, coming from the rock 'n' roll/rhythm 'n' blues, retail-race code/cultural filteration of the 50s and early 60s, and then seeing both things used, along with blues, early electronic experiments, etc in the Woodstock-to-the-Garden-to-Vegas Age of Rock, yknow Classic Rock, and wanting the thrill renewed, but still feeling it as against the grain, had in mind (and young Reynolds in Blissed Out, when he asks us and himself to abstain from listening to good ol' r&b for a while, although he's more into roiling atmosphere and texture, even/especially when he gets to MBV and Daydream Nation-era SY, much less ECM albums of the waterbed-in-the-monastery persuasion--so either way still a head. But also it's his path to renewal)

In other words, he bought it after all, even if/as he resists it, that's at least part of the point of going against the grain, to get people to do that, to go through that (and I say that having read [and bought the retail hell out of] the aforementioned 70s Guide)

And you do have to have some amount of experience to see or feel it as renewal rather than something new, becoming more problematic getting into the very post-50/60s experience of growing up with your parents' rock collection ("Pattern recognition gets us all in the end," observed Jane Dark, before jumping from the deadline train of Real reviewing, I think)

even if we just go back to Jazz Appreciation verities like "swing was more for dancing, bop was more for listening"

To what extent to fans use those musics for the reverse reasons, I wonder? I assume people listened to swing way more than they danced to bop, but who knows? (Free jazz musicians like Ornette later incorporated funk rhythms, as Don alludes, but did people even ever dance to Dancing In My Head?)

only Rockpile sound like good ol' rock'n'roll to him

And even they didn't, all the time. (Well, I never heard them live. But the Dave Edmunds LPs sound more like good ol' rock'n'roll than Pure Pop For Now People does. Or at least than most of it does -- by '78, it was the only Nick Lowe solo album, and the Rockpile LP had yet to come out either. But I'd say Nick, at that point, was more using old-style rock'n'roll -- in the same sense the Ramones, or Springsteen, were using it - than "reviving" it.)

he likes punk's "extremism, its honesty, its self-knowledge," but wishes it were less elitist and more inclusive. He feels it needs to mutate to survive, and lobbies for a punk / disco merger. Which, given the "disco sucks" sentiments of the rock crowd in 1977, is hardly as inevitable as it seems now. But it did happen, spawning what we *now* think of as "new wave," and also House, and Madonna, and post-punk, and electroclash, and millions of other things, including, for all I know, Ashlee Simpson

Ha ha, I just noticed this, from Sang Freud -- in 2005, no less, three years before Ashlee made her Lene Lovich album. Anyway, what I'm wondering is what punk-disco hybrids Xgau may have already been not noticing in late '78. Obviously, "Heart of Glass." I'm guessing on their second album Talking Heads were already taking tentative steps to incorporate disco (or at least soul -- they covered Al Green on it, after all.) There must be some obvious other examples I'm not thinking about. (I wonder where Bob thought Kraftwerk fit into this.)

Speaking of Lene Lovich, she had already worked with Cerrone and Chi Chi Faveles by the point, but as far as I know she had no punk/new wave credibility yet.

(From Ornette Coleman - Dancing In Your Head: Classic or Dud?:

I just remembered I'd BEEN to a party where everyone was dancing to this record.

-- Kris (aqueduct), Thursday, 6 February 2003 18:16 (5 years ago) Link)

Anyway, what I'm wondering is what punk-disco hybrids Xgau may have already been not noticing in late '78.

Hmm, Ian Dury, maybe? B-52s? Sylvester had made a move from glam rock to disco. Dr. Buzzard perhaps was heading ZE-ward.

"Rock Lobster" 45 didn't come out until '79, even as a self-released 45, right? Which was the same year Dury put out "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick," "Reasons to Be Cheerful" and Do It Yourself, at least in the States (were any of them out by the end of '78 in the UK?); don't think there were any disco moves on New Boots and Panties.

Actually, it occurs to me that Roxy and Bowie (and maybe certain other glam acts?) had been sort of sonically doing a punk-disco fusion for a couple years by then, in a way, though not intentionally.

As for Darnell, even if you consider his Kid Creole stuff new wave (he did mention "Mr. James White" in one song), that didn't come til a couple years later. Not sure if any Dr. Buzzard stuff counts....

From the 9/4/78 CG:

But the most irresistible of the bunch is "Rock Lobster"/"B-52 Girls," by the B-52s boys and girls, offering these pearls of surrealistic-surfer wisdom: "Here comes the sting ray/There goes the Man Ray/Here comes the dogfish/Chased by the catfish." I'm proud to be an American. . . .

Wow. I hereby eat my words; here's what must have confused me:

Pazz & Jop 1979: Dean's List

Singles
The Brains: "Money Changes Everything" (Gray Matter)
Michael Jackson: "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" (Epic)
The Clash: "1-2 Crush on You" (CBS import)
James Brown: "It's Too Funky in Here" (Polydor 12-inch)
Sister Sledge: "We Are Family" (Cotillion 12-inch)
McFadden & Whitehead: "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" (Philadelphia International 12-inch)
Kleenex: "Ain't You" (Rough Trade import)
B-52's: "Rock Lobster"/"52 Girls" (B-52's)
The Records: "Starry Eyes" (Virgin)
Machine: "There But for the Grace of God Go I" (RCA Victor)

And wikipedia says "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" was first released as a 7" on 11-23-78, though there's no indication I can see that Christgau heard it then. It was number one in the UK in January '79.

My wife says we both need to get out more.