ILX decides the Poll. 70s Rock Poll vs 70s all genre poll.

I would also throw out “rock” that is more “folk” or “prog” than rock, as well any mainstream recs operating p. clearly w/in rather established singer-songwriter/vaudeville/showtune/showbiz parameters (f/me that would mean goodbye to Springsteen and Randy Newman and Jackson Brown and maybe Bob Segar; idk, it all gets into alien territory f/me, so I can only speak v. generally about this crap).

This one's easy for me; Newman doesn't rock, Seger does!

Either way, my hope for this '70s poll would not just be to rehash a bunch of alternate-canon '70s records from various genres that only qualify as rock by some "clever" "stretching" of the notion, but to really explore the roots of punk, hard rock, proto-metal, post-garage, straight-up butt rock, stomping swamp rock, etc. This poll runs the danger of many of us just patting ourselves on the back from liking all these art bands that are really just as firmly canonized in their alternate canons as Springsteen and the Stones are in the world of Rolling Stone and FM radio.\

I'm not sure if you're addressing any of my particular arguments, but I don't think we really disagree. when I say "punk" or "postpunk" I'm obv not just talking about throwing in the token Sex Pistols, Clash and PIL records, but rather going much further underground into, again, industrial and other noise-related weirdness.

regarding Styx, Boston, Foreigner, you're essentially talking about a "deep cuts" approach to well-known recs (lol at AOR talk), which might more usefully be employed in a tracks poll. the other issue is that because the 70s are now roughly forty years ago, almost everything has been "canonized" by someone, but I think that AG wants to make a hybrid canon that breaks out of the traditional classification ghettos while still maintaining a rock underpinning. more-or-less, I think that including music that has already been "canonized" (if even on a smaller, more specialized level that might contradict the all-encompassing notion of canon), is inevitable. that being said, yeah, the emphasis should be on introducing as much "undiscovered" music as possible (though w/any hybrid canon everyone will find a bit of undiscovered music).
'

Also, I love Miles Davis's '70s work with a fierce burning intensity, but the only records that I think maginally qualifies for this poll are Aghartha and Pangaea. People talk about Bitches Brew having "rock influences" and all that, blah blah, but if you actually LISTEN to the damn thing it is about as far from rock as you can get.

Just because there's a guitar involved doesn't mean the music is in any sense rock music. That's like saying a sax makes something jazz.

this is exactly why I made my particular suggestion; it's IMO a workable compromise between the pro- and anti- Miles camps.

Hellhouse, I appreciate where you're coming from, but I think the danger in drawing such an exploded diagram is that it potentially involves a sketchy reliance on the power of influence.

not sure exactly what you're talking about here.

Also, I love Miles Davis's '70s work with a fierce burning intensity, but the only records that I think maginally qualifies for this poll are Aghartha and Pangaea. People talk about Bitches Brew having "rock influences" and all that, blah blah, but if you actually LISTEN to the damn thing it is about as far from rock as you can get.

Just because there's a guitar involved doesn't mean the music is in any sense rock music. That's like saying a sax makes something jazz.

I'll also say that I'm not in any way a Miles expert. if he has a different period, or group of touchstone recs that most people agree are closer to rock than the three I mention above, then I would obv suggest going w/those. my real point is, again, the notion of a selective discography based around periods when it comes to borderline artists (or, if absolutely necessary, individual recs, though this is something of a last resort b/c of the inherently contentious nature of trying to include only one rec).

all these art bands that are really just as firmly canonized in their alternate canons as Springsteen and the Stones are in the world of Rolling Stone and FM radio.

this actually brings up the v. real issue of the necessity f/an "alt." canon re: the 70s. it's possible that the passage of time has been such that most sectors of 70s rock have been mapped, and that more useful alt. canons can (and should) focus on the 90s and 00s. of course, there's a difference between saying that "everyone" knows about postpunk and saying that "everyone" knows that Throbbing Gristle's First Annual Report is fucking great. and, of course, the paradox is that while the lengthy passage of time means that quite a bit of of excavation has been conducted, it also means that there are more and more people to whom the 70s are v. far off and alien. splitting the diff, I think that giving an oddball canon like the one I've described would still be useful and interesting, but there are prob. people who might think a true alt. canon would right off the bat boot Zep, Sabbath, Stooges and Pistols.

I would, as per my krautrock/postpunk inclusion, include Can, but also Throbbing Gristle, NWW, Gary Numan, etc. I would also consider the Residents and other art bands, as they operated within/pushed back against a rock framework (and are part of this imaginary map to the present). again, I think that you’re going f/an Exploded 70s Hard Rock Map to the Present. at least that’s what I’d be trying to go for.

I think I have a problem with including the art bands that feel like they're just playing with rock-as-form. I used to really prize music that could "wrily comment on rock" or whatever, but I've lost a lot of that. I'd much rather listen to (and heap praise upon) a band that can actually just inhabit rock and do it really well. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, as I think Can and Faust both rock pretty mightily when they want to. But the Residents? No way. Nor NWW. That's, to me, the danger of defining the parameters of this poll in a micro-genre way or a super-specific way rather than a looser, more intuitive, more direct "does this rock?" way. It strikes me that you'd have to do a fair bit of intellectual calisthenics to say that the Residents rock. I'm not necessarily satisfied with the circularity of it all (it's in if it ROCKS), but I do think there's a certain level on which the '80s poll reflected a collective intuition about rocking that we are having a lot more difficulty achieving thus far with the '70s.

x-post to Hellhouse: I think you're OTM about "it's possible that the passage of time has been such that most sectors of 70s rock have been mapped"... That's one of the things I think that's making it hard for us! But I just know there's a ton of stuff out there that fewer of us know about. The problem is, it's even more hidden than the '80s stuff if it's neither part of the canon nor the alternate canons. I mean, I think someone like Scott could pull 20 records out of the ether in 30 seconds that would blow our minds and that we've never heard or likely even heard of. I mean, I just bought my first Uriah Heep record the other day, and they were a huge band. It rocks!

A Tribute to Jack Johnson is the most rock Miles, right?

I'll have much more to say when I have a moment later on.

I think I have a problem with including the art bands that feel like they're just playing with rock-as-form. I used to really prize music that could "wrily comment on rock" or whatever, but I've lost a lot of that. I'd much rather listen to (and heap praise upon) a band that can actually just inhabit rock and do it really well. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, as I think Can and Faust both rock pretty mightily when they want to. But the Residents? No way. Nor NWW. That's, to me, the danger of defining the parameters of this poll in a micro-genre way or a super-specific way rather than a looser, more intuitive, more direct "does this rock?" way. It strikes me that you'd have to do a fair bit of intellectual calisthenics to say that the Residents rock. I'm not necessarily satisfied with the circularity of it all (it's in if it ROCKS), but I do think there's a certain level on which the '80s poll reflected a collective intuition about rocking that we are having a lot more difficulty achieving thus far with the '70s.

I know what yr. saying, but f/the 80s poll AG v. specifically accepted nominations like SPK and Neubauten and DAF, b/c even though they don't necessarily rock in trad sense, they're engaged in an aggressive aesthetic dialogue w/rock that in a sense constructs rock (in its "fuck-you" essence, or as I mention in the 80s album rollout thread, "[from] a distillate of the contrarian euphoria of rock and roll") out of anti-rock. this is obv v. different from a band like REM that simply takes a straightforward but v. light approach to rock. I'm not saying that you're wrong, btw, I'm just trying to convey my understanding of the parameters of the 80s poll.

Including transgressive non-rock things really overemphasizes transgression as a significant factor in rock.

I haven't read the Carducci book in twenty years, so I don't remember the extent to which he might have been making this argument, but I'll say this: I've always thought there was too much reactionary response to melodicism as something that counters rock qualities in music. One example would be the Bobby Fuller Four and the Remains, who were a couple of the most bad-ass bands of their time.

I understand the premise of light vs. heavy, but the melodicism argument is more about light vs. dark. The Raspberries were sunshine but they were heavy.

Come on you titans of intellect! I want someone to start gunning for Dark Magus and Get Up With It to be included. All I can weakly offer is that Miles alienated the jazz purists so it must be rock! It would be very offside and even slightly suspect to include Can/omit Miles. I have just blasted out Honky Tonk on the Bose and can confirm it fucking rocks!

And they're the exact definition of balls' "cruising with the top down" archetype. And yet, he chooses to include Pere Ubu instead in his list of bands that fit that archetype.

xp

Including transgressive non-rock things really overemphasizes transgression as a significant factor in rock.

I haven't read the Carducci book in twenty years, so I don't remember the extent to which he might have been making this argument, but I'll say this: I've always thought there was too much reactionary response to melodicism as something that counters rock qualities in music. One example would be the Bobby Fuller Four and the Remains, who were a couple of the most bad-ass bands of their time.

Carducci did not at all consider bands like SPK and Neubauten to be rock in any conceivable sense (f/him it's all about the live rhythm section and the small-band, guitar-based approach). I see bands like the above as engaged in a v. specific destroying-rock-to-save-rock (and even elevate rock) project that's less about any kind of moral/social/civil "transgression" than it is about destroying what's seen as the stifling formal conventions of rock in the name of recapturing the initial excitement of rock and its sense of possibility.

Including transgressive non-rock things really overemphasizes transgression as a significant factor in rock.

Tim, thank you for expressing what I've been trying to say so much more succinctly than I was! OTM. (Although I do think some early Pere Ubu rocks pretty hard. "Final Solution"?)

Come on you titans of intellect! I want someone to start gunning for Dark Magus and Get Up With It to be included. All I can weakly offer is that Miles alienated the jazz purists so it must be rock! It would be very offside and even slightly suspect to include Can/omit Miles. I have just blasted out Honky Tonk on the Bose and can confirm it fucking rocks!

― Damo Suzuki's Parrot, Sunday, October 7, 2012 1:04 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fair enough re: Dark Magus and Get Up With It (parts at least), and I suppose I'd far rather than non-rock music that actually rocks than stuff like the Residents that takes a self-consciously outside-of-rock approach.

Yeah, "Final Solution" was the one I thought of, too!

But the fact that we both had to think hard to find something that rocked does kind of say something, I suppose.

i have no problems with agharta, pangea, jack johnson, dark magus being in it.
i dont even have a problem with the residents or the arty stuff.

I see bands like the above as engaged in a v. specific destroying-rock-to-save-rock (and even elevate rock) project that's less about any kind of moral/social/civil "transgression" than it is about destroying what's seen as the stifling formal conventions of rock in the name of recapturing the initial excitement of rock and its sense of possibility.

― Hellhouse, Sunday, October 7, 2012 1:14 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think you're imbuing art-school antics with way more missionary zeal than their practicioners ever would have. This makes for an appealing alternate-canon historical thread, maybe, but it's too neat and clean for me.

I think a good rule of thumb is to keep bands out of the thread that you can seriously imagine describing the "formal conventions" of '70s rock as "stifling"...

A couple of things: before we talked about it, AG, I honestly thought stuff like Boston, Styx, and Foreigner was exactly what you were looking for, or at least one part of what you were looking for, in an 'anti-RS' 70s hard rock poll. Pop-metal and AOR were included in the 80s poll, including two Journey albums. Many of us have been using Stairway to Hell as a reference point for these polls: Boston and Foreigner are included there. While Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca, Miles Davis, Metal Machine Music, and Swans are all in there too, they place lower than Def Leppard and Guns n Roses. Rating mainstream AOR/hard rock was a large part of what made that book anti-canonical or even 'anti-RS'. There's nothing wrong with choosing parameters for a poll that would exclude those bands but then it needs to be clear what we're looking for. If the focus is more 'acid-fried' or experimental rock, then pre-DSotM Pink Floyd should probably be included. If the focus is simply introducing people to more obscure music, then perhaps gold-selling albums or albums in the RS 70s list should be excluded?

Also, I listened to the Shoes tracks Tim recommended. I do think stuff like this and Big Star is more hard-edged than 80s REM, not that far away from Cheap Trick, possibly even Kiss. ("Down the Street" was even used as the theme song for That 70s Show, as a 'cruising' rock song.)

(I forgot that side 2 of Jack Johnson doesn't rock quite as hard as side 1 btw, although I'd still include it in a rock poll myself.)

I think a good rule of thumb is to keep bands out of the thread that you can seriously imagine describing the "formal conventions" of '70s rock as "stifling"...

you have to realize that b/c of forty years of punk/industrial/metal and MTV and the Internet and etc, etc, that the taste of the average listener today is vastly more catholic that it was then. you can't project your v. contemporary and vaguely postmodern, it's-all-good approach onto the 70s. perceptions of rock were far narrower, and many of the bands critics today see as essential and influential didn't really have big audiences at all, and were generally fairly obscure.

yeah ok i love big star and the raspberries are ok so yeah if cheap trick and big star are in then why not. I guess the aor stuff is the equivalent of hair metal in that poll.

but we're gonna end up just being all-genre arent we?

tbf if cheap trick makes it (and they should) then raspberries and arguably shoes do (i mean i wouldn't nominate shoes but more power to whoever does), i think you just want to not say 'since cheap trick and raspberries qualify therefore power pop qualifies therefore shake some action qualifies when shake some action, as great as it is, doesn't really rawk (flamin' groovies definitely have other records that rawk fwiw). the process should be, again, if the act doesn't have some degree of rawk heaviosity so to speak at its core then the record nominated better fucking rawk. first two big star? sure, ok. 3rd? c'mon, no. even though it's their most 'rock' record.

will the people who vote for the least rocking acts only vote for the least rocking acts?

So only Julian Cope approved singles get to be nommed?

ag if it worries you most of the huge aor stuff was in the 80s really. boston's a lock for the final results (and should be) but the biggest foreigner album and journey album were 80s and didn't sully the joint too much (journey actually breath of fresh air amidst skinny puppy and neubauten).

i think we have to face the facts we cannot replicate the 80s poll.

Eg: pink fairies - do it, can - turtles have short legs, hawkwind - silver machine, schizo - schizo and the little girl

I think really you just have to keep appealing to people to apply their inner 'does it rock?' test when putting together nominations. And not be afraid to veto.

will the people who vote for the least rocking acts only vote for the least rocking acts?

ha, yes, of course. people still voted f/that one sad REM rec in the last poll (and would've voted f/any others were included). letting people nominate and vote f/anything as a kind of liberal gesture is fine, but IMO if you really want an alt. canon of sorts you need to define the parameters before the voting. if you can't you might think about scrapping it f/a 90s poll where it would easier to establish an anti-canon of sorts.

The problems are as such

Cheap Trick and Big Star are in but not all power pop should be.
Funkadelic and Mandrill are in but not all funk is in (parliament, james brown,stevie etc)
Some 'aor' acts are in but some shouldn't be.
A few miles rock albums get in but not all fusion.

So bands/albums need to be excluded but a) someone's gonna get offended and take their ball and refuse to play.
b) more people fall out with me!
c) it becomes not fun

Then you have stones/bowie/springsteen

xpost It saddens me that having a band/album they like be excluded from a message-board poll on a specific subject would be enough to offend someone!

it really is ridiculous that we have to have a meta thread for a poll, innit?

I think this meta-thread is lots of fun...

i think all aor is safe ag, this is ilx not sure why you're worried about foreigner and styx domination. for stones/bowie/springsteen/neil just put a quota in place and/or wield a heavy veto. perfection's not neccessary nor desired, it's not like 80s poll was perfect. it just wasn't dull.

Why can't we make it a "'70s Hard Rock Poll"?

Or a "Hard/Heavy Rock Poll"? I think that would more neatly capture a similar spirit to the '80s poll.

That would get us lots of early- and proto-metal, lots of "acid-fried" stuff, the edgier and harder fringe of power pop but not the overly poppy stuff, the singer-songwriter-leaning stuff that's harder and more rocking but without the more folky stuff, etc, etc.

That would also get us lots of canon, sure, but I think with a 400- or 500-album rollout we'd get tons of obscure awesomeness to delve into for weeks and months afterward.

Anyway, for the next little while I'll be concentrating on the 90s electronic poll (which at least in terms of tracks looks likely to be the 90s DANCE poll in disguise, so yay for that) but if the nominations thread reopens I'll make it a point to pop in.

yeah i voted in that

I mean, I think someone like Scott could pull 20 records out of the ether in 30 seconds that would blow our minds and that we've never heard or likely even heard of.

xpost JUST OVER 24 HOURS LEFT TO VOTE FOLKS, YOUR VOTE MATTERS etc etc.

x-post to AG:

Even though Scott himself won't participate, I'll bet a lot of us who will, though, do have at least a handful of '70s treasures that aren't widely known. As long as we champion those (the way you did with the great early doom records in the '80s poll), I think we'll get a lot of interesting variety. I just re-read the now-locked nominations poll, and there are already a TON of things on there that I have no idea about, and that are piquing my curiosity. I think things only started to go downhill when people started being self-consciously contrarian and trying to stretch the boundaries in a way they (rightfully) anticipated would ruffle a bunch of feathers. Most people seemed to have gotten your point pretty well.

so can we agree on anything?

I kinda wish a few of us could get together and make a shortlist of some of the stuff we want then post it and people *try* to nominate other similar stuff, with edward and i vetoing anything we believe doesnt fit (i have finalsay obviously).

So i was thinking apart from edward and i would balls,hellhouse , sund4r care to help with that and would anyone else like to join in?

Clarke you in?

xp

that is the key thing. That poll worked because people campaigned for obscure stuff. Campaigning really works and is vital to the success

Agreed... What led me to check out records in the '80s thread most was those impassioned and articulate campaigning-style testimonials, rather than the mere presence of records I'd never heard of. I mean, how could you read something like this and not want to immediately hear the record? (From Edward III) "early swans was all about brutality, and public castration is the purest distillation. everything gira had done prior was a build-up to that material, and after the wave broke and receded they'd never get back there again. as an absurd reduction of rock's dionysian din to its elemental roots in the suffering of the blues, it exists outside of genre with even a barely tangential relationship to music itself. yet it's so compelling, sounds so massive, hasn't aged at all, and I still haven't heard a more harrowing record. a leviathan."

AG, I'd ostensibly be willing to help out with that, sure, sounds fun... My only hesitations are: (1) I'm pretty steeped in the '70s, but I'm by no means familiar with oodles upon oodles of things; and (2) my job keeps me away from a computer for hours at a time during the work week.