Creedence Clearwater Revival: C or D?

Revelation - maybe I'm a folkist

"Sexless" - I have no complaint here, I think, because this isn't their subject (a classroom-hallway distinction?).

I may be hypocritical, though, because I have the "Sexless" complaint about Chuck D. But I want his subject to suit his music.

No, they never improved on (or equaled) Mystery Train. But my ill-informed instincts say Elvis wouldn't have known to sing Lodi like Fogerty did, and wouldn't have done Fortunate Son, period.

Except Hendrix, Cream, and Zeppelin all sound dated now while "There Was a Time," "Lodi," and "Brown Sugar" do not.

(haha & maybe I've been reading too much Curnow & Brasch lately, but while not taking geography-as-destiny (or geography-as-haunting) too seriously, all the NZ rawkundroll fans I know have spent far more time around the otago/cantebury plains than I have).

"Subjective" is no good as a synonym for "value-laden." As a matter of fact it's no good as a word, period. (Nor is its twin "objective. Ban 'em both!)

Tracer: there are all sorts of ways to use the word "folk," but if you're using it anthropologically (folkways, folklore), I can't think of any other songs in modern America that are as folk as Xmas Carols, except maybe for "Happy Birthday" and "Rock 'N' Roll Part 2."

Zeppelin doesn't strike me as dated, while Hendrix and Cream and CCR do, though I don't have a quick explanation why. Punk and hair metal helped to switch the game again, maybe knocking Hendrix and Cream into the past, but since Stones-based punks like the Stooges, Dolls, and Pistols had all absorbed Clapton-Hendrix-Kaukonen guitar sustain, their changing the game didn't bring Stones '70 back to seeming retrospectively modern. (And the Stones themselves transformed from a song band to a groove band, though I don't think they pulled this off thoroughly until Emotional Rescue.) If "Brown Sugar" sounds not-so-dated now, this is because its style of riffing has a life in new country (though it hadn't back in the day). "Brown Sugar" is all over the place in recent Brooks & Dunn. Strangely, given that CCR was admired so much in country land, CCR doesn't live in modern country, while Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, and the Eagles all do.

They were both of and not of the counterculture, which was one of the interesting things about them.

Mark, I still doubt that the term "rockist" helps people to communicate or think through their ideas, but I won't make that argument here. I want to point out, though, that in using "rockist," Shakey is raising the question as to whether it's rockist to like Creedence now, not whether Creedence was rockist back in their day. For instance, staking one's allegiance to the Ramones makes you butt-plug reactionary now but didn't in 1977, at least didn't for most people. Depends how you deployed your allegiance to the band. Note, that there's a difference between liking the Ramones and staking your allegiance to them. I still like 'em. I think.

Funny that you mention this, 'cause I was thinking the same thing after I re-read my comment about "Lodi" after this thread sprang back to life. That tension -- being both of and not of the counterculture -- is what makes that (and other) CCR songs work. Lyrically, it's about the American Dream -- staking out on yer own to "make it," the singer working hard for and having "success" dangled in front of him. Musically (at least at the beginning), it's meat-and-potatoes American rock (or CCR-type "chooglin'"). Then comes the last verse, with the key change and the singer's epiphany that his version of the "American Dream" might be being stuck in shitty bars sinking to drunks for the rest of his life. At least to me, it seems very much of its time -- a counter-cultural Sixties twist on a common American archetype which may still resonate because of its craft and sublety, but also because of how cynical we've become since the Sixties.

my two cents anyway.

Hendrix, "dated"? I don't think it's ever going to date, that stuff is as audacious as the day he made it. I've come to the conclusion that, as much as I like rock and roll, and as instinctively hostile I can be toward "rockism" or whatever you call it, Hendrix is in a whole different class than anybody else who ever made "rock." I'm sure this opinion is not shared by everyone.

CCR, though...it is stiff, stiff. Bad rhythm section. Mechanical. Great songs performed with a kind of caution, a really bad reverence for some "past" which consistently hobbles the whole project. Ben Williams up the thread hit it, "Let it Bleed" contains some "eerie" moments where the bullshit of Jagger's lyrics sorta gets hijacked by something altogether more mystical...as in the slide-guitar/piano/vibes bit in "Monkey Man." Which is all Keith. Whereas CCR never once hit a note like that.

That said, I still kind of like them, as superior radio music, and I think "Willy and the Poor Boys" is a fine record, I always liked "Effigy." I mean explain to me how "Effigy" is all that different from "Mod Lang" or something...once you get past the limberness of the Big Star rhythm section and the stiffness of CCR's. But the basic conception is similar...

So, a classic, but even more dated than the Band, who had some of the same problems of over-thinking everything and self-conscious mythologizing...the Band were far superior musicians, and they sounded like they had been having a better time out on the road than CCR had...

Dan Penn does "Lodi" on his early '70s "Nobody's Fool" album, quite well.

If we had football chants in America they'd probably be the ultimate successful example of folk attitude in this country. The Pinefox mentioned on a war thread that he feels the art of chanting is DOA. Maybe he could expand on that here? I think if he's right it has serious implications for democracy!

I don't see how "sexy" by this definition is different from "makes me think about sex" - and as such it seems to be necessarily observer-dependent, ie., different strokes for different folks. For example, if I was to say that I don't find Elvis "sexy", how would you argue that I was wrong?

And CCR did have an influence on mid-late 80s Seattle. Mark Arm and some pre-Pearl Jam dudes had that band Green River. And didn't the early incarnation of Nirvana do CCR covers? Or at least Kurt claimed to have played in a CCR cover band. Something like that.

Andrew M., that is some interesting, uhmm, but have you ever been to "Appalachia" (pronounced correctly it rhymes with "appa-latch-a," not "appa-laytchi-a")? CCR has zero to do with any of that. They from California, man, and that's a long, long way from E. Ky./Tenn./W. Va., not to mention fucking Germany...personally, I used to dig Can when I was driving across, say, *Arkansas*, but otherwise, it's a bit honky for my taste...stiil, Applachian-Kraut boogie is a funny idea, someone out there in I Love Music-Land fire up the 4-track, we gonna have a part-ee!!

Lest I sound like an overly gushing fanboy, I'll admit that his solo albums have
been VERY inconsistent. The best songs are great, but nearly all of it sounds
like unecessary backtracking. Of course, it's hard to keep writing great songs
when you only release an average of 10 new songs per decade. These
things take practice.

I was surprised at how much I still loved some tracks (good god "Fortunate Son" might be the most ferocious song of the Vietnam era), but so many kind of filtered out into blandness. I really wanted to like it/them more than I do.

more info plz

That said, I find them incredibly boring and samey. There's something so mechanical about them, and JF's voice grates. Prototype of all the back-to-roots groups (the Band too, of course), and they lack the glamour I need from rock and roll. I know, I know--they weren't after glamour.

When something like "Fortunate Son" comes on the radio, I dig; but they're a group (I feel the same way about REM) whose records I don't own any more and have no desire to play. Nice on the radio. Fogerty's solo records are horrendous, I have always hated "Center Field" with a passion, what a stupid song. But sure, classic. And no way are they a patch on the Stones, give me a break.

SP: They were crankin' back in the day, I can attest.

Rock music: C or D?
Music: C or D?
Sex: C or D?
Oxygen: C or D?