"Record Collection Rock" - is there still a need for this? Does it still exist?

I do think there is such a thing as originality, but the idea that anyone's favourite records aren't awash with influences is obviously nonsense. Reminds me of the shit the beta band got in the 90s for daring to be into hip hop and dub, and I though we had mercifully moved on from that.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, January 15, 2018 1:08 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this is really missing the point, at least as how i see it. for me RCR is derogatory in a way, sure, in the same way as people sometimes used to (maybe still do) refer to things like the war on drugs as "dad rock." but i think this music thrived, and continues to endure, precisely because of a listenership sold on the notion of "authentic" music as opposed to whatever else. it's here that the canon-forming, or positioning oneself within a tradition of rarefied and far-out sounds, becomes the thing.

i use this label primary to criticize what i consider to be lazy music that somehow gets a pass because it's "supposed" to be good, because how could it not if they like coltrane and sun ra and the monkees' psychedelic period and and and

^^If that's the case, I'd be interested in seeing more specific criticisms of artists. Who are the bands with the Coltrane, Sun Ra, and Monkees psychedelic period albums? I don't remember bands with one token or non-token reggae song, one song where they claimed an obscure reference like Magma, or a bunch of references to such a variety of things like the Byrds/Miles Davis/King Tubby formula. Stereolab maybe. They were really good at it, though! Not so sure about Saint Etienne and think they might be considered just because they are more vocal as fans of things. If Royal Trux and TFUL 282 are record collection rock, I'm wondering what those records are.

Meant to say - Who are the bands with the Coltrane, Sun Ra, and Monkees psychedelic period PROBLEMS?

Budo - OK, I see what you mean, but really don't like the idea of categorising music based around "other people give this a free pass"

https://img.discogs.com/6Y0rhNFL7n-L7Caj59IdfzmXb_g=/fit-in/597x597/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-658986-1144413524.jpeg.jpg

^ feat. a cover of sun ra's "nuclear war"

plus a song called "from a motel 6" i mean come on

it's everywhere in YLT's catalogue

i think the key thing here is that it's almost less about what the music "actually sounds like" and much more about what the music is "supposed to sound like" -- RCR, in my opinion, has as much to do with the record collection of the listener (actually this is parmount imo) as it does the artist. it's less straight up aping an artist, or even genre hopping, and much more about constructing a constellation of small, sometimes subtle signifiers. and the message, usually not so hard to decode, is: you are cool, your records are cool, we are cool too, you will like this music the first time you hear it and it will not challenge you, and you are cool.

― budo jeru, Monday, January 15, 2018 1:20 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is just like an insane amount of assumptions about both a huge group of different artists and listeners

first among them is many many times the college aged audience actually hears the newer band BEFORE what they are influenced by, this happened to me like a zillion times

anyway cam, is it so hard to imagine that critics, then or now, would be more inclined to approve of a record because it flattered their distinguished taste and not only justified but glorified their nerdy, expensive record collecting habits?

UMS how am i not permitted to make observation about a certain subset of a particular band's audience without you thinking i'm speaking for the experience of everybody who's heard that music?

like i'm not interested in who ACTUALLY heard the album or even who ACTUALLY made it or even what the band's lived experience ACTUALLY was, in the sense that you mean

this isn't about that, and if you don't get it then this isn't going to be a productive discussion

^ feat. a cover of sun ra's "nuclear war"

― budo jeru, Monday, January 15, 2018 11:45 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

plus a song called "from a motel 6" i mean come on

― budo jeru, Monday, January 15, 2018 11:46 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So, this is a criticism of Yo La Tengo?

like i'm not interested in who ACTUALLY heard the album or even who ACTUALLY made it or even what the band's lived experience ACTUALLY was, in the sense that you mean

― budo jeru, Monday, January 15, 2018 1:52 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes it's clear you're not interested in anyone's thoughts or experiences that conflict with your own thesis

i remember hanging around waiting see tad or someone like that play and these bozos walked out on stage and started playing this song and tbh it was actually fucking awesome but at the same time it was totally a case of "you are cool, your records are cool, we are cool too, you will like this music the first time you hear it and it will not challenge you, and you are cool"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEYx8whmXiU

I love lots of writing about music but the scorecard of which writer likes which bands just seems unimportant.

i'm not criticizing them. i like them a lot.

i think this is mostly a metatextual thing, a certain grouping of gestures, reverberating in a particular critical echo chamber that privileges dylan, obscuro '60s psych, krautrock, and free jazz, among other things. i don't think RCR is useful to describe a band or a record in their / its entirety. it's more like an attitude of consumption, fortified by a certain kind of social/cultural discourse. it almost exists independently of the music and, often, many of the people who listen to it.

xpost

I love lots of writing about music but the scorecard of which writer likes which bands just seems unimportant.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, January 15, 2018 1:58 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree with this. but what interests me is the way in which critical appraisals DO take this into account.

New queens for sure. Proudly announces it's a homage to rock n roll on intro and references T. rex, Neil young and other stuff

yes it's clear you're not interested in anyone's thoughts or experiences that conflict with your own thesis

― bhad and bhabie (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, January 15, 2018 1:55 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't have a thesis? i'm just trying to describe something that i think exists but is hard to pin down

i find this particular idea -- "record collectors' records" as i call it in my head -- to be very interesting. i'm not interested in being right about anything, i'm just trying to share my experience with a specific kind of person / cultural reality

Cornelius would be a pretty good example of this, particularly back in the days of Flipper's Guitar when they were influenced heavily by Britpop and Shoegaze records that their Japanese audience wouldn't have heard of. They have one song that is basically a rewrite of Primal Scream's "Loaded".

i see really, really small bands do this, probably because it's still a novel idea to them

― infinity (∞), Monday, January 15, 2018 9:10 AM (two hours ago)

maybe they just like different kinds of music and just want to play what they like?

I mostly associate this with acts like the Gaslight Anthem and the Front Bottoms

Obviously some do better by their collections than others: the Beatles and Elvis come to mind (but/and check The King's Record Collection: sometimes Elvis improves on the originals, sometimes he's equally good from a different angle, sometimes not so much). Usually works better when not begging comparison with the original.
My initial take on Nicole Atkins---the songs I quote, not quite verbatim in the "grooves of my brain" instance---can be taken different ways, but she still seems self-aware about being a popologist, wothout being pretentious or nudge-nudge-wink-wink (from Rolling Country 2017):

Don't want to say too much about Nicole Atkins' Goodnight Rhonda Lee yet, but,
following the opening Laura Nyro-in-Memphis-upside-the-head "A Little Crazy", which is maybe a little too persistent with the swooping, hijacked-countrypolitan strings of the chorus, behold "Darkness Falls So Quiet," which is somewhat misleadingly titled, being very persistently catchy and not that quiet, and she says when things get too spooky, she can rely on her friends and her records, and it seems like her friends might be her records and vice-versa, and if so, that's okay.
For she has not only absorbed 60s Nyro, Dusty In Memphis, Ode To Billie Joe, the production moves of Lee Hazlewood and his prodigious acolyte Suzi Jane Hokum (especially on her own records), Atkins has also seen how other popologists have fallen short, and how so many are just nimbic names now, afterglow halos matter how good they were at certain things---who actually listens that much nowadays to Dwight Twilley, or even Harry Nilsson? It's sad. But the title track is vibrant and stoic: "When they stop listening, that's just the way it goes, don't let it crush you, say goodnight Rhonda Lee."
This track begins or makes more noticeable a recurring Heartbreaker of the Year vibe, in the sense that Whitney Rose and her producer/sometime duet partner Raul Malo drew from the Spanish tinge of late 50s-to mid-60s pop-rock hits (and their influence on some late 60s pop-country), with a Twin Peaks Senior Prom echo chamber.
So: unabashedly plush but well-tymed girlie swirls x restless drums, bass, rhythm guitar, tolerating bits of steel, keys, orchestra (the electric guitar is the orchestra on the last track--waking "from a nightmare to a dream"--- but not too much of one).
Whole thing's here, sounding better than Spotify to me: https://nicoleatkins.bandcamp.com/

― dow, Tuesday, October 31, 2017 12:32 AM (two months ago)

Although I really have no idea how many people still listen to Twilley or Nilsson, just don't hear much about them anymore.

here is my considered contribution to this thread:

❌

okay, true story: i was in a record store a few months back and i made a comment about how boring i thought endless boogie record was. a person responded, "dude, paul major has one of the biggest psych collections in the world. he's like a guru, i think he knows what he's doing."

byron coley's "ass run" series is another good example of this imo. where the appreciation of the music is predicated, to a certain extent, on ironic appropriation and deep knowledge.

and for me, UMS, the RCR mentality is precisely that this subset of listeners aren't particularly interested in what other people (perhaps most people) get out of the music. it seems to me that they might even feel that other listeners "don't really get it"

keith patterson and the whole roadrunner axis in minneapolis is also a good example of this. even though i really like KP and a lot of his music

bud otm

keyword here is record collectors

ums brings up college students, which is another subject, albeit related

we're talking about a certain type of music nerd

and tim i don't really know how to answer your question because, as i've tried to explain, this is more about the perceptions of a certain type of a record collector in relation to the new music they find appealing. i think certain people are willing to do a lot of squinting and squirming to hear "influences" that validate their hipness, whether those sounds are there or not.

and, as NickB's post reminds me, it's precisely this mentality that has lead to a proliferation of countless boring "psych" records

chesterfield kings belong here too i think

This isn't about the music; this is about critics pointing snarky fingers and saying "Ah, you just wrote that song so you can prove you've heard cult album X." (In the process of course proving that they've heard cult album X, too, and they heard it two years before the artist, so there.)

― grawlix (unperson), Monday, January 15, 2018 12:01 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also this

Acid mothers temple come to mind. I mean absolutely freak out your mind was a Zappa pun

Rock-mode Jim O'Rourke is very much this.

Not sure there's more to it than 'music whose influences are overly audible', the underlying assumption being that this is a Bad Thing. Or 'music made by people who are or come across as rock critics'.

I'm open to the idea of a criticism of music where the influences are the most elevated things that one is supposed to appreciate in a record rather than the record's creative accomplishments.

I started this thread just as I was finishing work and promptly forgot about it.

Apparently we all have slightly different definitions of what constitutes 'RCR'. I'm not even sure mine is correct either.

For me, a really good example of an RCR album is also one of my favourites: the Boo Radleys' 'Giant Steps', which is a litany of hip (for the time) touchstones (The Byrd, Davis and King Tubby referenced musically on this album along with the Beatles, MBV etc).

Of course when I first heard this album, I'd never come across any of these artists before. Now I have, I can tell that really this was Martin Carr experiencing music and then filtering it through his own work in a very literal way - 'let's have a burst of jazz trumpet here', 'some Lennony harmonies there'. It doesn't diminish my appreciation of the album mind you, but it is a matter of 'hey these are the records I like, check em out'.

A band like Electric Wizard though, for all the heavy 70s rock influences and Sabbathisms, I wouldn't really define as RCR. Their music is a continuation and an expansion of a heavy metal continuum. If anything they're 'horror movie collector rock'.

LCD Soundsystem are more like a post postmodern version of RCR. They even parody the idea on Losing My Edge by naming as many hip and obscure influences as they can.

One of the last true big RCR albums I can think of is Outkast's The Love Below, again a fine album but one that flirts with Prince, Coltrane, drum n bass and loads of other very direct influences for the enjoyment of the artist and listener. It's not a bad thing, in fact it's a real rollercoaster and shows the artist can turn his hand to all sorts of styles, that they're not rigidly married to their allotted genre.

I think some of my favourite music of all time could be classified as RCR to be honest, but my original question is more about whether this trend is less common now that people can make cool playlists with just an Internet connection.

Fever Ray isn't RCR for example. Sure you could argue that without Bjork or Kate Bush or a lot of disco, synthwave and goth music, she wouldn't be making the sound she makes today, but ultimately it's unmistakenly her sound through the album. That's just a random example really, of an act from the Internet age that forges a path without brazenly trying to reference her influences

Surely Tortoise's "Djed" qualifies as RCR?

lol did i open a door to 2004 when i clicked on this thread?

"and they were going to make a record with three-part harmonies, trumpet blasts and dubby bass echoes so you didn't have to."

you leave the beta band alone!

how does this concept differ from pastiche?

pastiche suggests archness or irony I think. there's nothing but reverence for the reference points in RCR

Just remembered this thread with an eerily similar title and sort of but not quite the same idea: Artists With A Syllabus - is this or is it no longer A Thing?

alternate title: dense rock music you will be mansplained to for not being into

rock music it is trivially easy to adapt the "to be fair, you need a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty" meme to

pastiche suggests archness or irony I think.
― Badgers (dog latin), Monday, January 15, 2018 5:36 PM (fourteen minutes ago)

No, not really.

This isn't about the music; this is about critics pointing snarky fingers and saying "Ah, you just wrote that song so you can prove you've heard cult album X." (In the process of course proving that they've heard cult album X, too, and they heard it two years before the artist, so there.)

― grawlix (unperson)

otm

Re 'MOJO reading lads' Mojo had the first interview before the album came out and the band did a playlist of influences for 'em (Dion, Nino Rota, David Axelrod, Gainsbourg..) so anyone reading Mojo knew before anyone else that the record wasn't a rock album. It's more for 30 and 40-something types Mojo. Lads are more 'LadBible' these days.

― piscesx, Friday, 11 May 2018 15:01 (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was thinking the exact same thing when I read that post.