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

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

do Dukes of Stratosphear fall into this category?

the page from rip it up and start again on this topic

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

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Monday, January 15, 2018 7:43 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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

― algorithm is a dancer (katherine), Monday, January 15, 2018 7:44 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so otm

What if the only records in your collection are record collection rock? What kind of records would you make?

do Dukes of Stratosphear fall into this category?

hah I don't know, I guess I don't really understand the topic. cuz the Dukes doing an intentional homage to fairly well-known 60's psych acts feels a bit different than say Field Music copping their early 80's sound

it's gotten to the point where even relatively "run of the mill" / MOR / not particularly "hip" rock acts ahve at least some sense of playing with rock history, like The Cribs recruiting Steve Albini to produce a song about Chicago and recording a song suite at Abbey Road studios on the same album.

people never got much hipper than the sufi choir. otis redding and lester young and lamonte young, dude! and a shout-out to chocolate. yum.

http://forums.ssrc.org/ndsp/wp-content/blogs.dir/23/files/2013/11/16_sufi_back.jpg

if you grew up listening to rap music then phil spector + feedback wasn't exactly a revelation when psychocandy came out. sounded awesome for sure though.i wouldn't really consider them record collection rock like simon does. with some bands you don't really need to go beyond the velvet underground to understand where they are coming from. public enemy were record collection rock. people, in general, were better at it in the 60s and 70s though because they could actually approximate lots of different styles/sounds competently or they had a record label who would find the people who could.

i tend to enjoy SHAMELESS ripoffs of styles/sounds/bands or bands who invoke/evoke other people without me sitting there thinking about who exactly they are ripping off. pavement and guided by voices don't really remind me of anyone in particular when i hear them other then themselves but they are obviously grabbing lots of stuff from everywhere.

the velvet underground kinda the premier record collection rock band really. its all their fault.

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

― sarahell, Monday, January 15, 2018 12:15 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean the two are not mutually exclusive

It might actually have been reissue culture rather than the internet that killed this as a thing. Like at one point a Neu! or Faust record would have been really quite difficult to get hold of so there was a certain cache in being able to show off that you owned these records. That disappeared well before the advent of streaming, there are so many interchangeable motorik bands out there now, which is fine if you like that sort of thing, but I doubt many of them expect a medal for doing what they do.

italian zombie movie soundtrack bands are an actual genre in the 21st century so i would say that record collection rock is alive and well.

so, a case of reissue culture making something exist.

*80s diy darkwave cassettes ripped off of mutant sounds 10 years ago* ALSO a genre now.

katherine and scott otm

I think the worst aspect of this is people making music that isn't very interesting but fans will justify the music's appeal by citing what bands/albums the work is in the vein of.

I was at a show a few weeks back that felt derivative enough that I kind of wished I'd gone to see a cover band instead

Foxygen is a good example of a current band that does this. They sound like a different psychedelic-era artist on every song

good example, not a good band

I understand the impulse to make music like this but when you're standing there thinking "oh, this is the song that sounds like <classic krautrock song>" it gets tiring

i bring this up over and over but i always think back to the time that i saw The Faint and the only time people went nuts was when they did "enola gay". the only great song they played that night.

i hardly ever go out anymore but i made a point of going to the local bar the other night to see J. Mascis's stooges tribute band because i love the stooges and just wanted to hear really loud stooges songs. and then i left. sorry, purling hiss!

i all for cover bands now that i am old.

*80s diy darkwave cassettes ripped off of mutant sounds 10 years ago* ALSO a genre now.

― scott seward, Tuesday, January 16, 2018 9:29 AM (two hours ago)

for the record, this made me laugh ... so true

this thread makes me question whether there is a need for sneery rock critics a hell of a lot more than it makes me question the need for record collector rock

controversial ilx poster and maker of record collection rock goes long on TOO MUCH MUSIC. someone give me a synopsis. too long for me.

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/01/16/578216674/too-much-music-a-failed-experiment-in-dedicated-listening

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 10:01 AM

qft and thread could have been locked after this post

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

sounds about right to me

not sure why but i seem to recall this being used about a lot of elephant 6 bands. olivia tremor control, apples in stereo

I keep hearing "Record Collection Rock" as the name of one of those tv infomercial comps
"Hey, is that The Creation?"
"No, it's Dungen!"
"Dungen?! aren't they some band from the *mid 2000s*"
"Yeah! And now the mid 2000s are back!"
"IT'S RECORD COLLECTION ROCK FROM TIME LIFE MUSIC! 32 TRACKS BY ARTISTS THAT WILL CORNER YOU AT A PARTY AND RANT ABOUT HOW SUICIDE IS A MORE IMPORTANT BAND THAN THE ROLLING STONES"

synopsis: ME ME ME ME ME ME ME PAY ATTENTION TO ME