If you actively dislike Creedence Clearwater Revival, then I can never respect anything you have to say about anything.

finally read this article and gotta agree that its pretty much filled w/stuff that's wildly wrong & suppositions that are downright weird

The subterranean groove of “Feelin’ Blue” is as insinuating and louche as any rendered contemporaneously by the Velvets or MC5

we all know the MC5 and how famous they are for their slinky, sexy, louche grooves

Lou-che grooves.

we all know the MC5 and how famous they are for their slinky, sexy, louche grooves

they've got more than a few imo: Teenage Lust, Looking at You, Ramblin' Rose, Miss X etc.

MC5 have an insane rhythm section but I would not describe the explosive high-energy rock sound of a song like Ramblin' Rose as being anything close to "subterranean" or "insinuating" in the way the writer seems to be getting at w/r/t Feelin' Blue. Maybe Miss X I would grant is the closest in those terms, but still makes for a weird choice of comparison imo.

Just feels like another writer who needs to learn that there are other ways of praising rock music than comparing it to Velvets, Stooges, MC5, punk, etc.

Or stuff like this seems backward to me:

If you listened to only classic rock radio today, you would think of Creedence as four-hit wonders, with a couple of well-worn tracks still in rotation, but without the acknowledgement that they are among the greatest bands this country has ever produced

Nelson, by the way, is The Paranoid Style, in case you wondered.

xp Yeah, they are (along with the Doors) one of the few “canonical” American classic rock bands, no? The Beach Boys are classic, but not really “classic rock” radio mainstays...

Velvets, Stooges, MC5

Well, in this case I think it's not a totally useless thing to bring up when they were all contemporaries. It's a refreshing approach to recontextualize CCR with this other group of bands rather than the Beatles, Stones, and Who, with whom they had imo not much in common but who they (per even the not far above) constantly get collected with in the classic rock pantheon.

Anyway, did I bring up my friend who, I just learned, does not like CCR, and was amazed the other two of us were huge fans? He's no snob or hipster, they just somehow totally passed him by. So I guess it's possible! I should follow up with him to see if he's taken the dive.

Also from that quote above, the idea that white and black audiences started out integrated and had been Balkanized by “market forces” seems like a strange reading of history.

It's complicated, but there is a kernel of truth to that. The Top 40 and the R&B Top 40 had become so similar and overlapping by 1963 that Billboard stopped publishing an R&B chart in 1964. It was, imo, business decisions that caused the subsequent balkanization, whether you call that "market forces" or something else.

(Not really, obviously. But more people should talk about Rare Earth. They were pretty good!)

― shared unit of analysis (unperson)

their critical error was failing to bring us the revolution

http://pm1.narvii.com/6955/e48db3b650475a2d92771c7c95e85268cde6a810r1-323-337v2_uhq.jpg

https://townsquare.media/site/86/files/2018/02/bob-seger-pep.jpg?w=980&q=75

There are maybe four unbearable things in the second photo, but I admire the sheer balls involved.

The Top 40 and the R&B Top 40 had become so similar and overlapping by 1963 that Billboard stopped publishing an R&B chart in 1964.

That's an interesting point, although the suspension of the R&B chart only lasted for 14 months. Looking at the Billboard Hot 100 and top 100 R&B tracks from 1963, there was clearly some overlap, but you wouldn't mistake one list for the other. So it may have been a business decision that anticipated more convergence than actually occurred. I guess the reason was never officially disclosed.

I see what you're saying, but I'm noticing how artists like Elvis, Roy Orbison, and even the Beach Boys were having multiple R&B Top 40 hits in '63 and then in '65 when the R&B chart resumes they're nowhere to be found. The conclusion I would draw is that business interests decided (circa 1965) it would be more efficient to sell R&B records to one demographic and rock records to another. Maybe it had to do with radio, maybe with promotion -I don't know and there's probably a good story to be told if someone researched this in depth.

I think something that frequently gets overlooked re: CCR's relationship to R & B is that they were basically a bar band for 10 years before breaking, and in that time they had to have learned and played tons of Motown/Stax/Checker etc. stuff to make rent, which I feel is reflected not just in some of their covers but also much of their prime original material.

Everybody played Motown/Stax/Checker etc covers though - Yes, Gentle Giant, you name it. Though I suppose in the US there were bands that came out of the folk scene.

Re: the encore thing - Fogerty seems so angry and suspicious of the music industry after years & years of getting kicked around by promoters & labels while coming up, it’s easy for me to imagine his thinking was more along the lines of “if they want us to play extra they’ve got to pay us extra” rather than some grand existential statement about living in the moment

I agree that the kabuki involved in the audience demanding an encore (that it knows it's going to get) while the artist pretends to be done (despite fully intending to come back on stage) is stupid tho

or rather *pretending* to demand an encore that the artist is *pretending that they might withhold*.

(Because, yeah, Human League is going to play "Don't You Want Me." Colin Hay is going to play "Down Under." The Knack is going to play "My Sharona.")

"I didn't think Andy Williams was going to do "Moon River" and then BAM! Second encore!"

lol how dare musicians take a short break

I like it better when the band comes back and then just fucks around with stupid covers or not-ready-for-prime-time material. Just like the bonus tracks/demos/b-sides you get at the end of a special edition.

"We're taking a short break" is not the same as "thank you Poughkeepsie, you've been great, that's it for us, we're done now"

and then some time later

"oh, wow, you guys made so much noise that we totally changed our minds about the concert being over, looks like we know a couple more songs that we are now going to play, though we had not planned to do these particular songs on this particular evening."

Audiences should stay completely silent and see what happens

a couple times in my life I've been lucky enough to see bands just offstage visibly disagreeing with each other about whether to go back out for an encore, which is extremely funny to me.

Man, the number of times I've seen a big show and the act broadcasts some bullshit like "oh, we're just getting started!" or "I don't know if you have somewhere else to be, because we're going to be here all night!" or some shit, *inevitably* a song or two before the break and encore (which itself is *inevitably* some combination of a quieter song from the new album, a louder song, and then the big hit). I just assume most people don't understand the concept of a curfew, and certainly don't realize that if the band goes over its more or less pre-determined end time they're going to start paying piles of extra cash to the union.

The exceptions to the rule are like Pearl Jam, which have a relationship with this city and/or venues like Wrigley Field, so get a tiny bit more wiggle room. But, for example, when Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen came out to do an encore together in Hyde Park in London a few years back, the city eventually pulled the plug.

Bryan Ferry, when I saw him a couple years ago, knows how to do it imo. After a lengthy set of Roxy and solo hits and deep cuts:

ENCORE 1:
Let’s Stick Together (Wilbert Harrison cover)
What Goes On (Velvet Underground cover)
Jealous Guy (John Lennon cover)

ENCORE 2:
Editions of You

lol @ complaining about the interactive theater of live performances

xps

The only legitimate encores I remember — that is, where the band actually seemed to be done and weren’t just going through the encore motions — were Neil Young & Crazy Horse in 1991, where he did his second encore after the house lights came up; and Otis Rush in 1987, who was opening for Los Lobos, and remains the only opener I’ve ever seen who got an encore.

My only contribution:

Shows should start at 4:30, end by 5:30-5:45, just in time for dinner and drinks.

All shows should be in escape rooms, and each song is a clue.

xp: Sometimes you just got to take a piss or get a quick bite/drink.

xxpost Who's complaining? I love that shit.

Best/worst encore I (almost) saw was Prince. The last time I saw him play a big place, when he barely played guitar and had the useless 13-piece horn section, was pretty underwhelming. Show ends and people keep clapping. Maybe ten minutes pass, lights go up and people start leaving. It's been maybe 15 minutes, and I say, fuck it, I'm seeming him later at like 3 in the morning, I want to go home and rest. Which I do. And then learn after maybe 25 minutes with the house lights up and the place emptying, Prince and is band supposedly came out to a 90% empty arena and played another 20 minutes or so.

I saw Sleater-Kinney last month. It was on Corn's birthday, so they'd been bantering a little more than normal (Corin said at one point it was the most she'd talked about her birthday on her birthday ever), so when they reached the end of the first encore, Carrie told the audience, "Normally we'd be walking off again for a few minutes, but, y'know, life is short and we're having fun, so let's just stay out here..." and then she took an audience poll about did we want "a slow one and a fast one", or "two fast ones" for the rest of the set (we ended up with a slow one AND two fast ones BTW).

Sometimes I see acts who make such a mockery of the encore process that I think (and this is probably true) that a lot of them are contractually bound to perform an "encore," which means the pantomime of walking off the stage and coming back, even if they don't want to or feel the need to.

The best approach to the perfunctory encore I ever saw was at a Metric show several years back. They just put a timer up on a screen that counted down the five minutes until they came back out. That struck me as perfect, because it was completely transparent about it being a pre-arranged break rather than something spontaneous, didn't obligate the audience to carry on clapping and cheering for some indefinite amount of time, and allowed the excitement for the "encore" portion of the show to build and peak at just the right time.

I accompanied a friend to a 2004 Decemberists show at some tiny venue; there were five members and enough instruments on stage that the band couldn't leave the stage without removing it all, so just told us to pretend they left, and chatted with each other for a few minutes before doing the encore.

Doesn't all of this depend on the act? Unless they were laying down a couple of hour-long choogles in there al la Rallizes or Endless Boogie or whatever I can't imagine wanting to sit through three live hours of CCR...there's just not enough variety in what they did to pull that off.

Comparing CCR to Zep in this regard is kinda dumb

I can't think of any band I would want to hear perform for three hours, Zep definitely included. Maybe P-Funk, but there was a fair amount of widdling between the gems in their shows too.

I've only ever seen two bands play for more than two hours - the Mars Volta in 2005 (no opening act and I feel like they were up there for about 3 hours) and King Sunny Ade (played from 8 PM to 4 AM). In both cases there was definitely a "it's all one song" feeling, and I wouldn't want to listen back to recordings of either show but I had a blast while I was there. I agree with Hadrian that Creedence, or any band playing one discrete song after another for three hours, would be intolerable for me after 90 minutes or so.

Heh, I was curious, so did the math, and the sum total of the first five CCR album runs just under three hours.

Every time I've seen Springsteen he's gone on for around 3 hours, and it's never seemed too long ... or too short. I'm trying to think who else I've seen who goes three hours. Even Rush I think stopped around 2.5.

Fwiw, btw, those epic Zeppelin sets were like half drum/guitar/organ solos. Basically "Dazed and Confused" and "Moby Dick" and "No Quarter."

Fwiw, btw, those epic Zeppelin sets were like half drum/guitar/organ solos. Basically "Dazed and Confused" and "Moby Dick" and "No Quarter."

I've always wondered about this. I've read books about Led Zeppelin where they describe concerts and it's like "and then John Paul Jones took a 40-minute organ solo before 'No Quarter'" and I think, who the fuck would even stick around for that? But at the same time, I'd kinda like to hear even one bootleg just to see how unendurable it really is.

"Man, I ain’t believing that shit about Bonham’s one hour drum solo, man. I mean one hour of drums, you couldn’t handle that shit on strong acid, man."

vampire weekend went 2 hrs 45 when i saw them at msg earlier this year lol

All I know is that, as a huge Zeppelin fan, I've never felt compelled to listen to any of their bootlegs for that very reason (plus others). But Springsteen, otoh, I can easily listen to a 3.5 hour show by him. Once I picked up a friend when I was listening to a Bruce show (during a Sirius promo), took him to a real concert, and the Bruce show was still on for the ride home.

How The West Was Won is a great live document and you don't have to try to track down weird bootlegs

The '69 live show on the expanded Zep I is great too--They were absolute hungry beasts onstage then.