Bread actually had what would be considered one genuine rock and roll hit -
“Let Your Love Go”.
What caused this aberation to occur, who knows? They went back to their soft rock sound for the rest of their days.
Wuss rock. Here, try these:
[ul]
[li]Loggins and Messina[/li][li]Hell, Kenny Loggins all alone[/li][li]Cat Stevens[/li][li]Neil Diamond[/li][li]CSNY, yes. David Crosby, Steven Stills, and Graham Nash solo, yes. Neil Young solo, no. Young was CSNY’s “token rocker.”[/li][li]A-hA[/li][li]Wham[/li][/ul]
I could go on all night.
Would you include acoustic/folk at all? Woodie Gutherie, Pete Seeger, and Arlo Gutherie would not only be good, but also a starting point, if you did. This would be as far back as the forties IIRC.
Don’t forget all the lounge bands, singer/songwriters, and spoken-voice artists of the day as well. Rod McKuen, Jim Croce, Don McLean, Ralp McTell, and various others would apply under this. '60s to '70s, mostly. Maybe also Moby Grape and Velvet Underground. Hell, you might even want to include Rubber Sole+ Beatles under this as well, but I believe that has been mentioned.
Acid rock, and general pyschedelia, seems to ALSO fit your description. There are tons of those bands, from Hot Tuna to Acid Mother Temple.
Disco, I suppose, and the history of electronica might even fit your bill. Bee Gees et al.
For the '80s you could always (maybe) include glam rock and punk (what has become known as New Wave), but I really don’t know much about it.
Concerning the '90s to the present, I’ll just give you a landury list, since those are the only decades I grew up in…
Some bands (I’ll name more on request):
- Neutral Milk Hotel, Sufjan Stevens, Sparklehorse, Ben Kweller, possibly Beck, Joesph Arthur, Juliana Theory, Badly Drawn Boy, Unicorns, Apples in Stereo, Essex Green, Elf Power, Of Montreal (ok, just include E6 in general), Ego Wrappin’, Mountain Goats and Jon Daniel in general, Tilly and the Wall, Grape Digging Sharon Fruit, For Stars, Fiery Furnaces, The Robot Ate Me, Ball Boy, Mono Puff, Camera Obscura, Shins…
I’ll stop there, considering almost all I ever listen to is “wussie rock.”
Well, the fact that you would classify Iron & Wine, Postal Service and Grandaddy as “wimp rock” is pretty insulting to someone who likes decent music, and is also proof to me that you have no place writing a history of any type of music. There is a difference between soft music and “pussy music” which seems to be what you’re looking for.
John Mayer and Keane are perfect examples of what you’d want. Oh, and I would classify anything that pretends to have balls, but really doesn’t (Blink 182, Sum 41, Simple Plan, The Starting Line, Good Charlotte) to be in the category of “wimp rock” as well. You know, any music that likes to pretend it’s being dangerous but to someone who actually has an ear it comes off being no more threatening than a ladybug.
Hear, hear! “Wimp rock”, to me, is what I also refer to as faux punk - the annoying trash that appeals to suburban kids with no regards to punk as it were. Just mindless annoying dreck.
However, him seperating things into “rock” and “not quite rock” does little to annoy me, considering that if he was actually taking an insulting tone he would also be assuming a fascade of mind-numbing ignorance. Instead, I assumed for the best, which was for me assuming he just couldn’t come up with a better term. This was seen best in his use of quotation marks, that which indicated “the opposite of balls to the wall.” Nothing quite offensive, just a loss for words. He might even be a fan, you never know.
(Besides, Sam Beam has neither a high voice or a glasses wearing boyish charm.)
Yes! How is
“wussy”? I think being able to write a song with “lucid and tight arrangement” is a lot less “wimpy” than just bashing away at some instruments.
Oh, and Maroon 5 also! I knew I forgot someone. :smack:
I agree with Soapbox Monkey.
The problem is that there is no linear connection between any of these bands and actually fall into several different evolutionary branches of music. Take Belle and Sebastian – they are definitely “twee pop.” They are supposed to sound like the Velvet Underground mixed with the Partridge Family with a dash of punk – that’s exactly what they are looking for. They aren’t pretending to rock, they aren’t pretending to be badasses. Other bands that you point out are emo (which can be intolerable if done wrong IMHO). This mostly originated from straight-edge and hardcore punk, believe it or not. Just go listen to some Fugazi or Sunny Day Real Estate for some proto-emo and you can totally hear it. Wilco, as a descendant of Uncle Tupelo, comes directly from alt-country. Grandaddy is more of the prog-rock resurgence a la The Flaming Lips and Radiohead. Weezer, Ben Folds, and Death Cab are pretty much straight up alternative/indie pop. Postal Service is Ben Gibbard from Death Cab and Jimmy Tamborello from Dntel, an electronic/indie outfit. An illustrated history of “wimp rock” will have to include much of the music out there today, because by your definition, these bands are found everywhere. I mean you could even stick Del the Funky Homosapien and Eminem into a “wimp rap” category.
There just aren’t a lot of bands IMHO worth listening to with the deep voice/crashing instruments, and even many of those guys can easily be labeled as “wimpy” – I mean have you seen Chester from Linkin Park or read any of those guys’ lyrics?
Hey, hold on a second, everyone. Grandaddy is my absolute number one favorite band ever - Iron and Wine and Postal service following right behind. “Wimp Rock” is practically the only music I listen to. Do you think I’d be writing about music that I wasn’t interested in?
I’m proud to bear the label of “wimp.” I’m using this word positively, not negatively. I started using the term when I was discussing Grandaddy with someone, I told them I thought the Postal Service’s singer’s voice was similar to Jason Lytle’s, and he said, “yeah, it’s all wussed out.” But he wasn’t trying to insult it - he was just using the word that he felt fit it best. And I thought he was right.
The reason I’m using the term “wimp” is because the music it’s describing I see as the opposite of the aggressive, posturing, overly assertive themes in most rock and almost all rap. The whole in-your-face, I’ve-got-something-to-prove, I’m-a-stud, throw-your-hands-up mentality. Wimp rock is the antidote to the screaming, wailing, flailing, hard-rocking lifestyle - at least in my eyes. It’s sensitive music. It can be neurotic music. It is not the music of cocky alpha males. It’s the music of the guys who stood on the sidelines at the high school dance, the guys who would rather read or draw than play sports.
It’s MY music. It’s the music I identify with. I’m not trying to knock it.
Chill out, my brothers.
Don’t forget Poco and Pure Prairie League, Orleans and Ambrosia and Atlanta Rhythm Section, Dan Effin Fogelburg, Pablo Cruise, Barclay James Harvest, King Harvest, America, Hall and Oates, England Dan and John Ford Coley, Andrew Gold, Player, Firefall, Steve Forbert, Marshall Crenshaw, John Fucking Denver, Little River Band, Jesse Colin Young, Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds, Tavares, Boz Scaggs, the Fucking Carpenters, Henry Gross, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Dr. Hook, many many more. Wimps and wusses all, especially Dan fogelburg, who is so wimpy he does not have a penis. It’s true!
Stone Roses as wuss rock? Hell no.
Argent Towers
It doesn’t matter or not whether you like them. The bands that you identified in the OP are bands from across the indie music spectrum that only share a nominal, passing resemblance (much like a grouping of people with big noses or dark hair). We may say in the business that they have no real unifying descent and have convergently evolved into a similar product because, perhaps, a “wimpy” product is associated with a high level of band fitness in today’s indie music scene. Or that “wimp music” is not a monophyletic grouping. One could theorize the environmental factors associated with a high fitness of “wimpiness” or intricate music with good vocals that don’t seem angry – reaction to such shite as the 10,000 Pearl Jam knockoffs since 1991, the craptacular emo involution, overprocessed boy bands, rap-rock, other music industry bullshit, etc.
If you are going to start an illustrated history, then you are going to have to start with the beginnings of the independent music scene: punk, Madchester, Seattle, shoegazer, britpop, C-86, whatever: The Cambrian Explosion of independent/alternative music in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Even some of those first Burgess Shale alternative music groups could fit your OP description: J&MC, Ride, Galaxie 500, Charlatans UK, The Wedding Present, The Boo Radleys. One could reach back even further and recognize the pattern in everything from traditional music to folk music to The Beatles.
What we’ve had since then is a bunch of divergence as different bands have begun to occupy new niches in the music ecology. For instance, the Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Son Volt clade in the alt-country niche (previously occupied by such extinct species as Gram Parsons). Or the Flaming Lips/Grandaddy/kind of Radiohead clade, which now occupies the prog-rock/space-rock niche once populated by the very hardy species Pink Floyd (although recent research has indicated some very rare, extant members of that species). What is clear is that this is a robust, successful adaptation, that is found widely throughout the music world. Interestingly, much of its origin has not been through direct linear evolution, but through lateral and convergent spread.
P.S. For those who don’t think the Stone Roses are wussy, just go read the lyrics to “Sugar Spun Sister.” That’s either wussy or incest. I’m voting for wussy. BTW, that’s one of my all-time favorite albums…
Well this isn’t going to be the kind of illustrated history that would have the time or space to discuss every nook and cranny of the evolution of indie music. You have a point about the fact that those bands don’t have THAT much in common…this whole project is going to come together much better than it sounds. Don’t worry, I’ll tie these threads together. It’s not going to more than two or three pages long anyway - it’s more about the music that I personally like than anything aimed for entry into music history’s annals.
I’ll put up the comic when it’s done. As of now it’s just an idea, and I’m working on something else at the moment anyway.
Interesting OP. I think whereas a number of responders have listed “wimp” rock bands/artists, what I consider “wimp” rock are bands that considered themselves “rockers”, but were really wimps.
Cat Stevens may be considered “wimpy”. But then he never considered himself a real “rock and roller”. Same is true for a number of “wimps” listed here (Dan Folgelberg, John Denver, etc.)
So what I consider “wimp rock” is bands that wanted to think of themselves as “rockers”, but really weren’t. And I think the “split” from hardcore rock occured sometime in the 70’s. The bands I can think of are:
- The Eagles
- Journey (later years)
- Styx
- Yes (later years)
- Kenny Loggins
- The Cars
On the fence might be:
- REO Speedwagon
- Kansas
- Foreigner
Oh, the Eagles are the biggest bunch of whiny wussmarys out there. They are my all-time least-favorite band, but even if you like them, you have to admit they are “wimp rock.”
I do like Styx, though.
Chicago,
Crowded House,
Extreme,
and that band that did ‘The Final Countdown’, can’t remember their name at the moment.
Nena (99 Red Balloons)
Maybe more one hit wonders. Will keep thinking.
The band who made the most money from wimp rock is ABBA. Nobody else came close.
Europe!
Surely you jest? 
What’s your opinion on Poco?