# Is It Rock and Roll...or Not? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 24, 2017, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766 "2017-10-24T22:40:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2017, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/41 "2017-11-04T02:30:55Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > Why? To me, it sounds like rock as interpreted by someone writing for musical theatre. There’s just no edge to it. It just sounds very sanitized and clean. It’s one of those things that’s kind of hard to pin down, like whether a song “swings” or not. That song most definitely does not “rock” at all. It’s a somewhat clever and well structured song, but it’s just missing that grit, that danger, that _something_. (The music nerd part of me does enjoy the simple drum fill after “aimed at your average teen,” though. The song is a triplet feel shuffle, and instead of something usual like a triplet pattern down the kit, the drummer throws in sixteenth notes–so groupings of four where three would be usual for the feel of the song. Gives it a nice little bit of rhythmic interest.) ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2017, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/42 "2017-11-04T03:01:49Z")
> [@drad\_dog](#): > > I think power pop fans of the time would have (Actually they did) hated it. Big power pop fan here. I like Jessie’s Girl. So do the [Foo Fighters and their fans.](https://youtu.be/xhGBLL76bs4) ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2017, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/43 "2017-11-04T03:38:34Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > Big power pop fan here. I like Jessie’s Girl. So do the [Foo Fighters and their fans.](https://youtu.be/xhGBLL76bs4) Strangely enough Grohl is a huge fan of Andrew Gold too. He’s kind of a softy. I think he knows how cheesy Jessie’s Girl is, don’t you? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2017, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/44 "2017-11-04T03:42:48Z")
Speaking of Jessie’s Girl, I’ve always like the [Jimmy Kimmel skit](https://www.facebook.com/JimmyKimmelLive/videos/10153481746613374/) on that. (And yes, “Jessie’s Girl” is unabashedly power pop.) ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2017, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/45 "2017-11-04T09:25:16Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > To me, it sounds like rock as interpreted by someone writing for musical theatre. There’s just no edge to it. It just sounds very sanitized and clean. It’s one of those things that’s kind of hard to pin down, like whether a song “swings” or not. That song most definitely does not “rock” at all. It’s a somewhat clever and well structured song, but it’s just missing that grit, that danger, that _something_. (The music nerd part of me does enjoy the simple drum fill after “aimed at your average teen,” though. The song is a triplet feel shuffle, and instead of something usual like a triplet pattern down the kit, the drummer throws in sixteenth notes–so groupings of four where three would be usual for the feel of the song. Gives it a nice little bit of rhythmic interest.) **Regarding the Billy Joel song It’s Still Rock n’ Roll to me.** Yep, that’s what I came into say. It sounds like someone on Broadway singing about rock and roll in a B’way sort of way. It’s a song that gets people who consider themselves rockers angry because it claims that “it’s one of us” when it’s not. It is the song equivalent of a totally square parent trying to claim that they get their kids’ music when the kid wants to curl up and die at the association. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2017, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/46 "2017-11-04T09:29:14Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > Big power pop fan here. I like Jessie’s Girl. So do the [Foo Fighters and their fans.](https://youtu.be/xhGBLL76bs4) Watch Grohl’s documentary **Sound City** - seriously, he did a great job on it and the story of that recording studio has a number of important moments in it. One of the studio’s first big artists was Rick Springfield - they also had a relationship with Pat Benatar, which is how Neil Giraldo ended up playing on Jessie’s Girl - so when Grohl was making the documentary, he involved Springfield and they hung out a lot. No surprise at all that they remain friends. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2017, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/47 "2017-11-04T15:37:18Z")
“Power pop” to me implies a high degree of tunefulness/hooks in addition to having a rock and roll core. (if you look up power pop in the encyclopedia, [this is the entry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov_ByEAACok)). Definitely rock n’ roll. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/48 "2017-11-04T18:53:28Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I’m not even sure I’d go so far as to say it usually uses a pentatonic scale. It’s certainly not uncommon, but most rock and roll songs I can think of go outside vanilla pentatonics. Even straight-up blues is usually at least hexatonic, with the sharp-4/flat-5 added to the minor pentatonic scale. I’d say the defining melodic and harmonic characteristics of straight-up rock and roll is the use of 7th chords (even on the tonic), a tension between the major and minor third (especially in piano parts, where a “slide” from the minor to major third is quite common.) In many ways, I think of early rock and roll as a cross between blues and country, so, I guess in a way, it’s major and minor pentatonics mixed together. If I’m doing a solo on something like Johnny B Goode or Rock Around the Clock on piano, I’m generally choosing among the tonic, the second, the minor third, the major third, the fourth, the flat five, the five, the sixth, and the dominant seventh. Dude, I can hear that solo in my head already. We have to jam. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2017, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/49 "2017-11-05T19:09:37Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > To me, it sounds like rock as interpreted by someone writing for musical theatre. There’s just no edge to it. It just sounds very sanitized and clean. It’s one of those things that’s kind of hard to pin down, like whether a song “swings” or not. That song most definitely does not “rock” at all. It’s a somewhat clever and well structured song, but it’s just missing that grit, that danger, that _something_. (The music nerd part of me does enjoy the simple drum fill after “aimed at your average teen,” though. The song is a triplet feel shuffle, and instead of something usual like a triplet pattern down the kit, the drummer throws in sixteenth notes–so groupings of four where three would be usual for the feel of the song. Gives it a nice little bit of rhythmic interest.) > [@WordMan](#): > > **Regarding the Billy Joel song It’s Still Rock n’ Roll to me.** > > Yep, that’s what I came into say. It sounds like someone on Broadway singing about rock and roll in a B’way sort of way. > > It’s a song that gets people who consider themselves rockers angry because it claims that “it’s one of us” when it’s not. It is the song equivalent of a totally square parent trying to claim that they get their kids’ music when the kid wants to curl up and die at the association. I totally hear ya! :D. I never liked that song but could never put my finger on why. You guys are spot-on. I saw Billy Joel at the Garden a couple of weeks ago. I’m not a huge BJ fan by any means, but I got a free ticket. It was an amazing show. He’s truly a first-class entertainer, and I’m actually thinking of going again. It was thoroughly enjoyable from end-to-end. I even enjoyed the songs I’m not fond of - except for It’s Still Rock’n’Roll to Me and Uptown Girl. Bleh. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/50 "2017-11-07T02:49:28Z")
> [@WordMan](#): > > Watch Grohl’s documentary **Sound City** - seriously, he did a great job on it and the story of that recording studio has a number of important moments in it. Thanks for the recommendation. I really enjoyed Sound City. Loved the segment where Stevie and Lindsey met Mick Fleetwood–some great photos of them in studio. I got a hoot out of the portrait Dave has hanging in Studio 606–he’s sitting in a high-backed chair, wearing a red velvet smoking jacket, holding a glass of brandy in one hand and a cigarette(?) in the other. Oh, Rick Springfield’s contribution to the project’s soundtrack,[The Man That Never Was](https://youtu.be/JtxFfWmPQpo) ? Definitely rock and roll. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766/51 "2017-11-07T18:31:31Z")
The preoccupation with what’s rock is funny to me. I knew early on that some rock was good and some good was rock. And there was a lot of other stuff out there too if you get my meaning. But underlining music that “rocks” as being better than something that doesn’t seems absurd to me. It used to be that rock and roll was a steady back beat, or maybe it was just some cohort of singers that started up around 1956. Then it was seen that the Beatles had begun something new and it was called “rock” instead of rock and roll. Heavy metal, before modern technology, was trying to sound “scary.” Now it’s a technological product. They have the tools to make sounds so that they don’t have to rely on sounding like a 1950s horror movie theme anymore. Things that “rock,” at least in the hard rock or metal fields, are tending to sound like some kind of technocratic assault, like the airlock on a space ship emptying and then filling up constantly. You can hear this, and will adopt some “sound” as your own, if you are a teenager, although it has nothing to do with the music that’s being made in the world. Music can be replaced by other stuff in the mind without much drama or notice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-rock-and-roll-or-not/799766.md?page=2)