Been traveling; not as much ability to post. Have been watching this thread; lots of interesting suggestions and discussion.
I guess I would try to “chart the course” of rock and roll and figure things out from there. I doubt I can make much headway in this post - I have a meeting coming up.
Rock n Roll gets popularized as both a white-crossover version of R n’ B and as the “coming out” signal that the Teenager has arrived as a distinct demographic: Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets
RnR gets acknowledged as a massive phenomenon - not sure if we should go with Elvis’ Sun recordings or his first album with RCA - given the buy-out of his contract and Elvis’ involvement in the production of the RCA albums, rock was becoming huge.
Writing your own songs starts to matter - Buddy Holly, The Beatles
Motown, where the songs stand on their own and don’t need to be covered by white artists to get heard, increasing the crossover between white and black commercial music
The studio becomes its own art form - Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, The Beatle’s Revolver, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds
Political Statements - Dylan’s Freewheelin’ etc. (also adding the influence of folk more to rock). What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye, on Motown, was an explosive, revolutionary album in this regard. None bigger.
The shift to Blues-based rock and the introduction of the Les Paul as a canonical guitar for the British blues invasion - **Let’s Dance Away and Hide Away **by Freddie/ Freddy King (spellings vary) - hard to get more revolutionary; completely changed how the Brits looked at blues, along with the Butterfield Blues Band’s first couple of albums. The first Brit album that captured all this and was responsible for Clapton is God graffiti and shaped the Les Paul + Marshall sound was John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers featuring Eric Clapton…featuring a cover of Freddie King’s Hideaway. Here’sa great version by Freddie on the local Texas music show !!!The Beat!!! from 1966…
Excellent post. I couldn’t agree more. But - the most recent music you mention is mid '60s. Was there nothing revolutionary after then? (Or did you just run out of time?)
It might be argued that The Doors first album was, if not revolutionary, at least unique in its sound and message. Few, if any, have been successful in replicating it.
Just a joke. It’s an SDMB meme - there was a thread where the references to “Rio by Duran Duran” were just pounded into the ground, so now when anyone asks for a music list, someone mentions it. I was going to throw **Bearflag **a shout-out for it, but forgot to…
Use of Distortion - first gen was tracks like Rumble, by Link Wray (Jimmy Pages biggest influence, according to him in It Might Get Loud), the Rock and Roll Trio’s Honey Hush and Train Kept a Rollin’. But the track that happened right when the world’s mind was opening up to rock and roll was You Really Got Me, by the Kinks. Oh, and the feedback intro to I Feel Fine by the Beatles…
Establishing the “modern template” for a good-sounding rock studio album - The Beatles, probably Help or Rubber Soul. The key here was the bass - they established the “bass forward” sound that most folks don’t realize is the dividing line between what sounds old vs. what sounds like “today’s” rock. Geoff Emerick, the engineer on some of their albums and the author of a great memoir Here, there and Everywhere, describes how they would get the mix about right but a bit low, and then increase the bass levels until they got the overall level they needed. This pushed the bass forward.
Big Drums; the template for the Classic Rock mix on a studio record - Led Zeppelin. Bonham was known as the loudest drummer around live - what was remarkable was the Page wanted to actually capture that in the studio. So between that huge drum sound and the innovative “guitars panned hard to one side, bass panned hard to the other side, vocals and drums in the middle of the mix” you had THE recipe for the sound of a rock record for the next 20 - 25 years.
the blockbuster live album - James Brown, Live at the Apollo. No one has done it better before or since. Set the bar high from the beginning. The Allman Brothers Band’s Live at Fillmore East is up there, too, but JB was ahead of them by 6 or more years. And the ABB’s was more revolutionary in introducing Southern Rock, with jazz and jam-band influences all wrapped up in a great package.
Art Rock - Velvet Underground and Nico
Introducing theatre and characters to conflate the sincerity of rock with the acting out of a story - Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust - feels different vs. Tommy or other concept albums. Tommy has already been mentioned and I agree with its place as a pivotal artistic Big Statement - it raised the bar for ambition; more so vs. Sgt Peppers which established the Concept Album, but really didn’t have much of a concept. Tommy - that had a concept.
You might not like OK Computer and Radiohead, but judging by the number of bands who imitated the sound and atmosphere of the album through the '90s there is no way to deny its influence.
I would put U2’s The Joshua Tree on the list somewhere. Or some album by U2. They were certainly one of the most influential bands of the '80s, when I was in college. I remember how fresh and different their first album seemed, along with REM’s Murmur, which was previously mentioned.
One of the most influential modern groups I believe is Animal Collective. Their off-beat songwriting and emphasis on intricate vocal work can be heard on albums by Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear (and of course there are animals in their names).
Legend is not really an album, it’s a greatest-hits compilation focusing on Bob’s later years. A couple of the late-period albums that it draws from are indeed among his best musically, and refined reggae as a global pop form.
But the principal revolution was in the records that helped define reggae in the first place, and brought Jamaican roots to the world: the Upsetter/Trojan label records, and the first two Island label records.
There’s no one right answer - it’s just fun to discuss. Moon certainly was in there, but I think his playing opened up over time - the drums on the early albums didn’t sound nearly as huge as they ended up sounding on later Who albums. Here is an old threadabout contrasting The Who and Zep…
Since no one has gone there yet, I’ll just mention what is arguably the first fully psychedelic album, Donovan’s Sunshine Superman, released in Sept. 1966 in the US. Other artists had made some tentative moves in that direction, but Donovan jumped in headfirst with this album, packed with raga-rock, Celtic-sounding mysticism, and spacy blues- and jazz-tinged pieces.
(Note: If someone wants to claim that The Fugs or Freak Out! is the first psychedelic album, I won’t argue.)
Who’s Next - truly integrated the synthesizer into a great rock album
Magnetic South by Michael Nesmith and the First National Band - Not well known by the public, but highly influential on the development of country rock
Sure, “Tomorrow Never Knows” is an extremely psychedelic song. Numerous artists were making forays into psychedelia in 1966. The thing about Sunshine Superman is that the entire album is basically drenched in psychedelia.