To this day, although I’ve come a long way in digging reggae music, I prefer hearing The Clash do their version of reggae than almost any real reggae artist. Give me “Police and Thieves” with those crunchy guitars and awkward bass over the Junior Murvin original version any day, even though the original version is pretty great. If you put a gun to my head I may even admit that I prefer the bastardized reggae of The Police and Joe Jackson to most of the real thing. Not cool, but true.
I feel the same way about most Brian Jones-era Stones covers of slightly earlier R&B/early rock songs, like The Stones’ version of “Around and Around” over Chuck Berry’s original or their cover of The Valentinos’ “It’s All Over Now.” Mad props to the source material, but I’ll take the Stones!
Give me Paul Simon and Talking Heads doing whatever they’ve done with South African and South American music over most of what I hear by the people who inspired them. Not cool at all, I know, but I’ve never found King Sunny Ade‘s music, for instance, half as interesting as the best of Simon and Byrne. For starters, it’s nice to know what’s being sung. How do I know King Sunny’s not singing his culture’s equivalent of “Working for the Weekend?” I do, however, prefer the real Brazilian stuff that Byrne’s label has released to Byrne’s solo works in that same vein.
A lot of my favorite “country” songs are Elvis Costello’s pastiches of real country songs, songs like “Motel Matches.” One of the best things about Costello’s “country” originals is that the rhythm section gets to do cool fills. Real country rhythm sections usually sound to me like they’ve got the freedom of a lamb.
I can’t say the same for newer takes on Da Blooz, not even Da Blooz of Jeff Healy and Stevie Ray Vaughn. This is proof that more than Rockism is at play, right?
This posting just makes me sad. I’m glad you let yourself off the “rockist” hook. Me, I’m not so sure feeling dismissive of Jeff Healy proves anything except that respect for the blind has its limits.
Euro-centric music has a more constrained sense of rhythm than music from the Southern hemisphere. I think the friction of that restraint must be what appeals to you. Maybe there’s an element of emotional restraint necessary too, since you prefer the British thespian imitation to George Jone’s brand of hillbilly melodrama.
That said, I prefer Dion’s “Ruby Baby” to the Drifters.
-db
(I can’t believe you’re not more into Kenton. Such precision…)
Mr Costello does write country songs.
The Police did do reggae.
I think these artists took a style and made it their own and in doing so opened up the ears of their fans to a particular type of music of which up until that point they may have been deaf to.
I’m the same as you. I prefer a familiar framework upon which different musical styles are hung.
“The style remains the same. The words and music have been changed to protect the innocent”
C.
The Cool Patrol’s off duty today, Townsfolk. Artslap got the message. It’s safe to come clean on your experiences along these lines – or are you telling me you’ve always preferred the source material over the later stuff that led you back?
I know exactly what you mean. I’d rather hear The Stones play blues songs than hear Muddy Waters or Slim Harpo. I’d rather hear them or The Police play a reggae song. I love the way The Stones did Cherry Oh Baby, but I thought UB40 kind of screwed it up. the original by Eric Donaldson is probably too authentic for me, and I just don’t have a frame of reference for it.
Concerning Healy and Vaughan, I think they’re just too slick sounding for me. I think they infuse rock into blues, but not so much rock music as popular rock production values. I don’t think the blues work well that big. Actually, I don’t think much rock works well that big.
Thanks, 2K – and I bet you don’t feel that guilty about any of this, right? I think we’ve got more purists here than I would have imagined. I know once Saturnismine checked out the folk and blues tunes Jimmy Page ripped off he never spun another Zeppelin album.
I tried listening to a Hoagy Carmichael CD once and couldn’t get into it. If you consider Randy Newman a bastardization of him, then I prefer the bastardization.
I don’t think I’m much of a purist, but I have real problems with sampling old songs into new hits. I don’t understand that at all. Like that Kid Rock song about Sweet Home Motor City or whatever. I don’t think he should make any money from that. Those mashups bug me, too.
I am stepping out into a bold new adventure, though. My friend is burning me all the Led Zeppelin albums and I’m going to sit and listen to them with as open a mind as I can muster. I grew up with it and I hate getting the, “You need to really listen to it, maaan” even though I couldn’t escape them when I was a kid. I actually had a conversation with a guy that thinks they weren’t popular and were apparently some kind of underground band. I had to like his last attempt at persuading me to their greatness by telling me they had sold over 75 million albums, which proved how great they were. But soon, I’ll try once again.
I’m excited for you, 2K. I brushed off Zeppelin until sophomore year of college, but eventually I started to appreciate how great they were, silly parts and all. Each year I appreciate them more, although I still can’t stand their take on 10-minute blooz numbers. There’s one of those songs on every album. I will forever lift the needle over those tracks.
One of my best friends has had similar experiences concerning Zeppelin and others. I think he suffers from the “You-gotta-dig-on-Zep-if-you-play-drums-and-are-in-high-school” overkill. I think he simply wanted to discover and appreciate it himself. What he discovered was that he’s not a blues enthusiast but he likes what Zeppelin does with the blues. Much along the lines of the spirit and question of this post. He feels the same way about System of a Down (I am not familiar enough to make a judgement): He doesn’t like heavy metal music per se, but he likes the way they turn the genre onto itself with their own stamp.
I suppose myself feels that way about reggae. I love The Police and The Clash, but own absolutely no pure reggae albums. Not one. Not even the fames Marley. It just hasn’t or doesn’t hit me in the spiritual gut the same way it does many many people.
As for the blues, I like both Robert Johnson AND Led Zeppelin.
TB
I’m definitely the opposite. When I heard Graceland, it wasn’t long before I was buying dozens of Zulu jive albums. That developed into a broad interest in African music, which I probably listen to now as much as any other style of music.
I discovered Bob Marley and Toots & the Maytals in the mid 70s, and I now own dozens of reggae records. I find most reggae played by rock bands embarrassing. Roxanne is not reggae; I can’t even hear how it’s influenced by reggae. David Lindley’s old band El Rayo-Ex is one of the few rock bands I know that could play reggae, and come to think of it they’re a good example of a band that successfully incorporated other musical styles into their gumbo. Ry Cooder has been another one. He’s always had some Latin influences, but on his recent records he’s got some really cool California/Mexican sounds.
My problem is the opposite of the one some of you guys have. When I discover these styles, I don’t want them to develop and add modern or American influences. It’s like I want to freeze them in their pure form, even though I understand intellectually that the earliest form I know about is already impure. I love Congolese rumba guitar from the 60s and 70s, which wouldn’t have sounded the way it did without the influence of Cuban music, but I hated it when it got more discofied in the 90s. I mentioned last week that my interest in reggae pretty much ends in the mid 70s. I’d much rather listen to Charley Patton than Roomful of Blues. This is not fair to musicians who want to evolve, and it’s too easy to accuse people of selling out.
So on the one hand I’m suggesting that Anglo-American artists should let themselves be influenced by other styles of music, but I’m less willing to let the converse happen. I guess it’s kind of a colonial attitude, and i’m not proud of it.
Of course, I’m significantly in the other camp, especially as regards the blues. Blues tunes by the Stones are often poorly performed, without the precision of tone that is so essential to great blues. When they play rock and roll, that’s another matter, and on some level they were always playing rock and roll, but their early renditions of the blues are pretty pathetic.
Although it’s hardly a great song, I do prefer Toots and the Maytalls bastardized version of the source material “Country Roads,” written by a very odd aboriginal Colorado character whose roots I don’t quite understand. But that’s not what the Mod was trying to mean, I guess.
I’m literally astonished that anyone could prefer a mediocre pop band like the Police (who, I will admit, do have a few enjoyable tunes for the radio, though I don’t own any Police albums, and the one I did buy, I sold) to Marley, Burning Speark, Black Uhuru, Culture, among others. The Clash does pretty great reggae influenced material, but I don’t think of it as better than actual reggae. Like the Stones, on some level, the Clash are playing, as you put it, bastardized versions of reggae, and that’s actually what makes it work.
I need to think some more on this issue, because I feel like there must indeed be some songs that are best done by rock and roll rather than country/blues/jazz musicians, but right now I’m pretty stumped.
BigSteve, something you say about not being able to distinguish reggae influences in “Roxanne” reminds me of an old thread we had about rock songs influenced by reggae – it may have been a Last Man Standing. I think someone brought up “Hotel California,” which I believe stunned some of us. I think some may have doubted this connection. I don’t want to SPOIL anything in the Felder book that I know a lot of you are plugging away at reading, but let’s just say any doubt is addressed in Felder’s autobiography!
Mwall, your “Country Roads” example can stand. That’s a good one! Take your time thinking about this. I know you actually are a sincere appreciator of source material and not a Townsperson looking over his or her shoulder for The Cool Patrol.
I own very little actual reggae — I have the deluxe 2-disc reissue of The Harder They Come from a few years back — but I think that stuff is fantastic. I think if you like or love ’60s and ’70s rock and R&B, you’ll find plenty stuff to love in this era of reggae (or ska or rocksteady). There’s stuff like great Hammond organ/grand piano interplay and danceable rhythms; plus the general sonic and emotional clarity of the performances. Maybe it’s because of the distance in time, but that music doesn’t sound alien at all to me. Beats the hell out of The Police, that’s for sure.
I think my problems with the more pure forms of reggae are that the style is so limited and the music is very similar from song to song. Artists have different sounds, but songwise, their material seems the same. The swell thing about The Police or The Stones with reggae is that they dabble, and in three minutes they get along to a rock song (I have the musical attention span of a gnat sometimes).
When it comes to seeing a band live I have always enjoyed reggae and blues shows, but the records don’t do it for me.
2K, I like how you characterize the limitations in a lot of real reggae compared with its use in bastardized form in rock songs. The Harder They Come and The Wailers’ Burnin’ are as great, for me, as any albums I own. There’s diversity to the music, production, and lyrics that stimulates my mind as well as my body.
There’s a relaxed ART to Burnin’ that I find unparalelled in the other Marley albums I own. The only other one that comes close is the pre-Island ROCK OUT version of what I believe is his next album. You burned me both the original and the breakthrough “rock” versions, BigSteve. I love the way Burnin’ sounds like a deliberate attempt at making a work of recorded art while keeping within Marley’s own culture. I may be glorifying a bunch of stuff, but to my ears Burnin’ sounds as novel and “true” as Revolver. Once Marley got onto the Starmaker Machinery in full force I could hear the seams, too readily hear him trying to make BIG STATEMENTS and reach BROAD AUDIENCES. There are still plenty of strong songs, but it doesn’t sound like something special and personal as much as it does on that one album I love by him.
This, then, gets to a major problem I have with a lot of real reggae: it either sounds too unselfconsious and artless to hold my attention for repeated, deep listening (ie, those same two chords with lyrics about smoking dope), or it sounds too forced, too willing to play up to Whitey’s idea of a powerful, new, political form of music. The latter gets into “revolutionary” Jefferson Airplane/Starship territory. How many dope-smoking musicians do I need to hear tell me about how they’re going to change the world and overthrow the forces of The Man?
Hrrundi, what’s your take on the hippie sympathies of reggae artists?
I almost invariably prefer the source material. Of course covers helped me discover the original source, but after I followed the thread back to say, Howlin Wolf, it’s tough to make it through the two Willie Dixon songs on the first Zeppelin album. To me, preferring the Zepplin style blues is similar to living near Mara’s in South Philly but ordering your pizza from Dominos.
For some reason I’m okay with rock bands screwing up country songs but I’m not sure why.
There’s a big difference (in my mind, at least) between some one being influenced by other non-rock types of music (eg Marc Ribot’s Cuban infused guitar style), and some one wholesale adopting a style (Paul Simon’s various projects). The former seems like growth, the latter seems like something else, laziness? Carpet bagging?
This last point might belong in a previous thread. I’m just catching up.
I know this is shocking, but count me in as a bastard!
I guess it has more to do with which you heard first. To me George Thorogood, Joan Jett, The Honeydrippers, Stray Cats, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Fabulous Thunderbirds were just ROOTS music (and I knew them before I knew the artists they took from…again being a kid in the early 1980’s. I didn’t notice/care/get that they were revivalists any more than that The Rolling Stones, Beatles, Animals, etc were. They all came from Chuck Berry (who of course stole most of it himself)
“real” Reggae is damn cool, but I can’t take a whole day of it, so 3 police songs mixed in with their pop/rock/new wave does the trick (although Marley’s mid/late 70’s stuff is freakin’ perfection)Or someone like Zappa that can nail all kinds of stuff in a single album or show but you can hate a waltz and know that it will not be an entire CD of waltzes.
And Costello has always written and performed country music. Is he a revivalist? maybe, since he does not write “modern country” per se
one other thought…
My favorite bands were the ones who tried to be purists and failed (the Beatles played american music in Europe on German instruments, the Stones were f’d up and not black, The Ramones didn’t know how to work their amps so they put all knobs on 10) the failure was the unique sound (The Police were a failed punk band — too “good” to be successful punks)
So The Clash trying to do reggae and failing is what is interesting, otherwise they would just be a copy band
This is sorta my sentiments, too, jungle. I’m not trying to say that The Police are better than reggae, I just like what they did with that style. My own experience with pure reggae music is very limited. I haven’t opened myself to it yet. I know that once I delve deeply into the reggae waters, I will find many pleasures. I just haven’t. I don’t see The Police as a reggae band in the same way that I don’t see The Clash as a punk band. They may come from those particular roots, but I don’t see them as that style. I guess that’s why what they do is a bastardized version. I’m sure I would love Marley over Sting and Co. once I really discover him.
It’s their failure to be pure (insert musical style here) that make those artist interesting.
TB