To pick up and run with an idea expounded here by Ricki and Julie, I think it is true that Rock 'n' Roll, and popular music in general, have really lost the good voices. The rockers and crooners of the '50s and '60s did know how to sing, while the later generations, to a great extent, did not.
But another idea has bounced around my head for many years now, and to a degree it ties in with Brian's post here. That post has morphed into a fun repository of great lines from "WKRP in Cincinnati", to which you should go immediately and add your favorites. But after you finish reading this post.
Anyway, the way it ties in is from this exchange, which goes (as best I can recall) as follows:
Johnny: So you guys play punk rock.Well, sad to say, it's not just punk rockers who dress deplorably.Blood: No, we play hoodlum rock. It's several notches below punk rock.
Johnny: What's the difference?
Blood: Well, for one thing, punk rockers dress deplorably
STRANGE INTERLUDE ABOUT PUNK ROCK: Back when I was kid, I didn't understand why construction workers wanted to beat up people (hippies) simply because of how they looked. Then punk rock came around, and suddenly I understood. Too bad Sid Vicious died on his own before I could kick his ass.
Where was I? Oh yeah, rockers dressing deplorably. It's true. This post has been bouncing around my poor little synapses for a while, but I was inspired to go ahead and write it by my searching the 'net to put together this post, as well as the discussions here and here.
When I went looking for Buddy Holly material to trigger trivia questions, I was (not for the first time) struck by how well the rockers of the '50s dressed. This was true of all the greats from the '50s and early '60s, no matter how odd their onstage antics. It even held into the mid '60s.
Sadly, something was lost during the "Summer of F***ing Our Drug-addled Brains Out", and rockers and pop singers in general began dressing deplorably. Worse, their sartorial slovenliness slopped over into other areas. Where once Country/Western and Bluegrass musicians dressed well, more slovenliness has crept in and settled.
Somewhere, something was lost. I'd like ro see it come back. I know, there are a few throwbacks to the nicer styles (I might know of more examples if I followed current music more closely) but by and large it seems that popular music has been sartorially castrated.
I think it's kind of a shame.
Posted by Ken S at July 29, 2007 04:12 PM | TrackBack (0) |With what they charge for concerts these days, musicians should dress like f-in Liberace.
My days of paying 60 bucks apiece to sit in the middle of dope-smoking, cell-phone-ringing, song-name-shouting lobotomized drunks in order to watch 60something aging hippies warble medleys of their hits... those days are over.
My only exception: The Sainted Gipsy Kings.
I don't know the Gipsy Kings. Should I?
Posted by: Ken S, Fifth String on the Banjo of Life at July 29, 2007 05:41 PMOh.
My.
Gosh.
YOU DON'T KNOW THE GIPSY KINGS???
Go immediately to www.gipsykings.com, click on "Discography" at the bottom, and press down the ">" to get to The Best Of The Gipsy Kings" and listen to Volare, Bamboleo, Baila Me, etc. My favorite is Triste Pena. (Note: A Mi Manera is a wonderful version of "My Way". It's on "Volare: The Very Best of The Gipsy Kings.)
You haven't lived until you've heard 16,000 people chanting "BAMBOLEOOOOO" live in concert.
No, I don't know what the words mean, but the passion just reaches out and grabs you.
Check it out!
Robert Palmer. Mmmmmmmm.
(Yes, gents, there IS a difference between a guy in a suit and tie and a guy in jeans and a "Big Johnson" or Old-Navy-fake-bar t-shirt. I will be MUCH more likely to consent to go to dinner or a movie or whatever with a chap who is at least wearing a shirt with a collar...or at least wearing a shirt that doesn't have a sexual double entendre printed on it. I know ties are uncomfortable and suits are hot, but the look is so much nicer.
Even well-pressed, well-fitted jeans (like the "cowboys" around where I live wear) are a more attractive look than the old, knee-blown, looks-like-they-were-picked-up-off-the-laundry-room-floor jeans that so many people wear.
That said: yes, I do generally "dress" for work myself, at least when I'm likely to be dealing with students or people from other universities. I may not always wear stockings [I think a heat index over 90 should excuse one from having to do that], but I do wear the nice skirt-and-blouse or dress.)
Posted by: ricki at July 30, 2007 06:21 AM
