"Rock Hall nominees include The Stooges"
First thought on the above headline (link is in the title) was did they include Shemp?
Also how does Abba or ABBA (guess the copy editor couldn't decide) qualify as a rock band? Getting inducted into the RHOF seems kind of like getting a gig on one of the late night TV shows- hang around long enough and you'll get on. A more accurate but less catchy title would be the Pop Music Hall of Fame (since 1950 minus the squares). Also having the KISS (Kiss?) Army protest is worth not not voting them in- that sounds more fun than the induction ceremony.
Is Genesis really art-rock? I would have put them more in the corporate rock category. Maybe there's a dividing line for before and after Peter Gabriel.
posted by New England Guy @ 10:24 AM
4 Comments:
Rock and roll is a state of mind. The Stooges were definitely in that state.
If you want to categorize a group under a single moniker, I think you can call Genesis "art rock". Their output from 1970 to 1977 included some of the most representative albums of the progressive rock genre. This included their output until Gabriel left in 1975, as well as two albums with Collins as singer (Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering). It was really after guitarist Steve Hackett left in 1978 that the band moved in a more pop direction.
And even their mainstream commercial rock / stadium rock albums in their later days always included one or two long songs with multiple sections in them.... although, except for "Home By The Sea", the long songs didn't get the airplay that their pop songs did.
(I prefer the English term "progressive rock" to the American term "art rock", which is a lot more vague.)
So you can call Genesis art/prog just like you can call Blondie "New Wave" -- that's where their roots were, and they never completely abandoned those roots when they moved in a commercial direction.
The big question is: will Gabriel reunite with them for a few songs at the Hall of Fame induction? The last time they did a reunion concert was in 1982.
Sadly, Peter has bought into the whole "prog rock is a betrayal of rock's true roots" school of thought popularized by Lester Bangs and LAGuy, and he seems to have no interest in reunions....
In the early days of punk there actually were two sides, always threatening to split. One was the "art rock" side, the other "let's rock out." In general, they stripped things down, but originally punk was more DIY, and if you wanted complex, lengthy songs, such as, say, those created by Television, that was punk as well. Bands that lasted more than an album or two, like The Clash or Talking Heads, often struck out toward new musical horizons. And one can see this dichotomy in the proto-punk of the Velvet Underground. But this sort of thing happens in many genres of music, as they move into their decadent phase.
I've written about how I used to listen to a lot of prog-rock, but I have to admit, when I heard punk (which I had resisted for a while), I was awoken from my dogmatic slumber.
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