catachresis
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2004
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"Classic Rock Kills" - The Strokes ought to have this tattooed on their foreheads. Jimmy Page already does. Funny how the label drains everything distinctive out of the music. Canonical status makes you and your band immortal, but only after it has consumed your soul. It giveth and taketh away.
Which is prefatory to the fact that I recently had a hankering for Steve Miller's The Joker, but Tower Recs in Dublin doesn't carry a lot of S.M.B., so I surfaced with a copy of Fly Like an Eagle. Serendipity.
This needs a little explanation. 1976 was the apex of America's Aquarian optimism, and Fly Like an Eagle contains a melange of electronica/psychedelic/folk rock influences that is reminiscent of The Byrd's most ambitious but least popular concept albums of the late 60s - The Notorious Byrd Bros. and Dr. Byrd and Mr. Hyde. Those were albums that remarkably stretched the tangents between traditional folk, classic country and aggressive hard rock and psychedelia. It didn't always work, but the ambition has to be admired. A similar, indisputably successful effort is the genre-crossing What's Goin' On, which combined psychedelia, soul and gospel. What fuses the modes is Marvin Gaye's fierce, evangelical conviction that a new generation of listeners are going to recognise that a holy revolution is in the works. The fury of "Inner-city Blues" is sublimated by the expectation that the Children of Peace are still going to save the world.
Southern Rock is a different animal altogether from The Byrds or Gaye: you'll get a lot of things out of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but lambs taking naps with lions in the earthly paradise isn't one of them.
Miller's Fly Like an Eagle is a crazy mixture of solid Texan-blues and country with more exotic lacings. "Rock 'n Me," "Dance, Dance, Dance," "You Send Me" and "Mercury Blues" were there to reassure the base that The Joker wasn't betraying his fan core. "Take the Money and Run" is a real anomaly -- a boogie-driven pop athem of the candy-flossiest sweetness that extolled armed-robbery and assault (maybe homicide). It's Southern proto-punk: a paeon to the urge to burn-down the suburbs and its conformist anomie and get truly free -- even if that means fugitive-free (and, I think it's worth noting, these young punks manage to find a girlfriend/boyfriend, which is miles beyond what you'd ever have expected The Circle Jerks to have achieved).
That hardcore Southern libertarianism is moderated by the equal and balancing influences of millenarian new-age spirituality and democratic social consciousness. "Mountain Honey" and "Serenade" are extraordinary Eastern-tinged prog-poppers. "The Window" evokes the powers of "peace and harmony" while condemning thoughtless materialism. Most forcibly, "Fly Like an Eagle" combines the radicalised urge for individualistic freedom and flight from tradition with the irrepressible confidence that the liberated will save the world -- starting, doubtless, with Texas. Of course, that sentiment is easy to laugh at now, but you can get a sense of wonderment from hearing Steve Miller's conviction in Fly Like an Eagle.
I don't think there's any place in America that's quite so stuck now as the South. Fly Like an Eagle expresses a vibe I remember though from '76, a feeling a lot of young Southerners had that the shame and horror of segregation and rural poverty that had dominated the region were being remedied. The New South was at hand, so if you felt like having a toke and then kicking your tv screen in, then you could just rave-on, Bro. It didn't wind up like that, but then Marvin Gay couldn't fix Detroit's inner-city blues either. Still, in the present historical moment, which feels so inpenetrably cynical, it feels good to channel a time when Southern Rock was appealing to every bubba's best and freakiest nature.
Which is prefatory to the fact that I recently had a hankering for Steve Miller's The Joker, but Tower Recs in Dublin doesn't carry a lot of S.M.B., so I surfaced with a copy of Fly Like an Eagle. Serendipity.
This needs a little explanation. 1976 was the apex of America's Aquarian optimism, and Fly Like an Eagle contains a melange of electronica/psychedelic/folk rock influences that is reminiscent of The Byrd's most ambitious but least popular concept albums of the late 60s - The Notorious Byrd Bros. and Dr. Byrd and Mr. Hyde. Those were albums that remarkably stretched the tangents between traditional folk, classic country and aggressive hard rock and psychedelia. It didn't always work, but the ambition has to be admired. A similar, indisputably successful effort is the genre-crossing What's Goin' On, which combined psychedelia, soul and gospel. What fuses the modes is Marvin Gaye's fierce, evangelical conviction that a new generation of listeners are going to recognise that a holy revolution is in the works. The fury of "Inner-city Blues" is sublimated by the expectation that the Children of Peace are still going to save the world.
Southern Rock is a different animal altogether from The Byrds or Gaye: you'll get a lot of things out of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but lambs taking naps with lions in the earthly paradise isn't one of them.
Miller's Fly Like an Eagle is a crazy mixture of solid Texan-blues and country with more exotic lacings. "Rock 'n Me," "Dance, Dance, Dance," "You Send Me" and "Mercury Blues" were there to reassure the base that The Joker wasn't betraying his fan core. "Take the Money and Run" is a real anomaly -- a boogie-driven pop athem of the candy-flossiest sweetness that extolled armed-robbery and assault (maybe homicide). It's Southern proto-punk: a paeon to the urge to burn-down the suburbs and its conformist anomie and get truly free -- even if that means fugitive-free (and, I think it's worth noting, these young punks manage to find a girlfriend/boyfriend, which is miles beyond what you'd ever have expected The Circle Jerks to have achieved).
That hardcore Southern libertarianism is moderated by the equal and balancing influences of millenarian new-age spirituality and democratic social consciousness. "Mountain Honey" and "Serenade" are extraordinary Eastern-tinged prog-poppers. "The Window" evokes the powers of "peace and harmony" while condemning thoughtless materialism. Most forcibly, "Fly Like an Eagle" combines the radicalised urge for individualistic freedom and flight from tradition with the irrepressible confidence that the liberated will save the world -- starting, doubtless, with Texas. Of course, that sentiment is easy to laugh at now, but you can get a sense of wonderment from hearing Steve Miller's conviction in Fly Like an Eagle.
I don't think there's any place in America that's quite so stuck now as the South. Fly Like an Eagle expresses a vibe I remember though from '76, a feeling a lot of young Southerners had that the shame and horror of segregation and rural poverty that had dominated the region were being remedied. The New South was at hand, so if you felt like having a toke and then kicking your tv screen in, then you could just rave-on, Bro. It didn't wind up like that, but then Marvin Gay couldn't fix Detroit's inner-city blues either. Still, in the present historical moment, which feels so inpenetrably cynical, it feels good to channel a time when Southern Rock was appealing to every bubba's best and freakiest nature.
