Sunday 15 January 2012

Postmodernism in Rock 3

Actually it was Iron Maiden and it was Paschendale (see below) But I've got the first two Boston albums coming my way for a pound each and I can't wait. Boston are clearly the unhippest band in the world right now but in 1976 you couldn't have moved without More Than a Feeling, and the fact that the Darkness copied them....well!
1977's Heroes by David Bowie was the first album I bought that I knew my older brother had no interest in. Heroes is a modernist enterprise. Berlin blotted out the rest of the landscape. Lyrically it is pretty much pure 'cut up''fold in' whatever, the WS Burroughs technique that jumbles things up to make a strange kind of sense if you enjoy his cocaine fueled detective show; 'Somethings going down the chips are down I'm under Japanese influence and my honour's at stake...You wake up and sleep, You can b(u)y god, it's monday, slither down the greasy pole.... ' Robert Frip played guitar however he wanted and Eno was still interesting. The bloody things been reverberating round my head for weeks after one playing on Christmas Eve.
Of course, punk was also a modernist enterprise, busses going to Nowhere and Boredom, no longer 'Further' like the Merry Pranksters school bus. Very apt, and the best singles, such as The Ruts 'In a Rut' a pure reinterpretation of the blues even if they didn't give a damn (see also The Stranglers).

No comments:

Post a Comment