Roxy Music -> King Crimson -> Yes (& Genesis, ELP, Soft Machine, etc.)

Having an (currently) unhealthy fascination/obsession with Krautrock it was natural to start revisiting that other bastion of 70's out-there rock, the UK. Krautrock is great and requisitely wierd & exotic, but they *all* (ok, maybe not all) were taking more tips from bands like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, than from the more oft reported Ayler, Stockhausen or Dada. And if you open your ears and listen to what can be easily ignored as Prog you can hear even more of the greatness that is 70's music (the best decade for rock music?).

Retrospectively it's easy to clump British Art/Prog/Post-Psychadelic Rock off into little sectors or genres. Roxy Music goes there in Art-Rock/Glam (throw Bowie in there too), King Crimson & ELP go in here in Prog, Soft Machine and Gong go over in the Cantebury scene, etc. The reality is not so simple. Not that these classifications are worthless but they don't reflect the reality on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, that is I don't think Phil Collins and Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt and Robert Fripp saw themselves as working in different genres. Sure they end up sounding vastly different but in essence they were approaching the same problem, with generally similar POV. That is say taking the (middle-class striver) gauntlet thrown down by the "ART" of the Beatles late-60's album. (I got yr ART right here!) Driving it home is the fact they cross-pollinated heavily. Phil Collins and Robert Fripp played on Eno's solo albums. Eno and Fripp played on/produced Wyatt's 2nd Matching Mole album.

It's not like it these groups weren't successful either. College kids (in the UK) ate this stuff up as a sign of rock'n'roll sophistication in the face of the oncoming onslaught of (percieved) dumbing down of rock via Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The still-another-step-down-the-cool-ladder and mega-selling prog groups of Yes and ELP can just as well included in the 70's art rock scene. Greg Lake of ELP was in the first incarnation of King Crimson. Bill Bruford (of early Yes) was in King Crimson mk 2. (on a side-note; How great is the Lark's Tongue -> Red version of KC? Fucking Great.)

Maybe significantly in the UK the Beatles were a *cultural* phenomenon as opposed to more of a *pop* phenomenon in the US. I'm sure heads were opened by the psychadelics in the US, but most were to worried about following the Grateful Dead or dancing in the rain at Woodstock, unlike in the UK, where the Beatles were serious Artistes. An aspirational Goal to shoot for.

Not surprising then the UK art-rockers weren't trying to make a new Outside statement, but trying to make the next great step in Inside statements up until when the mask was pulled off (via Punk and Time) and prog rockers shunted off into more LCD pop friendly territory. Indie labels not being a thing in the 70's art rockers generally recorded for major labels. The M.O. being working with Virgin/Richard Branson or Island Records (the analog to hippies working with David Geffen). With the changing times people moved to the poles, with a previously united art-rock camp split twix insider strivers and outsider pioneers. See Phil Collins/Genesis. See Peter Gabriel. Even see Eno working w/U2. On the other side of the coin you have Robert Wyatt at Rough Trade and Fred Frith trudging through the DIY underground with the Art Bears. One way to look at it is a culling posuers from not; another (and more proper) way is the times changed. The cynic says the curtain was dropped away from the Wizard; the even more cynical that the Wizard just changed his look. Oh Well I digress.

(another side note -> I'd argue that US Punk: Ramones, Talking Heads, Pere Ubu, Blondie (and frankly VU too) was working from this same Art-Rock paradigm. Even David Thomas says as much. They weren't making prole music but instead they were making the new edge-y establishment music.) (And one last thought; maybe it wasn't the musicians/music that changed but the market and the labels?)

To sum it up: check out King Crimson, Roxy Music and Soft Machine.

Yale Beat Down

For those of you not in the Bay Area (or an Eli) presumably this big bay area story has passed you by:

Yale A-Capella group gets beat up by San Francisco Prep school students on New Year's Eve, Yale students SHOCKED

and a month later it's still on the FRONT PAGE OF THE SF CHRONICLE

and a month after that the story's changed a little

When this story was first pointed out to me I had read it as Yale students beat up in Richmond, a rough & tumble community north of Oakland, which popped out as a ridiculous class conflict vignette (aka Yalies sing A-capella to working class youths; get the shit beat out of them) but in fact it occurred in the Richmond, a middle-class/upper-middle class neighborhood in San Francisco, the spill over of an preppy underage new year's eve drinking party. The Eli "victims" thus painted in a decidedly less sympathetic light. Now it seems as if there's more to it with some soon-to-be-shipped-to-Japan Marines involved in the melee.

After reading this story it was almost clear to me what happened. Though I would not endorse violence (and the preppy punk thugs (or marines) who put the beat down on will hopefully be punished (though probably less than is deserved)) I would say it is probable that this was not a RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE. Yale dudes and privileged kids at a party start a little trouble and a juvenile pissing match escalates in to a brawl. This sort of thing happens all the time. Maybe not on the Yale campus but probably in New Haven just as well as SF or Oakland or where-ever.

But that's not even what got my blood really boiling. The story reminded me of how much I HATE ACAPPELLA (obviously not the type of singing, but the genre of Prep-School/Ivy League lets-all-get-together-and-circle-jerk Acappella). The fact is, which I've discussed ad nauseum, is that a-cappella's only function in the world is to verify among upper middle class twits that they are indeed upper middle class twits. A whole "hey look at me - this is what good-old-timey-when-only-the-moneyed-went-to-college college students do, we're 'those' kind of college students." Which is the only reason anyone performs or listens to acappella given the fact that no one actually enjoys it. Not the people who go see to the concerts, which are limited to on campus events that can only count on friends of the group to attend, nor the people singing it, which if they in fact did they'd probably continue to do it after school (how many non-college acappella groups are there?). From their selection process, to how they present themselves, to the whole fucking thing sucks.

And people eat this shit up. Being in an acappella group counts towards someone being involved or interesting or creative, when it's really the biggest cop-out, least creative thing one can participate in while in college.

Not that there aren't other activities in college and out that can't be accused of the same thing (Crew, Frats, Debate team) but it's the one with the least substance (none) behind the actual motivation for participation. There is no reason to participate other then the fact of participating. Furthermore it's not like other social groups don't have "activities" that help identify members that they are part of the group (punks, hipsters and on to EVERYONE), but at least in other cases those groups aren't trying to identify themselves as upper middle class whitebread social climbers, that is to say guilty of striving to be THE status-quo MAN.

And I'm also guilty of this but really do try (to a fault) and not overly identify w/ a group or set. Sure I'm a hipster who does hipster things as well as a WASP who does WASPy things but it's far from exclusive and far from how I identify myself.

Whatever, the anger seethes.