Why I don't need to rock: my official, essentially-unedited rebuttal.
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Artist:
I think what Mr. David Hyman (AKA my boss) and I can agree on is that, for the vast majority of those who find it their passion, music is, in part, a search for the sublime feeling. Sometimes this is an ultimate calm and soothing rest, like a chill; sometimes it is a cathartic release. With rock, I believe we are talking about the latter.For some, it is reached through 11-level rockitude, and this is entirely acceptable. I like Led Zeppelin, I understand and accept that it resides solidly in the top of the rock pantheon, but J.S. Bach's 3rd Brandenburg Concerto gives me a rush - a release, in other words - that I can only assume is similar. Not rock enough for you? How about the Who? Sometimes they do the job just the same. So does Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos," which is, I believe, likely one of the most righteous songs you will find on Satan's scorched earth. Maybe it is thought that I do not have an appreciation for the talents of Mr. Hendrix and Messers Zeppelin. This is untrue. I have marveled at live footage of Jimi. I have praise for the Bohnam & Jones rhythm section. I can verily receive and enjoy "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath. I do not have these in my collection; why? Because when I want release, I am not delivered."where is the release?" asks our esteemed Mr. Hyman. I can tell you! For me it comes from the knowledge, the rhythm, the counterpoint and the melodic path! It is a combination. It is a forged relationship. It's when I listen to this samba by Carlinhos Brown featuring Doces Barbaros (Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethania, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa) and I feel taken by it. I feel the history behind the four esteemed vocalists, the fire and passion of their past, combining with the next-generation counterpart Mr. Brown. I hear the phoenetic beauty of the Portugese language, and I feel the arrangement as if it were a language that I understand.It is simply who we are. Somehow I have become more accustomed to being taken by an atonal, blazing, all-encompassing noise-wall (Merzbow! Masonna!) than the sound of a pentatonic, blues-based guitar solo. The blues has a fascinating history, and I will gladly learn more about it any day (and I do, sometimes), but I do not enjoy the basic musical form very much. And of course there are exceptions! The Groundhogs album Thank Christ for the Bomb is an excellent blues-rock album and somehow, perhaps in the chord voicings or *something*, I don't really know, I feel compelled to return to it. It's just simply not a style with which I often jack my brain.The sublime release has come to me most strongly in the form of the Boredoms. The Super ae record rocks harder - TO ME - than anything I have ever heard by the Rolling Stones, and this is not to discount the Rolling Stones; it is only to show that the sublime can arrive in a different form. Eye Yamatsuka is worth a thousand Mick Jaggers to me in a single scream, and on almost any day of the week, I will choose Yoko's voice with John on guitar (or even Yoko with no instruments) over John with anyone else. It is simply where I have arrived for now.And of course the feelings are malleable and fluid; I would have never thought three months ago that I would be going to a Steely Dan concert tonight, and that I would be so damn excited about it. And I know there are people who don't know that they have within them the capacity to feel the glory of the fucking blues, and I feel glad for the day that they realize it; and the basic elements of the blues and rock have snuck their way into so much music that I love, and I accept this fully. It's just here, in both too many and not enough words, that I scream to the skies: I know release!
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