Creatures of the night

[koganbot]

Over at the Jukebox the subject of funky house somehow came up on a Jay Reatard thread, and so here's my addition to a conversation between martinskidmore and chuckeddy:

Martin, I'm nowhere near being someone who creates or consumes the codes surrounding "funky house," but it sure seems to be coding something more than just "fun dance music" – I hear stylishness, and the adventure and mystery of the night, and not just anyone's night (no mere boshing Cascadas here), but a discerning listener's poignant and risky night.

Not that it shouldn't, since something that's "just fun" usually isn't all that fun, but I don't know of much that's trying to be nothing more than fun anyway.

I read you more as being fed up with rock's tired and stodgy results, but that's not a knock on rock's ambitions, is it? I do see where one can argue that rock's old ambitions have now become a cover for what's actually defensive and unimaginative, but that's not a result that's written into either the ambitions or drawing on the not-so-recent past for one's vocabulary.

(The adventure and mystery of the night is a role that rock once laid claim to - the electric excitement of the electric guitar! - and rock's night-time adventure is something that Marshall Jefferson in Chicago and the techno guys in Detroit were consciously emulating, right?)

[Also, check Chuck's comparison between electronic dance and metal: "there is a kind of rock these days that's as obsessed with new strange innovative sounds as the most extreme kinds of electronic dance music or whatever, and it's called metal. But just like in dance music, supposed metal innovations now seem to happen in almost indiscernible increments, within a more and more conscribed perimeter, so you need to be an expert with a microscope to even notice them."]

[I suspect "conscribed" is a hybrid of "prescribed" and "constricted."]

Comments

[chuckeddy.livejournal.com]

Again, I just want to be clear that I don't necessarily recommend all of the above albums; certainly don't suggest that anybody go out and spend actual money on them. I'm just saying I heard something that caught my jaded ears as interesting on all of them -- maybe just a couple smart and catchy songs, in some cases (Drivin & Cryin and Cross Canadian Ragweed are pretty spotty actually), or an overall sound that I feel like I might want to return to and investigate more, if I have time someday. Which I probably won't, in many cases, but what the heck. (My habit lately has been to get rid of lots of marginal stuff a year later, when I finally decide that it had its shot and I'll never return to it and I need to clear space. But I'd still predict most of these will stick around here for a while; I'm actually getting choosier in my old age, believe it or not!) (At very least, I'd say all of these have some palpable semblance of a beat, and singers who don't put me to sleep or make me gag, at least not yet. Even the two I'm calling "post Radiohead prog" give up something rhythmically and melodically that pulls me in. Actually they might be more post-Gentle Giant or Soft Machine prog, for all know, but I kind of like the idea of preferring bands influenced by Radiohead to Radiohead themselves. I was always like that about Frank Zappa-influenced bands, too.)