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Frank Kogan ([personal profile] koganbot) wrote2009-09-10 09:43 am

Creatures of the night

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 [livejournal.com profile] martinskidmore and [livejournal.com profile] 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."]

[identity profile] chuckeddy.livejournal.com 2009-09-12 12:03 am (UTC)(link)
Ha, just noticed that Health have been added as a Singles Jukebox song (and I have no idea what my opinion about that particular track is, at least not yet).

A few more not-bad (and maybe even good) 2009 rock albums:

Tim Carroll – All Kinds Of Pain (Gulcher)
UFO – The Visitor (SPV)
The Pinx – Look What You Made Me Do (The Pinx)
The Backsliders – Thank You (The Backsliders EP)
The Aggrolites – The Aggrolites IV (Hellcat)
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs – La Luz Del Ritmo (Nacional)
The Answer – Everyday Demons (The End)
Dead Man – Euphoria (Crusher)
Living Things – Habeas Corpus (Jive/Zomba)
Cross Stitched Eyes – Coranach (Alternative Tentacles EP)
Talk Normal – Secret Cog (Menlo Park Recordings EP)