These two thoughts come to mind about your post. 1) "It's all Shirelles and Rolling Stones, in different times and places, inhabiting different bodies, wearing different clothes." I get it, I think, and am in awe of your ability to shape your list that way but genuinely wonder if this applies to, say, Chopin? I'm not doubting it, I'm intrigued by what it might mean. It might come a little more into focus when I get around to listening to your Chopin selection. (Your list subverts the boys-girls/English language thing in various places, so my inquiry applies elsewhere too; I can SORT of get it with Charlie Parker, I think, though I'm probably half-bullshitting my way through that too.) ("Ko Ko" is the only Parker song to date I've been able to truly hear, and I had a lot of help even getting to that – via documentaries, podcasts, written exegeses, etc.) (And I don't want to suggest that every song on your list adheres to some "theory," lest the inquiry itself sound reductionist.)
2) "funk didn’t just reorganize my sense of musical relations but of human relations" – this feels brilliant, but I'm still half-lost. Musical relations I would assume means something along the lines of how funk emphasized rhythm, turned drums into lead instruments, etc.? I need to think about how this applies to relationships – I'm sure there's something here that could resonate deeply in my own life but I guess that I just don't know.
Well, the Cortot Chopin prelude is one of my '30s choices, and in "Methodology" I was exempting them from the Stones-or-Shirelles dynamic: but that brings up another aspect of the alleged similarities, which is that I'm clever so I can take any song and find a way to link the dynamic, e.g., could claim that Billie's not the swing but the need for the swing, the anticipation of swing ("Don't stop to diddle daddle, Stop this foolish prattle"), except actually I think in "Swing! Brother, Swing!" she is the swing, not the ache and the need for it; so I'm really talking more about feel than lyrical strategies; whatever the words are doing, "Swing! Brother, Swing!" doesn't feel Stonesish or Shirellesy. But a whole shitload do!
Stones, a hard dissatisfaction that feels it can potentially beat what it's challenging, and in the meantime enjoys thumbing its nose and rocking out to its own discontent. —I wouldn't define the Stones this way, or any of their songs, 'cause it's just a sense, just a part, a piece of the whole, that gets linked to tones and music and you can dance to it. But this is maybe what I'm hearing in it that I'm also hearing in, say, "Ko Ko" and Wesley Gonzaga (which I also wouldn't reduce to that definition), and believe it or not the Brown Eyed Girls (it helps to know they did the Nivea Lipcare ad only months after radically redefining themselves as aggressive and sexual). Baauer's "Harlem Shake" is frustration audiblized, defiantly not arriving anywhere, and you can hear similar strategies in DJ Guuga.
And Sheck Wes and Playboi Carti, and a lot of trap and Soundcloud rap, came into existence so that I could take my description of the last 30 seconds of "Heart Of Stone" – frontman's acting tough while the music cries tears in the background – and apply it to the rest of the world.
Anyway, I haven't gone over the list song-by-song to justify my hyperbole. James Brown's "Prisoner Of Love" and T-ara's "Lovey-Dovey" and U-Roy's "Drive Her Home" don't feel Stones or Shirelles to me, but Lonnie Johnson's "Tomorrow Night" and the Orioles' "Too Soon To Know" and Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" do (first two Shirelles; Donna, the Stones).
The point is there is a narrower social and emotional range to my list than its apparent diversity would suggest. But also, I seem to be the contributor so far who's trying to throw the readers into the music, make 'em hear it or hear ways of hearing it, rethink it no matter how much they've already heard it.
(2) Music as an interplay of sounds and people that are not necessarily all pulling in the same direction with a set and settled "lead" voice or instrument, but a collective enterprise nonetheless. Ditto life as a collective enterprise, though not a happy communal one but rather the swirl of conflicts and cohesion surrounding an endeavor.
Scott & Frank
Well, the Cortot Chopin prelude is one of my '30s choices, and in "Methodology" I was exempting them from the Stones-or-Shirelles dynamic: but that brings up another aspect of the alleged similarities, which is that I'm clever so I can take any song and find a way to link the dynamic, e.g., could claim that Billie's not the swing but the need for the swing, the anticipation of swing ("Don't stop to diddle daddle, Stop this foolish prattle"), except actually I think in "Swing! Brother, Swing!" she is the swing, not the ache and the need for it; so I'm really talking more about feel than lyrical strategies; whatever the words are doing, "Swing! Brother, Swing!" doesn't feel Stonesish or Shirellesy. But a whole shitload do!
Stones, a hard dissatisfaction that feels it can potentially beat what it's challenging, and in the meantime enjoys thumbing its nose and rocking out to its own discontent. —I wouldn't define the Stones this way, or any of their songs, 'cause it's just a sense, just a part, a piece of the whole, that gets linked to tones and music and you can dance to it. But this is maybe what I'm hearing in it that I'm also hearing in, say, "Ko Ko" and Wesley Gonzaga (which I also wouldn't reduce to that definition), and believe it or not the Brown Eyed Girls (it helps to know they did the Nivea Lipcare ad only months after radically redefining themselves as aggressive and sexual). Baauer's "Harlem Shake" is frustration audiblized, defiantly not arriving anywhere, and you can hear similar strategies in DJ Guuga.
And Sheck Wes and Playboi Carti, and a lot of trap and Soundcloud rap, came into existence so that I could take my description of the last 30 seconds of "Heart Of Stone" – frontman's acting tough while the music cries tears in the background – and apply it to the rest of the world.
Anyway, I haven't gone over the list song-by-song to justify my hyperbole. James Brown's "Prisoner Of Love" and T-ara's "Lovey-Dovey" and U-Roy's "Drive Her Home" don't feel Stones or Shirelles to me, but Lonnie Johnson's "Tomorrow Night" and the Orioles' "Too Soon To Know" and Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" do (first two Shirelles; Donna, the Stones).
The point is there is a narrower social and emotional range to my list than its apparent diversity would suggest. But also, I seem to be the contributor so far who's trying to throw the readers into the music, make 'em hear it or hear ways of hearing it, rethink it no matter how much they've already heard it.
(2) Music as an interplay of sounds and people that are not necessarily all pulling in the same direction with a set and settled "lead" voice or instrument, but a collective enterprise nonetheless. Ditto life as a collective enterprise, though not a happy communal one but rather the swirl of conflicts and cohesion surrounding an endeavor.