The Billboard Top Ten

Here is the Billboard top ten for this week. I don't know new music these days but I'm pretty sure there are no rock bands in it.

1. Blurred Lines

Robin Thicke Featuring T.I. + Pharrell
Blurred Lines 

2. Roar

Katy Perry
Roar 

3. We Can't Stop

Miley Cyrus

4. Radioactive

Imagine Dragons
Night Visions

5. Holy Grail

Jay Z Featuring Justin Timberlake
Magna Carta...Holy Grail 

6. Applause

Lady Gaga
Applause

7. Get Lucky

Daft Punk Featuring Pharrell Williams
Random Access Memories 

8. Treasure

Bruno Mars
Unorthodox Jukebox

9. Cups (Pitch Perfect's When I'm Gone)

Anna Kendrick
When I'm Gone

10.Safe And Sound

Capital Cities
Capital Cities 

Some people say rock is dead, and may use the recent charts as proof of this. But I propose that rock has never dominated the charts. 

Look at the top ten songs ten years ago in 2003:

1	50 Cent	In Da Club
2	R. Kelly	Ignition
3	Sean Paul	Get Busy
4	Beyonce feat. Jay-Z	Crazy in Love
5	3 Doors Down	When I'm Gone
6	matchbox twenty	Unwell
7	Chingy	Right Thurr
8	Aaliyah	Miss You
9	Kid Rock feat. Sheryl Crow	Picture
10	Evanescence feat. Paul McCoy	Bring me to Life

The Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow song 'Picure' is definitely not rock music. Evanescence, 3 Doors Down & Matchbox Twenty are borderline pop bands. The charts ten years ago are  dominated with Hip Hop/Pop music.  

Look at the charts twenty years ago in 1993:

1

Whitney Houston

I Will Always Love You

2

Tag Team

Whoomp! (There It Is)

3

UB40

Can't Help Falling In Love

4

Janet Jackson

That's The Way Love Goes

5

Silk

Freak Me

6

SWV

Weak

7

Shai

If I Ever Fall In Love

8

Mariah Carey

Dreamlover

9

Wreckx-N-Effect

Rump Shaker

10

Snow

Informer

 No rock bands whatsover. 

What about thirty years ago in 1983:

1	Police	Every Breath You Take
2	Michael Jackson	Billie Jean
3	Irene Cara	Flashdance... What A Feeling
4	Men At Work	Down Under
5	Michael Jackson	Beat It
6	Bonnie Tyler	Total Eclipse Of The Heart
7	Daryl Hall and John Oates	Maneater
8	Patti Austin and James Ingram	Baby Come To Me
9	Michael Sembello	Maniac
10	Eurythmics	Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)

 Personally I consider The Police more of a pop band than a rock band but other than that no rock bands.

and finally let's look at 1973, forty years ago.

1	Tony Orlando and Dawn	Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Ole Oak Tree
2	Jim Croce	Bad Bad Leroy Brown
3	Roberta Flack	Killing Me Softly With His Song
4	Marvin Gaye	Let's Get It On
5	Paul McCartney and Wings	My Love
6	Kris Kristofferson	Why Me
7	Elton John	Crocodile Rock
8	Billy Preston	Will It Go Round In Circles
9	Carly Simon	You're So Vain
10	Diana Ross	Touch Me In The Morning

I'm trying to show you that you can't say rock is dead just because it's not on the top of the charts these days. As you can see, rock music has never been in the top of the charts. Rock has always been a fringe movement. Sure it's had times where it's been more socially acceptable but it has never been the music of 'the people.' 

That's what pop music is for 

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The Doors

There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors.- Jim Morrison

   Today's entry is about The Doors, why they have always been one of my favorite bands, why their work is important, and what I've gotten out of it - enjoy.

   I always liked the fact that in 1967 at the height of the hippie, flower power, peace and love scene, The Doors emerged as something quite different. The had top ten singles yet they wrote about death and Oedipus Rex. They had a teen sex idol for a lead singer, a drunk with a habit for getting arrested and starting near riots at concerts, yet he was a college graduate, intelligent, well-read and an author of several books of poetry. It was pop music, rock and roll, blues, performance art, and theater all rolled into one unique combination. 

  I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think. I mean if you can get a whole room full of drunk, stoned people to actually wake up and think, you're doing something.- Jim Morrison

   What made The Doors musically unique were the varied backgrounds and musical styles and influences of its members. Its not very often these days that a classical keyboardist, a jazz drummer, and a blues guitarist combine to form a band. 
 
   The reason rock bands suck these days is that modern rock musicians don't have the wide array of influences that rock musicians in the 1960's had. The original Rock and Rollers didn't grow up with rock music. Before rock, it was classical, jazz, blues and country. These different influences produced highly original rock music. 

BUT HOW UNIQUE AND CREATIVE CAN YOU REALLY BE IN 2012 WHEN YOU'RE INFLUENCES THAT YOU GREW UP WITH CONSIST OF NICKELBACK AND CREED?!

  So here's what you young douchebags need to do

1. Don't be afraid to play with musicians of all styles of music. 

2. FYI: Dave Grohl was in another band before Foo Fighters, look into it. 

3. Listen to Blues. And by blues I don't mean Blues Traveller or your sisters John Mayer CD. I'm talking 1930's Delta Blues. Robert Johnson, Son House. 

4. Read Jim Morrison's biography, "No One Here Gets Out Alive." Actually, read it once a year. 

5. Just because Jim Morrison put on leather pants drank a gallon of booze and became a world famous rock star, doesn't mean you will too if you do the same thing. 

Jim Morrison Predicts the Future of Rock Music

"When You're Strange," A Documentary on the Doors.

 

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The Five Stages of Rock N Roll: Stage 1

Stage 1: 'F*CK YEAH MOTHERF*CKER!!'

   I was an angry, hateful teenager. I hated school, teachers, the students, their parents, my parents, organized religion...messy religion (haha) the good looking girls that shunned me, the ugly girls that thought they were good looking and who also shunned me as well as the jocks, preppies, math nerds, science nerds. art fags, drama fags, cowboys, rappers, goths, punk rockers, skin heads, cholos, and those guys that all they ever talked about were muscle cars, or guns. I was a stoner, metalhead, rocker, hessian (I never understood hessian, how are headbangers and german mercenaries from the 18th century alike?) and I even hated most of the other stoner-metalheads. 

   So I listened to angry music. Metallica (until they put out the Black Album) Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, among many others. Grew my hair long and wore black, experimented with drugs, got into some trouble with the law, never got laid, never had a girlfriend, never had a date, never went to a dance, didn't go to prom, never showed up at school for picture day. 

Highlights of Stage 1

• Age 13: I had drank before but at 13 was the first time I got really drunk
•  
• Age 14: started smoking cigarettes
•  
• Age 14: Smoked weed
•  
• Age 14: First time I was allowed to go with my cousins to the bars in Mexico. 
• 
  
• Age 15: First concert, Metallica w/Queensryche
•  
• Age 15: Tried LSD, which became somewhat of a semi-regular habit.
• 
  
• Age 16: Was hanging out with a group of 20-something homeless drug addicts. I would often disappear for days at a time, sleeping under bridges or on church rooftops.
• 
  
•  Ran away from home at age 16/17 (can't remember now) to Santa Barbara , CA where I lived in a car with three people I didn't know.  While we were there we broke into a car, stole some dudes weed stash, went shopping while I watched the people I was with bounce an $800 check for groceries, and went to one of the dudes girlfriends house where, while he was talking to her in the house, I was "drafted" to sneak into the guest house to take the "money machine" - one of those big crystal water jugs full of change and bills. This financed our trip back to Phoenix.
•  

My first DUI at age 17


    I was a rotten kid. I hated myself, and everyone around me. I was impossible to keep control of. There was nothing you could do or say to me. You couldn't take away my shit, because I didn't have anything. You couldn't ground me, I would sneak out. 

   You could try knocking me around, but I would knock you right back. I never minded getting hurt or beat up a little, bruises and wounds heal. So the threat of physical punishment meant nothing to me. 
 
   The Way I saw it, everybody takes a beating sometime. - Henry Hill, from Goodfellas.


  Besides a certain amount of pain is good. It lets you know you're still alive. Sometimes you can be so helplessly depressed, that you'll believe that THE ONLY way to feel anything else is to experience pain. At least thats how I used to see it. I spent my fair share of time carving anarchy symbols and pentagrams on my forearms.
 _____________________________________________________


   By the time I was 21, I had long been using alcohol and drugs to self medicate myself. When I was in hyperactive mode, alcohol or weed helped calm me down. When I was depressed or having the usual racing thoughts then alcohol killed all thought in my brain, like 'liquid meditation,' if you know what I mean. And if you know what I mean, then congrats because that means you are f*cking cool as hell. You're the Kitties Titties!

   But the thing with weed was that I never had any money because I could never hold down a job. Besides, I hate always having to 'score' all the time, and in the days before cell phones scoring weed could be a major pain in the ass. I tried growing it on a few occassions but that never worked. So if it was around I would smoke it, if I had money and the opportunity came along, I would buy. If a friend had some and was busting out with everyone else, count me in, but I never went out of my way for it, and alcohol is so much easier to take.  


   And of course there is the music....

  Back in the 80's my world revolved around Metallica. 'I celebrated their entire catalog.' For my money there was just no other band that was as hard, and fast, while still managing to remain melodic. "Master of Puppets" is a masterpiece. I loved the progressive tone of the album, 8 minute+ songs with three main riffs and at least two guitar solos. This was all lost with the Black Album, but we'll get to that in stage 2. Metal, and headbanging, moshing, thrashing on my guitar was the only way I could let out all the anger I was feeling.

   But why the hell are you so angry in Stage 1, When the Music is so F*kkin Cool?

   I was angry for a lot of reasons but besides the fact that your hormones are in overdrive, most of my anger had to do with being ostracized, left out, hunted, despised...

Home, I have no home, hunted, despised, living like an Animal!

   Years before I entered high school and my teenage years, my social fate was sealed as the oddball, the weird dude, the one who doesn't say much. The, "yeah he's alright but he's just a little..off, you know" 

   Stage 1 is where you really begin to realize this, but you are in denial of it. You still haven't accepted your fate by removing yourself of all labels and "types"... and by types, I mean that you no longer feel the need to have to be either a rocker or a jock, or a preppy, or a theater geek, whatever... 

   All you know is that your situation sucks and you don't how to fix it. The anger is a byproduct of this resistance to the way things are. And since it seems that the harder you try to fit in, the more you just stand out, there is only one thing to do...Smoke cigarettes, get drunk on cheap beer, get stoned on bad weed, and turn the music up louder than you secretly admit is reasonable, just so you can get a kick out of telling whoever asks you to turn it down, to f*ck off.

   I got kicked out of many public buses for not turning my walkman down. And I'm talking about the old ass walkmans, the ones that used 4 AA batteries instead of two. Now those f*kkers were noisy.

________________________________________________________

Ok I've Covered A lot, So Let me Explain...

 

  The Five Stages of Rock

Stage 1: F*ck Yeah Motherf*cker!

• Raging Hormones
• Misplaced Aggression
• Realization that the teenage social status boundaries have already been drawn
• Accompanied by the realization that, that means you're pretty much screwed.
• Cheap beer, bad sex (if you're lucky) good drugs. (if you're real lucky)

• Kick ass tunes. 

Next Time: The Five Stages of Rock, Stage 2

 

 

 

 

Silvertone SS10 Guitar & Amp Package, Black - Guitars

 

Monkees = Monkees

The following is an excerpt from the book, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, by Chuck Klosterman.



        - I found it necessary to mention that Journey was rock's version of the TV show Dynasty. This prompted a spirited debate we dubbed, "Monkees = Monkees.' The goal is to figure out which television show is the closest in philosophical analogy to a specific rock 'n' roll band, and the criteria is mind-blowingly complex: It's a combination of longevity, era, acclaim, commercial success and - most important- the aesthetic soul of each artistic entity.  For example, The Rolling Stones = Gunsmoke...Jimi Hendrix was The Twilight Zone, The Eurythmics are Mork and Mindy, and Hall & Oates are Boosum Buddies -

    Here are a few more I've come up with.

The Sex Pistols = The Young Ones

Madonna = Extreme Makeover

The Beatles = Monty Python

Tool = The X Files

Rob Zombie = The Walking Dead

Pink Floyd = Dr. Who

If Nirvana = Cheers, then Foo Fighters = Frasier

The Dead Milkmen = Nightcourt

If Van Halen = Happy Days, then Van Hagar = Joanie Loves Chachi
  
The Misfits = Plan 9 From Outer Space


Motorhead = WWE Wrestling (whatever that show is callled)

Ozzy Osbourne = The Osbournes


Whitney Houston = Intervention

Guns N Roses = Cops


Michael Jackson = Unsolved Mysteries


Deep Purple = Kung Fu




Got any more, send 'em in.








     

How 80's Hair Metal Almost Destroyed Rock Music

Dee Snider: Telling it like it is!

   I was a teenager in the 80's when the whole Hair Metal scene was at it's peak. I personally hated hair metal, I was more of a metal head. 

Me, sometime around 1987-88

   Ultimate Guitar's website appropriately called Hair Metal, "Cookie cutter, fast food rock." I frankly find it offensive that they even used the word metal when naming this genre.

                                   

  

Let's hate on Hair Metal some more shall we?

   In my opinion it was a great day when Nirvana finally came around to save rock music by putting a giant mirror to the face of Glam Metal so they could all realize just how ridiculous they looked, sounded, acted etc...

Old 80'S Monsters of Rock Commercial 

   All that emo crap thats out there now is music's modern day version of Hair Metal. Well I guess every generation has to have that one style of music that they'll feel ashamed about 30 years later.

_________________________________________

   Ok as a treat I'm posting the 1988 documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years. Directed by Penelope Spheeris, who would later go on to direct Waynes World, This film sums up what was going on back then better than anything else I could say. 

 If you have the time, I recommend watching it even for no other reason than to just make fun of it.

 

The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years - (1988) Full  Movie