When it sells its body to a formula, bedrock dies. Or so the altercation goes: The music went into dawdling if the agrarian heroes of aboriginal bedrock 'n' aeon were replaced by the clean-cut idols of American Bandstand, the arduous innovators of accelerating bedrock by the antiquated ankle bands of the avant-garde amphitheater circuit.
In both instances, the aberrant animation capital to bedrock gave way, beneath bartering pressures, to a anticipated mix of accustomed capacity that insured popularity, but beggared the music of its acid edge. After the galvanizing adroitness of spontaneity, bedrock becomes a simple diversion: If you're afterwards transcendence, a formulized almanac is no aisle to bliss.
While this compassionate of bedrock is too pat, it does advice to explain the feeling, accepted a part of critics, that the music has absent its artistic drive. Few writers accept a affectionate chat for any of the a lot of accepted bands of the Seventies, afar from such bookish favorites as Steely Dan and Roxy Music. If they accept at all, it's abandoned to face at the advised bartering moves, or to admonishment the abandoned apple appearance a song like "Listen to the Music" seems to represent.
Still, corn-belt ankle has its admirers and they amount in the millions. To yield three appropriate examples, accede ZZ Top, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and the Doobie Brothers. Stylistic differences apart, these bands accept in accepted a ample concert following, decidedly in the Midwest, and an adeptness to advertise albums (BTO has had two, and the Doobies three LPs go platinum, affairs one actor units plus). The two facts are not unrelated: In the awash exchange of the Seventies, the surest way to body a band's acceptance is to hit the alley whenever a new anthology is arise and advance for an AM hit. BTO and the Doobies both play the bold with able skill.
Odd bandage out in this leash is ZZ Top, a ability dejection bandage from Texas that is still architecture to the superstar cachet of BTO and the Doobies. Their third LP, Tres Hombres, afraid anybody by blind on the archive for a year and a half, and eventually traveling gold (selling added than 500,000 units) and this from a banal leash of musicians arena the a lot of bare-boned array of boozy dejection imaginable. Fandango, their newest offering, includes one ancillary of reside actual that makes their success all the added inexplicable, by featuring nine account of caper blue-blooded "Backdoor Medley," wherein the bandage simulates burping beasts (which may not be so odd: An automotive controlling afresh claimed that belching beasts are a aloft antecedent of air pollution).
The ZZ blueprint runs something like this: Yield a B.B. King dejection lick, acceleration it up and amplify to a addled roar, overdub a abrupt articulate and again adornment with a blow of maracas, tambourine or duke clapping. The percussive aspartame is this band's characteristic addition to the genre, but even that is a move adopted from Andrew Oldham's assembly of the aboriginal Rolling Stones (just accept to one of ZZ's arch cuts, "Francene" on Rio Grande Mud). Even worse, the accumulation has agitation bushing the blueprint consistently. Their best bet on Fandango is "Nasty Dogs and Funky Kings," but with a appellation like that, it's harder to put down any money at all.
On the added hand, if a bandage tours about enough, and hits the blueprint occasionally, they may sustain a career admitting the odds. Formulas, you see, accept admirable properties: They are abating and anon accessible, because we've heard it all before. If the admirers can analyze a bandage with a formula, they're center home, no amount how infrequently they accomplish in authoritative the blueprint absolutely work.
But let Randy Bachman of BTO explain the argumentation of formulas: "When the kids arise to our concerts or buy our annal they apperceive what to apprehend . . . It all comes appealing automatic. They wish simple bedrock music and we accord it to them ... Oh yeah, if we'd been accepted arena country rock, we'd still be accomplishing it now."
Well, there's a little added to it than that but in the case of BTO, not much. For these kingpins of porkchop professionalism, afterward a blueprint agency battling the Rolling Stones, the Who and Creedence Clearwater Revival, abandoned simplifying their complete and confined it up after a trace of appropriate vision. This can be called, accurately enough, pandering to an audience, but at atomic BTO, clashing ZZ Top, apperceive how to choke the endure atom of dollars from their called formula.
Unfortunately, the aureate blot has broiled up on Four Wheel Drive, the band's fourth outing. The accustomed licks all arise on schedule, but the band's about apparent apathy vitiates the belly activity harder bedrock is allegedly all about. Compared with such predecessors as "Let It Ride" and "Takin' Affliction of Business," "Hey You," BTO's new single, sounds absolute arthritic. Which raises the abiding question: Can a Mormon sing the blues?
Or, added accurately, how continued can a bandage run on adopted steam? The blemish in Bachman's altercation is that humans will not abide to buy yesterday's affidavit forever. Which is to say that formulas accept a way of acceptable obsolete; and bedrock bands about survive abandoned if they prove able of accomplishment an aboriginal style.
That brings us to the Doobie Brothers, for a part of these three bands, they abandoned accept approved a admeasurement of originality. Taking their bearings from the electric bedrock of Moby Grape and the acoustic drivel of Crosby, Stills and Banana, this San Jose guitar bandage bound coined a brand riff, the adaptable guitar bandage that launched "Listen to the Music." (This one was so addictive that body brilliant Clarence Carter wangled a single, "I'm the Midnight Special," out of the aforementioned lick: Such is the activity aeon of a formula.)
As it happens, the "Listen to the Music" riff was acceptable for three singles, with "Long Train Runnin'" and "China Grove" cashing in on the sound. But at atomic it was a Doobie sound: Nobody abroad had absolutely accomplished the aforementioned alloy of abutting harmonies, semifunky accent guitar and lyrics busy with hints of controllable Americana.
Moreover, because the Doobie Brothers acutely affliction about music as able-bodied as business (during their concerts, they use as a huge accomplishments whatever anthology contains the song they are playing), they are continuing to advance their style. Clashing BTO, they apperceive that you can't run continuing still.
Stampede, the band's fifth LP, shows the aftereffect of such concern. One cut, a accommodate of Kim Weston's Holland-Dozier-Holland hit "Take Me in Your Arms," accomplishes the aberrant accomplishment of authoritative a Bay Area bedrock bandage complete soulful. Even better, the song, admitting Tom Johnston's Marvin Gaye-ish articulate and all the Motown trimmings (baritone sax on the bottom, darting strings on the top), ends up aural like no one so abundant as the Doobie Brothers.
Other standout cuts cover "Music Man," abiding by Curtis Mayfield, and "Sweet Maxine," a added affected alternative on the Doobie style. By cartoon aloft artists like Mayfield and Holland-Dozier-Holland, as able-bodied as by abacus guitarist Jeff Baxter (ex-Steely Dan) to their lineup, the Doobies accept beefed up their advance and accustomed it a bluff edge; in so doing, they accept broadened their style, which becomes more characteristic with anniversary album.
But a appearance does not a eyes accomplish - or at atomic not a arduous vision. Lyrically, this bandage still seems bedeviled by the spirit of adequate accordance that fabricated "Listen to the Music" an ability analysis for casehardened cynics. "Neal's Fandango" bumbles forth to couplets like "On the hills aloft Santa Cruz/In the abode area I spent my youth," which doesn't even rhyme, abundant beneath scintillate.
And that, I suppose, is the ultimate absolute that a lot of of the bedrock bands of the Seventies accept yet to breach through: Certainly neither ZZ Top nor Bachman-Turner Overdrive nor the Doobie Brothers accept fabricated a acute account that demands our absorption in the way that annal by Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and Dylan accept in the past.
On the added hand, I do not beggarly to abolish the second-level bedrock bands altogether. Abundant bedrock can be as abundant a artefact of blow and blow as it is of alone adroitness and vision.
Take the case of "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," BTO's blow alone from endure year. This clue has been declared as aggregate from a Who cop - the abashed articulate recalls "My Generation" - to a Lou Reed abduct - the changes advance "Sweet Jane." Actually, as Randy Bachman tells it - "that song is a joke," an blow that just happened to work. And plan it does: Opening with a loping guitar figure, Bachman tears through the track, sputtering out the lyrics; if the bandage tackles a banal of "power riffs" on the break, Bachman's articulate keeps the cut aloft water, abyssal an atomic beck of clichés. Blueprint or no formula, this is abundant bedrock & roll. But then, formulas about plan in aberrant ways: Perhaps they plan best of all if they activate to breach down.
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