Rock and Roll Flashpoints

oh, and bobby brown, humpin' around.

 

I've always questioned the way history has portrayed the relevance of the Run DMC version of 'Walk This Way.'
One can't dispute the fact that it was the first rap song in the Billboard top 5, but rap was pretty mainstream already in July 1986.
I was a 16-year-old suburban white kid, and kids in my town and school, both overwhelmingly white, had been listening to rap for music for several years.

Having lived through the time, it seems to me that the effect of Run DMC's 'Walk This Way' has been mythologized quite a bit.

 

We're about the same age. I recall White Lines getting some airplay two years prior and a few others too.

But that could be down to the fact that I lived in the epicenter of hip-hop ... Milwaukee.

 

I've never met anyone who actually liked that version of the song.

 

I don't think it had all that much to do with rap reaching a white audience, but I think it was a big step in the mixing of rap and rock in the same song. I think it tied the genres together more than they had been previously.

 

I definitely remember hearing "White Lines" and "Jam On It" by Newcleus on the radio prior to "Walk This Way".

 

To me, Dylan's melding of surrealist lyrics and rock and roll is the most important flashpoint in rock history. I don't know if music looks the same if he doesn't produce Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde. As biographers have noted, he was a complete outlier and added something to the canon that wasn't a logical next step from rock's origins.

There was nothing leading rock to Desolation Row or Visions of Johanna. They were from a tradition 100 years out of style and unlikely to be revisited by rock artists unless Dylan did it.

 

I don't think anyone's mentioned "Pet Sounds" yet, which is a big one.

Dramatic change for the Beach Boys and changed the way others looked at the recording process. "Pet Sounds" begat "Sgt. Pepper," among others.

 

If you're going to reference Dylan for a "flashpoint", don't you have to mention Newport Folk Festival?

 

Agree completely, regarding how Pet Sounds influenced other artists.

But I think the changes in the Beach Boys started earlier ... maybe with the recording of "Help Me Rhonda," when Brian Wilson finally told off his dad and took control in the studio.

And certainly with the orchestral intro to "California Girls," which was a step on the way to the gorgeous music on "Pet Sounds."

 

But I think a truer flashpoint via the Beach Boys was when Brian Wilson freaked out and had to be taken off the plane. That was a couple years before Pet Sounds, but that essentially was when the Beach Boys became a nostalgia act, no longer an influential creative force. Pet Sounds was essentially a masterpiece forged from severe mental illness, pretty much the work of Brian Wilson and his studio musicians, not really a Beach Boys work but for the vocals being plugged in. And Good Vibrations was essentially Wilson's last true contribution to popular music.

It was sad to see Wilson having to fight his demons while dealing with an exploitative therapist, lawsuits with his abusive father and Mike Love, and hangers-on more than willing to stuff him with food and drugs. Now, even though he can't even tour as a Beach Boy anymore unless he wants to be Mike Love's employee, it does seem he has found some peace late in life, thankfully.

 

I found Wood's singing to be pedestrian at best. I will agree that if he hadn't killed himself with heroin, the Seattle music scene and the way grunge evolved would have been a little different.

But as for a true flashpoint, Smells Like Teen Spirit was the vanguard of a whole new wave of music. Debate its merits as you like, but any song that essential kills another genre (hair metal/power ballad tripe) represents a seminal moment.

Yes, I'm biased. When I first heard it, it was as if a whole new world of music opened up. A world of real rock music, not the Poision/Whitesnake/GNR excess, was there for the taking. I dove in headfirst.