From the Caves – The ABCs of Rock n Roll

Free, man

I thought it would be a useful to establish some framework for this Full Kicks blog; to try to define as objectively as possible my necessarily subjective rock n roll view. Let's start with what makes good classic rock. Here goes.


It’s very difficult to separate art from history. Early man scratched on cave walls not to legitimize anthropology grants for hairy professors of the future, but to communicate in the now. 


Bastard child of legitimate art, rock n roll music is part of this tradition – the need to express ourselves in more than words and gestures, to help us make some sense out of all of the shit going on around us. The popular music landscape has changed so much over the last decade, and there are now so many sub-genres it's impossible to speculate on the future impact of the "rock" artists of today. But if we focus on classic rock or at least pre-1990 rock n roll, we can build a template for how to be considered good classic rock.

Taste in everything be damned

What is it that makes some music worthy of a somewhat regular spin or at least makes you happy to hear it on the radio or in a movie? The easy answer is well, ‘REM is better than REO Speedwagon’. True, absolutely. The cop-out answer is “it’s a matter of taste” and yes, while that is also somewhat true, most people just have no fucking taste (see right). 

Brushing this so-called matter of taste aside, it’s songs about how humans somehow relate to each other and somehow can’t ever really relate to each other that resonate deepest and longest. Songs about getting paid/ getting drunk/ rocking until dropping/ trying to get laid/ getting laid/ getting dumped/ getting drunk again/never getting laid ever again endure. We’ve all been through, or are currently mid-cycle in, these common situations and we can sing along in character.

While the themes are pretty common, rock n roll music remains a personal relationship. You can share the magic with 300 people at Lee’s Palace on a Thursday in September or as a part of bigger or smaller communities as you like, but it’s a unique connection your nervous system makes with the sound and the energy. A great song rushes almost dangerously through us. We feel like we are in the song and its tone and mood become our tone and mood. It’s an exhilarating invasion.

ABCs to sing with me

For our purposes, the rock n roll breaks into 3 categories:

1. Artists and songs that transcend time and are interminably relatable for future generations.
2. Artists that become the musical equivalent of had to be there jokes. Not to say they are less important, but that they live on in a time capsule dug into the bunkers of a world gone by. They can be still be appreciated, but require context like hallucinogenic drugs or a particularly unrighteous war.
3. Artists and songs that instantly and transcendentally suck, but no one seems to be bothered.

A. is for apple & stuff

Love songs or specifically, songs about falling in and then out of love, age drastically differently. They can come across as sappy or overwrought and hokey. In the right hands, however, love songs can be impervious to shifts in music and popular culture.

The Beatles owned and continue to own love. They explored love in all its forms through a variety of characters so expertly that it’s almost impossible to imagine pop culture existing without them. The Beatles haven’t recorded together in 40 years, but their career genius is that regardless of your birthdate, their music is with you every step of your life; from the innocence of childhood to pubescent exuberance and on into incense & peppermints (and divorce & rehab) and on down the long and winding road. And the songs are not only stand up today, they stand out. Grab an old Beatles album, not a greatest hits, but listen to the album tracks – it’s tough, there were so many hits – like Paul’s lullaby “Golden Slumbers” or “Every Little Thing” or John’s “I’m Only Sleeping”. These are not obscure songs, but just subtle reminders of what makes them so great, they made their hard work seem effortless.

The perfect pop ‘hook’ is often the sad turn of the melody, catchy songs stick in your head, but it’s the rare and masterful hook that sets the barb in your heart and don’t let go. The Beach Boys’ “Help Me Rhonda” is a tidy example of this phenomenon and my favourite hook of all time.  The opening to the verse is an aw-shucks jingle to missing your girl until the plea gets more urgent as the chord goes minor for “Rhonda you like so fine“. Chills for me, just thinking about that part. That is my personal relationship with that song. When you get to Beach Boy Appreciation Age you discover that the easy, oceanic beauty of the early Beach Boys songs came from the mind of one sad man, essentially crippled by his gift and his inability to communicate through any other means than his music. Your appreciation grows when you start to identify with the scruffy man sitting at his piano in a sandbox trying in vain to get his shit together. He seemed profoundly strange but also weirdly hopeful. Considered an eccentric in a peer group that did not easily fend off its demons, the fact that Brian Wilson has found a balance whereby he can enjoy his legacy while still alive is remarkable. News that The Beach Boys will tour for their 50^th anniversary this year is also remarkable. And listening to his music provides blissful escape from a perverse world. I can dig that. Forever.

The Rolling Stones certainly had some hippy moments, but like Brando in a musical, it never quite suited them as well as being cheeky and rebellious did. Mick and Keith never (honestly) apologized for writing songs like Under My Thumb and Brown Sugar that objectified women (or in the case of Some Girls, objectified actual objects - groupies) and as they now say “reinforced negative stereotypes”. Back in the 70s enough people seemingly saw the joke. While Jesse Jackson was outraged by the lyrics referring to the sexual appetites of black women in Some Girls and called for a boycott of the album, SNL’s Garrett Morris asked Mick “where are these women!?”. The Stones clearly recognized the value in being the bad boys of rock n roll. Where Jerry Lee Lewis was actually crazy, The Stones perfected looking wasted and badass and sexy. BTW, they wrote a shit load of great songs and were one of the best live bands ever.

cruel to B. kind division

What keeps a really good B artist from A status? Whether or not you want to hear that song again, sing those words in your head another time. Overtly political music is problematic for me and even the good stuff is almost immediately B category. It just doesn’t age well. And it can be exhausting to listen to songs that are trying to teach us something. Fuck it, I don’t want to spend my precious and increasingly elusive entertainment hours hearing how corrupt the system is, I learned that long ago in the song called real life.

The one band whose politically infused music has aged/should continue to age pretty well is one of the all-time champions of rock n roll, The Clash. The Clash evolved from angry garage rocking upstarts into a taut, dexterous band whose heart pumped the pulse of the streets of the world. But, if we ever cared, we don’t remember just what it was that pissed them off so much, we just loved their conviction. And they looked so fucking cool. 

This photo is actually black & white,
rock n roll animal magnetism makes it appear colour

The rise of punk rock in England was framed as a socio-political rebellion, but really it was just a kick in the balls to the stadium-rocking hair farmers who had become the establishment, bands that pushed their fans away from the stage and relegated them to passive worship. “God Save the Queen” was a ‘fuck you’ to rock n roll royalty. Punk rock brought the fans face to face with, on stage with, and even into the band. It was primitive, sexy and easy to do, and the kids were alright with it.

C. listers & c words

It's here that we come back to that pesky matter of taste. My C list is brief because I don't like to think of these tired acts, but still there is plenty of music that some people consider classic or cool, that I just never want to hear again, including; any Steve Miller, almost all of Rod Stewart's painstakingly crafted art, most of the crappy blooze poetry of Jim Morrison & The Doors, Pink Floyd, even Rush I can definitely live without.

• Until next week, when I return with reviews and stuff about some exciting upcoming tours and releases, I want you to check this out, just cuz its so awesome.

• And finally, I want to send a heartfelt please fuck off to the synthetic pop dance music that attacks me while I lather myself at the gym! People - this is sex with robots and rock n roll is sex with humans! Let’s stick to our own.