Monday, January 8th, 2024
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
MUS106 Lecture 1: Intro
- early rock: 40s-50s
- Rocket 88 is often credited as the first rock song
- produced by Sam Phillips, written by Jackie Brenston and Ike Turner
- Things to think about for critical music listening
- instrumentation
- form
- timbre
- tempo
- lyrics
- context: historical, venue, audience
- compare
- ”Rocket 88”
- tempo: medium tepmo, similar to Train
- instruments
- keyboard
- sax
- drumset
- vocals
- bass
- lyrics
- deeper voice
- not much repetition
- sounds bluesy?
- form
- just verses?
- sax solo
- no idea what the actual form is tho
- context
- about a car
- guitar timbre: weird dirtier sound
- anecdotal evidence: the guitar amp was broken and band members repaired it by stuffing things → fuzzy amplified sound/timbre
- audio: dirtier
- ”Train Kept A Rollin’” (1951)
- medium tempo
- instruments
- keyboard
- drumset
- electric guitar
- sax
- vocals
- lyrics
- chorus: “the train kept rollin”
- form
- verse, chorus?
- sax solo section
- medium tempo
- context
- about a train…? didn’t pay attention
- audio: cleaner
- ”Rocket 88”
- similarity
- instrumentation
- vocals + sax + vocals
- lyrics
- shuffle: rhythm, keyboard pattern
- 12-bar blues
- jump blues: up-tempo sub-genre of blues
- sexual subtext: “rollin”, “step in my rocket”
- common topics in first-wave rock ^first-wave-themes
- cars (or transportation in general)
- substance abuse
- sex
- hokum blues: common blues that included quite a bit of double entendres
- Rocket 88 is more innovative
- the weird guitar timbre made it the first rock recording with distorted amp effects
- refinement vs innovation?
- Rocket 88 & Chess Records
- record company made up band name Delta Cats (without the band’s knowledge); somehow Jackie Brenston (vocals) was named as the leader of the band, which was only a side member
- Rocket 88 was “plagiarized” from Specialty without crediting, resembling rock’s looser concept of ownership.
- Red & Hot radio show (?)
- mixed genres
- both white and black audience
- exploding birth rates after 1945 (end of WW2)
- personal income also explodes, lots of disposable income
- idea of “teenagers” didn’t exist til ‘50s
- teenagers had freedom that parents didn’t have before war
- teenagers had the cash (alloances from parents) for entertainment and for defiance
- A movie was made (Blackboard Jungle) to caution against teenagers getting out of control (too much freedom); soundtrack used a rock song “Rock Around The Clock” (Bill Haley) which became a number 1 hit song
- quote: “teenage terror”
- Rock is commercial music! It relies on corporate monetary support