[Genteel Death]

How has Beefhart pushed music forward? Don't get me wrong, big fan of his here.

[Genteel Death]

Einsturzende Neubauten pushed music forward.

[ann ashtray]

I'm not even sure what "pushing music forward" means anymore. If it means having an artist w/ really progressive ideas that are bound to be ripped off over the next ten-fifteen-twenty years....that's been happening since forever.

98% of everything I listen to stems from blues (and of course...rock). I really don't think that there is much more that can be done with it...which isn't to say that I don't think people can no longer get "creative" with it.

Seems as if more of the seemingly progressive stuff these days happens to be working within the scheme of metal-based-musics. But, it only seems that way to me because for years a deliberately stayed away from most things metal.

Whatever, it's all rock.

I'm at work, draggin, slow-pokin, and really wanna be home listening to the Stooges w/ a big fat ass foam cup filled to the brim w/ caffeine. That shit's progressive. Maybe I'll throw some paint mixed w/piss concoction all over the walls during this nicotine + caffeine induced session. performance art. I'll leave the tv on some static-fried station and record the whole thing. Pay some Vietnamese friend to shout red-neck jokes in her native tongue.

Fuck everything.

My minds already been blown too many times. If it happens again, great...kinda hope so, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm taken aback by little, and virtually nothing shocks me these days.

[atsonicpark]

Originally Posted by Genteel Death

How has Beefhart pushed music forward? Don't get me wrong, big fan of his here.

Well, first of all, he inspired the Beatles (who all attended a Beefheart gig together). Especially John Lennon (Safe as Milk was Lennon's favorite album of all time). I'd say pretty much every musician worth a damn has namedropped Beefheart at one point or another (The Fall.. Mark E. Smith mention him by name in 3 songs!). I mean, listen to pretty much any of the bands on any of those Beefheart comps; Dog Faced Hermans, Sonic Youth, etc. Oh yeah, Hendrix was a Beefheart fan too, but he died shortly after saying that so I debt he was too inspired by them.

I'm willing to say that he invented what we call "math rock", what we called "no wave"; hell, pretty much any avant-garde, or overly technical music within a rock context. Don't get me wrong, there were some prog bands that existed around the same time, but no one was doing what Beefheart was doing. I'd say just about every band on Skin Graft owes a debt to Beefheart.

More than that, he inspired painters, filmmakers, television show creators (The Mighty Boosh!).

So, as an inspiration -- yes, definitely. As far as "pushing things forward", he completely reconfigured the rock language; NO ONE sounded like something like Trout Mask Replica. You can draw a few very basic connections to blues, free jazz, etc.. but I'd say within a rock context, nothing had come close. Now, not everything was verse chorus verse, but Beefheart went beyond that; he skipped that idea and just had sections, he had every instrument playing in different time signatures, he had guitar riffs constructed of noises instead of "conventional" riffs. And he made it all sound musical!

I really can't think of another musician who invented their own language, inspired so many influential people, and was actually commercially successful (slightly, and only in the UK, but hey...). Oh, and in a really short amount of time. Like 13 years, but like 5 of those years were in sitting around waiting for an album to come out that never did, and Beefheart recording some shitty sellout records. Let's skip those.

[Dr. Eugene Felikson]

KoRn

[ann ashtray]

I think music will reach a seriously high point when folks learn to focus more on "inspirations" than "influences"

Mucho-biggo difference.

[Genteel Death]

Adam- get technical, forget about points of views that have not suffered from a certain fastidiousness, then get back to me.

[demonrail666]

surely if someone is inspired enough by something that it affects their work, then it's an influence.

EDIT: That was addressed at Ann Ashtray.

[atsonicpark]

Originally Posted by Genteel Death

Adam- get technical, forget about points of views that have not suffered from a certain fastidiousness, then get back to me.

Get technical?

He took away the 4/4 mother heartbeat from rock music for good. He made it safe to be different, atonal, discordant. And he still rocked.

Seriously, name a catchier band, with better riffs, that would still constitute as... experimental (for lack of a better word) rock music.

If Trout Mask (and don't get me wrong, it's far from my fav album by him) isn't an example of "pushing things forward in rock music", what is?

[ann ashtray]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

surely if someone is inspired enough by something that it affects their work, then it's an influence.

EDIT: That was addressed at Ann Ashtray.

Of course that's AAAAAAAAAAA way of looking at it. But, seems things have gotten stagnant to the point of influences being obvious. Not a bad thing, just boring. Go walk around in the woods, drive around in yr car, go to the theater and out to eat alone, get drunk w/ no music playing, watch TV w/ no volume...whatever...then create. As opposed to "hey, let's do something that sounds like a combination between Throbbing Gristle and Neil Young"...which seems to be the more common thing.

TRY AND FORGET ABOUT WHAT YOU"VE BEEN LISTENIN' TO WHEN CREATING MUSIC!

Lee's great about taking personal situations/visuals and being able to create some sound-sphere around it. Course, it's still an "influence", but an "inspiration" sounds better.

Look at these two sentences:

"I was inspired by the ocean to write this song"

"i was influenced by the ocean to write this song"

...one makes more sense to me. I don't think outside of no box, I think inside of my own. My mind is open to everything/anything/anything/everything that enters it.

[Genteel Death]

Originally Posted by ann ashtray

I think music will reach a seriously high point when folks learn to focus more on "inspirations" than "influences"

Mucho-biggo difference.

Yeah, your sphere of influences is what makes it or break it for me. If you are only influenced by music you are fucked. Particularly if you are only influenced by music you think of as ''innovative''.

[ann ashtray]

Originally Posted by Genteel Death

Yeah, your sphere of influences is what makes it or break it for me. If you are only influenced by music you are fucked. Particularly if you are only influenced by music you think of as ''innovative''.

Exactly, man.

You def. worded what I was getting at better than myself. Thanks.

[Genteel Death]

Rob's not here, so.....SONIC LIFE!

[Genteel Death]

I can't think of a more prophetic lyric than kraftwerk's 'computer love' right now.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

I'm willing to say that he invented what we call "math rock", what we called "no wave"; hell, pretty much any avant-garde, or overly technical music within a rock context. Don't get me wrong, there were some prog bands that existed around the same time, but no one was doing what Beefheart was doing. I'd say just about every band on Skin Graft owes a debt to Beefheart.

I think part of the problem with this subject for me is that when people say 'music' I think of it in quite a (classical-centric), broad sense. Beefheart definitely transposed some ideas from outside of rock music onto instruments which don't generally do 'that sort of thing'. The difference between pushing music forward and pushing rock music forward is a semantic one, but important. Beefheart didn't do much in terms of harmonic, rhythmic or melodic development of music in general; similarly, someone like Steve Reich transposing ideas from African rhythmic music isn't pushing music forward so much as it is innovative.

Another pair to mention are Branca and Chatham - in as far as they applied existing techniques to instruments which hadn't really been used for that purpose. Which, from a formal point of view makes them timbrally innovative but not musically innovative.

Just to clarify that a bit - if you're playing Mozart-esque stuff on an alien instrument - electronic synthesiser, sousaphone or whatever - then the music itself remains the same, but the sonority is 'innovative' (or just 'different'). I often think that Beefheart's great innovation is using rhythmic ideas from contemporary classical, free jazz and applying them to melodic ideas from blues. The criminal thing with Beefheart isn't so much his creative impulse as it is the lack of anyone who approaches rock music with a comparable mindset. This doesn't really make him important, in my view, for music in general but he's certainly irreplaceable for popular rock music.

Partch is a difficult one for me - there are plenty of people who pushed different tonalities, and many of those people pre-date Partch. The problem for me is that Partch uses fairly standard musical structures on top of some fairly 'radical' tonal innovation. Partch is probably not very well thought of in formal musical terms for this reason, whereas the spectralists or the Xenakis fall-out tend to construct the form of the music differently based around innovative tonalities. The interesting thing about the rock mindset towards music (as I understand it) is that it's more than happy to allow dogmatic form to dominate. Interestingly, I find that this wasn't the case with jazz but, since about 1980 or so, and with very few exceptions, it is now.

To explain that idea of form - MBV's Loveless is considered a groundbreaking album. And within the rock context, it definitely is; from a timbral point of view, it is. In terms of production, it is. But on a formal level, the songs are structurally identical to the more prosaic Ecstasy and Wine or any other bog-standard late-80s schmindie. Of course, if the songs weren't bog-standard, there's no way the record would be popular within the rock context, because (repeating myself) the rock audience is inextricably tied to a form that is inherently not that interesting.

So I suppose my cards-on-the-table moment - my music theory is by no means great (you'd have to turn to fugazifan or the greatly missed noumenal for that) but I can't quite get away from the idea that rock music's hermetic notions of 'genius', 'avant-garde', 'innovation', 'trail-blazing' [etc] simply don't hold up in a broader context. But there are adjacent musics which do do something more interesting in a musical context. AMM are the first thing that come to mind, or Bailey's free-improv, but you could name any number of things where the pre-existing notions of form, structure, tonality, timbre, rhythm, melody, harmony [etc] are re-invented. That's not to say that a great deal of free-improv isn't a dead-end today, but for a while in the 60s it seems very forward thinking and impressive.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

I really can't think of another musician who invented their own language...

I probably should have quoted from this - my point above was perhaps more about the idea that no-one 'invents' the language of music. I've been transposing some ideas from gamelan into an electric guitar quartet recently. There's no fucking way that's 'groundbreaking'; I can't think of anyone else that's done it though. Like Beefheart, I merely borrow the language; I suppose the difference is that I'm a lot more self-conscious about doing so. Oh, and the other great difference is that he's very good, whereas I'm not as good as I want to be. Yet.

[Dr. Eugene Felikson]

Okay, another attempt at a serious answer:

What about Dälek?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i789TMw49rE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTeIq8CCG3s


I mean I know that the beats could be compared to plenty of shoegaze/drone/noise/etc. artists, but I have never heard another rapper release so many tracks with such fuzzed-out, atmospheric production behind it.

Truly an original, and pretty young as well...right?

[fugazifan]

first of all i i doubt that my knowledge in music theory surpasses yours.
and i agree with you. i have recommended a leonard meyer article here before that explains it pretty well. from what i can remember he differentiates between univesal musical laws, to restrictions of a certian era, strategies of a certain sub era a composers personal dialect and intra opus style.
so basically bach, mozart and wagner all functioned within the same rules, although each one had different strategies of writing within that set of rules and thus each had their own dialect. and each piece of music had its own inner set of rules. so basically that means that there have been very few complete musical revolutions, not to mention the few, as glice stated that happened in rock which actually affected other music.

so i guess the question of pushing music foward is not the person who does the revolution (like scheonberg) but the person who pushes the music as far as it can go within each set of rules (wagner)
or something like that.

and to reiterate another of glice's points, there is no sound, almost, that comes out of nowhere. i have yet to hear a band or composer that sound like nothing that was ever heard before them. and in order that i dont start another boring acedemic rant i will simply state- intertextuality.
and i will also state that i agree with genteel death, who i think wrote that furxasha's kobold moon is a brilliant album.

[atsonicpark]

Wow, Glice. I mean, I mostly agree with you, but damn. Haha. I don't think I can properly respond. Mind is blown!

[the ikara cult]

Originally Posted by Glice

I think part of the problem with this subject for me is that when people say 'music' I think of it in quite a (classical-centric), broad sense. Beefheart definitely transposed some ideas from outside of rock music onto instruments which don't generally do 'that sort of thing'. The difference between pushing music forward and pushing rock music forward is a semantic one, but important. Beefheart didn't do much in terms of harmonic, rhythmic or melodic development of music in general; similarly, someone like Steve Reich transposing ideas from African rhythmic music isn't pushing music forward so much as it is innovative.

Another pair to mention are Branca and Chatham - in as far as they applied existing techniques to instruments which hadn't really been used for that purpose. Which, from a formal point of view makes them timbrally innovative but not musically innovative.

Just to clarify that a bit - if you're playing Mozart-esque stuff on an alien instrument - electronic synthesiser, sousaphone or whatever - then the music itself remains the same, but the sonority is 'innovative' (or just 'different'). I often think that Beefheart's great innovation is using rhythmic ideas from contemporary classical, free jazz and applying them to melodic ideas from blues. The criminal thing with Beefheart isn't so much his creative impulse as it is the lack of anyone who approaches rock music with a comparable mindset. This doesn't really make him important, in my view, for music in general but he's certainly irreplaceable for popular rock music.

Partch is a difficult one for me - there are plenty of people who pushed different tonalities, and many of those people pre-date Partch. The problem for me is that Partch uses fairly standard musical structures on top of some fairly 'radical' tonal innovation. Partch is probably not very well thought of in formal musical terms for this reason, whereas the spectralists or the Xenakis fall-out tend to construct the form of the music differently based around innovative tonalities. The interesting thing about the rock mindset towards music (as I understand it) is that it's more than happy to allow dogmatic form to dominate. Interestingly, I find that this wasn't the case with jazz but, since about 1980 or so, and with very few exceptions, it is now.

To explain that idea of form - MBV's Loveless is considered a groundbreaking album. And within the rock context, it definitely is; from a timbral point of view, it is. In terms of production, it is. But on a formal level, the songs are structurally identical to the more prosaic Ecstasy and Wine or any other bog-standard late-80s schmindie. Of course, if the songs weren't bog-standard, there's no way the record would be popular within the rock context, because (repeating myself) the rock audience is inextricably tied to a form that is inherently not that interesting.

So I suppose my cards-on-the-table moment - my music theory is by no means great (you'd have to turn to fugazifan or the greatly missed noumenal for that) but I can't quite get away from the idea that rock music's hermetic notions of 'genius', 'avant-garde', 'innovation', 'trail-blazing' [etc] simply don't hold up in a broader context. But there are adjacent musics which do do something more interesting in a musical context. AMM are the first thing that come to mind, or Bailey's free-improv, but you could name any number of things where the pre-existing notions of form, structure, tonality, timbre, rhythm, melody, harmony [etc] are re-invented. That's not to say that a great deal of free-improv isn't a dead-end today, but for a while in the 60s it seems very forward thinking and impressive.

Ive already given you rep for this, but everyone should know this is just about the best post ive ever read on here