Read Online Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard by Roni Sarig - Free Book Online
Authors: Roni Sarig
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from Branca’s early No Wave bands.
Symphony No. 5 (Describing Planes of an Expanding Hypersphere) (Atavistic, 1996) ; a guitar symphony from 1984.
Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses (Newtone, 1996) ; a lost recording from 1986 released for the first time.
INTERNATIONAL POP UNDERGROUND
As musical term, pop generally refers to popular music, all the stuff (rock, country, jazz, adult contemporary, etc.) that’s not considered classical. Taken more literally, pop means popular, the stuff on the radio, on MTV, in the Top 40. But pop has another connotation, one more difficult to pinpoint. This is the sense in which we’re going to use it in this chapter.
As a concept, Pop (with a capital P), can draw from many genres. Whether or not a particular piece of music is Pop doesn’t depend on how many people hear it or how many copies it sells. Rather, it depends on sounds and attitudes and production styles. In this sense, an immensely popular band like Pearl Jam is not Pop, while an obscurity such as the Vaselines most definitely is Pop. And an undeniably creative musician like Jimi Hendrix is not Pop, while the Beatles surely are.
While Pop incorporates styles from all over, it retains an essential spirit. Pop is colorful, innocent, and melodic. It’s not willfully noisy, gloomy, or rambling. Pop combines the song traditions of vaudeville, cabaret, Tin Pan Alley, English dance halls, Motown, bubblegum, and easy listening with the classic studio techniques of Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, George Martin, and Jeff Lynne. It ties Cole Porter to the Cardigans, the Monkees to Stereolab.
The two elements that each of the artists in this chapter share is that they are all:
(1) pop; and
(2) not popular in the United States.
Beyond that, they differ in styles, time period, nationality, language, and relative levels of success. Some were, in fact, immensely popular in other countries (Serge Gainsbourg, Scott Walker), but didn’t translate well to American audiences. Others, like Big Star, had just about all the elements for popularity except luck and circumstance. Still others, such as Van Dyke Parks, were just too far out to connect in the mainstream, no matter how hard their label tried. A group like the Young Marble Giants, meanwhile, didn’t stick around long enough to cross over. And some groups, like Beat Happening (who coined the term “International Pop Underground,” which I’ve appropriated for my own purposes here), were too concerned with creating their own definition of what it meant to be a pop group to care much whether the mainstream took notice.
Calvin Johnson, Beat Happening:
[The International Pop Underground] was the idea that there were people who were interested in pop music and making records all over the place, connected through the mail or through records. It was just a wide umbrella that wasn’t necessarily a genre, not any one definition. It could be anything. Maybe it’s people who are inspired by pop music, but basically it’s just about taking over the media and calling the shots: “We’re calling this pop music, and it is because we said it is.”
Whatever the reason these artists never became popular, their music lives on and thrives as part of a pop tradition that continues today, in both independent and some mainstream music. Unlike jazz or blues or even rock ‘n’ roll, this Pop is not exclusively American in origin, and it’s certainly not culturally pure. Rather, it’s an endearing musical mutt that’s claimed by the entire modern world.
VAN DYKE PARKS
Scan O’Hagen, High Llamas:
I was as influenced and as obsessed with Van Dyke Parks as I was with the Beach Boys. I loved that you could be avant-garde with traditional instruments and tunes. Some would say avant-garde is for the elite, it’s introverted, it happens in small rooms, it’s subversive, but Cabinessense is a very strange piece of music that’s melodically heartwarming and has a skip in its step.
Symphony No. 5 (Describing Planes of an Expanding Hypersphere) (Atavistic, 1996) ; a guitar symphony from 1984.
Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses (Newtone, 1996) ; a lost recording from 1986 released for the first time.
INTERNATIONAL POP UNDERGROUND
As musical term, pop generally refers to popular music, all the stuff (rock, country, jazz, adult contemporary, etc.) that’s not considered classical. Taken more literally, pop means popular, the stuff on the radio, on MTV, in the Top 40. But pop has another connotation, one more difficult to pinpoint. This is the sense in which we’re going to use it in this chapter.
As a concept, Pop (with a capital P), can draw from many genres. Whether or not a particular piece of music is Pop doesn’t depend on how many people hear it or how many copies it sells. Rather, it depends on sounds and attitudes and production styles. In this sense, an immensely popular band like Pearl Jam is not Pop, while an obscurity such as the Vaselines most definitely is Pop. And an undeniably creative musician like Jimi Hendrix is not Pop, while the Beatles surely are.
While Pop incorporates styles from all over, it retains an essential spirit. Pop is colorful, innocent, and melodic. It’s not willfully noisy, gloomy, or rambling. Pop combines the song traditions of vaudeville, cabaret, Tin Pan Alley, English dance halls, Motown, bubblegum, and easy listening with the classic studio techniques of Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, George Martin, and Jeff Lynne. It ties Cole Porter to the Cardigans, the Monkees to Stereolab.
The two elements that each of the artists in this chapter share is that they are all:
(1) pop; and
(2) not popular in the United States.
Beyond that, they differ in styles, time period, nationality, language, and relative levels of success. Some were, in fact, immensely popular in other countries (Serge Gainsbourg, Scott Walker), but didn’t translate well to American audiences. Others, like Big Star, had just about all the elements for popularity except luck and circumstance. Still others, such as Van Dyke Parks, were just too far out to connect in the mainstream, no matter how hard their label tried. A group like the Young Marble Giants, meanwhile, didn’t stick around long enough to cross over. And some groups, like Beat Happening (who coined the term “International Pop Underground,” which I’ve appropriated for my own purposes here), were too concerned with creating their own definition of what it meant to be a pop group to care much whether the mainstream took notice.
Calvin Johnson, Beat Happening:
[The International Pop Underground] was the idea that there were people who were interested in pop music and making records all over the place, connected through the mail or through records. It was just a wide umbrella that wasn’t necessarily a genre, not any one definition. It could be anything. Maybe it’s people who are inspired by pop music, but basically it’s just about taking over the media and calling the shots: “We’re calling this pop music, and it is because we said it is.”
Whatever the reason these artists never became popular, their music lives on and thrives as part of a pop tradition that continues today, in both independent and some mainstream music. Unlike jazz or blues or even rock ‘n’ roll, this Pop is not exclusively American in origin, and it’s certainly not culturally pure. Rather, it’s an endearing musical mutt that’s claimed by the entire modern world.
VAN DYKE PARKS
Scan O’Hagen, High Llamas:
I was as influenced and as obsessed with Van Dyke Parks as I was with the Beach Boys. I loved that you could be avant-garde with traditional instruments and tunes. Some would say avant-garde is for the elite, it’s introverted, it happens in small rooms, it’s subversive, but Cabinessense is a very strange piece of music that’s melodically heartwarming and has a skip in its step.
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