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Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

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Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#221

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #205
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I so disagree. You can totally dance to metal. First, there's headbanging and moshing which are absolutely kinds of dance, as is air-guitar playing (a kind of... interpretive dance; I guess?). These may not be what most people think of when they think of dance, but most people also don't think of growling when they think of singing, and yet growling is a form of singing - and in fact one that is connected to traditio…

Obviously, when I said "you can't dance to metal", I was referring to dancing as traditionally pursued by those populations. They probably don't want to switch from the dancing they are used to to headbanging and moshing.

I get it, but I think the only reason why you don't see people dancing-dancing to metal, rather than heabanging and moshing, is tradition, not the music itself. The music itself has eminently danceable components, particularly oodles of rythm.

To give a few examples, I can imagine, in my head, wild rock 'n' roll dancing, of the kind you'd see young folks of the '60s dancing to Great Balls of Fire and the like, but this time under the sweet sounds of Motorhead or ACDC and it doesn't look out of place at all.

Anyway, I don't think modern dance is much closer to traditional dances either.

Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#222

Post by otde »

blacksqr wrote: post #116
ebiester wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You miss the point. Lil Nas X and The Weeknd are placed in R&B almost exclusively because they are black. In your eyes, sung by a white person in 1986, would be synth pop. Did Billy Ray Cyrus make Old Town Road suddenly country? Is Montero (call me by your name) rap or a gay dance anthem?

As an X'er, The Weeknd's latest music does sound amazingly to me like a callback to early 80s's new wave synth pop. "Save Your Tears" could've been an OMD single. As such, to me, it's a powerful challenge to existing musical categories. But to how many people younger than me does this really register?

Younger millennial/Z-adjacent here. I don’t claim to speak for everyone younger than me, but I am continually impressed by the level of genre awareness today’s youngsters have.

Genres like synth/vapor wave are very conscious remixes of periods of time many of us were barely alive during, and their popularity comes in part, I think, from the tenuousness of their connection to the time period from which those genres draw their audiovisual cues. For me, at least, my earliest memories are a dream half-remembered, and music that draws from but does not emulate music from that time period can be a way for my imagination to fill in the blanks.

Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#223

Post by kbelder »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #71
eplanit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm talking 20th or 21st century classical" I can't consider anything so recent to be "classical" -- it might imitate the style of older music, but to call that 'classical' makes the word basically meaningless, or that it's only a style (however that would be defined). To me, 'classical' means that it has survived and thrived across _many_ years.

>To me, 'classical' means that it has survived and thrived across _many_ years. I believe that would normally be referred to as a classic.

The music is classic?

Yes.

Classical music?

No!

Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#224

Post by xphilter »

dang wrote: post #109
xphilter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if you exclude racism and structural racism as an answer, you’ll be wondering for a long time “why black people don’t rock anymore.” But it’s not my job to educate you, I’d suggest you look into yourself.

Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to HN or cross into personal attack. Neither of those makes for interesting conversation, only dumbed-down hostility. If you have a substantive insight to offer about the topic, that of course is welcome. It's no one's job here to educate the others, thankfully. But learning from each other is the point of this place, and that only works if we don't get stuck in ideolog…

Give me a break. Y’all are so eager to say “it can’t be racism” to explain current situations despite explicit racism for hundreds of years in the US. Maybe take that learning attitude you’re talking about seriously.

Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#225

Post by goto11 »

dang wrote: post #150
aerovistae wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest it seems very unlike you (going off your usual comments) to say that someone would have to be 100% ignorant to not know the history of rock and roll. I didn't know this, and I'd like to think I'm not "100% ignorant."

I'd have thought that everyone who knew anything about rock and roll would know that it started as black music, but ok - the world is a big place with a lot of variance. I've taken "100%" out of my comment above. The nice thing is that you have unbelievable amounts of incredible music to discover. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=764iHBRjAVw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_6gptd01mY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-…

It is worth noting that back then songwriter and performer were basically separate jobs, and it was very common for multiple artists to record the same song, sometimes even at the same time and competing on the charts. Hound Dog is written by Lieber and Stoller, the legendary songwriting duo, and recorded by multiple artists, including Thorpe and Elvis. The performer only got paid for their own performance, but the songwriters got paid for every recording (depending on the contract).

All this changed with Beatles and Bob Dylan, because they made it the expectation that "real artists" wrote their own material. This caused the idea of the "original version", and consequently the "cover version" which was a recording by any other artist than the original writer/artist.

So not to dispute that Rock n Roll was originally black music which made a lot of white artists rich and famous, it is still interesting to note how many of the songwriters at the time were Jewish. Just another aspect of the story!

Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#226

Post by bobbybabylon »

wholinator2 wrote: post #175
krapp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the reason "rock and roll" exists as a label was to segregate "ethnic" (read: Black) music in record stores and on the radio for a white audience.

Interesting and damning claim! Do you have a source for it? Ive googled around and found no mention of race in the articles I've read

It is in the Bob Dylan article itself.

Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#227

Post by dang »

skystarman wrote: post #213
skystarman wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is a really great video, thanks for sharing "woke" Bowie. As you say, he ages well, except for his molesting young girls in the '70s. There's at least two 15 year olds that admit having sex with him. I'm a Bowie fan but it's difficult to separate those unacceptable acts from the great things he did.

Getting downvoted for pointing out the fact that David Bowie raped teenagers. Great job HN!

Please don't post this sort of flamewar dross to HN. We're trying for something a little better than that here.

If you review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html to (almost) the end, you'll see that comments like this are explicitly off topic.

Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#228

Post by dang »

skystarman wrote: post #215
dang wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's true, you're right—that has not aged well. I meant that he has aged well as a performer, which is what that interview was. I've added that qualifier to my comment above. Generally though, I don't think it's that hard to separate. Everyone is a combo of good and bad–that's how humans are. It's childish to expect otherwise. The fashion of denouncing historical figures by anachronistic standards is especially…

I'd imagine plenty of people didn't rape 15 year old girls in the '70s even if it was more "acceptable" back then. Using your fame to exploit young, impressionable women is pretty awful and was awful 50 years ago. Even if "everyone did it!"

Could you please stop taking HN threads into flamewar? You've been doing it a lot, and it even looks like your account has been using HN primarily (though fortunately not exclusively) for political and ideological battle. We ban that sort of account on HN [1] because it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Also, definitely please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#229

Post by dang »

xphilter wrote: post #224
dang wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to HN or cross into personal attack. Neither of those makes for interesting conversation, only dumbed-down hostility. If you have a substantive insight to offer about the topic, that of course is welcome. It's no one's job here to educate the others, thankfully. But learning from each other is the point of this place, and that only works if we don't get stuck in ideolog…

Give me a break. Y’all are so eager to say “it can’t be racism” to explain current situations despite explicit racism for hundreds of years in the US. Maybe take that learning attitude you’re talking about seriously.

Who is "y'all"? If you mean "some HN commenters", then sure—some HN commenters post all kinds of crap. This is the internet.

If you mean anything more than that, I'd like to know who. It doesn't describe the community as a whole. If you mean the moderators, it is deeply untrue.

Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? It leads to extremely poor-quality, indeed vicious discussion, which does zero good and only contributes to destroying this place. You don't need swipes, putdowns, snark, or personal attacks to make your substantive points.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Bob Dylan lays down what killed rock n roll (2016)

#230

Post by naravara »

gonehome wrote: post #56
stuart78 wrote: post #41

I think that the narrative of last twenty years has been a re-blending of genre in a way that is not fully appreciated. While you can certainly find plenty of music that fits the mold established in the 60s, 80s or 90s around you also find much more at the top of the charts that challenges those categories. Right now the top 10 Billboard chart includes Lil Nas X and The Weeknd, neither of whom fits comfortably in the…

One hypothesis for why genres matter less is musical abundance and identity as a result of that. I think when you had to buy a record or CD people would consider themselves a “punk rock” person or whatever for any genre and they’d tend to buy and listen to/show their friends that music. With streaming services, and easy access to wide variety there’s not much need for this kind of thing so tastes blend more on the co…

You're not alone on this. I recently saw this video from a guitar teacher who has been doing it since the 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emOJdqsEU0o

He charts the patterns in how his students engaged with music over his career and comes to the same conclusions you do, shifting from a very highly engaged relationship with bands and acts to a relationship with music as more of an aural thing. Often he finds people don't even necessarily know the names of the songs they enjoy, while in the past people would read liner notes and learn a whole origin story for their favorite acts.

He attributes it largely to the neverending algorithmic feed. You don't need to know anything about the music you like to find more music like it, the feed does it for you. Not always for the best of course. I recently started listening to the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack and really enjoy it, but algorithmic feeds seem to associate it with a lot of anime soundtracks and Jpop rather than associating it with jazz and funk, the actual musical genres the soundtrack is in.

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