Rockin' the 'f' out

[Lunkhead]

I didn't want to clutter up the One Beautiful Summer review thread anymore, but I did want to carry on the discussion. To me "rocking the fuck out" and smashing your guitars and all that other stuff has been played out over the last 30 years, and is not really exciting and edgy and dangerous anymore. It almost sounds to me like you're saying ditch the "calculated sound" for what basically amounts to a "calculated attitude". Thoughts?

[john m]

One can "rock the fuck out" without doing stupid shit like breaking expensive equipment. I don't associate the two. The former, if done well, is fun and exciting for both the performer and the crowd. The latter is ridiculous.

[Future Boy]

There's a difference between posturing and non-musical stage antics, which can be entertaining, and the act of musically rocking the fuck out. I think that when it comes to performing live there needs to be equal attention payed to "calculated sound" and "calculated attitude". I don't care how awesome the music is, if the band just stands on stage in everyday clothes and plays the songs without getting into them or anything, they haven't earned my money. Fuck that. Performing for people is about entertaining them. (On a bit of tangent: this is why I don't really enjoy going to see laptop musicians "perform" because no matter how interesting the music might be, all they do is sit behind a computer, barely moving. Boring!)

Now, one can have a very carefully crafted sound, but if someone goes so far as to completely remove spontaneity, then why would I want to see them live? This also goes for the attitude.

When one is talking about recorded music, I think it is more difficult to talk about "rocking the fuck out." If one is to succeed at that on a recording, then one has to somehow conjur up the feeling of a live performance. I think the first two Weezer albums (the Blue album and Pinkerton) are excellent examples of recordings that "rock the fuck out" because they feel live, spontaneous, and <i>alive</i>. Compare those to the third album, which although the sound is essentially the same, it is more tamped down, it feels more contrived, or calculated, if you will. I've never seen Weezer play live so I cannot attest to whether or not they still rock out in person.

I think the reason that Deshead's chorus sounds like it is trying to rock out, but fails to actually do so, is because it is too perfect. The harmonies are spot on, they are glossy, everything about it glossy. Glossiness, IMO, is the opposite of rocking. It is not possible to be glossy and also rock, in the original sense of the word (and no, I don't think it is OK for people to generalize the word "rock", because it takes the teeth out of it). Rock is about subversion, is it not? It is about sloppiness and raw emotion. It isn't about compressors or sexy guitar amps or shit like that. Deshead's chorus is a perfectly composed photo taken with an expensive camera. Rocking is the roll of film shot by a disposable black and white camera while in the hands of someone flailing around on the dancefloor.

[erik]

To me, "rocking the fuck out" is about playing tightly, passionately, and energetically. It helps to play something uptempo and a little bit dirty, that is, not sanitized of imperfections or soul. I know that personally, when I suggest to someone that they need to "rock out" more, the thing that I'm really responding to is the energy level, most usually with regards to the guitar and the voice. Don't worry about singing perfectly, worry about singing loudly and passionately and really making the person feel the emotion behind your words. Channel your inner Fogerty. Same think with the guitar: don't just hit the distortion pedal- instead play something like you were auditioning to be in the MC5. Don't be Dave Navarro in RHCP, be John Frusciante with a mohawk in a dress. Get crazy and bring it.

Does everyone need to rock the fuck out? No, of course not. There's whole genres of music that don't need to rock to be good, and even here on songfight there are musicians whose style doesn't require them to rtfo. But that doesn't mean that there aren't artists (at songfight or otherwise) who wouldn't benefit from this. Oftentimes it's a matter of getting a live sound in the studio with a producer who may have different ideas than the band members. I think a great example of this is the difference between records made by the Jam and by the Buzzcocks. Studio records by the Jam sound very passionate and vibrant, even when compared to live recordings. However, Buzzcocks live recordings totally blow their studio albums away, in terms of rockingness. And I'm saying this as a total Buzzcocks fan. I love "Singles Going Steady", but when I got to hear live recordings of the songs, I was blown away with how rockin' they sounded.

[Hoblit]

fails to actually do so, is because it is too perfect. The harmonies are spot on, they are glossy, everything about it glossy. Glossiness, IMO, is the opposite of rocking. It is not possible to be glossy and also rock, in the original sense of the word (and no, I don't think it is OK for people to generalize the word "rock", because it takes the teeth out of it). Rock is about subversion, is it not? It is about sloppiness and raw emotion. It isn't about compressors or sexy guitar amps or shit like that.

I know it's your opinion, and I generally agreed with most of what you said...but... A band can be exceptionally tight and perfect and still rock.

Rush would be a good example as well as Puce just to name a couple.

Also, 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu is a Tim McGraw lyric.

[j$]

Lunkhead, only a guitar player would associate rocking out with smashing up guitars

There are plenty of good examples of total rock out, in different genres, at different bpms, with amps turned up or down. If I was pushed to define what I meant when I said it, I guess 'Any music that makes you wanna dance like a monkey on acid' would do.

That said, I also pretty much agree with Erik's definition, too ....

[Lunkhead]

john m: Sorry, I should have provided more context. I'm trying to carry on what Blue and Erik and Deshead and Boltoph were talking about in the One Beautiful Summer thread. Here's a quote from Blue to which I was alluding:

if i were playing guitar on your chorus, about 20 seconds before it started you'd hear my guitar smashing the fuck into something, just to go ahead and wake people up. because they were napping.

I don't think he meant literally smashing the guitar, but I could be mistaken.

Future Boy: I think that the idea of "rock as subversion" has been completely commercialized, though. Punk rock, for example, is now totally mainstream. If somebody today put out a song that sounded like a Sex Pistols song, it would be derivative, even if it had the same attitude and sound, because the Sex Pistols already brought that to the mainstream, to a certain degree. If they had the attitude but the song sounded crappier people would think "These guys are like the Sex Pistols only their songs sound like ass..."

Also, you could just as easily use a formula to mutate your "perfect" song into a "rock" song by properly adding the requisite "off" sounds/passages/chords/harmonies/etc. Did you hear about the guy who analyzed all the reviews by a music Web site and came up with a precise formula for making songs that would get good reviews on that Web site? He followed the formula and made a couple songs that actually sounded pretty good to me, even though I knew he was following a formula.

Maybe people just hate formulaic music here? But doesn't all music ultimately follow some kind of formula?

[john m]

I was aware that it was part of a discussion that I did not read. I was just offering a thought.

[Future Boy]

It's true, the image of "rock as subversion" has been commercialized and continues to be accepted and enjoyed by the masses. I think this has happened because it is a safe way for people to consume something that they would like to think is dangerous or edgy. People are stupid.

The <i>spirit</i> (ethos) behind the idea of rock as subversion is something that could never be commercialized because it is inherently anti-commercial. It's not about lots of money or lots of fans or lots of notoriety, it's about emotional release, getting oneself to a unique physical and mental state, ultimately it's not about the audience at all.

If one takes that as a starting point for rocking out, they are not going to sound like the Sex Pistols or other "subversive" groups from days past because they would (hopefully) not be thinking about style or genre.

I disagree about being able to engineer a convincing "rocking" song. I think one can make the decision to be a bit sloppy, but it's got to be natural. Take Captain Beefheart's <i>Trout Mask Replica</i>, for example. Every single tune is out-of-wack and full of wrong-sounding notes, but it was crafted that way on purpose. The result is not an album that rocks, but something that is artistically satisfying in a more intellectual way. Obviously, that is an extreme example, but your hypothetical mutated "perfect" song would be almost as extreme, I think.

I don't think people have a beef with formulaic music. Everybody loves a good ole VCVCVCC kind of form, you know, the issue is with how the artist fills the space. If they put formula inside of formula inside of formula everything just starts to homogonize and it sounds like a song made by a carbon copier.

To answer your final question: No, ultimately not all music follows some kind of formula.

[Future Boy]

Also, the thing that is called Punk Rock by the mainstream media is NOT Punk Rock, I'm sorry, it just isn't.

[erik]

Also, you could just as easily use a formula to mutate your "perfect" song into a "rock" song by properly adding the requisite "off" sounds/passages/chords/harmonies/etc...

Maybe people just hate formulaic music here? But doesn't all music ultimately follow some kind of formula?

I don't think it's a response to a song being formulaic as much as it is having a set of sounds that appeal to you. I want to hear passion and emotion, but that does not mean playing notes wrong. It's like the difference between Bo Bice and Anthony Federov on American Idol. Federov sings very very nicely, but that's all it is: nice. Could he rock out? I don't know, but he definitely *should*. Pull a Pat Benetar and scream his lungs out in a phone booth for 8 hours straight, something to put some balls in his voice. Bo Bice can rock out. It's not that he hits bad notes, it's that there is a greater range of expressiveness in his voice, a greater range of volume, more control over different tones he uses, greater knowledge of when to hit runs and when to just sing the melody.

Does Bo hit more bad notes than Anthony? No, they are both very accurate pitchwise. Is Anthony more worried about hitting a bad note than Bo? Way. And that's part of why he doesn't rock, he's playing it too safe. Is that a bad thing? Well, it depends on who you talk to.

In other news, I know where my sig comes from, you doofus.

[Dan-O from Five-O]

it's about emotional release, getting oneself to a unique physical and mental state, ultimately it's not about the audience at all.

Do you even understand how contradictory this sounds? The "emotional release" is All about the Audience. If it it isn't, then you just don't get it and you will never RTFO.

Period.

[blue]

if you've never turned your amp up as far as it'll go and smashed your guitar around a bit, try it. it's bother very liberating and very focusing. it probably won't break.

as for the rest of it, MC Tricky Wang already summed most of my opinion up nicely:

If they put formula inside of formula inside of formula everything just starts to homogonize and it sounds like a song made by a carbon copier.

i once got to sit down over beers with J Robbins, supposedly for an interview but mostly because i'm a fanboy. i asked him whether he thought punk or emo was going to be the next big radio format. he laughed and said that punk was over and done, and that all of the new punk coming out had all of the signifiers of punk, but nothing to do with punk itself.

i thought that was a very smart way to put it.

[erik]

I read some piece about Rollins and Ian MacKaye about how they were both went to the same concert when they were like 12 years old that changed their lives. To them, the band they saw was so raw, so rough, so LOUD, that they both knew that they wanted to make rawroughLOUD music.

The band they went to see was Led Zeppelin.

Music evolves when people listen to the music, but emulate the feeling. Minor Threat and Black Flag really don't sound like Zep, but Hank and Ian were trying to make music that would make other people feel the same way that they felt about Zep, they weren't trying to be Zep.

They say that a smart dog looks at the thing you're pointing at, and a dumb dog looks at your finger. I think the same thing happens in music, where some bands try to copy their idols instead of learn from them, and they end up looking at someone's finger instead of what he was pointing at.

[Adam!]

smashing your guitars

Probably way off topic, but I always thought NIN was onto something with the smashing of keyboards. Keyboards just tend to explode when you take a mic stand to them. However, Trent feigning coitus with his keyboard at Lollapalooza... not so much.

As far as calculated attitude goes, one of my favorite bands has a unique attitude they've cultivated, which fits nicely under the label of "Really, Really Gay". F’rinstance, at the last show I saw them at the lead singer ran down into the audience mid-song and started making out with guys for money. When he got back on stage he looked at his haul, yelled "What!? Canadian money?" and threw it back at the crowd. Later he jumped up on a big stack of speakers about 10 feet above the stage and began a striptease, before running back to the stage where he sang the rest of the [punk] song lying on a piano seductively swiveling about. It was an odd spectacle.

I omitted the part where someone threw their thong up on stage and he flossed with it, didn't I?

[Hoblit]

In other news, I know where my sig comes from, you doofus.

Oh, ok. I really like that song.

[deshead]

I guess 'Any music that makes you wanna dance like a monkey on acid' would do.

Dude, if you'd said that in the first place we could have avoided this whole thing.

Glossiness, IMO, is the opposite of rocking. It is not possible to be glossy and also rock, in the original sense of the word

Green Day's last album makes me want to dance like the afore-mentioned monkey. Green Day's last album is glossy. I don't think glossiness is in any way related to rock, present or original sense.


Also:

... it probably won't break

Hahahaha. That's the essence of rock right there: the sweet here-and-now. "My need to express myself requires immediate gratification, damn the consequences, damn the future."

I'm convinced it's not possible to RTFO when you're writing for a deadline. That's the f**kin' antithesis of rock...

[erik]

Green Day's last album makes me want to dance like the afore-mentioned monkey. Green Day's last album is glossy. I don't think glossiness is in any way related to rock, present or original sense.

So if not glossiness, then what? What qualities make music "rock the fuck out"? If you heard a band that did not "rock the fuck out" but who should, what would you suggest that they do?

[boltoph]

Rocking Out is sweet no matter what you rock out to. Whatever gets the adrenaline rush coursing through thy veins.

[the Jazz]

They say that a smart dog looks at the thing you're pointing at, and a dumb dog looks at your finger.

Wow. I've never heard that before, but it's perfect.

Punk is dead, as evidenced by Avril Lavigne.

A lot of good jazz is all about rocking the fuck out, just in a different way. Look at Coltrane or Mingus. The "free jazz" movement is entirely about losing your shit, and that's strong enough to attract some people, even if most of the players weren't able to lose their shit and still play well.

[Leaf]

I was under the impression that the term "rock and roll" referred to fucking.


So, it stands to reason that to "rock the fuck out" would mean to fuck until you can not fuck anylonger. Let it all out, go for it, RELEASE your raw, sexual energy.

Now suddenly, we're all talking about the work ROCK like it has some definitive meaning beyond it's original connotation.... so, obviously, really we're just expressing various perspectives and opinions.

For me, a tune that rocks is one that makes me forget everything but the music, carries me away, and get's me all excited. My body loses all tension, my head starts bobbing, I wanna jump, and run, and break things, and slut right out. That's ROCK. My spine loses all locked up stress from everyday life, I feel like something IMPORTANT has happened, something that will change not just me, but everyone. My brain is on fire... you get me.

I have turned up every amp and pa I've owned, driving band mates away with sheer volume. That's not the only way to rock though. It's not the song that rocks, it's the emotional mentality of the music, and the player. It's a feel.

I experienced this just last week... our regular bass player, who excels in the funk, reggae world, couldn't make practice, so another buddy subbed in for fun, who has the metal/rock and blues bags sewn up pretty good... and we played Diamond Head's "Am I evil"... well, the difference in the tune with a guy who GETS the tune, who grew up listening to it, who FELT it for what it really was, compared to a guy who plays all the right notes, but couldn't give two shits about the tune... unreal. With Bassplayer #2, the tune had RAW POWER... I felt like I was 16 again... with #1, it's a fuckng chore to drag his ass through that tune. But hey, play funk tunes, and the opposite occurs... so There's an experiential factor in there too. Some people just can't rock, cause it's never been there... they need so much therapy just to cut loose and get off... man.

Clearly, it's a very personal thing.

I thinkmaybe it's a helluva lot easier to explain why a tune DOESN"T rock you rather than why it does.

Ok, back to work.

[jack]

i saw system of a down on saturday night live. those guys rock the fuck out.

i think it's funny how so many people here love to debate semantics and syntax.