This course, part 2 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. This course covers the music of Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, Carole King, Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols, Donna Summer, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Metallica, Run-DMC, and Nirvana, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed. Emerging out of the experimental and ambitious years of late-60s psychedelia, rock splintered into a variety of styles in the 1970s as the music business continued to expand. By the end of the decade, punk and disco had challenged the excesses of the hippie aesthetic, as rock became more commercially streamlined and radio friendly. The emergence and rise of MTV transformed pop music and propelled the careers of Michael jackson and Madonna, while heavy metal and hip hop dominated the late 1980s. Nirvana leads alt-rock's return to simplicity in the early 1990s.
Summarizing the 1970s
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Из курса от партнера University of Rochester
History of Rock, Part Two
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Mainstream Rock, Punk, and New Wave (1975-79)
Rock style from the early 70s are streamlined and labeled corporate rock, as the music business expands even further. The mega-album. Punk reacts with a return to simplicity. New wave develops the punk attitude. [Read Chapter 10 and work through listening guides and dedicated video.]
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John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
Let's take just a minute, here,
as we conclude this third week of the course to draw a kind of a bigger picture
over what we've talked about over the first three weeks and connect it with
some other things that we talked about in the History of Rock part one.
I would like to, my interpretation of this, the argument that I would like
to make, advances that we can sort of see an arch of rock music that develops
between the mid 60s somewhere, it's tough to say exactly where it start,
but by 65 or 66, it's definitely starting to happen.
That crosses over psychedelia, over the barrier of the decade
between 1969 and 70 there, continues forward to 1974,
1975 and then works its way toward 1979, 1980.
That arc of about 15 years, 14, 13, 14, 15 years worth of music,
is what we might think of as music that's dominated by The Hippie Aesthetic.
All this music kind of hangs together around a number of ideas and
values that characterize it, some parts of it more than others,
but almost none of it is outside of it.
It's the idea of the music being professional, of the artists being
authentic, writing their own songs, playing their own instruments,
producing their own records, being in control of their artistic statement and
their music in as many possible domains.
Having a certain amount of virtuosity.
Even the sort of more blues players who weren't a sort of technical show offs,
would never want to be thought of as amateurs or
a technically deficient any kind of way.
They thought of themselves as pros.
There was a kind of pride that came with it, there was an embracing on
all the groups, even those who went for a more sort of straight ahead rock and
roll sound of high levels of production of embracing technology.
Of really kind of pushing the art forward in a certain kind of way.
Not spending a lot of time looking back, but working forward.
This kind of aesthetic, this element, is what pulls all of that music together.
And, as I say, we can see it happen in the mid 60s, and
we can see its decline at the end of 70s.
On the way in, on the mid 60s, it's coming out of a very craft based approach.
And we talked about this in part one, where the Beatles and
a lot of other groups make the transition from craftsman to artist.
It's where the artist thing kicks in, that we begin to see the beginning of this
hippie aesthetic and the music continues to get increasingly ambitious, and
sophisticated, and embrace technology in all these kinds of ways,
really, sort of coming to a culmination and at the end of the 70s.
So, as I said before, we see this stylistic experimentation
combining different styles at the end of the 60s.
We see that develop again into different kinds of styles that are separable from
each other, country rock, jazz rock,
progressive rock, singe, songwriter, all these kind of things.
And then, we see that starting to come together in the second half of the decade
to consolidate, so you can see elements of progressive rock being used in things that
are, otherwise, more blues based and this kind of thing.
And you see a kind of bringing together as the business expands, gets bigger and
bigger, and radio has this requirement of trying to have four and five minute songs.
So you see a real sort of arc occur.
At the end of that arc, two styles come up to really challenge
the whole idea of what that arc is about or what's stand it is base.
And that is Disco which is essentially a dance form, a return of a dance craze,
which says, who cares about these big issues, who cares about concept albums,
who cares about professional musicians and their long and boring solos, let's dance.
You don't even know who the artist is.
It' s not even important.
We just want to dance.
That's what disco does.
And in its way, I'm not casting any aspersions on disco,
I'm just saying that it was an aggressive attempt to reject the hippy aesthetic.
And we've already talked about how it is that these rock fans understood it as that
and reacted with hostility.
The same thing happens with punk.
Punk was so, when people first got their first look at the Sex Pistols they seem
like such amateurs.
It seemed like they really just didn't care about being able to play.
They didn't care about really doing a first class performance.
They just sort of showed up, and it just all seemed so sloppy and amateurish.
That a lot of rock people just couldn't even take it seriously.
But then you get the more refined version of new wave,
which starts to make concessions to rock mentality.
When you look at a lot of new wave, I've said before, that they are looking
back at the history pre, sort of, rock and roll and using that.
But they're looking at that music in a way that's entirely conditioned
by the musicians,
themselves, having been hippies before they started to do new wave.
So, it isn't really a musicologist's objective perspective on earlier music.
It's a perspective on that music that's conditioned by
having gone through 70s rock.
So, in many ways, new wave cannot escape the hippy aesthetic and the music
created by it, despite the fact that that's exactly what it's trying to do.
It's like there is no way out, there's only in.
And that's where they are, they're inside that world.
So we see this arc starting from the mid 60s, going across 1970,
heading to the end of the decade, and the rejection that occurs there.
Well, as it turns out, most of this rejection of the hippie
aesthetic really marks the end of an error for this music.
Many of the groups that we've talked about, the main stream rock group that
we've talked about, will continue to have careers into the 80s, and
we'll note that next week, and the week after that we'll certainly about that.
But things really start to change in the 1980s and, rock music really
does get down to a four or five minutes song, a normal thing, the extended tracks,
the big concept albums are, for the most part, out of the picture.
But then, at the beginning of the 1980s, emerges MTV Music Television.
It changes the business all over again.
So, next week, we'll talk about MTV and the music of the first half of the 1980s.
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