>Where for most rock historians the '50s begin circa 1954, musicologist Zak's angle is to encompass the entire decade. For him, the game changer was the man who symbolized the pop establishment rock and roll displaced: Columbia Records production chief Mitch Miller, auteur of Frankie Laine's "Mule Train," Johnnie Ray's "Cry," and Rosemary Clooney's "Come On-A My House" as well as his own "The Yellow Rose of Texas." What unites these "novelty" records is that each, like many early-'50s hits from Miller and others, constituted a unique soundscape whose only natural environment was the studio. Thus they challenged recording's performance-based, ear-on-the-wall ethos. Zak believes that although rock and roll began with different materials, it found new ways to exploit and embellish the novelty aesthetic.
>Zak overstates his thesis, and although he doesn't ignore race, which remains fundamental no matter how revisionists nitpick, he does downplay it, as he does the bigness of the beat. Nevertheless, this is a well-researched study that pokes major holes in Americana and garage orthodoxy, both of which conceive early rock and roll as a species of folk music in which unschooled young bucks gain entrance to a recording facility and do their fresh and simple thing. Instead, Zak emphasizes the willingness of indie label owners to turn off the clock through many humdrum hours until fresh music actually happened, be it Buddy Knox's raunchy "Party Doll" or the Drifters' semisophisticated "There Goes My Baby." He honors the tricky sound effects that delighted musical thrill seekers. He describes how deliciously amateur singers rubbed against jazz-trained sidemen in doo-wop and elsewhere. And beyond the Mitch Miller effect, he insists on a truth long denied--that '50s rock and rollers also dug pop's pre-rock history, on a hit parade with room for Frank Sinatra and Gogi Grant and in rocking covers of such chestnuts as "Blue Moon," "Blueberry Hill," "Baby Face," and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes."
>Zak's revisionism might have been tonic for Simon Reynolds, the onetime techno utopian whose strange new Retromania is particularly glassy-eyed about what a long chapter calls "The Never-Ending Fifties Revival." But this was not to be--Reynolds's extensive bibliography cites only one outdated and sketchily researched work that documents the decade. Retromania is an entertaining if long-winded exposé of backward-looking fads most of us were too sensible to pay any mind in the first place, from Sha Na Na to postpunk revival concerts featuring full-length renditions of albums never before performed beginning to end. A committed futurist for all of a quarter-century critical career, Reynolds is old enough to feel nostalgic about futurisms past and smart enough to know this is weird. But he isn't humble or candid enough to admit that although he can write with passable insight about chart pop, black music, and America in general, he has no heart for any of them. Hence he doesn't get the '50s at all, which renders doubly redolent his explanation of why he believes 1963 was "The Year That Rock Began": "Rock'n'roll in the fifties sense was both rawer and more showbizzy; 1963, the year of The Beatles, Dylan, the Stones, is when the idea of Rock as Art, Rock as Revolution, Rock as Bohemia, Rock as a Self-Consciously Innovative Form, really began."
>Reynolds is making fun of himself a little; he knows all those capitalized concepts generate folderol aplenty. But the real problem is the absoluteness of the bifurcation he proposes. As Zak is one of many to point out, the standard 1955 dividing line is problematic enough. It's much worse that what the Beatles and the Stones and the less showbizzy Dylan are actually doing in the supposed year of Rock as Innovative Art is seizing the past by reinterpreting Americana (albeit not in the garages they didn't have). The Beatles and the Stones share Chuck Berry, a bugbear of Reynolds, while the Stones and Dylan share blues, which he never addresses. But all define an aesthetic in which a modernity they will soon start messing around with begins with the insurgent American pop of the '50s.
>Most of what's become of this aesthetic, especially when it imagines a utopian '50s that never existed like Grease, is as artistically flabby and intellectually barren as any other golden-age escapism, including many of the retro strategies and subcultures Reynolds dissects. But for some reason he skips one of the most egregious: the tribute album, in which artists take time out of their busy schedules to honor an earlier cynosure in cover versions of widely varying approach, quality, and enthusiasm. I count precisely six such tributes of any consistency since 1990: reconstituted Jimmie Rodgers, Hound Dog Taylor, and Fela Kuti, well-respected Richard Thompson, Gram Parsons, and Loretta Lynn. Now, suddenly, there are two more.
>>126923548Ever see that interview from '72 where Elvis shamefully admits that he sang "'Till I Waltz Again With You" at his high school talent show?
>>126923542 (OP)>>126923548it's partially right in the sense that a lot of the basic sounds of the '50s were already there in 1950, the first yer of the decae
the accurate way to put it is that the age of standards had ended by 1950 yet the age of the rock singer-songwriter had yet to arrive so there was about 14 years when novelty songs dominated pop
i dont know which one is more of a fraud this loathsome cunt or simon reynolds, i think its funny both act like authorities for scenes they were never a part of though
>>126923548oh well you know how it was. rock critics had to create a simplified narrative of "Elvis kill le doggy in le window" when the truth was more complex than that
>>126923782Cuckgau gets some legitimacy here for having been a teenager in the 50s and lived through that music firsthand but Reynolds was a child of the 70s.
>>126923827reynolds sells himself as the voice of electronic music (especially acid house) when he was a shoegazer until the 90s it's why he pushes nonsense mythology that bowls over mongs
christgau is old enough that he could've been listening to 50s rock when he was 13 but he was a sportswriter and a jazzfag until the late 60s
The problem with the 1955 dividing line is exactly that. It's true that the late 40s was dominated by monotonous crooner lullabys at very slow tempos but the big hits in early 1950 were "If I Knew You Were Coming Id've Baked a Cake", "Music Music Music", "Rag Mop" etc and it was like flipping a switch. Suddenly lullabys were (mostly) out of style and bright sounding novelty hits were in.
>>126923969>christgau is old enough that he could've been listening to 50s rock when he was 13 but he was a sportswriter and a jazzfag until the late 60sEven worse, lol. He admitted that he got into black music as a kid because black singers didn't look like the guys who shoved him into a locker in the 9th grade.
>>126923969>and a jazzfag until the late 60sthis was the guy who got filtered by Sketches of Spain and boycotted jazz for 4 years
>>126923577>The Beatles and the Stones share Chuck Berry, a bugbear of ReynoldsLemme guess. He had a beef with Chuck over his personal life despite that being irrelevant to the music. Go figure.
>>126923827>but Reynolds was a child of the 70syeah he has said that Fear of Music and PIL's debut album which came out when he was 16-17 were like the most powerful music ever recorded
>>126923542 (OP)>>126923548My most unfavorite part of the 50s by far is those white bread male vocal groups like The Four Aces and The Hilltoppers. Absolutely drab chart filler that aged like old milk and are rightfully forgotten.
>>126924201exactly. Reynolds was down with the post-punk/shoegaze scene back then.
>>126923542 (OP)That still of course doesn't mean "Istanbul" or "You'll Never Get Away From Me" constitute listenable music.
>>126923548>Instead, Zak emphasizes the willingness of indie label owners to turn off the clock through many humdrum hours until fresh music actually happenedthat was true, it was an era when singles not albums dominated and you shit out singles assembly line style with 1 in 4 roughly being good songs instead of filler.
>>126923645Well yeah, rock n roll is an equal mix of black rhythm and blues and white country and western
at least reynolds had better taste than cuckgau
I mean, I could see why "Suzie-Q" just might have been more fun than the Four Aces.
Jazz died as popular chart music in the fifties because whites totally drove it into the ground with inane croonerslop
>>126926368Some context is required. Croonerslop was a heavily urban genre and heavily ethnic genre popular with Jews/Italians/Irish who all had strong singing traditions.
>>126926396Blacks had doo-wop though? Or did that come from barbershop style singing too?
