How I Learned To Love Rock And Roll

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I have been spending quite a lot of time listening to rock and roll (and other music from the rock and roll 'era' c.late 50s). This was sparked by a sudden and complete infatuation w/"Chantilly Lace" by the Big BOPPER.

So I wanted to ask - what do my fellow Poptimists think about rock and roll? Do you like it? Do you listen to it? How does it stack up next to pop now (or pop from a more recent then)? Is it pop at all? Is it rock? Does the path of listening to rock and roll lead inexorably to the Stray Cats? etc. etc.

Here are some things about rock and roll which relate to other Poptimist concerns:

- The tracks are generally very short.
- They are often quite goofy.
- They sound like they were done very quickly.
- They mostly came out on single.
- There was a hell of a lot of it.
- There are a lot of boys with guitars around.
- Rock and roll is pretty old.
- Chunks of it are very revered.
- It gets revived a lot.

HMMMMMM. Over to you crazy comments box cats!

Comments

[koganbot]

If you're looking from the perspective of r&b, rock 'n' roll brings a lot of pop into r&b. E.g., before rock 'n' roll there's a chord pattern that as far as I know is only used in white pop: I-vi-IV-V (e.g., Richard Rodgers' "Blue Moon"). Or a common variant: I-vi-ii-V (e.g., Hoagy Carmichael's "Heart and Soul"). When rock 'n' roll hits, it's suddenly all over the place (something like 90% or the doo-wop songs uses one or another of those patterns, but they're hardly restricted to doo-wop). Btw, how do you categorize doo-wop? Is it part of rock 'n' roll? R&b? Its own thing?

Gene Vincent: I hear beatnik, proto-counterculture, proto-punk leanings in the guys. Maybe in a lot of rockabilly.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

Doo-wop is a genre of its own, somewhere between R&B (where it started out, certainly), pop and rock 'n' roll. It existed before the last of those, of course.