a brief history of the recessive vocal

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

so instead of making use of my time intelligently or enjoyably, i was playin SOUVLAKI-TETRIS this mornin and listenin to UMMAGUMMA -- and as usual stuck on what an f.awful singer r.waters is, that his shtick is a distrust of emotive effectivness, and it occurred to me that there's a history in pop of the self-consciously characterless vocal, which operates by a kind of passive-aggressive second-guessing ("you admire this uninflected mumble as ART because it is not mere RECEIVED TECHNIQUE playing on your UNEXAMINED INSTINCTS... or some such)

it seems to me it's a feature "why indie is dislikable", and conversely an (haha unacknowledged) reason why r&b and pop divas receive so much kneejerk dislike from indie quarters (as if "being able to sing" = "suborned by THE MAN")

anyway what struck me as odd is that it's NOT a mainstream rock characteristic as of the 60s, 70s or even 80s -- vocal style characterful to the point of being gratingly dislikeable was the rule, and waters was really anomalous in his day

so A: was this the root of his prog credentials? did he make virtue of a necessity? (i'm not a syd fan but he belongs squarely in the post-dylan tradition of expressivity out of anti-technique technique... which is a very different thing)
and B: who does watersism start with? (cheeky burchill-baiting answer: julie london)

footnote: UK punk was notoriously suspicious of the borrowed expressivity of soul and blues in the white voice, but much less so of the borrowed expressivity of folk or country; in fact it pushed off into the exploration of modern urban cousins of folk and country, so it was in the dylan-tradition even when it was actively hostile to borrowed dylanisms

Comments

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)

[koganbot]

Would Morrissey as faux recessive?

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think maybe he started that way and gradually retreated into actual recession? One of the big influences on early/Smiths-era Morrissey are singers who were big in the interregnum between rock'n'roll and the Beatles - British Elvis imitators like Tommy Steele and (especially) yodelling novelties like Frank Ifield. So he's positioning himself as away from rock, unable to tap into the sexuality and authentic self-expression of bluesiness: in effect he's pulling the recessiveness trick on rock 'technique' as it had evolved. But he's not a shy or non-aggressive singer.

Re: some punk voicings (list NOT exhaustive)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes, i think of morrissey as a fairly flamboyant singer (especially in the context of indie): he pulls the passive-aggressive trick in lots of other ways -- or rather, the characters in his songs do -- but as a melody writer and tune-line embellisher he's pretty generous