[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Tero wrote: [/QUOTENAME][QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME][QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Tero wrote:[/QUOTENAME]Heavy metal, Rock and Pop are all part of the same musical scale, and are nothing more than artificial pigeonholes to separate the "better" music I listen to from the "lousier" music YOU listen to.[/QUOTE]
My definition of pop? Lightweight, frothy, suitable for mass consumption. [/QUOTE]
Thanks for admitting what I just wrote. ;)[/QUOTE]
If everything is equal to everything else then, according to your logic, me singing Nessun Dorma is equal to Pavarotti singing it.
However, by assigning an opera rating of 10 to Pavarotti and an opera rating of just 1 to me, I have proved that you are wrong. ;)
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imho the Headbanger's mix of HTF, and IGC, are harder than the rest of The Works & Hot Space combined, with the exception of "Under Pressure"
"One Vision" generated a lot of heat on radio & MTV Dec 85, but somehow it didn't crack the top forty here in the US...??
"One Vision" generated a lot of heat on radio & MTV Dec 85, but somehow it didn't crack the top forty here in the US...??
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME][QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Tero wrote: [/QUOTENAME][QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME][QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Tero wrote:[/QUOTENAME]Heavy metal, Rock and Pop are all part of the same musical scale, and are nothing more than artificial pigeonholes to separate the "better" music I listen to from the "lousier" music YOU listen to.[/QUOTE]
My definition of pop? Lightweight, frothy, suitable for mass consumption. [/QUOTE]
Thanks for admitting what I just wrote. ;)[/QUOTE]
If everything is equal to everything else then, according to your logic, me singing Nessun Dorma is equal to Pavarotti singing it.
However, by assigning an opera rating of 10 to Pavarotti and an opera rating of just 1 to me, I have proved that you are wrong. ;)[/QUOTE]
You're so far off now that it's becoming ridiculous...
I've never said that pop and rock and heavy metal are all equal. They do however typically use the same selction of instruments, rhytms, and compositional structures. What differentiates them from each others is the subjective "heaviness" of the final product. That's what makes it possible to use the same scale in rating them.
And yes, by my logic you singing an opera song and Pavarotti singing the same opera song could reach almost the same "operatic" score, because that particular scale doesn't take into account the qiuality of the performance. You might be the worst opera singer ever, but if you tried your best to imitate Pavarotti with a series of shrieking voices which I would happen to associate with opera singing, then you would get the same "operatic" rating.
My definition of pop? Lightweight, frothy, suitable for mass consumption. [/QUOTE]
Thanks for admitting what I just wrote. ;)[/QUOTE]
If everything is equal to everything else then, according to your logic, me singing Nessun Dorma is equal to Pavarotti singing it.
However, by assigning an opera rating of 10 to Pavarotti and an opera rating of just 1 to me, I have proved that you are wrong. ;)[/QUOTE]
You're so far off now that it's becoming ridiculous...
I've never said that pop and rock and heavy metal are all equal. They do however typically use the same selction of instruments, rhytms, and compositional structures. What differentiates them from each others is the subjective "heaviness" of the final product. That's what makes it possible to use the same scale in rating them.
And yes, by my logic you singing an opera song and Pavarotti singing the same opera song could reach almost the same "operatic" score, because that particular scale doesn't take into account the qiuality of the performance. You might be the worst opera singer ever, but if you tried your best to imitate Pavarotti with a series of shrieking voices which I would happen to associate with opera singing, then you would get the same "operatic" rating.
I'm totally confused then, and I'm dead smart me. I once read The Times all the way through, although I have to admit I did start at the football section.
You said ealier that Bohemian Rhapsody was "not any more rockier than Radio Ga Ga". You have still to provide any evidence to support that assertion. For my part, the fact that Wayne & Garth were headbanging to BoRap rather than Radio Ga Ga is evidence enough. Also, although my ears are getting progressively worse as the years go by they were never simply painted on and I can tell a rock song from a pop song pretty easily. Contrary to what you have been arguing, genres do exist: jazz, rock, pop, classical etc. Try telling Annie Lennox she is producing essentially the same music as Iron Maiden "only less intense or powerful", see how far you get. Queen did dabble in many of these but their primary characteristics were rock-based. This so blindingly obvious to me that I can't see why you don't get it. Then again, I don't see your point of view either (although I don't think you are explaining yourself terribly well -- I'm still trying to figure out why, if genres don't exist, you insisted earlier that Queen have always been a pop rock band. Your scale to "quantify the subjective heaviness" of songs also remains puzzling. What exactly does it do again except measure how noisy each song is? How does that prove Queen were a pop rock group rather than a rock group?)
All the best.
You said ealier that Bohemian Rhapsody was "not any more rockier than Radio Ga Ga". You have still to provide any evidence to support that assertion. For my part, the fact that Wayne & Garth were headbanging to BoRap rather than Radio Ga Ga is evidence enough. Also, although my ears are getting progressively worse as the years go by they were never simply painted on and I can tell a rock song from a pop song pretty easily. Contrary to what you have been arguing, genres do exist: jazz, rock, pop, classical etc. Try telling Annie Lennox she is producing essentially the same music as Iron Maiden "only less intense or powerful", see how far you get. Queen did dabble in many of these but their primary characteristics were rock-based. This so blindingly obvious to me that I can't see why you don't get it. Then again, I don't see your point of view either (although I don't think you are explaining yourself terribly well -- I'm still trying to figure out why, if genres don't exist, you insisted earlier that Queen have always been a pop rock band. Your scale to "quantify the subjective heaviness" of songs also remains puzzling. What exactly does it do again except measure how noisy each song is? How does that prove Queen were a pop rock group rather than a rock group?)
All the best.
Tero, I don't mean that synths and machines were the only cause for their music to be averagely simpler, but it did encourage the path they were taking. 'Races' is already notably simpler and less overdubbed than 'Opera' (although they could use 32 tracks instead of 24), and 'News' is much simpler than 'Races'.
Btw, I do regard 'Hard Life' as a masterpiece.
And while I think your scoring idea is nice, I think it still needs loads of polishing.
Btw, I do regard 'Hard Life' as a masterpiece.
And while I think your scoring idea is nice, I think it still needs loads of polishing.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]
You said ealier that Bohemian Rhapsody was "not any more rockier than Radio Ga Ga". You have still to provide any evidence to support that assertion. For my part, the fact that Wayne & Garth were headbanging to BoRap rather than Radio Ga Ga is evidence enough.[/QUOTE]
On average those two songs are just hard and heavy... You didn't see Wayne & Garth headbanging at the ballad section did you? Or at the operatic section? Out of the six minutes in Bohemian Rhapsody, the song spends about 4,5 minutes in the pop area (with a short guitar solo thrown in before the opera section), which is less heavy than Radio Ga Ga.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Also, although my ears are getting progressively worse as the years go by they were never simply painted on and I can tell a rock song from a pop song pretty easily.[/QUOTE]
Alright then, is You're My Best Friend a pop song, or would it be a pop song only if some other band had released it? A serious question, which tells a lot about how your ears work. ;)
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Contrary to what you have been arguing, genres do exist: jazz, rock, pop, classical etc. Try telling Annie Lennox she is producing essentially the same music as Iron Maiden "only less intense or powerful", see how far you get.[/QUOTE]
I have never before in this topic mentioned genres such as jazz or classical music, because they do NOT use the same selection of instruments, rhythms and structures unlike pop/rock/heavy. I wouldn't place all of these genres on the SAME scale of heaviness, as they would have only occasional linking points... The "scale" of all musical genres would look more like a 3-dimensional representation of a molecule which has a wide variety of different chains and circles connecting each other in several different points. Kinda like this picture:
http://www.cscs.ch/~mvalle/ChemViz/representations/m-thumb.jpg
I have no problem admitting the similarities between heavy rock and pop music. Why is that such a big deal to some people? It's just an artificial label which doesn't change the content of the music at all.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Queen did dabble in many of these but their primary characteristics were rock-based. This so blindingly obvious to me that I can't see why you don't get it. Then again, I don't see your point of view either (although I don't think you are explaining yourself terribly well [/QUOTE]
The way I see it, the only real difference between our views is that you cannot possibly accept that the same band could be both a rock band and a pop band at the same time. If you have 5 pop songs and 5 rock songs on the same album, where do you categorise the band?
You want to believe the band was first a rock group, then turned into a pop group for ten years, and then again back to rock group. It didn't have to change at all, because it has ALWAYS (at least since 1974) been both types on the same album. I can't understand why you don't get it. ;)
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]-- I'm still trying to figure out why, if genres don't exist, you insisted earlier that Queen have always been a pop rock band. Your scale to "quantify the subjective heaviness" of songs also remains puzzling. What exactly does it do again except measure how noisy each song is? How does that prove Queen were a pop rock group rather than a rock group?)
All the best.
[/QUOTE]
The point of my scale was to try and illustrate that Queen has always been a band that has done all kinds of material from soft pop music to heavy rock music. Of course it all depends on whether you think of pop, rock, and heavy music as subgenres of the same genre or different genres altogether... If you want to think that just the appearance of a synthesiser instead of a piano magically makes something pop music instead o
You said ealier that Bohemian Rhapsody was "not any more rockier than Radio Ga Ga". You have still to provide any evidence to support that assertion. For my part, the fact that Wayne & Garth were headbanging to BoRap rather than Radio Ga Ga is evidence enough.[/QUOTE]
On average those two songs are just hard and heavy... You didn't see Wayne & Garth headbanging at the ballad section did you? Or at the operatic section? Out of the six minutes in Bohemian Rhapsody, the song spends about 4,5 minutes in the pop area (with a short guitar solo thrown in before the opera section), which is less heavy than Radio Ga Ga.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Also, although my ears are getting progressively worse as the years go by they were never simply painted on and I can tell a rock song from a pop song pretty easily.[/QUOTE]
Alright then, is You're My Best Friend a pop song, or would it be a pop song only if some other band had released it? A serious question, which tells a lot about how your ears work. ;)
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Contrary to what you have been arguing, genres do exist: jazz, rock, pop, classical etc. Try telling Annie Lennox she is producing essentially the same music as Iron Maiden "only less intense or powerful", see how far you get.[/QUOTE]
I have never before in this topic mentioned genres such as jazz or classical music, because they do NOT use the same selection of instruments, rhythms and structures unlike pop/rock/heavy. I wouldn't place all of these genres on the SAME scale of heaviness, as they would have only occasional linking points... The "scale" of all musical genres would look more like a 3-dimensional representation of a molecule which has a wide variety of different chains and circles connecting each other in several different points. Kinda like this picture:
http://www.cscs.ch/~mvalle/ChemViz/representations/m-thumb.jpg
I have no problem admitting the similarities between heavy rock and pop music. Why is that such a big deal to some people? It's just an artificial label which doesn't change the content of the music at all.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Queen did dabble in many of these but their primary characteristics were rock-based. This so blindingly obvious to me that I can't see why you don't get it. Then again, I don't see your point of view either (although I don't think you are explaining yourself terribly well [/QUOTE]
The way I see it, the only real difference between our views is that you cannot possibly accept that the same band could be both a rock band and a pop band at the same time. If you have 5 pop songs and 5 rock songs on the same album, where do you categorise the band?
You want to believe the band was first a rock group, then turned into a pop group for ten years, and then again back to rock group. It didn't have to change at all, because it has ALWAYS (at least since 1974) been both types on the same album. I can't understand why you don't get it. ;)
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]-- I'm still trying to figure out why, if genres don't exist, you insisted earlier that Queen have always been a pop rock band. Your scale to "quantify the subjective heaviness" of songs also remains puzzling. What exactly does it do again except measure how noisy each song is? How does that prove Queen were a pop rock group rather than a rock group?)
All the best.
[/QUOTE]
The point of my scale was to try and illustrate that Queen has always been a band that has done all kinds of material from soft pop music to heavy rock music. Of course it all depends on whether you think of pop, rock, and heavy music as subgenres of the same genre or different genres altogether... If you want to think that just the appearance of a synthesiser instead of a piano magically makes something pop music instead o
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Sebastian wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Tero, I don't mean that synths and machines were the only cause for their music to be averagely simpler, but it did encourage the path they were taking. 'Races' is already notably simpler and less overdubbed than 'Opera' (although they could use 32 tracks instead of 24), and 'News' is much simpler than 'Races'.
Btw, I do regard 'Hard Life' as a masterpiece.
And while I think your scoring idea is nice, I think it still needs loads of polishing.[/QUOTE]
In a way you are right because synthesisers made it easier to record the music they wanted. No need for time-consuming orchestrations and overdubs, when you can just punch in the nearest thing into the machine and play it out.
I only used ADATR as an example because it's something most fans would call their favourite album, and It's a Hard Life because for some reason most people seem to dislike it (although I cannot understand why, as it even has guitar and piano. :P )... They're just "easy targets" because they're well known. But like you said, their recordings were constantly evolving. They didn't just snap out of rock and into disco the next year (and again into pop few years later), but evolved just like any normal person would. That's what makes them great: There's change in between the albums.
I hope you don't take the scale too seriously. ;)
It isn't by any means absolutely accurate or meant to be taken literally, but rather as a representation of how the band had several facets throughout their career.
Btw, I do regard 'Hard Life' as a masterpiece.
And while I think your scoring idea is nice, I think it still needs loads of polishing.[/QUOTE]
In a way you are right because synthesisers made it easier to record the music they wanted. No need for time-consuming orchestrations and overdubs, when you can just punch in the nearest thing into the machine and play it out.
I only used ADATR as an example because it's something most fans would call their favourite album, and It's a Hard Life because for some reason most people seem to dislike it (although I cannot understand why, as it even has guitar and piano. :P )... They're just "easy targets" because they're well known. But like you said, their recordings were constantly evolving. They didn't just snap out of rock and into disco the next year (and again into pop few years later), but evolved just like any normal person would. That's what makes them great: There's change in between the albums.
I hope you don't take the scale too seriously. ;)
It isn't by any means absolutely accurate or meant to be taken literally, but rather as a representation of how the band had several facets throughout their career.
Tero, and as you're very passionate and obviously intelligent, I must say with all due respect that like Holly, you're confusing me! Queen were not a pop/rock band on either of their first two albums. SHA contained more pop elements (KQ, Misfire) and ANATO even more than SHA. But Queen at the start were a hard rock band with pop sensibilities. The Beatles The Beach Boys? Pop bands who dabbled in the world of rock (using your example of Judas Priest as rock). Queen could blow the doors off of virtually any rock band in the early days. Listen to Modern Times Rock and Roll, Ogre Battle or even the end of the "poppy" piano based Doing All Right. As great as the Beatles, were, and the wonderful, intelligent Sebastian loves them, I don't think they belong in that world with Priest, Maiden, Sabbath, VH, Aerosmith etc. Queen did, but with more mainstream sensibilities that became more obvious after they went after a bigger audience. Honestly, I like where you're going with your ratings and admire you defending them, but RGG is about the least heavy song in the catalogue. Bo Rhap has a fire, builds in an all-time crescendo, and just pounds along in the rock section. Listen to Roger's bass drum during the post-opera section. Punishing, pushing the song forward. That's what I'd call heavy. Not playing keyboard pads to a drum machine.
BTW, agree with whoever said this had been a good discussion, a rarity around here in the past year but hopefully a good sign for '08.
BTW, agree with whoever said this had been a good discussion, a rarity around here in the past year but hopefully a good sign for '08.
Tero, I can't do the quote thing but here goes:
There is no rock bit at all in Ga Ga whereas everything in BoRap leads up to a fantastically hard and exciting rock ending. Remind me again where the "heavy" bit is in Ga Ga...
YMBF is a catchy, lightweight pop song. Have I ever said anything different?
You have no problem seeing similarities between pop & rock but I disagree with your comparisons and catgorising. Also, you clearly have problems seeing differences between rock and pop, refusing to acknowledge any. Fair enough: you haven't convinced me though.
I can accept that a band can be a rock and pop band at the same time. I have said clearly that Queen in the 80s fall into that category. Also, I have never said Queen "was first a rock group, then turned into a pop group for ten years, and then again back to rock group". Where in the world did you get that from? I said in the 1970s Queen were basically a rock band who dabbled in other genres and in the 80s they were a pop-rock band.
I have covered the synthesiser stuff already. There isn't much to discuss if you keep misrepresenting my views about it. I never said anything remotely like "the appearance of a synthesiser instead of a piano magically makes something pop music instead of rock". I am a Rush fan after all.
Don't understand any of that molecule stuff. If you Use a Simpsons analogy I might get it.
There is no rock bit at all in Ga Ga whereas everything in BoRap leads up to a fantastically hard and exciting rock ending. Remind me again where the "heavy" bit is in Ga Ga...
YMBF is a catchy, lightweight pop song. Have I ever said anything different?
You have no problem seeing similarities between pop & rock but I disagree with your comparisons and catgorising. Also, you clearly have problems seeing differences between rock and pop, refusing to acknowledge any. Fair enough: you haven't convinced me though.
I can accept that a band can be a rock and pop band at the same time. I have said clearly that Queen in the 80s fall into that category. Also, I have never said Queen "was first a rock group, then turned into a pop group for ten years, and then again back to rock group". Where in the world did you get that from? I said in the 1970s Queen were basically a rock band who dabbled in other genres and in the 80s they were a pop-rock band.
I have covered the synthesiser stuff already. There isn't much to discuss if you keep misrepresenting my views about it. I never said anything remotely like "the appearance of a synthesiser instead of a piano magically makes something pop music instead of rock". I am a Rush fan after all.
Don't understand any of that molecule stuff. If you Use a Simpsons analogy I might get it.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Boy Thomas Raker wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Tero, and as you're very passionate and obviously intelligent, I must say with all due respect that like Holly, you're confusing me! Queen were not a pop/rock band on either of their first two albums. SHA contained more pop elements (KQ, Misfire) and ANATO even more than SHA. But Queen at the start were a hard rock band with pop sensibilities. The Beatles The Beach Boys? Pop bands who dabbled in the world of rock (using your example of Judas Priest as rock). Queen could blow the doors off of virtually any rock band in the early days. Listen to Modern Times Rock and Roll, Ogre Battle or even the end of the "poppy" piano based Doing All Right. As great as the Beatles, were, and the wonderful, intelligent Sebastian loves them, I don't think they belong in that world with Priest, Maiden, Sabbath, VH, Aerosmith etc. Queen did, but with more mainstream sensibilities that became more obvious after they went after a bigger audience. Honestly, I like where you're going with your ratings and admire you defending them, but RGG is about the least heavy song in the catalogue. Bo Rhap has a fire, builds in an all-time crescendo, and just pounds along in the rock section. Listen to Roger's bass drum during the post-opera section. Punishing, pushing the song forward. That's what I'd call heavy. Not playing keyboard pads to a drum machine.
BTW, agree with whoever said this had been a good discussion, a rarity around here in the past year but hopefully a good sign for '08.[/QUOTE]
Like I said earlier, Queen started out much heavier, but even by the time Q2 was released, they had changed a LOT. It wouldn't be exactly fair to categorise the band based on their first album, now would it? Especially since that first album made no impact on the general audience. Imagine if the Peter Gabriel era Genesis were thought of as that 3-minute pop song band with strings overdubbed on every song, just because that was what their first album sounded like?
It would be stretching the truth a lot to say that Procession, White Queen, Some Day One Day, Fairy Feller, Nevermore or Funny how Love Is were heavy tracks, let alone if we included the fairly lightweight majorities of Father To Son or March Of The Black Queen... Compared to the half a dozen "straight" rockers on Q1 were down to about 3 and 1/2 of them on Q2!
As to comparing the "heaviness" of Radio Ga Ga and Bohemian Rhapsody... There are many ways to do that as well. Bohemian Rhapsody is comprised of five different segments: The acapella introduction which is VERY light, the ballad section which starts out as light pop and finishes as light rock, opera section which is pretty much in the halfway of Queen "heaviness" scale, a heavy rock section which is pretty close to Queen at their "heaviest", and the ballad finale which is light pop again. I'd say that on average the song is "light rock", which is incidentally what Radio Ga Ga is. Some parts are heavier, but some parts are much lighter. The thing that makes Bohemian Rhapsody (or practically any of the Queen albums) great compared to Radio Ga Ga is that variance. Valleys in the music will make you appreciate the peaks even more, but if you start out on an even plateau, it's pretty hard to see just how high you are. ;)
BTW, agree with whoever said this had been a good discussion, a rarity around here in the past year but hopefully a good sign for '08.[/QUOTE]
Like I said earlier, Queen started out much heavier, but even by the time Q2 was released, they had changed a LOT. It wouldn't be exactly fair to categorise the band based on their first album, now would it? Especially since that first album made no impact on the general audience. Imagine if the Peter Gabriel era Genesis were thought of as that 3-minute pop song band with strings overdubbed on every song, just because that was what their first album sounded like?
It would be stretching the truth a lot to say that Procession, White Queen, Some Day One Day, Fairy Feller, Nevermore or Funny how Love Is were heavy tracks, let alone if we included the fairly lightweight majorities of Father To Son or March Of The Black Queen... Compared to the half a dozen "straight" rockers on Q1 were down to about 3 and 1/2 of them on Q2!
As to comparing the "heaviness" of Radio Ga Ga and Bohemian Rhapsody... There are many ways to do that as well. Bohemian Rhapsody is comprised of five different segments: The acapella introduction which is VERY light, the ballad section which starts out as light pop and finishes as light rock, opera section which is pretty much in the halfway of Queen "heaviness" scale, a heavy rock section which is pretty close to Queen at their "heaviest", and the ballad finale which is light pop again. I'd say that on average the song is "light rock", which is incidentally what Radio Ga Ga is. Some parts are heavier, but some parts are much lighter. The thing that makes Bohemian Rhapsody (or practically any of the Queen albums) great compared to Radio Ga Ga is that variance. Valleys in the music will make you appreciate the peaks even more, but if you start out on an even plateau, it's pretty hard to see just how high you are. ;)
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]
There is no rock bit at all in Ga Ga whereas everything in BoRap leads up to a fantastically hard and exciting rock ending. Remind me again where the "heavy" bit is in Ga Ga...[/QUOTE]
It's an average thing. ;)
Some parts of Bohemian Rhapsody are much heavier than Radio Ga Ga, but some parts are much poppier. If it makes it easier, you can think of it as a report card where "Bo" gets all kinds of grades from A to F while "Rad" has a C in every subject... They still have the same average.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]YMBF is a catchy, lightweight pop song. Have I ever said anything different?
You have no problem seeing similarities between pop & rock but I disagree with your comparisons and catgorising. Also, you clearly have problems seeing differences between rock and pop, refusing to acknowledge any. Fair enough: you haven't convinced me though.
I can accept that a band can be a rock and pop band at the same time. I have said clearly that Queen in the 80s fall into that category. Also, I have never said Queen "was first a rock group, then turned into a pop group for ten years, and then again back to rock group". Where in the world did you get that from? I said in the 1970s Queen were basically a rock band who dabbled in other genres and in the 80s they were a pop-rock band.[/QUOTE]
I think I get that "first a rock group, then a pop group" -vibe from things like you just said. You've admitted that the band was making pop tunes quite early in their career, you can see that there were several of them on the same album, and as little as half of the albums are comprised of "rock songs"... Yet you can say that they were absolutely a rock band.
In 1974 half of the album was filled with rock and half with pop.
In 1975-1977 one third was rock, one third was pop, and one third was "experimental".
In 1984 One third was rock, one third was pop, and one third was middle-of-the-road synthesised light rock.
The proportional representation of rock or pop didn't change in the albums. What changed was that the "unclassifiable" material which was all over the scales in the 70's turned into "light rock" of the 80's which was in the middle of the scale. An accurate analogy here would be a literal scale.
http://www.juliantrubin.com/imageses/scale.gif
In the 70's either side (the pop side and the rock side) would have 3 equal heavy weights, and another three lighter weights, keeping the combination in balance. In the 80's that would have turned into three larger weights on either side, and another three carefully balanced on the top of the beam, making the combination teeter ever so slightly, but still keeping a balance.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Don't understand any of that molecule stuff. If you Use a Simpsons analogy I might get it.[/QUOTE]
How about just any old street map from any city?
(You can google Springfield if you like. :P )
Pop, rock, and heavy are all intersections on the same straight street, with perhaps a few blocks between them. From the "pop" intersection you can also take the "soul" bulevard which twists and turns around for a while through other intersections like "gospel", "blues" and "rhythm 'n' blues" before it arrives to the "rock" intersection from another direction.
Each of these genres can be reached via other genres, but the road between some of them is much shorter and simpler than the road between others. So much in fact, that it's easier to think of the "pop-rock-heavy" blocks as a single development project instead of three separate ones. (I don't think that two dimensions can accurately represent all the relationships and differences between these "roads", which is why I used that molecule as my previous exam
There is no rock bit at all in Ga Ga whereas everything in BoRap leads up to a fantastically hard and exciting rock ending. Remind me again where the "heavy" bit is in Ga Ga...[/QUOTE]
It's an average thing. ;)
Some parts of Bohemian Rhapsody are much heavier than Radio Ga Ga, but some parts are much poppier. If it makes it easier, you can think of it as a report card where "Bo" gets all kinds of grades from A to F while "Rad" has a C in every subject... They still have the same average.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]YMBF is a catchy, lightweight pop song. Have I ever said anything different?
You have no problem seeing similarities between pop & rock but I disagree with your comparisons and catgorising. Also, you clearly have problems seeing differences between rock and pop, refusing to acknowledge any. Fair enough: you haven't convinced me though.
I can accept that a band can be a rock and pop band at the same time. I have said clearly that Queen in the 80s fall into that category. Also, I have never said Queen "was first a rock group, then turned into a pop group for ten years, and then again back to rock group". Where in the world did you get that from? I said in the 1970s Queen were basically a rock band who dabbled in other genres and in the 80s they were a pop-rock band.[/QUOTE]
I think I get that "first a rock group, then a pop group" -vibe from things like you just said. You've admitted that the band was making pop tunes quite early in their career, you can see that there were several of them on the same album, and as little as half of the albums are comprised of "rock songs"... Yet you can say that they were absolutely a rock band.
In 1974 half of the album was filled with rock and half with pop.
In 1975-1977 one third was rock, one third was pop, and one third was "experimental".
In 1984 One third was rock, one third was pop, and one third was middle-of-the-road synthesised light rock.
The proportional representation of rock or pop didn't change in the albums. What changed was that the "unclassifiable" material which was all over the scales in the 70's turned into "light rock" of the 80's which was in the middle of the scale. An accurate analogy here would be a literal scale.
http://www.juliantrubin.com/imageses/scale.gif
In the 70's either side (the pop side and the rock side) would have 3 equal heavy weights, and another three lighter weights, keeping the combination in balance. In the 80's that would have turned into three larger weights on either side, and another three carefully balanced on the top of the beam, making the combination teeter ever so slightly, but still keeping a balance.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]Don't understand any of that molecule stuff. If you Use a Simpsons analogy I might get it.[/QUOTE]
How about just any old street map from any city?
(You can google Springfield if you like. :P )
Pop, rock, and heavy are all intersections on the same straight street, with perhaps a few blocks between them. From the "pop" intersection you can also take the "soul" bulevard which twists and turns around for a while through other intersections like "gospel", "blues" and "rhythm 'n' blues" before it arrives to the "rock" intersection from another direction.
Each of these genres can be reached via other genres, but the road between some of them is much shorter and simpler than the road between others. So much in fact, that it's easier to think of the "pop-rock-heavy" blocks as a single development project instead of three separate ones. (I don't think that two dimensions can accurately represent all the relationships and differences between these "roads", which is why I used that molecule as my previous exam
I don't agree with your stats about the amount of pop and rock tracks on early albums. I don't think Lily of the valley, for example, is "pop". neither is it rock exactly, but it's not Cool Cat either. Also, I don't agree with leaving out Queen I. If the question is "were Quen a rock band in the 70s" then you have to look at all their albums, not omit the first because "it's not typical". Besdies, if youa re concerned with "averages" then you can't leave out an album that obviously skews the average towards rock.
I see your anology better now. on some of those streets people are dressed in Iron Maiden t-shirts and Judas priest is blasting from cars. On other streets, Boy George has opened a disco. However, both streets clearly exist, whether they are close to eachother or far away.
You are correct in that it doesn't take much to get form the blues to rock, for example, but to deny both exist as separate genres (with multiple crossover points - liminal spaces is, I think, the term often used for this kind of debate -- is oversimplifying things. It's got nothing to do with elitism -- "my music's better than yours" (although it probably is ;p) as I am fond of a lot of other types of music apart from rock. For example, I like hard rock, heavy rock, rock 'n' roll and heavy metal :) Seriously, I am as fond of Annie Lennox's voice as I am Freddie Mercury's. Your approach is too reductionist for my liking, although I'm sure you probably feel it's me who has that "fault". Fair enough: I'm willing to accept (1) either that I'm right and you are wrong, but that we both hold honest differences of opinion or (2) I don't know as much about music as you do, which is quite possible, and I simply don't "get it". In which case you are never going top convince me that Radio Ga Ga is as heavy as BoRap. Not in a millon years mate.
All the best.
I see your anology better now. on some of those streets people are dressed in Iron Maiden t-shirts and Judas priest is blasting from cars. On other streets, Boy George has opened a disco. However, both streets clearly exist, whether they are close to eachother or far away.
You are correct in that it doesn't take much to get form the blues to rock, for example, but to deny both exist as separate genres (with multiple crossover points - liminal spaces is, I think, the term often used for this kind of debate -- is oversimplifying things. It's got nothing to do with elitism -- "my music's better than yours" (although it probably is ;p) as I am fond of a lot of other types of music apart from rock. For example, I like hard rock, heavy rock, rock 'n' roll and heavy metal :) Seriously, I am as fond of Annie Lennox's voice as I am Freddie Mercury's. Your approach is too reductionist for my liking, although I'm sure you probably feel it's me who has that "fault". Fair enough: I'm willing to accept (1) either that I'm right and you are wrong, but that we both hold honest differences of opinion or (2) I don't know as much about music as you do, which is quite possible, and I simply don't "get it". In which case you are never going top convince me that Radio Ga Ga is as heavy as BoRap. Not in a millon years mate.
All the best.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]I don't agree with your stats about the amount of pop and rock tracks on early albums. I don't think Lily of the valley, for example, is "pop". neither is it rock exactly, but it's not Cool Cat either. Also, I don't agree with leaving out Queen I. If the question is "were Quen a rock band in the 70s" then you have to look at all their albums, not omit the first because "it's not typical". Besdies, if youa re concerned with "averages" then you can't leave out an album that obviously skews the average towards rock.[/QUOTE]
Did you happen to read what I wrote about Genesis? That based on their first album the Peter Gabriel years of the seventies (which are now seen as deeply progressive and sometimes even overcomplicated) would be classed as three minute pop music with lots of strings? :P
First albums aren't perfectly indicative of musical styles because the bands rarely have a "finished" product by that stage, and are more open to outside influences like record companies and producers. Sometimes bands do stick with the original formula (like Iron Maiden), but sometimes they do veer away from that pretty fast.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]I see your anology better now. on some of those streets people are dressed in Iron Maiden t-shirts and Judas priest is blasting from cars. On other streets, Boy George has opened a disco. However, both streets clearly exist, whether they are close to eachother or far away.
You are correct in that it doesn't take much to get form the blues to rock, for example, but to deny both exist as separate genres (with multiple crossover points - liminal spaces is, I think, the term often used for this kind of debate -- is oversimplifying things.[/QUOTE]
I don't think you got my meaning perfectly this time either, so I guess it must be my fault. There are genres, but some of them are much more closly related to each other than others.
Perhaps another helpful analogy here would be New York City. The scale of pop-heavy music extends across Manhattan from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side. Central Park is a "no-man's-land" which is a crossover point into the blues and soul of Harlem and rap in Bronx. Dance music is somewhere in Queens, classical music in Brooklyn (and is accessable through the cabaret, casino, etc "entertainer acts" at Lower Manhattan), and "world music" is far, far away at Staten Island. Of course all the places are accessible from all the other places with the subway, but it might take a change or two along the way. ;)
EDIT: I've added the next paragraphs...
I was a bit bored, so I colored a quick sketch on the map of New York. :P
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d134/TeeRoo/nyc.jpg
What the map is supposed to show is
a pop-rock-heavy scale goes from light green to dark green
a dance-disco-techno scale that goes from light yellow to dark (almost greenish) yellow
a series of brownish colours to illustrate the entertainment-orcehstral-classical music scale
a blue soul-gospel-rnb-blues scale.
The colours, sizes, shapes or locations don't even try to represent any factual measurable distances or popularities, and it's pretty impossible to draw this as a two-dimensional picture... This is only meant to illustrate that there are "series" of similar subgenres, and these subgenres can approach some of the most unexpected subgenres elsewhere (for example you can get from "dance" to "classical music" via "ambient" much easier than you could get via "pop music".
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]It's got nothing to do with elitism -- "my music's better than yours" (although it probably is ;p) as I am fond of a lot of other types of music apart from rock. For example, I like hard rock, heavy rock, rock 'n' roll and heavy metal :) Seriously, I
Did you happen to read what I wrote about Genesis? That based on their first album the Peter Gabriel years of the seventies (which are now seen as deeply progressive and sometimes even overcomplicated) would be classed as three minute pop music with lots of strings? :P
First albums aren't perfectly indicative of musical styles because the bands rarely have a "finished" product by that stage, and are more open to outside influences like record companies and producers. Sometimes bands do stick with the original formula (like Iron Maiden), but sometimes they do veer away from that pretty fast.
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]I see your anology better now. on some of those streets people are dressed in Iron Maiden t-shirts and Judas priest is blasting from cars. On other streets, Boy George has opened a disco. However, both streets clearly exist, whether they are close to eachother or far away.
You are correct in that it doesn't take much to get form the blues to rock, for example, but to deny both exist as separate genres (with multiple crossover points - liminal spaces is, I think, the term often used for this kind of debate -- is oversimplifying things.[/QUOTE]
I don't think you got my meaning perfectly this time either, so I guess it must be my fault. There are genres, but some of them are much more closly related to each other than others.
Perhaps another helpful analogy here would be New York City. The scale of pop-heavy music extends across Manhattan from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side. Central Park is a "no-man's-land" which is a crossover point into the blues and soul of Harlem and rap in Bronx. Dance music is somewhere in Queens, classical music in Brooklyn (and is accessable through the cabaret, casino, etc "entertainer acts" at Lower Manhattan), and "world music" is far, far away at Staten Island. Of course all the places are accessible from all the other places with the subway, but it might take a change or two along the way. ;)
EDIT: I've added the next paragraphs...
I was a bit bored, so I colored a quick sketch on the map of New York. :P
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d134/TeeRoo/nyc.jpg
What the map is supposed to show is
a pop-rock-heavy scale goes from light green to dark green
a dance-disco-techno scale that goes from light yellow to dark (almost greenish) yellow
a series of brownish colours to illustrate the entertainment-orcehstral-classical music scale
a blue soul-gospel-rnb-blues scale.
The colours, sizes, shapes or locations don't even try to represent any factual measurable distances or popularities, and it's pretty impossible to draw this as a two-dimensional picture... This is only meant to illustrate that there are "series" of similar subgenres, and these subgenres can approach some of the most unexpected subgenres elsewhere (for example you can get from "dance" to "classical music" via "ambient" much easier than you could get via "pop music".
[QUOTE][QUOTENAME]Holly2003 wrote: [/QUOTENAME]It's got nothing to do with elitism -- "my music's better than yours" (although it probably is ;p) as I am fond of a lot of other types of music apart from rock. For example, I like hard rock, heavy rock, rock 'n' roll and heavy metal :) Seriously, I