[QUOTE] [b]cmsdrums wrote:[/b]
[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]
If you're really going to make me go into a detailed analysis of the score to Good Company and why it's not jazz in any sense of the word, I will, but not right now. However, let me raise the following points:
1) The Temperance Seven were a novelty act - essentially musical comedy. They took some stock clichés from the rising dixieland movement, but that's pretty much it. Their music was, incidentally, NOT based on 1920s jazz, but on the 1917 recordings of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, particularly the novelty-song "Tiger Rag", which they covered, a group whose music is universally deemed unrepresentative of authentic jazz at the time (a very small number of authentic artists from this period were recorded in the course of the '20s, Bunk Johnson and Sidney Bechet among them, and their music bears little if any resemblance to the ODJB).
2) In the 1950s, jazz was virtually unknown in Britain. This is in marked contrast to France, Belgium and Holland, where a significant number of jazz musicians settled after WWII. People in Britain (and, to a lesser extent, also in France, Belgium, Holland and the rest of Europe) were only familiarized with jazz through novelty songs and heavily popularized songs. This is not at all dissimilar to what happened with Calypso and, later, Reggae: what was marketed under those terms had little if anything to do with music of those genres as performed in their countries of origin. Here, for instance, is an already popularized but more or less authentic Calypso recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZnNwZyaGf8 And this is what was marketed as Calypso: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek2NucwOOvs
3) Related to the second point: what was marketed as "jazz" or "dixieland" depended on what the record companies thought their audience expected. That still happens - there can be little doubt that Jamie Cullum and Amy Winehouse had little if anything to do with jazz, but they were marketed as such nonetheless.
But by far the most important point - Brian, like the other guys from Queen, was never particularly interested in jazz. He doesn't have any in-depth knowledge on the subject, so when he says that his song was inspired by Formby on the one hand and The Temperance Seven on the other, he is likely 100% truthful, and he might even believe that he was letting jazz inspire him, but erroneously so.
I'm struggling to find a parable that is a little more modern and someone without an insane amount of detailed niche-information will get, as the definition of jazz gives vast amounts of trouble everywhere, but especially among non-jazz listening audiences. The best I can come up with right now is that rap is considered a fundamental aspect of hiphop. But, when you listen to Falco rapping Rock Me Amadeus, that doesn't mean it's suddenly a hip hop song. I'm sorry I can't think of a better way of making this point right now, but is this at least somewhat less confusing than before?[/QUOTE]
Interesting thoughts.
If you were asked to, and had to fit them under one umbrella, what style/genre would you bracket Queen under? Heavy Rock? Rock? Pop? Easy Listening?
You hit the nail on the head with the statement that essentially, most of our genre definitions/expectations are set by the record companies and lazy music media and stores. I can go into HMV and find Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, Bryan Adams or Queen under 'rock', yet if I have seen Extreme and Poison filed under 'Metal', purely based on preconceived ideas of their image!
The best was when a friend queried with a store as to why 'Dan Reed Network' were filed under 'hard rock', to be told "well they just supported Bon Jovi on tour"........ in the same year they also supported RUN DMC and UB40!!![/QUOTE]
Ah, and now you've got me in a corner. I think Queen are extremely difficult to classify genre-wise. A single classification for their entire back catalogue, to me, seems impossible. So, I'd have to look at things one record at a time.
"Queen" could, I suppose, just be filed under "rock", but it's only logical that they were trying to find their footing with their first record. "Queen II" is mercifully cohesive, so I have no qualms calling that symphonic rock. "Sheer Heart Attack" is a richer blend of different styles, but I suppose I could still call that progressive rock, a moniker I guess is applicable to ANATO, ADATR and NOTW, too. "Jazz" is more difficult - not in the last place because the world of music was changing so much in the second half of the '70s, leading to different genre demarcations and new genres - I'd say it's a hybrid of progressive rock and pop.
"The Game", "Hot Space", "The Works" and "A Kind Of Magic" I would file simply under pop/power-pop (note that I don't discuss "Flash Gordon" - soundtracks are a different thing altogether).
"The Miracle" is another complicated record. By the late '80s, the world of music had completely changed again, new genres had emerged and the sound of 'familiar' genres had developed significantly since the late '70s (e.g. the way heavy rock genres treated synthesizers). Queen was also experimenting with new styles combined with old habits, resulting in something totally new (I didn't like the album at first, but it grew on me), albeit hit and miss, though more of the former. I'm going with progressive rock because I really can't think of anything better, but the genre doesn't fit as well as it did with SHA/ANATO/ADATR. Innuendo, same genre - but I think the progressive rock genre fits very well here, equally so as with SH/ANATO/ADATR, but accounting for 15 years of musical innovation.
If we summarize/abstract this a little, I would go with progressive rock (1973-1979), pop (1980-1988), progressive rock (1989-1991). However, I don't think such classifications (nor the above album-based classifications) are anywhere near perfect - some bands fit genre demarcations very well (AC/DC, for instance), others, like Queen, David Bowie, Genesis and Lou Reed, defy classification.
thomasquinn 32989