Who Says Avant-Garde Is Dead?

Postmodernism Hasn’t Killed It Yet

William Sundwick

When art critic Clement Greenberg wrote in 1939 that the opposite of avant-garde was kitsch, he was referring to the struggle then between artists who had a burning desire to be creative and the exigencies of the commercial art world focused mostly on advertising and consumer products. Kitsch was defined as mass-produced commercial design (as well as academic art burdened by excessive rules).  Avant-Garde was the modernist response seeking to protect true aesthetic value from such crass commercialism. “True aesthetic value” itself was a modernist, absolutist, concept -- coinciding nicely with radical social philosophy.  Like Marxism, this aesthetic was characterized by a scientific determinism.

But Greenberg was far from the first to use the term “avant-garde.” It’s origins in the art world date from 1825 in France. It was used in an essay by a follower of Saint-Simonianism (the philosophical underpinning of a new aesthetic for the industrial revolution). The arts were to be the “advance guard” (French military usage) for the people, leading the way toward massive structural reform of society. Notable followers of Saint-Simonianism in Europe included the composers Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt.

The next generation of the avant-garde reached its climax with artist Gustave Courbet, who extolled the destruction of the Vendome column during the Paris Commune of 1871. Courbet saw this as a revolutionary act, toppling a symbol of an imperial aesthetic (it was a monument to Napoleon at Austerlitz), to be replaced by a proletarian art with “true aesthetic value.” By this time, modernism was clearly established in art – rules and school credentials dominated who could exhibit their art and who couldn’t. However, the same scientific determinism which underlay the modernist aesthetic also led to impressionism, then cubism, still far too rules-based for the younger creative souls of the age.

It seemed there must be a “deeper truth” in art, much like the deep insights then emerging in psychoanalysis. Surrealism became the new avant-garde. But the tension with kitsch continued. Ordinary people were still barred from participation in “high art” – because of barriers to entry, academic, linguistic or cultural.

By the mid-20^th century, a new art philosophy began to emerge. It became known as “postmodernism” – characterized by acceptance of cultural relativity in standards for art. Even kitsch could be appreciated, if only for its humor! Mass availability of electronically reproduced art (and kitsch) on recordings, radio and television changed the aesthetic experience for the bulk of the population in advanced societies -- especially the United States. But artists still yearned for that creative satisfaction in their art. Many sought it not through their works, but through symbols. Bohemianism became fashionable. Even affluent young people in the 1960s and 1970s became what David Brooks would call “Bobos” (bourgeois Bohemians). Other conservative commentators on aesthetics have lamented the apparent “irrelevance” of the avant-garde in postmodern art. Avant-Garde has now become the “establishment” among the art cogniscenti.

This ferment in style and aesthetics has been playing out in popular music as well as high art. It’s now a question of separating avant-garde kitsch from real avant-garde – or, conversely, ordinary unredeemable kitsch from avant-kitsch. Punk Rock illustrates this postmodern dilemma of aesthetics.

As the popularity of rock-and-roll on radio and records increased through the 1950s and early 1960s, two countercultures in music seemed to emerge. Both were purists. One sought to return to “roots” (early Delta blues and country ballads), the other mainly sought to smash the stranglehold of pabulum-purveying record companies, expressing their creativity through an edgier, more experimental (yes, avant-garde) style. It is the latter group that started to call themselves “Punk.” They were urban, working class in sympathy, and shared a contempt for the commercially successful pop music of the time.

Some of these artists, like Lou Reed and his band Velvet Underground, managed by that modernist/postmodernist crossover icon, Andy Warhol, set out to create an idiom – the idiom of avant-kitsch. Reed expressed Warhol’s aura, but had an inner competitive drive to be successful in the music world himself.

Others, like David Thomas, a long-time Cleveland Punk personality with his two bands, Rocket from the Tombs, then Pere Ubu, seemed to be happy existing for four decades on the margins of the critical universe, never really entering the world of commercial pop music, except satirically.

Then, there was Iggy Pop from Ann Arbor, with his early proto-punk band The Stooges, and later as a solo performer, with backup musicians from previous Punk groups. He did reach “rock star” status himself – but has always explored the boundaries between art and kitsch in a serious way. He continues to ask questions about the Avant-Garde, even as he seems finally to have quit performing (usually shirtless).

But their music is their legacy. It survives. Art always survives. While popular tastes change, the impulse to transcend the rules, the drive for the Avant-Garde, continues generation after generation. Rules and credentials are meant to topple, like that Vendome column nearly 150 years ago. It is not the conventional we remember – it is the breakthrough art.

There will always be a vanguard. The Saint-Simonians were correct – artists will lead the people’s vanguard. Even in our now-maturing “postmodern” world, we ask ourselves: “What comes next?”

Who Killed the Anger?

Noise/Experimental Rock in the Digital Era

William Sundwick

I didn’t realize, until doing some research, that today’s popular music streaming services are at least partially owned by the traditional major record labels – Sony, Universal, Warner.  While Internet streaming can, theoretically, be a path for “DIY music,”  the exposure of the services to placement of bands signed with major labels is inescapable. There are also “artist aggregators,” like CDBaby and TuneCore, who will charge artists an annual subscription fee, or per-track fee, to handle digital distribution – becoming, in effect, streaming labels.

Apparently, digital music streaming, now the primary means of distribution for new bands, has altered the history of rock music. True, indie labels and DIY all have some access to the streaming services, but not all access is equal. Changing fashions are still dictated by major labels. Today’s biggest pop music trends are hip-hop and EDM (electronic dance music). How does anything that used to be called “alternative” or “experimental” get played?

It will likely be a major label that determines whose music gets promoted. Indie labels try to compete, but the market segmentation of audiences that existed for AM/FM terrestrial radio has largely disappeared, replaced by Sirius/XM and Pandora who have services based on genre “channels”. But Spotify, Apple and Amazon (the biggest streaming services) do not. Hence, the majors promoting artists by name once again have all the market clout.

Alternative rock has now become a meaningless category. Perhaps all “genres” have disappeared, leading some critics to claim that rock, itself, is dead.

Yet, new bands keep coming. They all have been inspired by some previous artist. Their motivation can be creative just as much as commercial. Two very different bands, both legitimately rock-oriented, both artistic, have sprung up in this new digital distribution environment. AWOLNATION (they prefer all caps) and Deaf Wish have chosen to pursue separate styles, while tracing their lineage from former rock genres that an aging aficionado like me can appreciate. They are both edgy, if not truly angry. Aaron Bruno’s AWOLNATION mixes Bruce Springsteen’s “industrial” rock ballad sound with a predominately EDM beat, and Australia’s Deaf Wish emerges directly from noise and metal, from Sonic Youth/Velvet Underground roots.

AWOLNATION

Bruno signed early with Red Bull Records, an indie label, and released his first AWOLNATION album, Megalithic Symphony, in 2011 (a megalith is a very large rock). One single from the album, Sail, went platinum. It gave the band early visibility (along with their label). It has since been licensed for TV commercials, and some dramatic TV series episodes. It’s a straight-up rock ballad, “Blame it on my ADD baby” is the chorus – apparently a personal reference for Bruno. But, the tone is clearly one of struggle, whether from ADD, or some unnamed cause. “Maybe I should kill myself” appears in one line. Heavy bass, driving beat, all electronic – good for slow dancing, with a labored tempo. Yes, it’s angry. “Maybe I’m a different breed.”

Three other tracks on that first album illustrate the group’s range. Reviewers attribute the “group” to being basically Aaron Bruno “and friends.” It is firmly in the EDM tradition -- all production, little solo artistry. Burn It Down and Soul Wars use drums as the foundation for the beat, simple rhyming lyrics, rapper style in Burn It Down, punk style in Soul Wars. Both songs have very fast tempos, hard to imagine them as dance music, but perhaps that’s because I don’t know what dances look like anymore! 

Burn It Down’s first verse starts:

“If you’re feeling like I feel then run your life like it’s a dance floor/And if you need a little heat in your face, that’s what I’m here for”

and second verse:

“If you’re feeling like I feel throw your fist through the ceiling/Some people call it crazy well I call it healing”

chorus:

“So burn it down, burn it down.”

This is EDM as it’s meant to be! Soul Wars uses a similar drum-based format for the rapid-fire beat, but substitutes a whiter vocal style, reminiscent of old-time rock-and-roll, like Jerry Lee Lewis. In fact, it’s probably inspired by Bruce Springsteen. The chorus, “I’m on fire,” is a famous Springsteen song title, which AWOLNATION covered for the sound track of the 2015 film, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Finally, Jump on My Shoulders explores a secondary AWOLNATION theme, Christian allegory. It may have been a commercial gamble, as Mumford and Sons, and Robert Plant’s Band of Joy made their appearances at about the same time, but it is present on AWOLNATION’s third album, Here Come the Runts, as well.

The song begins:

“There’s a mad man looking at you/And he wants to take your soul./There’s a mad man with a mad plan/And he’s dancing at your door. Oh/What to do, oh …”

then:

“There’s a mad man with a mad plan/And he waits for us to stumble.”

Soon we hear the chorus:

“Oh, but our eyes are open/Yeah, they’re really open/(Five, four, three, two, one)/I say we rob from the rich/And blow down the door./On to the next/To dance with the poor./Jump on my shoulders./You can jump on my shoulders.”

Not angry music here, but joyful -- a real change.

Here Come the Runts, AWOLNATION’s latest album, was released last February. It opens with the title track, a theatrical zombie march of runts, martial in tone – you can visualize them coming over a hilltop on the horizon, in formation. It’s an invasion of runts! But, in the end, “Okay I am a runt/Baby you are a runt/Baby we are the runts” – indeed! It makes a great electronic pump for the rest of the album.

 Three short tracks illustrate the experimental nature of the album, compared to their earlier work, and to most of what we hear in the mainstream pop choices. Sound Witness System is a very short rap number (2:22), with electronic finish, almost a sound check, but unquestionably qualified as avant garde in my book. Cannonball and Tall Tall Tale are conventional punk and heavy metal tracks, respectively. Cannonball reminds me of The Ramones, but with an “E” for explicit lyrics (hence, listen at your own risk). Yes, obscenity is anger, and is still avant-garde in pop music. Tall Tall Tale grabs the heavy metal baton, even featuring a synthesizer in a few bewitching chords.  These tracks make AWOLNATION’s third studio album far more adventurous than the relatively cautious, mainstream Megalithic Symphony. Is this where they’re going? I hope so!

They can do “pretty,” too. A wonderful slow dance number, perhaps another Springsteen inspired creation, also appears on this album. I consider Seven Sticks of Dynamite to be possibly their finest piece ever. Listen:

“Who wants to dance who wants to slow dance”

“Lipstick like dynamite, seven sticks of dynamite”

 and, finally:

“Fuse the morning, fuse the night/Give me seven sticks of dynamite.”

A brilliant song, suspenseful, mysterious, sweet, catchy tune, but ending with an amped up electronic flourish. If this represents a new genre of rock music, I’m in!

Deaf Wish

From their home in Melbourne, Australia, Deaf Wish has come into the streaming community by signing with alternative music icon, Sub Pop – still an indie label, technically, but much bigger than Red Bull Records. This band traces its style directly back to Sonic Youth and noise rock.  They take heavy metal and gift it with cacophonous noise in place of a simple punk-style beat.

And, the lyrics are very angry. Sub Pop may have been reminded of Nirvana when they signed Deaf Wish.

Two tracks from Lithium Zion, their fifth studio album (second with Sub Pop) are Easy and FFS. Both are characterized by monotone electronic feedback for the rhythm line, nihilistic lyrics sung by Jensen Tjhung in the former song, Sarah Hardiman the latter. The duo, much like Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, have a darker outlook on life, depressed and angry (like Kurt Cobain?). Their first Sub Pop album, Pain, was even more brutal – as heard in Dead Air -- here, Hardiman mouths the only vocalization of the entire 6-minute track at its opening:

”In my heart there is blood, in my heart there is only blood.”

The remainder is all electronic feedback – noise, in the best SY tradition, or perhaps Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. The band entered the world strictly as a new noise group, with their 2014 single, St. Vincent’s. They were consciously in the mold of Sonic Youth which had disbanded three years earlier.

It’s good to know that somebody still finds this kind of music worthy of production. And, it’s good to know that a label as established as Sub Pop is willing to take a chance on them.

When I first conceived the pages for Warp & Woof, in early 2017, I defined the “Beats” page as an exploration of the music I liked, which I asserted in my original Welcome piece had ceased to be created at least ten years earlier. I was wrong. I have since discovered both AWOLNATION and Deaf Wish. There is great “alternative” and “experimental” rock still being produced. It is not even that hard to find!

Who Killed the Anger?

Noise and Experimental Rock, 1980s – 2010s

William Sundwick

Punk Rock began in the 1970s as an attempt to strip away the artifice and commercial compromises of art in popular music. It was seen by bands on both sides of the Atlantic -- like The Clash, New York Dolls, and Ramones -- as a path back to the basics of rock-and-roll. It gave expression to working-class alienation and anger as well. Class struggle, adolescent rage, and defiance of social norms all became subjects of the lyrics. The music resurrected blues guitar, strong bass lines, and simple, but pronounced, drums. It was a return to blues roots, but with a modern social message.

Then, the anger became fatiguing to its audience. It needed a boost. Perhaps the original fans “grew up” and a new audience was yet to emerge. But, the genre evolved rather than died. In what is often called “Post-Punk,” groups like The Fall, Joy Division, and Pere Ubu picked certain punk themes to explore, while eschewing others. Nihilism in some cases replaced anger. But, the proliferation of sounds and styles in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s exceeded the ability to find genre names for them. It seemed like every band was its own genre – New Wave became No Wave, Punk became Gothic, etc.

One thing remained unchanged; bands needed a recording label. There was now, fortunately, more competition in this area than in the days of AM radio. ”Indie” labels began to proliferate, and “college radio” (on FM) became the new trendsetter, reaching a much wider audience by the eighties than AM. It was the age of cassette, and widespread dubbing. As business models and technology changed, so did the music.

The emergence of heavy metal and noise rock had been pioneered all the way back in the late 1960s by the Velvet Underground. Their second album, White Light/White Heat (1968) was arguably the first example of both these genres. In the late 1980s, indie Seattle label Sub Pop signed two local groups – Nirvana and Soundgarden – and promoted a new style. It was called “grunge,” based on the stage appearance of the bands. A market for “fusion styles” of rock, combining metal, grunge, and post-punk followed.  The genre known as noise rock by some reviewers was epitomized by New York band Sonic Youth.

Some, including this reviewer, find Sonic Youth the most compelling, and complete, of all the rock bands of the era. They finally disbanded in 2011 after a traumatic breakup of their two founders, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon.

Perhaps their best album is their third studio release, Daydream Nation (1988). It explores their roots, from Lou Reed’s experimental Metal Machine Music, and The Velvet Underground, to heavy metal’s Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead. In a collection of very electronic, very cacophonous, tracks they develop their format of melodious, almost pop-sounding, beginning, then a descent into chaos in the middle, and a reprise of the initial tune in the final chords. Their lyrics borrow standard punk themes.

An excellent example of this is the seven-and-a-half-minute track “Total Trash.” The lyrics are not especially meaningful but fit well into the overall architecture of the piece. It starts with a pleasant, almost easy-listening tune (reminiscent of sixties “surf music”) and repeats that theme for nearly three minutes, as the generally mindless lyrics are sung by Moore and Gordon – “It’s total trash.” At the three-minute mark in the track, something happens. The melody disappears, drowned out by electronic feedback, with only a faint undercurrent of drums. Even that semblance of order transmutes by four minutes into an entirely different, much faster, beat. It’s all feedback and distortion – noise – until six minutes, when the surf music returns, intact from the opening chords. But in less than a minute the chorus repeats, then fades out into more electronic noise. This is SY’s key signature.

Many tracks on the album follow the same formula – familiar sounding melody and lyrics, electronic dissonance, return to melody. It was the essence of noise rock. Daydream Nation was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2005, having received rave reviews by Rolling Stone and other critics when first released.

Some variations on this format are found in The Wonder, which starts out with high electronic anxiety, proceeds through a frenetically fast beat, making you think a better title might be the Silicon Valley mantra, “move fast and break things,” This song simply runs out of energy at the end, after a short interlude of panicked feedback before slowing the tempo into the fadeout. “I’m just walking around, your city is a wonder town” is the chorus.

Borrowing more heavily from punk and metal, Silver Rocket also starts with a familiar tune, harder and rougher than some others, cacophony in the middle, then initial theme resurrected by the end – chorus on this one, “You got it. Yeah, ride the silver rocket. Can’t stop it. Burnin’ hole in your pocket.”

Through their career, Moore and Gordon were looking for new indie labels. They started with SST, abandoned them for Enigma Records with Daydream Nation, then once that album catapulted them to international fame, they sought to try major labels. Yet, they never signed with any. Ultimately, they created their own label, SYR. Distribution was now largely via the Internet, so this made sense. They could do it on their own!

Overall, SY manages to take experimental electronic rock from the age of the Velvets and Lou Reed, adds heavy metal, like Motorhead, and creates a very new experience.

But, we heard little more like this until about 2011, when “alternative rock” ceased to be an identifiable genre – and genres in general became unimportant. Part two of the question, “Who Killed the Anger?” focuses on new developments in marketing music, and two contemporary bands worth noting: AWOL Nation and Australia’s Deaf Wish. The anger has returned!

The Velvet Underground – Or, Perils of Selling Avant Garde as Pop

William Sundwick

Lou Reed was a middle-class Jewish kid growing up on 1950s Long Island. He was always interested in pop music – especially doo wop -- and taught himself to play guitar from the radio. In high school he apparently experimented with illegal drugs; and, he became sullen, depressed, and anti-social, perhaps due to the notorious gangs of his school. Nevertheless, according to his sister, he was a “genius,” and was sent off to Syracuse University in 1960, where he was mentored by poet Delmore Schwartz, who taught creative writing there.

At Syracuse, he also became acquainted with a classically-trained Welsh experimental musician, John Cale, and another guitar player, Sterling Morrison. They jammed together, forming a band which they informally named “The Primitives.” By graduation in 1964, they were playing gigs in New York City (East Village), and had changed their name to “The Velvet Underground” (after a popular college novel about a secret sexual society). 

Another acquaintance had a younger sister who really loved drums! Maureen Tucker, known as “Mo,” was invited to join the band --over Cale’s objections to having a female drummer.

This was the origin of the “Velvets.” They lasted until 1973, but in their relatively brief lifespan they became one of the most influential rock bands in the history of the art form, says Rolling Stone and other critics. Yet, they were never commercially successful, measured by the sales numbers or charts of the day.

Why? Because you can’t sell experimental, avant garde art to the masses. And, from the outset, this was clearly the preferred path for Reed and Cale.

Yet, their raw and experimental repertoire of social realism was what gave them their first break – Andy Warhol heard them perform in the East Village, and recruited them as the house band for his studio, called the “Factory,” and his upcoming planned tour, “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” (For an immersive experience, visit the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. It dedicates an entire soundproof room on the third floor to EPI!)

Warhol also brought a German chanteuse, Nico, into the mix. She added her name to their debut album -- “The Velvet Underground and Nico” – since she contributed lead vocals on three tracks (and backup vocals on a fourth). Nico severed her connections with the band after the release of that one album, to pursue her own career.

The artistic thrust of that first album was dominated by Cale’s fascination with avant garde music. He played an electrically amplified viola on many tracks, and is credited with its creative direction, generally called “producing” in the record business, despite Warhol’s official title as “producer.” The songs, however, were written by Reed, showing his fascination with morbid sexuality and the underworld of drugs and transsexual behavior (“drag queens” in those days). Sterling Morrison was the main force keeping the tracks sounding like rock ‘n roll, aided by Mo Tucker and her simple, yet exotic, drum riffs.

Highlights from that first album are:

•        The opening track, “Sunday Morning,” about paranoia (common in illicit drug users) –Reed was vocal front man, with Nico doing backup.  
•        “Venus in Furs,” based on the novel of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, about what we now know as BDSM (he lent his name to the sexual deviation “masochism”), lots of John Cale and Mo Tucker exotica in this one.
•        “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” a Nico masterpiece and Andy Warhol’s favorite track on the entire album.
•        And the final track, “European Son,” dedicated to Reed’s mentor Delmore Schwartz, who died before the album was released. 

Also on this album was the very Lou Reedian “Heroin” – anticipating one of Reed’s recurring themes, even in his later solo career, nihilism! I’ve always felt that Heroin is the best track on the album to show the synergy between Reed’s nihilistic lyrics, Cale’s screeching viola, and Tucker’s primitive, pulsating drum kit. It also features a Lou Reed invention – “ostrich” guitar tuning, where all strings are tuned to the same note. This early Lou Reed song, with the ostrich tuning, had impressed Cale as unique enough to spur their collaboration. Reed had written the song before the idea of the band emerged.

If you listen to more than one or two of the songs linked above, you’ll understand why the album was never commercially successful. It was much too dark, much too avant garde, too naughty for the teenagers and young adults who were buying records in the sixties. But, as experimental musician Brian Eno famously remarked, “everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.” It was later lauded as one of the most influential rock albums ever. It was bought by artists … not by kids who wanted dance music!

For their second album, White Light/White Heat, it was time to try something different. Cale continued to exert creative direction. Reed had fired Warhol, despite his having an extremely laissez-faire attitude, which Reed appreciated. His style left the musicians to experiment as they wished, but Reed may have felt Warhol hampered the band’s potential commercial success. 

The sound changed in White Light. Instead of Cale’s electric viola, more tracks featured Mo Tucker and her primal beat, and much more guitar droning. Tracks tended to be very long, and very loud. Blowing out the amps substituted for Cale’s more exotic forays. The recording quality was intentionally distorted, unpolished and raw, compared to the first album. It was “anti-beauty,” according to one reviewer – paving the way for later proto-punk, and punk, bands.

Cale continued with the band, but became more cynical. When the recording sessions, and a round of live performances, were finished, he left – to produce Iggy Pop’s band, The Stooges. He and Reed were often at loggerheads, creatively. But, while the sound may have been more conventional, Reed’s songs were still way out there – like the homosexual orgy in “Sister Ray,” which relates a story of mass drug use, and a sailor being shot and killed, left to bleed on the carpet. Or, the frenetic world of meth addicts described in the title track. 

The amazing spoken word recording, “The Gift”, features Cale’s Welsh brogue sounding rather charming as he reads a short story, to heavy rock background.

Also included in the deluxe boxed set is a vintage recording jam which is ALL Reed, “Temptation Inside Your Heart” – a sign of things to come in his solo career.

White Light/White Heat, alas, was no more successful than The Velvet Underground & Nico. Verve Records dropped the band, along with many others thought to “glorify” use of illegal drugs. Reed believed that the real reason was: they just didn’t sell. Even nearly fifty years later, when HBO produced its series “Vinyl” in 2015, with music producer Mick Jagger, a “White Light/White Heat” cover was played, by a band portraying a fictitious Velvet Underground gig, shown in flashback. It was the high point of episode 5 … but, HBO would not renew for a second season!

New record labels were found, and The Velvet Underground soldiered on for two more studio albums and a live album, then the posthumously released VU Another View. Now Lou Reed was in total control, with his backup stalwarts Morrison and Tucker. Doug Yule was added. Reed was convinced he needed to move more into the pop mainstream, his song lyrics would now be only slightly unbalanced, and the sound mostly inoffensive. An example from 1970’s Loaded album is “Rock and Roll”. The difference from the first two albums is stark. Reed managed to return to his rock ‘n roll roots, and the lyrics are generally happy, upbeat. The darker side would return later, in his solo career.

That solo career lasted nearly 40 years, until his death. And, it finally propelled him to the commercial success he had always sought, but never achieved, with the Velvets. It began in 1972, with his album Transformer, produced by disciple David Bowie. “Walk on the Wild Side” did the trick, and without toning down the content of his lyrics an iota! Perhaps the times had finally caught up with Lou Reed.

He died in 2013, after a liver transplant, but managed to outlive Andy Warhol, Nico, and Sterling Morrison. Cale and Mo Tucker are still alive (but retired from music?). Rolling Stone’s obit for Lou Reed ranks The Velvet Underground & Nico on an artistic par with two other contemporary classics: the Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers … and Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. And, summarizing the oevre of the Velvets, calls them “the most influential American rock band of all time.” 

It’s been fifty years since the release of The Velvet Underground & Nico LP. I purchased my copy in Paris, during my college study abroad. It was my favorite on my little portable turntable in the dorm room at L’Universite de Strasbourg. Although, the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesty’s Request was a close second. Fifty years … that’s a long time, even in a 70-year-old’s life. I’ve always been drawn to the avant garde. Despite my rather conventional life, it symbolizes an excitement never quite attainable, for fear of reaching too far outside my comfort zone. Artists CAN get there, however!

That twenty-year-old’s spirit of adventure is still approachable, if only by listening to Velvet Underground songs on my iPod … while working out at the gym!

Proto-Punk and The Stooges

William Sundwick

Rock 'n Roll started this way in the 1950s. You had poor, unknown, young musicians who had a desire to make music for other young people ... especially, at the beginning, for dancing. But, since it became apparent, early, that many of the young fans weren't just interested in dancing, but also listening to the music (with or without physical movement), records starting being pressed. Then, radio stations began playing the music. 

People started making money! Eventually, the raw power, the African inspired beat, and traditional song lyrics, was deemed by some entertainment conglomerates as a marketable commodity. Singles, recorded cheaply on 45 rpm vinyl discs, sold for a price low enough that teenagers could easily buy them without much budgetary notice from even hard-pressed families. Once they were "promoted" on corporate radio stations (supported by advertising), big business resulted. Some bands gained national reputations, and could tour ... drawing large crowds in concert venues. 33 1/3 rpm albums, comprising 10 or more "tracks" began to replace the inexpensive singles. The appeal for the music soon came primarily from listening, not dancing.

Jazz and Folk Become Rock 'n Roll

Jazz and folk music, from the late forties on into the 1950s, had established different audiences. Jazz buffs were older, college plus for the better educated; or, if not, they had grown up with the Big Band jazz of the thirties and forties, which represented their own youth. Folk music also had pre-war origins; but, unlike popular jazz, it centered around experiences of a poor, oppressed, people. It may have been a rural white experience, in Appalachia, or a black experience, also mainly rural Southern, in those days. By the 1950s, there was beginning to be a clash between the demographic groups who favored jazz versus those favoring folk. Jazz was considered, by this time, to be authorized by the middle class norms of American society. In short, it became bland. Folk music, thanks to people like Woody Guthrie, became associated with a left-wing alternative (clearly NOT authorized by a HUAC-dominated American political environment!). 

Into this arena burst that early youth-centered dance music, amplifying African-American beats and blues lyrics. It was named "Rock-and-Roll" by Billboard magazine, and was associated with popular dance music by Cleveland DJ Alan Freed. It came from black gospel and folk, from jazz dance music, and from country ballads (generally called "rockabilly"). It was simple, primitive, and mostly without commercial motivation. It was music intended for the enjoyment of the audience. Soon, it became music that an entire generation could associate with its own identity. These were white kids now living in suburban communities. Why they chose an identity celebrated previously by black folks must have had something to do with social power structures in mid-century America. The kids were the "havenots," aspiring to become "haves." But, to get to that status, the young fans needed to overcome much resistance, especially from their elders. Their music was the vehicle that could inspire them to keep fighting, fighting for themselves, to gain something unknown to their parents.

But, things began to change, as rock 'n roll became more widespread, and commercially successful. As it entered its second decade, rock 'n roll (now starting to be called simply "rock") was attracting a different audience. They were more upscale, college students (previously followers of modern jazz), a demographic now rather far removed from the baser origins of dance music. They also preferred to listen to more melodious, pleasant, sounds ... like those from the Beach Boys, or the Beatles. 

The Revolt Against "Rock"

The commercial market for popular music was becoming far more lucrative. Record labels were now giving big contracts to bands who managed to sound like what the executives of those labels thought would "sell." As always seems to happen in the dialectical world in which we live, a counterculture emerged. Just as the original rock-and-roll fans were a counterculture to their parents, a new counterculture was setting itself up in opposition to those contemporaries who seemed to have lost touch with the real roots of their art. The original rough, even sexually inspired, beat, the brazen saxophones, the black-sounding vocals, were being replaced by complex melodies, possibly two guitars with background keyboard, and generally more "soothing" vocals.

Something new, or perhaps, retro, was needed. It had to return to simplicity. It had to communicate some primitive passion ... even anger. Where the dominant singing style had become "crooning", the new paradigm needed to sound more like "snarling." In some ways, it was like evolving tastes in automobiles, at least in the U.S. The old tastes were for ostentation .... chrome and tail fins. The new taste was for power and speed, smaller in size, lighter, but much faster! 

The musicians who felt this way did not have a club of their own at first, they didn't even know what to call themselves, but they did have common influences on their musical style. They all liked Chuck Berry, but despised The Platters. They may have admired early Rolling Stones songs, and stage presence, but had only disdain for the clean-cut Beatles personas of the mid-sixties (Ed Sullivan vintage). 

Rock commentary has become obsessed with stylistic labels over the last thirty years or so (since "rock" has been deemed worthy of serious cultural and artistic critique). A style of rock music which most historians of the genre associate with the mid-seventies to early-eighties is called "punk." It was created simultaneously in the U.S. and U.K. The biggest name bands of this genre were on both sides of the Atlantic, The New York Dolls and The Clash are probably the first that come to mind. The Sex Pistols, in Britain, may have reached similar acclaim in the early eighties. These bands all seemed to be saying similar things about their social and artistic milieu. The dominant popular music of the day, according to them, had become far too burdened with technical matters, and divorced from real feelings.

Proto-Punk

But, these well-known bands had precursors, starting in the late sixties. The revolt against the homogenization of rock, and the desire to return to a simpler, more primitive, beat may have begun solely in the United States. There has been a new label  assigned by rock historians to a group of artists personified by three American bands, one from New York, and two from Detroit. The original "proto-punk" band, as the three are now known, was the one from New York, first promoted by Andy Warhol --The Velvet Underground. It was formed by Lou Reed and John Cale. Reed was an English Lit major at Syracuse University, with a penchant for the beat generation American authors. Cale, somewhat older, had been a devotee of John Cage and Sun Ra (avant garde electronic classical and jazz, respectively), but had prodigious musical talent, himself, playing several instruments. He was a Welsh immigrant to New York, while Reed was a middle class kid from Westchester County, who had suffered a traumatic childhood. Together with a bass player and a female drummer, they put together what today would be called a "garage rock" band, in the mid-sixties. They were discovered by Warhol, who was looking for a vehicle to promote his traveling show of films, "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable." He probably had a vision of the kind of music he wanted for his show, and VU matched it. Cale's penchant for the avant garde, and cacophonous dissonance, often with unusual instruments, made great counterpoint to Reed's flair for language, as the songwriter/storyteller of the group. After a few years, however, the resulting artistic tension between the two led Cale to leave. Reed carried on with the others for a while, then decided to launch a solo career.

What did John Cale do when he left The Velvet Underground? He began looking for struggling young bands that might be receptive to his outrageous, experimental, avant garde predilections. One such band, located in Ann Arbor, was The Stooges. They had just been signed by Elektra Records, the same label that did The Doors, and other big name rock acts, but they had yet to produce their first album.  Another Detroit band, the MC5 (for "Motor City 5"), was signed at the same time by Elektra, but was already well known locally. They were offered $20K to The Stooges $5K.  Cale agreed to produce The Stooges first album. Front man Iggy Pop had been experimenting early with avant garde sounds. and unusual souding non-instruments, that would clearly draw Cale's interest.

MC5 had created some buzz in the fledgling rock media, mostly for their own outrageous brand of anger, raw rock 'n roll beat, and strong anti-establishment viewpoint -- in the late sixties, this took the form of actual political advocacy for left-wing groups like the Black Panther Party. They were clearly mentors for Iggy, and his band members, the Asheton brothers (Ron and Scott), and Dave Alexander. The musical style of both bands was similar, harking back to early rock and roll sounds: simple guitar chords, now heavily amplified, with feedback, bass rhythm guitar, and drums. MC5's songs used rather traditional blues lyrics, but Iggy Pop had more affinity for teen-age alienation, and in some noteworthy cases, a real sense of the malaise of industrial America, befitting his Michigan background. He was born in 1947, in Muskegon, as James Osterberg. Iggy Pop was a stage name he invented for the band, after attending an early MC5 concert in Detroit. Rob Tyner, of MC5, eventually starting using Iggy, and his band, as openers for them. Hence, the two bands were discovered simultaneously by Elektra, in 1968. 

Enter, The Stooges

It was The Stooges more adventurous musical content, however, that drew the attention of both John Cale, and later rock music critics. MC5 built a counterculture following, especially after an obscenity flack around their signature song, "Kick Out the Jams." (Detroit's premier department store chain, J. L. Hudson Co., refused to stock any Elektra records as fallout ... down went Hudson's!). But, it was Iggy Pop and The Stooges who blazed the path which later led to what rock commentators would label "punk." In a very real way, they were the first punks! The avant garde style of Cale did not last past their first, self-titled, album, however. 

By the time their third album was released, in 1973, they had attracted the attention of yet another rock music star with an interest in finding new, raw talent ... that album, "Raw Power," was produced by David Bowie. Pop and Bowie had become friends since the two had met at Max's Kansas City in New York, two years earlier. It was primarily Pop's outrageous concert demeanor that most of his fans grabbed. Performing bare chested, he was known to have allowed himself to be hoisted overhead on the hands of the audience, smearing peanut butter on his chest, or walking barefoot over broken glass on stage.

But, from the viewpoint of a rock historian, perhaps the most significant feature of The Stooges was the simple, primitive, retro rock 'n roll beat of their songs, and the banal ... even boring ... nature of the lyrics. None of the poetic flourish of many Bob Dylan-inspired songwriters, or of a Lou Reed. No, Iggy Pop songs weren't fancy, but they remind some of us of just what it was like growing up in places like a typical Detroit suburb, or Flint. The sameness of the routine, the drabness of daily life, in that industrial flatland. Here are some examples:

No Fun (by Scott Asheton) --

      No fun, my babe

      No fun

      No fun to hang around

      Feelin' that same old way

      No fun to hang around

      Freaked out

      For another day ...

put it together with the minimalist music: No Fun

Or, 1969 --

     It's 1969 OK all across the USA

     It's another year for me and you

     Last year I was twenty one I didn't have a lot of fun

     And now I'm gonna be twenty two I say oh my and a boo-hoo

     It's 1969 OK all across the USA ... 

with similar chords: 1969

Not much to stir the imagination here. It seemed the very repetitiveness, the drone, especially at loud volume, that was the message. One song from the John Cale produced debut album stands out as the signature, however: "I Wanna Be Your Dog". More than any of the others, this song manages to muster some urgency, perhaps inspired by Cale, with a stabbing pain from keyboard throughout, and the crescendo fuzzed guitar chords at the close. The lyrics suggest that happiness may come only by descending to the level of a pet ... as he lays "right down in my favorite place", where he can close his eyes and close his mind. Listen here.

Raw Power, and the Decline of Punk

The David Bowie produced third album, Raw Power, is generally even darker than the debut album. While the Cale produced work emphasizes monotony, a theme in Raw Power is aggression. An example:

Search & Destroy --

      And I'm the world's forgotten boy

      The one who's searchin', searchin' to destroy

      And honey I'm the world's forgotten boy

      The one who's searchin', only to destroy, hey

      Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology

      Ain't got time to make no apology

      Soul radiation in the dead of night

      Love in the middle of a fire fight

      Honey, gotta strike me blind

      Somebody gotta save my soul

      Baby, penetrate my mind ... 

It moves at a faster tempo, more frenetic, than most of the tracks on the first album, but with conventional rock guitar, bass, drums. Here it is: Search & Destroy . 

Some tracks, like "Gimme Danger" are slower, but much more menacing, than anything on their self-titled first album. Here's Gimme Danger .  In 2016, Jim Jarmusch made a documentary film of the same name, about Iggy Pop and The Stooges. It artfully skims over the outrageous stage antics (and personal lives of the band members), focusing more on the music ... an appropriate emphasis, I would submit.

The Stooges struggled for the rest of their career, losing members of the band to drug addiction, and generally finding that Iggy Pop's stage persona started getting old, as the original fan base from the early seventies aged out of the target audience. The next generation apparently had different sensibilities. Gen-X did not have the same frame of reference as their older, boomer, siblings. Also, "punk" itself, evolved into metal, then alternative rock. The rock aficionados had no time for yesterday's stylistic labels ... as long as there were always new bands to write about. It remained material only for the rock historians. Nevertheless, The Stooges were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. This honor, as intended, allows them (the survivors, at least) to claim the well-deserved mantle of "icon" with the rock commentariat.