RockRoast

The music world is a weird place, and a lot of unfortunate things happen there.  As rumors circulate about various bands putting out new stuff, somebody needs to step in and let the music industry know when to stop.  Here are ten artists who we wouldn’t have to deal with if we had some kind of gatekeeper.

 1.  Ashlee Simpson
She only really came into the public eye by coasting on the coattails of her older sister.  After several instances of being publicly embarrassed and ridiculed, apparently she’s planning a third album of whiny, strained vocals on songs she couldn’t write without some help.  That makes her either one of the stupidest, most desperate, or gutsiest celebrities I’ve ever heard of.

2.  AC/DC
It’s now thirty-three years since their debut release, and these guys are still at it.  By “it,” of course, I mean cranking out sub-par simplistic music driven by throaty vocals and repetitive riffs.  I suppose their tendency to stick to their own sound for thirty years would be worthy of some respect if their sound were something particularly special. 

3.  Raven-Symone
The music business isn’t meant for everyone.  After putting out three albums over the last fifteen years, each released to little fanfare, she’s trying it again.  Perhaps that’s just how dedicated she is.  But she should probably just stick to her more successful acting career.  And maybe she should watch old episodes of The Cosby Show and get some acting lessons from her younger self.

 4.  Scarlett Johansson
Who is she kidding?  The only reason people are going to buy her new album is because she shows some leg and some cleavage on the cover.  Add that to the fact that ten of her eleven songs are Tom Waits covers, and you’ve got one of the more worthless CDs of the decade.

5.  Black Sabbath
There is a recent trend of old bands reuniting and releasing new material for the first time in more than ten years.  Black Sabbath is jumping on the bandwagon and trying to put out their first record in the last thirteen years.  This is especially disappointing because for the last eleven years, Ozzy Osbourne has been their vocalist again, instead of the highly preferable Ronnie James Dio.  With a little luck, however, the album may come from the closely-related, Dio-fronted band Heaven and Hell instead of the real Sabbath.

6.  Whitesnake
Whitesnake is right there next to Sabbath on the bandwagon, as they are hoping to release their first studio effort in eleven years.  Of course, they haven’t had a significant hit single since 1990, but I’m sure almost twenty years of nobody really caring won’t limit their chances of success.  And for their sakes, I hope they realize that glam metal has kind of gone out of style since they were last popular.

7.  Def Leppard
Speaking of glam metal, Def Leppard is hoping to make a return to original material after a cover album in 2006.  But the band made a bizarre tactical error in recruiting country singer Tim McGraw to co-write and sing on their new album’s lead single.  That kind of desperate lunacy speaks for itself.

8. Pussycat Dolls
Pussycat Dolls embody a litany of problems with modern music.  Their music is an overproduced morass of dance beats, stolen riffs, breathy singing and too many “featured” guests, not to mention the fact that everything about the group, from their image to their lyrics, is calculated to sell records based on sex appeal.  It would be a huge favor to the world if PCD just decided to stop making music.

9.  Nicole Scherzinger
The only thing worse than a group like Pussycat Dolls is when that group grows an appendage and spawns a solo act.  Nicole Scherzinger, lead singer for PCD, has cut an album on her own, although the release date hasn’t been determined.  I’m not convinced she can make it on her own, as she’s only a fraction of the eye candy offered by Pussycat Dolls.

10.  Rihanna
Rihanna is very possibly the most obnoxious musician active today.  That’s all that needs to be said.

Tyranny (1998)
Shadow Gallery

Tyranny is one of my favorite concept albums. It tells the story of a weapons designer who comes to his senses and realizes he’s building bombs that will kill thousands of innocent people. He becomes crippled by disillusionment until he meets a similar soul on the internet who helps him make sense of all the corruption. He falls in love with her and the end of the album sees them still determined to make a positive change in the world, even as they flee evil government agents.

It may sound cheesy in writing, but the music makes it work with minimal lameness. After a brief instrumental introduction, “War For Sale” kicks the album off with an energetic, guitar-driven anthem. The climactic eight-minute “New World Order” boasts a dueling vocal between Shadow Gallery’s Mike Baker and Royal Hunt’s D.C. Cooper. The final track, “Christmas Day,” imparts inspiring words of hope over a beautiful piano melody. Most importantly, Tyranny showcases Shadow Gallery’s characteristic melodies. Bassist Carl Cadden-James is responsible for most of the vocal lines on this record, and Tyranny stands as a shining example of his talent for writing strikingly unique and memorably emotional melodies. All other elements of Shadow Gallery’s sound are present, accounted for, and at their finest.

Shadow Gallery’s work sounds derivative at times and it could be easy to label them as a generic prog metal ripoff band. But Tyranny (as well as its sequel, 2005’s Room V) sets the band apart as legitimate contributors to the genre. I look forward to the third installment of the storyline, hopefully due out in the next year or two.

It’s time to sit down for a minute and think about your preferences in music. If most of the artists you listen to are the ones you’ve heard on popular radio, then this article is for you.

Although I love listening to some of the stuff on the radio, I happen to be a huge fan of progressive rock. And my hope is that I can convince a couple people that listening to some prog is actually worth a try. Because I’ve come to the conclusion that the main reasons progressive music isn’t more popular are all because of time.

Not to make this some misanthropic lecture about the insanity of modern society, but you don’t have to think about it too hard to agree that we tend to be obsessed with time. We get up at a specific hour, go to work at a specific hour, and microwave our dinners in three minutes so that we can eat them in time to go do something else at a specific hour. All this has been said before, many, many times. But how often is it considered as a having a negative effect on our appreciation of music? Time is closely related to three big issues that keep progressive rock relegated to a more or less “underground” status.

Musical Intricacy
I think a lot of music fans don’t want to spend the time required to really get into more complex music. I freely admit that the first few times I listened to progressive music I found it to be kind of boring, but as I spent more time on it and really paid attention to the nuances of the music, I began to realize that I was enjoying it far more than I expected I would.

Take, for example, Drowning Pool and Yes. The first time I heard Drowning Pool’s “Bodies,” I was rocking out like mad. It’s catchy and it’s infectious from the first whispered “Let the bodies hit the floor” to the last scream. The first time I heard Yes’ progressive epic “Close to the Edge,” a chaotic instrumental section near the beginning made me roll my eyes and turn the volume down a bit so I could focus on what I was doing. But as I listened to both songs more, I noticed that Drowning Pool was just playing a handful of chords over and over. Yes, on the other hand, was going nuts with unexpected picking patterns and cool keyboard arrangements. Drowning Pool was loud and angry the whole way through, but Yes offered a wide dynamic and emotional range. “Bodies” is a fun song, but what you hear the first time through is all you’ll ever hear. “Close to the Edge” has much more lasting appeal for me because as I kept listening to the song, I discovered new layers in the music that continue to give me chills when I hear them.

Twenty years from now, “Bodies” could very well be something that people look back on, snicker at, and derisively ascribe its popularity to idiotic trends of the decade, much like we now ridicule the fashions of the eighties. But “Close to the Edge” is already more than thirty-five years old and it’s still loved by fans and considered a classic by critics. Hopefully, that is a testament to the admirable creativity and enduring appeal that I consider to be characteristic of progressive music.

Composition Lengths
Another big problem that hinders prog’s popularity is the length of a typical prog song. Progressive acts tend to go a bit overboard with their compositions.  By the time you’ve finished listening to a single song, the better part of an hour may be gone. Song length makes more sense as a prog turn-off than musical complexity does because most people have been conditioned into the 4-minute-song mentality.  A lot of that can be attributed to the influence of radio.

The radio likes to crank out as many songs as possible in a short period of time, and they do it because it’s a shrewd business strategy. They need to keep people listening in order for any advertisers to be interested. If a radio station were to play Porcupine Tree’s “Anesthetize” or Dream Theater’s “A Change of Seasons,” people who don’t like those songs would have twenty minutes to spend on other radio stations, hearing other people’s advertisements. It’s actually a comfort for me, when I’m listening to the radio, to know that, if I don’t like a song, all I have to do is wait three minutes and a better one might come on. I don’t have to bother changing the station if the problem will solve itself momentarily. So that philosophy works for radio.

But unfortunately, plenty of people tend to apply that radio mentality to their own listening habits. They don’t have the patience for twenty-minute prog epics because they seem to think that their enjoyment of their music is directly proportional to the number of songs they can cram into their listening time. I happen to disagree. One twelve-minute song can be just as enjoyable as three four-minute songs. It should be about the quality of the music, not the brevity of it.

Sadly, though, people expect short songs and lose interest quickly when something goes much beyond the five-minute mark. Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” clocks in at a modest 3:24, but Yes’s “Close to the Edge” far surpasses that, ending at a staggering 18:42. “Bodies” follows your typical verse and chorus structure, but “Close to the Edge” offers several different movements which, to me, make it feel shorter. It’s kind of like four songs in one. Unfortunately, radio stations prefer to play four separate songs instead of one four-movement song. Not that I blame them.

Obscurity
But radio brings up another problem with progressive music. For the most part, prog is obscure, and it continues to be held in obscurity because it doesn’t benefit from the widespread exposure that radio offers. But how is obscurity a function of time?

Simple: the Internet. In the modern age, you don’t have to spend much time at all to expand your musical horizons. Internet resources such as Pandora, Last.fm, and even Yahoo Music can open your eyes and ears to a world of sonic euphoria you never even knew existed. With just a few mouse-clicks and a few minutes of streamed songs, you could discover something incredible.

Even Wikipedia helped me out a bit. They have a list of rock music genres. Once when I was perusing that list I saw “post-rock.” The name intrigued me, so I looked it up. The article describing the basic characteristics of post-rock further piqued my curiosity. And because of that, I’ve found great music from Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

The point, I suppose, is that there’s a lot of good stuff out there, and you have no idea if you’ll enjoy it until you give it a listen. And I firmly believe that a lot of underground bands deserve more recognition than they receive from radio-dominated pop culture. All you need to do is give these artists a few minutes of your time. You may find that you enjoy some weird subgenre more than the popular music you’ve been listening to for so long.

I like 3 Doors Down and Evanescence and Breaking Benjamin. But I also like Yes and Ayreon and Gordian Knot. Great stuff can be found in any kind of music if you just give it a little time to manifest itself. And any kind of creative artistry deserves someone to appreciate it. So I’d challenge the reader to make an effort to explore just a bit more. Because if what I’ve discovered so far is any indication, we have no idea that what we we’re missing out on can really be this good.