Seven Ages Of Rock- VH1 CLASSIC
Bathgate66
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Tonights Episode - Edition 1 : The Birth Of Rock
7 Ages Of Rock
VH1 'Rock' history hits huge sour note
Monday, December 17th 2007, 4:00 AM
Mazur/Getty
Bruce Springsteen (l.) and Steven Van Zandt perform a number in 'Seven Ages of Rock.'
SEVEN AGES OF ROCK. Tonight at 9, VH1 Classic
"Seven Ages of Rock," an ambitious week-long documentary that kicks off tonight, delivers a fast-paced, entertaining ride through rock music from 1965 to the present.
So it's very tempting to just sit back and enjoy it, except that's hard when it's all built on a lie.
At the beginning of the first installment, a Bobby Vee song plays in the background while narrator Dennis Hopper explains that before Jan. 1, 1965, popular music was bland, sanitized and largely irrelevant to a restless audience that was thirsting impatiently for something more.
This view can be explained partly by the fact "Seven Ages" is primarily a BBC production, so it looks at popular music from the perspective of Great Britain, where until the '60s pop music fans had only the ultrabland BBC.
The fact that this premise largely ignores the Beatles is a little more perplexing. But it forges on, arguing that "rock" as we know it really took off in 1965, when the Rolling Stones started doing their own material and the Who found their voice and Bob Dylan went electric.
So okay, you could argue that the "British invasion" bands started to rock harder that year. But "Seven Ages" doesn't phrase it that way. "Seven Ages" gives the distinct impression that the first real voice of rock was the Who smashing guitars.
To find where that voice came from, the show suggests, you have to go back to black American blues. It underscores this argument with a marvelous scene in which Keith Richards plays "Satisfaction" as a slow Delta blues.
But the implication is that nothing else came between John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton, that no other music affected these early Brits.
That's just plain wrong. It's a lie, and any of the musicians here would tell you it's a lie.
To talk about the dawn of "rock" without factoring in Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Fats, James Brown and a hundred others doesn't just ignore history. It sneers at history.
The people involved here should know it - from their own clips. In the first two performance shots of the Stones, they're singing "Not Fade Away," a Buddy Holly song, and "Around and Around," a Chuck Berry song.
"Seven Ages" tells a good story, with great music and incisive and amusing comments from the likes of Clapton, Richards, Springsteen and Ozzy Osbourne.
But the fact that it ignores the entire decade when so much of this music was built - ignores Little Richard, the Beach Boys and Four Seasons, Phil Spector, Bo Diddley, rockabilly, early Motown, dismisses everything that went on before 1965, suggests by omission that it doesn't matter - sheathes the whole production in a cloud so dark that Keith, Eric, Bruce, the Clash, Pearl Jam and Oasis all together can never quite bust it out.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
7 Ages Of Rock
VH1 'Rock' history hits huge sour note
Monday, December 17th 2007, 4:00 AM
Mazur/Getty
Bruce Springsteen (l.) and Steven Van Zandt perform a number in 'Seven Ages of Rock.'
SEVEN AGES OF ROCK. Tonight at 9, VH1 Classic
"Seven Ages of Rock," an ambitious week-long documentary that kicks off tonight, delivers a fast-paced, entertaining ride through rock music from 1965 to the present.
So it's very tempting to just sit back and enjoy it, except that's hard when it's all built on a lie.
At the beginning of the first installment, a Bobby Vee song plays in the background while narrator Dennis Hopper explains that before Jan. 1, 1965, popular music was bland, sanitized and largely irrelevant to a restless audience that was thirsting impatiently for something more.
This view can be explained partly by the fact "Seven Ages" is primarily a BBC production, so it looks at popular music from the perspective of Great Britain, where until the '60s pop music fans had only the ultrabland BBC.
The fact that this premise largely ignores the Beatles is a little more perplexing. But it forges on, arguing that "rock" as we know it really took off in 1965, when the Rolling Stones started doing their own material and the Who found their voice and Bob Dylan went electric.
So okay, you could argue that the "British invasion" bands started to rock harder that year. But "Seven Ages" doesn't phrase it that way. "Seven Ages" gives the distinct impression that the first real voice of rock was the Who smashing guitars.
To find where that voice came from, the show suggests, you have to go back to black American blues. It underscores this argument with a marvelous scene in which Keith Richards plays "Satisfaction" as a slow Delta blues.
But the implication is that nothing else came between John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton, that no other music affected these early Brits.
That's just plain wrong. It's a lie, and any of the musicians here would tell you it's a lie.
To talk about the dawn of "rock" without factoring in Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Fats, James Brown and a hundred others doesn't just ignore history. It sneers at history.
The people involved here should know it - from their own clips. In the first two performance shots of the Stones, they're singing "Not Fade Away," a Buddy Holly song, and "Around and Around," a Chuck Berry song.
"Seven Ages" tells a good story, with great music and incisive and amusing comments from the likes of Clapton, Richards, Springsteen and Ozzy Osbourne.
But the fact that it ignores the entire decade when so much of this music was built - ignores Little Richard, the Beach Boys and Four Seasons, Phil Spector, Bo Diddley, rockabilly, early Motown, dismisses everything that went on before 1965, suggests by omission that it doesn't matter - sheathes the whole production in a cloud so dark that Keith, Eric, Bruce, the Clash, Pearl Jam and Oasis all together can never quite bust it out.
dhinckley@nydailynews.com
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Summerfest 2006
"Why would they come to our concert just to boo us?" -Lisa Simpson
Yeah, cause only American and Britian ever playd rock music. No one else matters.....
France: Twee pop music.
Norweigan nations: metal, metal, metal, all the time.
South America: Pop and Jazz.
afaik Britain and America have produced the majority of good rock music.
(Canada doesn't exhist to me because Avril Livigne, Celine dion, and Nickelback are all from up there. So the hell with them.)
Made a thread about that awhile ago, Canada has given us alot more crap or average music than good music. Some excellent artists though like Neil Young, Guess Who, etc.
Summerfest 2006
"Why would they come to our concert just to boo us?" -Lisa Simpson
Avril, Celine, Sum 41, Nickelback...
people who are born in Canada must have been wicked in their past lives and now god is punishing them by sending them to live in a frozen hellhole.
Your forgot Finger Eleven, Three Days Grace, Barenaked Ladies, Sum 41, Default, Simple Plan. Man I cant believe how bad popular rock is lately.
Summerfest 2006
"Why would they come to our concert just to boo us?" -Lisa Simpson
Well I'm biased by Australia seems to have provided more than its fair share of great bands i.e. AC/DC. Sadly we never get enough cred.
The 'alternative' episode is good, has REM and Nirvana with a bit of the pixies.
2007 ░▒▓ London, Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, Nijmegen
2009 ░▒▓ Manchester, London
2010 ░▒▓ Hyde Park
*§* Music is all the juice i'll need *§*