Genre Study - 6.4.2010

I recently embarked on one of my periodic efforts to give every song in my music library a proper ID3 tag, and in the process I discovered some rather odd data on some of my songs. Winamp's Auto-Tag process, which queries the reputable Gracenote music database, is generally reliable for basic information like year of release, publisher, and other such fields, but their genres are... odd. Bizarrely specific tags like 'Original New Wave Scene' or 'General Alternative Rock' are the norm, despite their bizarre ambiguity. What does 'General Alternative' even mean? Is it somehow different than 'Alternative'? These posts endeavor to further investigate the topic.

Queried Album: The Modern Lovers - The Modern Lovers
Gracenote Genre: Original New Wave
Wikipedia Genre: Rock, proto-punk, garage rock
My Genre: Proto-alternative
First off, I should point out that no one really knows what New Wave means. The term was invented as a marketing gimmick in order to avoid using the word 'punk', and it's generally used as a catch all for bands that would now be called alternative. The term gradually shifted from groups like Television to the burgeoning synth-pop movement, and then died off all together in the mid-80s.

The original, I suspect, is based on how some modern groups, like Franz Ferdinand, are being called 'New Wave revival'. The idea of reviving a New Wave is laughable as is, and demonstrates just how incurably lazy people are getting with genre names. Or maybe it's just the opposite and music is getting incurably lazy. I don't fucking care, the point is that 'Original New Wave' should be truncated to 'New Wave'.

However, note that Wikipedia, the ultimate internet reference in front of which I daily debase myself, seems to disagree with Gracenote's assertion. God knows why Wikipedia is calling this band proto-punk; their album was released in '76, right at the onset of the punk movement. Can't be right all the time, I suppose. 'Garage rock' is a pet peeve of mine, and the only professionally released album I'd put under that label would be the re-release of Raw Power.

From my personal perusal of The Modern Lovers, the group's only album, I'd put them in the same boat as Television in terms of their sound, which would lead me to put them into a new genre I am creating right now: proto-alternative. New Wave, for me, refers to bands with a lighter sound, such as the Talking Heads or Blondie. The Modern Lovers aren't that poppy.

Queried Album: Tom Waits - Blue Valentine
Gracenote Genre: Alternative Pop Singer-Songwriter
Wikipedia Genre: Blues-rock
My Genre: Nicotine blues, nicotine jazz, jazz-blues
Well shit, I don't even know where to begin! The fuck is going on over in Gracenote's offices anyway? Alternative Pop is a misnomer, and Singer-Songwriter tends to describe solo acts like James Taylor and early Leonard Cohen; artists who accompanied their signing with a guitar and very little else. Tom Waits does play the piano, but he doesn't even do that on every track! You could possibly lump his first album under the singer-songwriter label, but even that doesn't work all that well.

A good rule of thumb is that no genre name should ever exceed two words. Three's pushing it, and four is right out. I'll admit that the Gracenote genre is roughly descriptive, and you can get a decent idea of what Waits is up to by looking at it. Still, you could easily truncate it to 'Alternative Singer Songwriter'. Alternative, in it's musical use, suggests anti-pop in-and-of-itself, though that itself is a very vague description. Painfully, Gracenote uses the same genre for Waits' later avant-garde work, where it's even more inappropriate. I can't imagine anyone calling Swordfishtrombones a singer-songwriter album, even with a bunch of extra words thrown in for good measure.

I coined nicotine blues as a vague catch-all, as no one genre really accounts for all of Waits' output. You could call this album, as well as most of his early period, nicotine jazz just as easily, or maybe jazz-blues. Blues-rock, Wikipedia's take on the album, isn't quite there, as the term can be used just as easily for roots rock groups like Creedence. Jazz-blues is probably the best one to use for general reference.

Classic Rock Canon - Journey

Up until now I've stuck to bands that I both enjoy and know about. I'm attempting to keep this blog largely positive because, believe me, I could go on for the next three years about twee, contemporary R&B, and those miserable shit-fuckers the Black Eyed Peas (who, by the way, are still in the fucking top 20 of the Billboard 200, proving that I'm perfectly justified in hating everyone in existence) but it would probably get old after a while. Besides, I don't want to invest that kind of time in a blog of all things.

But when discussing classic rock, even when limiting oneself solely to bands with some historical relevance, there comes a time when you must discuss the dregs of the genre. It's inevitable, like how every David Bowie fan has to admit that he did, in fact, make albums after the mid-80s. You look down on the floor and mumble something about how 1. Outside had some great avant-garde influences and was really cool for pulling in electronica and people let you get away with it out of pity.

The difference is that I fucking love Bowie, despite his flaws, and have some serious issues with classic rock, mainly because of its flaws. And no flaw is bigger or better selling than Journey. God I hate Journey. If you want to save time you should take those words and go find something cheerier.

Let's address the band first; Journey got their start when Santana's backing band got sick of playing second fiddle to ol' Carlos (which they should have seen coming considering what he named the group) and decided to take a stab at a career on their own. This isn't unheard of; The Band (Bob Dylan's backing band) had some decent success on their own. The difference is that the original version of Journey tried to make a stab at financial success with jazz fusion, which had the result you'd pretty much expect.

Their label, Colombia, told the guys to find a frontman and change their style to something closer to Foreigner/Boston. They complied, and after going through a few guys they settled on Steve Perry, otherwise known as "that talentless schmuck who stole Pete Townsend's nose."

As much as I hate Steve Perry, the band themselves hated him more. The group's drummer and keyboardist both left the band, and did it after it became obvious that Perry's Journey (for it very much was under Perry's control) would be monstrously successful. Not even buckets of money, each as large as Perry's schnozz, could convince them to put up with him.

You may think I'm being mean-spirited here, but this is how intense my hate of Perry is. Why do I hate him so much? Because of classic rock stations, who all fucking love Journey. Goddamn do they love Journey; I can guarantee that, on any given classic rock station, no more than two hours pass without a Journey song.

And what songs they are! Thanks to The Sopranos and countless bars around the world, "Don't Stop Believin'" is the best selling iTunes song of all time at three million downloads. That's roughly six million dollars, all spent on Swiss. "Separate Ways" has the cheesiest opening outside of Styx's discography; "Faithfully" is the only love song less convincing than "Hey There Delilah"; and "Wheel In The Sky" is... actually pretty cool. I like that one. Worse, every lyric Perry ever sang/wrote is ever worse than "Welcome To The Jungle".

Wanna know who to blame for synth rock? Journey. Vapid lyrics sung by people who sound they have a cold? Journey. A bizarre love for overly emotional lyrics sung in the least convincing way possible? Journey. Worse, they're one of the core bands of the classic rock canon. They are universal; heard everywhere. Even today, the average person on the street is more likely to know about Journey than any other band from the early-80s, guaranteed. For a lot of people, they are the 80s, representing the entire decade's rock movement.

That's why I'm pissed off. That, and because they suck.