Heights of Rock 'N' Roll

[Sepulchral Voice]

This is a thread to discuss the heights that rock music can achieve. It can be rather difficult discovering rock music that has substance.

King Crimson - Red, In the Court of the Crimson King, In the Wake of Poseidon - Forward thinking, progressive rock

Arthur Brown - The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - Dangerous, defiant, hammond-organ oriented rock

Jethro Tull - Stand Up, Living in the Past - ancient sounding, with contempt for the modern world.

Pink Floyd - Animals, Atom Heart Mother - When this band isn't going out of its way to sound whimsical and pseudo-progressive, they are pretty decent.

[Rot]

Frank Zappa is a favorite of mine combining jazz, psychedelic, progressive, RnB, orchestral compositions with sadistic mockery (Zappa was calling hippies out on their shit in 1966), his guitar playing was absolutely amazing as well. Check out the album Hot Rats..

Captain Beefheart - Safe As Milk (featuring Ry Cooder on slide guitar)

[Conservationist]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand that was it ladies and gentlemen, hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

Rock music: so many attempts, so little of any enduring musical value, and those aren't even the popular ones.

Pink Floyd? Their entire catalog is equivalent to maybe ten seconds of Schubert... whatever.

I'll give King Crimson, Yes and The Doors some credit, but the rest is just drool, like most of metal.

Metal's rock heritage is actually what holds it back. Rock music is like the musical equivalent of jeans. Everyone thinks it's cool so they blindly do it in order to not be seen as conformists.

It's for idiots!

[Dead_Soul]

R.E.M.'s first album is fantastic. Gentle Giant, The Stooges, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains are all worth while.

[Conservationist]

How do you listen to this shit?

Day after day, massive repetition.

The Stooges? I got bored after five minutes!

Music doesn't get interesting until melodies develop beyond four notes!!!

[Sepulchral Voice]

How do you listen to this shit?

Day after day, massive repetition.

The Stooges? I got bored after five minutes!

Music doesn't get interesting until melodies develop beyond four notes!!!

You could say the same about Discharge, Bad Brains, Amebix...

[Rot]

Black Metal and even the best Death Metal bands highly praised on this site have the same texture as rock music. Zappa, Beefheart, King Crimson, even Gentle Giant pack in more than four notes a melody (and often never return) taking the songs to their breaking limit.

[Devamitra]

King Crimson

Breathing and organic jazz/prog that uses structure to expound melodic themes.

Arthur Brown

Not musically strong, but the freaky imagery builds sympathies and keeps one listening.

Jethro Tull

It wants to be respectable music, which is an unnecessary intent. Simple beauty though.

Pink Floyd

Some of it is mesmerizing, but severely lacks cohesion.

[Umbrage]

My top three:
Nickelback gets hit with rocks
Gene Simmons sets his hair on fire
Axl Rose falls off stage

[Conservationist]

You could say the same about Discharge, Bad Brains, Amebix...

You could, but they're deliberately simple and droning. Rock doesn't think it is.

[Conservationist]

Black Metal and even the best Death Metal bands highly praised on this site have the same texture as rock music.

Sounds like bullshit to me. Some of the bands praised on this site also use guitars, ergo they're on par with rock.

Do you ever get tired of comparing apples and oranges? Both after all have stems!!!1!

[War]

Rock music is a dead end with a severely limited potential. It's interesting to hear prog bands like King Crimson, German Oak, Magma (all worthy listens) as you can definitely trace metal's heritage, but at that point you might as well reach for the Morbid Angel CDs. Rock is something metal needs to leave behind if it wants to evolve in a way conducive to being appreciated on a more 'serious' level, and reach higher levels of quality.

[ASFXE8]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand that was it ladies and gentlemen, hope you enjoyed it while it lasted.

Hahahahahaha. Though rock is pretty dull as a whole, I do commend the few that tried (Like Therion did for death metal) to utilize what little it had in hopes of bringing some decency into the genre. NickeLAYONYOURback is a sorry excuse of musicianship and should only serve as an example of what NOT to do when forming a band. At least I'll see age 35 without having such huge holes in my cheeks that I can eat cereal out of them, milk and all.

[Heydrich]

Maybe it is because I'm getting long in the tooth, is just nostalgia driven, or what have you, but I do not see ALL rock in such a negative light. I still find bands like the Outlaws and similar Southern Rock or the jazzier, but still rock-founded Dixie Dregs, or Prog-ish Yes (Crimson of  course), early Blue Oyster Cult, or even really old Scorpions(Uli Roth era) , among others to be pretty satisfying musically.

Granted, much, even most rock music is indeed as stupid as it is simplistic and forgettable, but I can't see writing it all off so broadly. I will say this - some of it, after listening to it for three decades or more holds up better for me than a number of metal bands whose music is ostensibly lionized here.

Perhaps my ears are just not as refined as some...     

[wEEman33]

King Crimson is definitely the best thing you're going to come across in the rock genre, but even then, I prefer the ambient works Fripp has done as a solo artist over his rock stuff in King Crimson.