Comments on: On the tangled ball of music that is rock

By: Angine de Poitrine « The Tar Pit

Angine de Poitrine « The Tar Pit — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:43:11 +0000

[...] through a form of expression that was unheard of before, one that was approximated at the time as "rock and roll", but that was indeed much more than that. In less than a decade, they managed to invent quite a [...]

By: Los Angeles, a land of even stranger contrasts « The Tar Pit

Los Angeles, a land of even stranger contrasts « The Tar Pit — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 20:26:14 +0000

[...] a self-described Armenian born in Persia3 with whom I had a cultural exchange in... I shit you not, rock'n'roll music. He was quite impressed with my familiarity with '70s and '80s metal, so he put on Black Sabbath [...]

By: The SF Bay Area, a land of strange contrasts « The Tar Pit

The SF Bay Area, a land of strange contrasts « The Tar Pit — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 15:18:24 +0000

[...] a bunch of blues standards and oh boy, they were quite young, which kinda goes to show that this rock thing isn't really dead. At least not in the places where it came [...]

By: The sweeping, unstoppable wave « The Tar Pit

The sweeping, unstoppable wave « The Tar Pit — Wed, 20 Jul 2022 19:16:14 +0000

[...] Only through sheer coincidence we may agree with the pantsuits here: whether you like jazz or not, that's entirely a matter of taste. Otherwise there's really nothing putting it below the so-called "classical white"5 genre, it's not like Miles Davis' free modals are in any objective manner of speaking "below" Beethoven's sonatas. That's nonsense, which makes the pantsuits' derpage about supposed "white elitist patriarchy" all the more ridiculous. Anyway, all the whites did was try to coopt blues -- since, with the exception of maybe Brubeck and a few others, they didn't really understand jazz -- which resulted in that obscure6 country genre and which at most gave birth to a sub-genre, that meanwhile utterly dead "rock music". [...]

By: Piano practice, the first month « The Tar Pit

Piano practice, the first month « The Tar Pit — Sun, 18 Jul 2021 22:07:32 +0000

[...] say that the peak year of rock was 1971, others think that it was '73, when the The Dark Side of The Moon, Houses of the Holy, Who [...]

By: On the utter death of musical arts « The Tar Pit

On the utter death of musical arts « The Tar Pit — Tue, 04 May 2021 11:02:53 +0000

[...] other words, I am saying that the broad field of music-making has by Anno Domini 2021 reached the state of sheer rubble. And I can bet my ass that at least the late classics foresaw [...]

By: spyked

spyked — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 07:24:49 +0000

It appears that Steven agrees with me... sorta.

I, on the other hand, do not quite agree with him. It takes way more work than putting some guitars through a MIDI synth to evolve rock musically.

By: spyked

spyked — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 19:43:45 +0000

While we're here, I must not forget to mention one other thing which I deeply dislike about rock music, namely that it has fallen under the trap of the same mockery-of-sound as its brother, pop, on the other hand; and that the same sound consistently lacks any qualities worth the mention in actual performances. And let us be clear -- no one may mention Pink Floyd. They are the exception among so many sound failures, both obvious and subtle, during "rock" and "metal" concerts -- whatever "rock" may have gained by its blasting volume, it has surely lost the appeal to the ear's sensibilities. No amount of fucking with dynamics and with textures is able to replace that, no synth will sound remotely organic in lack of a Roger Waters to fiddle with it to the point of obsession.

Let us leave the dead in their peace. What concert have you been to lately, which sounded great? 'cause my last one wasn't really rock, if you know what I mean.