New Project 2 - Glam Rock

For our second project my group were looking at creating a Glam Rock piece. Historically Glam Rock focuses on issues with gender and sexuality. Glam was born out of the turbulent musical era of the early seventies and was originally called various things; Theatre rock, glitter rock, shock rock and gay rock. Most of these terms were derisive, but the form was durable and influential and inspired popular modern artists such as Madonna and My Chemical Romance. The genre is well known for is eccentrically dressed performers, such as David Bowie who dressed very in a more stereo typically feminine way, with the wacky make up, styled hair and accessories.

"Gender Bending and Gender Blending with Bryan Ferry and Roy Wood" is a chapter from Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music. This book highlights the importance of gender in the glam rock genre. In reference to David Bowie, "The performative experiments that contributed to the development of Ziggy Stardust centered on two issues: transvestism and the development of explicitly artificial performance personae." Auslander, P (2006). Ziggy Stardust was David Bowie's performance alter ego who “Appeared on television wearing a frock and playing acoustic guitar.” Bowie revolutionised the genre with his rock performance based in theatrical characterisation. 

"Bowie and his guiatarist, Ronson became more and more explicitly sexual, with gestures that evoked both male camaraderie and a more sexualised homosociality. Bowie and his guiatarist, Ronson became more and more explicitly sexual - during a concert in 1972, Bowie famously simulated fellatio on Ronson and this routine and variations of it became staples of Ziggy Stardust concerts." Auslander, P (2006). The explicitness and sexualisation was new and it quickly became popular as well as gaining a large gay/trans audience.

Of course, it wasn't all about sexual identity. Many performers create a persona by whom they perfrom for a variety of reasons. "I can hide behind a role on satge and really enjoy performing." - Kate Bush {(quoted in Sutcliffe 2003, 77) Lenig, S. (2010)}

Musique Concrète

Musique concrète is music that is made in part from acousmatic sound. It can features sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, voice, and the natural environment as well as those created using synthesizers and computer-based digital signal processing. Also, compositions in this idiom are not restricted to the normal musical rules of melody, harmony, rhythm and so on. It's based solely on the production and manipulation of electronically produced sounds rather than recorded sounds. The theoretical basis of musique concrèteas a compositional practice was developed by Pierre Schaeffer, beginning in the early 1940's.

Our task was to create and absract piece which took inspiration from the 60's/70's. I choose to replicate the psychedelic soundscape which opens Pink Floyd's album. I created my soundscape using recordings taken in my kitchen and decided against adding any additional instruments as I wanted the piece to remain as abstract as possible. Once I had recorded my everyday sounds I edited them in the style of Pierre Schaeffer using cutting, delay, reverb and reverse which are all original concrète techniques.

Many albums in these era's were concept albums, meaning one idea ran through every song and these were often comments on society. The concept behind my piece was to comment on the way that women are labelled cooks, there's many a joke about a woman's place being in the kitchen or that a woman is only good for making her man a sandwich. So, my piece uses the sounds of the kitchen to express a feminist stance on this.

The sound of a boiling kettle runs all the way through, under-pinning the piece and providing the main beat. It starts off with the sound of a reversed oven door closing, to which I applied heavy reverb (something also very reminiscent of Pink Floyd) and the sound of my squeaky kitchen tap turning, which has been time stretched. The opening of a packet of crisps was then cut, sampled and repeated throughout, as were the cupboard door closing and the saucepan lid being placed on the pan. The piece finishes with a reversed microwave ping which is also time stretched so that it takes longer to fade out, a technique that The Beatles used in "A Day In The Life" in which a C chord was recorded on four different pianos and then sustained for 42 seconds as it faded out.

'Brain Damage' - Pink Floyd (1973)

Brain Damage was written by Pink Floyd and is a track off their album "Dark Side of The Moon". Roger Waters had been playing the song during the recording of the Meddle album in 1971, when it was called "The Dark Side of the Moon". The song is inspired by their former band member Syd Barrett who endured a mental breakdown. It falls under the genre of Progressive Rock.

Brain Damage features a guitar, bass guitar, drums, a synthesiser, an organ and bells - among other instruments. The song is slow, with a guitar appregio pattern similar to The Beatles' "Dear Prudence". It is in the key of D major and features a recurring lyrical pattern and chorus. The main time signature is 4/4, however the drums play 5/4 which gives the song an unsettling feel as the listener is unsure of the beat.

As the song is inspired by Syd's decline in mental health, the lyrics are very poignant. The line "There's someone in my head and it's not me" is very haunting and clearly relates to Barrett. The lyric "If the band you're in start's playing different tunes" relates to Syd reportedly changing the song he was playing mid-concert, unintentionally. Finally, the line "I'll see you on the dark side of the moon" refers to Syd Barrett's mental idiosyncrasies.

The music supports the message of the song, despite being in a major key (major connotes happiness) the lyrics of the song are sad. This could be because despite his deteriorating mental state Syd was happy within himself and it was more the people around him who were upset by his illness. The tape effects on the song add to the psychedelic feel of the song.

The 1970's

The 1970's are described as a "pivot of change" due to increasing political awareness and political and economic liberation of women. The British 1979 elections resulted in the victory of the Conservative party under Margaret Thatcher, the first and to date only female British Prime Minister.

The early 1970s saw the rise of many diverse forms of popular and rock musical styles, including jazz rock, the latter including artists such as The Carpenters and James Taylor. It also included the rise of such popular, influential rhythm and blues (R&B) and Motown artists as Stevie Wonder, The Temptations and The Jackson 5. Funk, an offshoot of soul music with a greater emphasis on beats, influences from rhythm and blues, jazz, and psychedelic rock, was also very popular. The mid-1970s also saw the rise of disco music, which dominated during the last half of the decade with bands like the Bee Gees, ABBA,The Village People, Boney M, and Donna Summer. In response to this, rock music became increasingly hard-edged with British early metal artists like Led Zepplin and Black Sabbath.

 A major event in music in the early 70's was the deaths of popular rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrisson, all at the age of 27. Elvis Presley, the best-selling singer of all time, died on August 16, 1977. Bing Crosby, who sold about 50 million records, died October 14, 1977. 

New Project 1 - Motown

So although we've only just gotten into groups for our first assessment I'm really excited to start working!

The sixties was an exciting, influential and inventive period for popular music. The skirts were shorter, the hair longer and the younger generation liberated from the prim and proper attitudes of the decade before. Typically the music reflected this idea of counterculture, artists ignited rebellion and began to stand up to the establishment culture. Protest songs such as "God On Our Side" - Bob Dylan, "Give Peace A Chance" - John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band and "A Change Is Gonna Come" - Sam Cooke, sent out a message that was readily accepted.

My group is considering taking a modern song and putting a 60's spin on it - completely changing the song so that it fits into a popular 60's genre, we were thinking Motown. This reminded me of a band I like called 'The Baseballs', who take modern songs and re-invent them as a barbershop quartet in a 50's style! Ready for next lesson I began researching the typical conventions of 60's motown music so that we can assess what we want to replicate in our work.