Rock Is Dead?
By Ian Loa

You be forgiven for having thought that one of the most enduring forms of expression and youth identity in the late 20th Century Western world had finally decided to call it quits.

After 25 years of premature pronouncements, this is it, you thought. Electronica is making its way full blast into the rock world, and everyone - from 60s pioneers such as Eric Clapton to 80s New Wavers like U2 to 90s stadium fillers like The Smashing Pumpkins - is using the new technology. Pretty soon, no doubt, Zildjian and Pearl will shut down the assembly lines as the all-powerful programmer takes over percussion duties and put real drummers out of business. After that, other players in the rock pantheon will be gradually replaced by synthesizers or melded into a new musical form that borrows elements from the hip-hop and techno movements.

If you actually believed this, then you're either too young to remember earlier forays into electronic music or too short-sighted to realize one of the key elements of rock music that made it so appealing in the first place.

First, some history. Remember Neil Young? The guitarist and singer was in one of the earliest waves of rock in the mid and late 60s. He's still around, still doing the classic rock thing.

But in between, you may have missed his experimentations with other types of music. He's had his Country and Blues phases, as well as a little remembered and much ridiculed period in the early 80s when he embraced electronic music.

Yep, electronica. Synths, computerized percussion, headset microphone and wraparound sunglasses. There was an album, Transformer, but within five years he was right back where he started - rock music - and doing it quite well. Furthermore, he was one of the few rock artists to denounce compact discs when they started displacing old vinyl LP's. Listening to a digitized music on a CD, he said, was like trying to look at a picture through a screen door.

What did he feel he was missing in the electronic world, and what brought him back to a musical form that he had turned his back upon in the mid-70s? I feel that the best answer to these questions can be found in a very obscure album from 1989 (incidentally, now only available as a Japanese import CD) called Eldorado. You can draw all kinds of symbolic meaning from the title of the album, but it's best to hear for yourself. Listening to it, and especially tracks like "Cocaine Eyes,” you know right away that this is very special - it's clearly heartfelt and it sounds great. Although this can be said for many types of music, including electronica, the music on Eldorado has an additional quality that cannot apply to computerized beats, programmed fills and synthesized instruments: It's very, very raw.

"Raw” is not easily described. It means more than being loud or rough-sounding. There is something else, too, which only real musicians, acting on their own impulses and feelings, can create. You hear it in old jazz recordings from the 50s, certain country artists, Carnival parades and some (but not all) live rock recordings. It's musicians coming together, interacting with each other and reacting to their audience in a spontaneous way that brings out a spirit and emotional quality that would otherwise be simply static notes and beats with no life or feeling.

"Young Man Blues.” First track, The Who's Live At Leeds. Listen to the incredible fills and beats played by Keith Moon at this 1970 concert. One particularly complex fill comes at the end of the introductory phrase, right before Roger Daltrey starts singing (“I say a young man ... ain't got nothing in the world these days ...”). Coming as Pete Townsend's guitar is feeding back and John Entwistle is furiously strumming his bass, It is inhumanly fast, yet incredibly precise.

Great, you say, but I'm sure some hotshot programmer could cook up the same fill in a couple of hours and have it ready by showtime, were the technology available at the time.

The only thing is, Keith Moon didn't plan that fill, except in a general way. It just happened. It was the product of his talent and his training, as well as more intangible factors like the volume and pitch of the guitar feedback, and the feel of the crowd that night. All of these factors came together at that particular moment to create a unique and powerful fill, just one of many that the crowd heard that night. It was raw, it was real.

The next night, while playing the same song to a different audience, the fill came out differently. The tempo was maybe a little faster. He didn't hit the snare as hard at the beginning of the fill, or in a split-second unconsciously decided to hit a crash cymbal instead of going to the floor tom. Maybe he had a fight with his girlfriend an hour previously, and was angry when was hitting his drums, or sad. Maybe the guitar sound wasn't right. Maybe it was even more driving. Maybe it was raining. Maybe he was drunk, or high.

Maybe the fill sounded great. Maybe it sounded ten times better than it did the night before, when Live At Leeds was recorded. Or maybe it sounded ten times worse. It's a risk you have to take performing with real musicians, but something that makes live music (and the occasional studio recording like Eldorado) all the more enjoyable when all these variables hit the right mix. Replacing one of the more important variables, the drummer, with programmed 0s and 1s is perhaps safer, but in the end takes away from the music.

So no matter how popular electronica gets over the next few years, no matter how far the technology advances, there will always be a need for a group of real people to get up on stage or go into the studio with their microphones, guitars, organs, drums and other instruments, and creating music together, on the spur of the moment and without the crutch of computerized percussion. It may be old-fashioned, but it is also very special, and very human.