Rock is Dead (Part 2: On subverting instruments)

Yesterday I made the highly disputable (ie intellectually shaky) conclusion that rock is dead. So disputable in fact that I don't think its necessarily true. It certainly raises questions of what exactly one can define rock as.

So check it, my definition is that rock almost begins and ends with the guitar (and more specifically the electric guitar) the bass, drums and vocals. Several elements therein are more important than others. The electric guitar is almost entirely crucial for a classification of music as discernably 'rock'. After all, the african-american inventors of rock did so by quickening up and electrifying the blues they'd been playing all their lives.

Rock music, at its core, can really be seen as the worship of the guitar hero. You could po-mo your way into seeing some kind of representation of the old fashioned knight and sword arangement of the feudal days (and certainly for some metal bands, there really isn't any distinction made). The most important people in any rock band are the guitarists (whether lead of rythym) and the vocalist. The guitar seems a pretty unique instrument for its qualities of timbre and all that theory junk, at any rate guitars are melodic AND percussive. The guitar is a pretty awesome general field weapon (to continue a military analogy) much like I suppose the modern machine-gun-riffles like the M-16 and the AK-47 (AKs don't jam all the time though baby!). Its also impossible to avoid noticing how mobile the electric guitar is in comparrison to other instruments. Basses and Cellos are unwieldy affairs, Pianos are like heavy musical furnature and the immobility of drum kits is demostrated in any rock video where the band are all mobile and they have to come up with a way to deal with the drums (and which has only ever been adequately dealt with in a treatment for a weezer video by Michel Gondry see: booklet of his Director's Label DVD).

The guitarist is the individualist, the mercenary and for many bands the songwriter. The guitarist essentially controls the band whether setting the tone for the melody as a rythym player or adding harmonic flourishes (in the form of solos) that always come a close second to vocals in defining a song (look at the way in which solos often occur in a bridge, compensating for sung melody lines in the verses and choruses). The guitar is central to rock, and although this point is probably obvious to everyone, I hope I've given some indication as to the reasons why this is the case.

But see, there's only so much you can do with a guitar. In recent times the guitar's use has been very much subverted. I'd, of course, place the usual qualifier on this: that certain bands and individuals subverted guitar use on a small scale throughout rock's history. I'll make my start point (again arbitrarily) with the example of the NYC experimentalism of the early 80s and talk about Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth's guitar subversion (that they've practised to varying degrees throughout their career) is to render the guitar a producer of 'non-traditional' 'non-rock' sound. They weren't the first band to use noise, but I like them, so there.

While retaining a band structure and playing 'rock' music Sonic Youth utilised the qualities of guitar electrification and amplification to make non-guitar sounds, sounds that were more about making noise than playing. In many ways this noise deconstructs the electric guitar and bares the innards of the instrument. For many people the noises Sonic Youth utilised would be considered mistakes - feedback primary among them. One part of noise guitar is allowing (intentionally or not) the technology behind the instrument to show - highlighting the fact that the electric guitar's sound is in-part assisted by something other than the player. The other part is to utilise sonic elements that cannot be accessed playing a guitar in a rock style. No configuration of chords can give you the screeching feedback drone at the end of Mogwai's breifly engaging but ultimately irritating 'Stereodee.'

This non-traditional use of guitar is one way in which people began to make music that could be defined as 'post-rock.' I think the repositioning of the guitar is very much overlooked when people talk about the post-rock movement. For one band, the role of the guitar is crucial in its post-rockiness and that is Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The technique which GY!BE use that is so fundamentally un-rock is the metal-slide and delay pedal drone: Using one presumes a screwdriver, a string on a guitar is rubbed back and forth as if one is playing slide guitar without picking a string. A sustained metalic drone is created that is given a greater fullness and sustain by using a delay pedal. The result is something like a bowed note on a stringed instrument like a violin or cello (as it must be obvious by now, I'm no music theory student, but i believe the screwdriver/delay technique produces harmonic tones of some kind?). The combination of noise guitar and techniques such as screwdriver/delay attack the role of a guitar as the provider of rock melody.

As the guitar is used for its variety of sonic qualities is ceases to be a central pillar of the band and becomes an element in the production of music. GYBE's orchestral quality (having 9 members contributing to a peice of music) deconstructs the use of guitar and vocalist as the personality of a band, backed by the physicality of the rythym section. I would suggest that 'non-traditional' modes of guitar playing tend to take away the guitar's special place in a band. I don't think I have this stitched up by any means, but my point is that the rock technique of playing the guitar can be seen as limited, and can also be seen as being transcended by newer more diverse ways of playing. In order to play definably rock music, one needs to rely on a certain limited concept of the guitar as a means of expressing a melody or harmony. It also requires a deliberate relegation of percussion and rythym to the backseat of songwriting and performance.

In many ways, it is as much what rock bands don't do that defines them, as much as what they do do (that's a stupidly confusing sentence isn't it folks?). The decision to make 'rock' music is not just a stylistic choice, it is also a technical and political one. A set configuration (guitar, bass, drums, vocals) is used in a set way to produce set outcomes. The problem is, there are only so many ways in which you can use these set criteria and it is my argument that most of them have probably been done at this point. This is not to say macro and micro-adjustments can't be made within the cannon of rock music - from a sub-genre level (look at the revival and renewal of post-punk) to the individual melodic, rythmic and harmonic choices of bands (Chuck Berry and Nirvana are both rock bands but with completely different sounds). One must accept, I believe, that all of the reinventions of rock one may accomplish today, occur within a style of music that has lost its ability to grow. Perhaps rock isn't really dead, but merely fully grown and beginning to age.

The changing nature of the guitar, as the central tennet of rock music, is one way (and one of the most important ways) in which this ageing can be shown.

(Some rock music politics next-time, and I might just tell you why its desirable that we smother rock in its sleep like an electro-shocked cuckoo's nest Jack Nicholson).