I hate Rolling Stone. I hate MTV more, but since my interests lie mainly in merging the two great under-appreciated arts, music and literature, it is this leading publication that is the bane, the scourge, the absolute blight of my musical existence.
Aside: What does this have to do with Classic Rock Ramadan?
Excuse the aside, I’m taking Shakespeare this semester.
It’s Sunday night and I’m eating dinner at the house of some third cousin (Jews have more cousins than inbred Margaret Mitchell characters), and I come across a book of Rolling Stone covers from 1967 to 1997. I start flipping through and become more and more disturbed as each page passes. Mick Jagger again? David Letterman for the fourth time? Head shot after head shot of predictable rock stars and flavor-of-the-month movie stars posed with piercing eyes or hand pensively under chin. With a few notable exceptions (Tina Turner, REM, Kurt Cobain, Bart Simpson) I wonder if this magazine was checking for the pulse of rock America on the country’s foot.
One cover in particular catches my eye: Jimi Hendrix, down on his knees, nursing a blazing fire consuming his guitar, eyes wild and downcast, hands posed as if in incantation. This is the spirit of rock America, this is the pulse, the wild beating blazing Hendrix and his musical black magic that changed the art of guitar rock forever. Rolling Stone peaked with that cover, and has since been sliding, sometimes slowly sometimes headlong, into the corporate music abyss also known as the state of rock and roll in 2002.
But this is a column, not a soap box, so I’ll step down for a moment and attempt cohesion. If I’ve learned anything during this month of Classic Rock Ramadan, it’s that the problem with rock and roll is that it’s been there and done that. Its initial appeal was its newness, its sexiness, its quality of being unlike anything else, and besides, being good. I close my eyes and listen to Jimi Hendrix and his Band of Gypsies, live at the Fillmore East on New Year’s Eve in 1969, and I think, this is rock, this is the pinnacle, and why the hell do people still play guitar when it’s already been done the best that it can be?
A friend walks in, has heard the set a million times, starts singing along to Hendrix’s guitar line as if it’s a familiar TV jingle. “Hendrix was Trey’s hero,” he says as we segue into a conversation about the recently announced Phish February tour dates. He leaves, I continue listening, and it comes together, it comes full circle. We have to listen to classic rock, understand classic rock, because it is the bedrock. Layer after layer of musical sediment now covers the rock music of the 50s and 60s, and it is the job of any true rock fan to excavate.
Amidst the dust and the bones of our musical past are the clues to an evolvement not unlike human evolution. All of the music that we listen to now, from Timo Maas to Missy Elliot to Martina McBride to Phish, is made up of this past matter, as if in the music of today is the collective DNA of yesterday. There is nothing essentially new, but there is much beauty; seeing it, hearing it clearly, embracing it, is something otherworldly. Rolling Stone and MTV can’t touch that, reading Rolling Stone won’t get you there, nor will watching MTV. Classic Rock Ramadan has been a lesson in the power of experiencing music. So excuse me while I kiss the sky.
Live music is live art, be a part of it. Try to catch some shows in your town over break, and have a happy turkey day!