A bastard child of blues and pop, rock makes its way with gusto. It is not shy music -- even when its head is cast diligently shoewards. In fact, nothing is more indulgent than purposefully employing low production values. And rock,... [more]

A bastard child of blues and pop, rock makes its way with gusto. It is not shy music -- even when its head is cast diligently shoewards. In fact, nothing is more indulgent than purposefully employing low production values. And rock, from its inception, has indulged itself with glorious abandon. As if shooting out directly from the swaying hips of Elvis, the sexy bravado of Bill Haley, the showmanship of Chuck Berry, rock has soared through the decades, a phallus in flight. Now, this is not meant as either a gender claim (although rock is conspicuously male dominated) or a political claim. No, here the phallic nature of rock music is its aesthetic prediliction. Rock is extended music, if not in length, than in composition. It is rarely discrete the way pop is. That is to say, if pop offers up tightly wound nuggets which swirl back on themselves, rock is expansive. And it doesn't like to be caught swirling back on itself. Rock prefers to shoot its energy forward in a sprawling jam a la Allman Brothers or in forceful decadence a la Nirvana or Jimi Hendrix or in the chaotic white boy blues of The Rolling Stones. Needless to say, rock and pop overlap just as blues and rock at times overlap. Led Zeppelin rages through a searing noise melange; the structure of the song is often classically blues. When Pavement's lo-fi rock pulls a fancy little riff out of its pocket then swirls back around itself, rock finds itself in the realm of pop. But between these zones of blues and pop, rock makes its own offering: a steady, more or less linear surging. [show less]