CLASS NOTES: 1970s: Hippie Aesthetic, Corporate Rock, Disco, and Punk (History of Rock, 1970-Present)

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Notes on video lecture:

1970s: Hippie Aesthetic, Corporate Rock, Disco, and Punk

History of Rock, 1970-Present

John Covach, University of Rochester

Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on November 8, 2014 (go to class or lectures)

Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:

cleanest, mega, visceral, teenie, albums, psychedelic, homogenized, challenges, musicianship, ability, ambitious, specialized, business, serious, venues, corporations, movements, asked, friction, AM, perfection, hip, black, continuous, psychedelia, Beach, Altamont, sophisticated, standard, FM, matured

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the 60s and 70s

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many music historians make a break at 1969 with Woodstock and

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the end of era with something new happening in the 70s

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but in many ways the late sixties and the 70s can be seen as a piece music history

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overview of the 1970s

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the rise of musically groups

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most groups playing music in the 70s were:

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concerned with being taken as professionals

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had a certain standard level of professional

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even the rather than cerebral type players

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although punk and disco music comes along at the end of the 70s and this notion

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what's different about the 70s

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while many genres of music were being mixed together in the of the late 1960s including rock, world music, jazz, country and few people were concerned with these as being areas of music

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in the 70s these get divided up into separate styles such as country rock and progressive rock and jazz rock

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you can think of it in terms of the cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon with 1960's psychedelia as the white light coming into the pyramid containing all kinds of stylistic elements

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then on the way out of the pyramid into the 70s you get a break down into all of these different kinds of specialized styles

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rock was still quite separate

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not many white people listening to rock radio who knew about black music extensively

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general in 70s music

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rise of ambitious bands

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taken more as professional musicians

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the punk reaction to that

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the disco phenomenon

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parallel track of black pop

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rock is becoming a bigger and bigger

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second half of 70s, bands selling many more records

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corporate rock

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rock music that uses large arena , particularly sports venues, for concerts or series of concerts linked in tours

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albums

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people started selling albums at a volume that no one thought would ever be possible

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brought multinational into the business

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music began to play a safer game

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became less ambitious, and listener friendly

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rock business grows incredibly over the course of the 70s

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albums and singles become separate markets

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already happening in 1967 and 1968

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albums are what go to the radio band

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singles, which had been the commodity throughout the beginning years of rock and roll

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relegated mostly to the band

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AM was hit song radio, singles

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FM radio becomes bands that are mostly selling

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in the early 1970s, if you really cared about the band, you bought the albums

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people who bought singles were:

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superficial listeners

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seen as people who had not to the level of buying albums

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AM was often dismissed as being sell-out, commercial, -bopper

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FM was were the real action was

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stylistic spectrum expanded in the 1970s

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Jazz

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Folk

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Indian

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Classic

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Avant-Garde

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the Hippie Aesthetic

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a rock musician thinks of himself as an artist who has a responsibility to create music

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not just playing what you are to play

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not constructing songs for a teen or market

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you are writing and performing your own music

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at the highest level of technical that you can

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proud of your

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using the best technology to create the possible recordings

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you don't want to be seen as someone who keeps doing the same things over and over

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you want your new material to go places you haven't gone before

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began in the 1960s

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The Beatles, the Boys, and Bob Dillon pushing the idea rock musician artist

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continues into the 70s and becomes the model of rock music in the 70s

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this is going to be the with disco, and to a certain degree, punk, at the end of the decade

Spelling Corrections:

psychodelic ⇒ psychedelic

relagated ⇒ relegated

Ideas and Concepts:

Music metaphor of the day via this evening's History of Rock and Roll class: "One main difference between music of the late 60s and the music of the early 70s is that while many genres of music were being mixed together in the psychedelia of the late 1960s including rock, world music, jazz, and country, few people were concerned with these as being specialized areas of music in themselves. Yet in the 70s each of these genres gets divided up into separate styles such as country rock, progressive rock, and jazz rock. You can think of this in terms of the cover of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album where the 1960's psychedelia movement, with all of its stylistic elements, is the white light coming into the pyramid which represents Woodstock and Altamont in 1969, then on the way out of the pyramid you get a sharp break down of this rough musical mixture into all of the specialized and separate styles of the 70s."

Music history vocabulary of the day via this morning's History of Rock and Roll class:

"corporate rock, n. rock music that uses large arena venues, particularly sports venues, for concerts or series of concerts linked in tours. Historically, corporate rock bands have often come from the hard rock, heavy metal and progressive rock genres, using a more commercially oriented and radio-friendly sound.

The origins of corporate rock were in the 1960s, sometimes dated to when The Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York in 1965. Early bands experiencing success in this genre included The Rolling Stones, Grand Funk Railroad and Led Zeppelin.

The tendency developed in the mid-1970s as the increased power of amplification and sound systems allowed the use of larger and larger venues. Smoke, fireworks and sophisticated lighting shows became staples of arena rock performances.

It has been argued that the rise of corporate rock marked the end of the idealism of the 1960s, particularly in the disillusionment that followed the Altamont Free Concert of 1969, for a more commercial form of rock.

Key acts included Journey, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Styx, Kiss, Peter Frampton, Boston, and Queen. The commercialism, and overblown spectacle of stadium rock has been seen as promoting a number of reactions such as the punk rock movements in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, corporate rock became dominated by glam metal bands (bands which combined rock and punk), following the lead of Aerosmith and including Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P. and Ratt."

On the Hippie Aesthetic in 1970s Rock and Roll, via this evening's History of Rock and Roll class: "In the early 1970s, a rock musician thought of himself primarily as an artist who had a responsibility to create sophisticated music, not just play what he was asked to play, not just construct songs for a teen or hip market, but write and perform his own music at the highest level of technical perfection that he could, using the best technology available to create the cleanest possible recordings. You didn't want to be seen as someone who kept doing the same things over and over, you wanted your new material to go places you hadn't gone before. This adherence to authenticity and quality had begun in the 1960s with The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and Bob Dillon who pushed the idea of rock musician artist, and it continued into the 70s becoming the standard model of rock music of the decade, eventually becoming a friction with disco, and to a certain degree, punk, towards the end of the decade."