Ahead of their time?

I'll have to think about an answer to your question Trouss, but in the meantime, may I be the first to congratulate you on Papercuts' takeover by IPC. You get to retain editorial independence, right? Or can we expect to see 'Joe Brooker salutes the magic of Fred Durst' some time soon?

See the links list at http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~tewing/singlesb.html if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

DEVO. Lee Perry. Jimi Hendrix. Beatles. To a lesser extent New Order/Joy Division, Kinks, Sonic Youth, Captain Beefheart, Beastie Boys.

I would definitely agree with the Ramones also.

Being ahead of your time I would say means that you either *greatly* accelerate the progression of pop/rock music (Hendrix, Ramones, Beatles) above the snails pace that it normally takes and literally take it immediately to a place where it wouldn't have gotten to for another few years or more. Or, do something that is so crazy at the time that most dismiss you as crap, and only later be able to more universally see the value (DEVO, Lee Perry). Not that the "crazy" artists can't be acknowledged at the time, but their full worth as creators is only revealed over time.

Oh look I know it's boring, but Kraftwerk.

Does there need to be an element of intentionality, do you think? (I dont really but I think you still need to be realistic) Not as in, now we will invent the future, but as in, well this might be a good idea. I mean saying the Beatles' "You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)" invented house (or whatever the article Stevie links to claims) is a bit of a stretch. Something that annoys me about Beatles criticism is Beatles Overclaim - Alan McGee saying a few years ago that Helter Skelter had invented noise music, etc. etc.

I think "ahead of their time" shouldnt just mean "influential" - it implies doing something ignored or overlooked at the time. The Beatles are the most influential band ever for rock music but they weren't ahead of their time, they kind of defined it or led it.

When you say Lee Parry was 'ahead of his time', Tim, what do you mean? He had a couple of stabs at effects-laden 'versions' in about '70, which could justify the claim. That aside, I see him as at the leading edge of Jamaican music from the early-mid sixties to the mid-late seventies, but I'm not really aware of his being ahead of his direct competitors, and certainly not of his musical ideas being derided as irrelevant, only to find favour later.

Serge Gainsbourg, obviously. Listening to "Cargo Culte", "Requiem pour un Con" or "L'homme à Tête de Chou" always reminds me of how much flair he had. That in a notoriously un-rock'n'roll country. Talking on loops in 68, mixing Le Fonque with orchestral manoeuvres in 71, going Nazi in 76, full-on reggae in 79... Just like Bowie and Iggy and Lou were left unscathed by the London punks in 77, SG was one of the few from the Vieille Garde to find acceptance by the Paris ones. "Play Blessures", the bleak-as-fuck Alain Bashung record to which he contributed lyrics in 1982 also demonstrates his remarkable instinct.

A few years ago, John Peel played a Siouxie & the Banshees B-Side from about 79/80 which appeared to have invented techno. Can anyone shed any light on this? He may have been playing it at the wrong speed.

There was another proto-techno track I heard by some obsure artist from around the same time. It was very fast too.

I agree about Devo. Their version of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' sounds like Big Beat to me.

Rolling Stones covers seem to be a source of musical innovation. Ananda Shankar's 'Jumping Jack Flash', from 1969 sounds like it was made in 1993.

Roxy Music was WAY ahead of their time. Something like "Virginia Plain", as well as the ideas behind it, was so unique in sound and spirit in 1972, and it didn't become influential until several years later. Except that Sparks' "Wonder Girl" sounded exactly like Roxy Music a full year before "Virginia Plain", so maybe *Sparks* is the most ahead-of-their-time band ever. But that would really suck.

the Silver Apples and United States of America sounded completely foreign in the late 60s. Bands like Broadcast and Stereolab get props for basically repeated the same thing 30 years later. Obviously anyone toying with electronic in the late 60s/early 70s can be "ahead of their time".

Bowie would have to be mentioned. His Berlin trilogy basically started new wave and brought ambient into pop.

Robert Johnson!

Well, as far as Lee Perry goes, there certainly were plenty of Jamaican artists/producers at the time (mid-late 60s) who where exploring "dub" and its various forms and depending on who you listen to, any one of 10 or so people could have "invented" the form. Details about the origins of rocksteady, ska and reggae are sketchy at best. But, aside from Lee's recorded work, a lot of his ideas, such as distaste for "corporatized" music (he burned his studio down in protest fer chrissake!) and his lyrics were things that a lot of people didn't jive with at the time. Its sorta like he was an original punk, reggae style. Its really hard to say though, again, because the "facts" come down to whom you talk to, but if there's one person that has survived all these years and become the icon of dub reggae, deserving or not, its Lee Perry.

Oh anyway, I was just speaking about how dub in general has experienced a SERIOUS resurgence in popularity. Not like Lee Perry was unpopular in the 60s (I even noted in my first post that initial unpopularity was NOT a prerequisite), but I doubt that most people pre-90s would even know what dub was. Bands such as Tortoise and Massive Attack have really taken a lot of the original dub ideas and recycled them "for the kids". I mean, the whole "breakdown" idea used so much in techno(tm) music comes pretty much straight from dub, so somebody has gotta take credit for that.

WIRE has a nice article by Reynolds in their latest (?) issue, debunking the afro-futurist reading of Perry and crew. John Cale was ahead of his time -- protopunk with a vengance, and as hyper aware of the performance nature of rock as anyone before or since.

A mindnumbingly cliched answer from me, I know, but I'd have to say Delia Derbyshire.

Two hypothetical answers.

1. No-one is ever ahead of their time - by definition. It's their time.

Or:

2. If anyone was ahead of their time, I wouldn't like them, until I caught up with them, much later, in my time. That's my job: to be behind my time.

Somebody oughta pay me. I'm putting life and soul into this behind-the-times job gig thing.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND and THE STOOGES.

fifty foot hose

there's that Miles Davis song "Rated X" from '75, everyone always goes I-can't-believe-it's-not-from-the-90s...yeah & the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, definitely...Sun Ra obviously but what about Mingus? or Duke Ellington? lotsa futuristic moves back there... Also, what about all those boring '70s rock bands who uncannily prefigure all those boring '90s/'00s rock bands.

neu/silver apples...and colourbox. "edit the dragon" sounds way ahead of it´s time to me.

I am afraid I agree with Pinefox "No-one is ever ahead of their time - by definition. It's their time".

In fact I think when we say something's ahead of its time we mean that we don't understand the past well enough... The first time I heard the Performance soundtrack was a typical case for me - rap and synths in 1969? But of course! How dumb of me...

And there are so many synth pioneers who sound proto-techno that you have to argue the reverse; how curiously nostalgic and backward looking techno was (essentially Hi-energy revisited...).

This was particularly true of early house music; which after the post-mod cut-ups of electro sounded like a return to classic disco, albeit aided with a drum machine (all those piano riffs and big soul voices sounded achingly 1977 in 1987).

Backward looking has never been a problem in my book. The holy texts of modernism - Eliot's 'Waste Land', Joyce 'Ulysses', Proust - all leech onto the past to make a new vital present. Post-modernism asserted its claims on posterity with a fraudulent re-reading of modernity. The only way forward has always been to stumble backwards.

i'll throw around some of the usual suspects, Miles of 'On The Corner' and that weird drum-machine on 'Dark Magus', Kraftwerk of course, Tangerine Dream's 'Rubycon' (very scary how far ahead they were when it starts to roll), ahem...the first side of 'Dark Side of The Moon', Can's 'Future Days'(how perceptive that title ;), Suicide, that soundtrack to Antonioni's 'L'Eclisse' and of course Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' (or how I invented techno).

ps. i'll say it again but that Reynolds article on roots reggae is not very good, some excellent points on dub and the need for vocals and the next steps of dub in today's London, but the debunking of Perry was rather unsuccesful and unneccesary I feel. In dub i still only trust Penman & Eshun.

my "ahead of their times" picks:

ornette coleman -- frank zappa and the mothers -- velvet underground -- the modern lovers -- the kinks -- black sabbath -- gary numan -- kraftwerk -- can -- brian eno

i'll fill in the details later

Louis & Bebe Barron's soundtrack to Forbidden Planet is ahead of everyone''s time.

Also kinda fond of that CA Quintet Trip Through Hell album, which is basically a 60s-era garage rock band accidentially sounding like something on Kranky.

Pauline Oliveros.

What about Yello? They were so ahead of the time no one has catched them to this date...

And the first track on Herbie Hancock's "Sextant" sounds incredibly like techno. Unlike many other pioneering synth tracks, it's based on repetition not melody.

DEVO. Lee Perry. Jimi Hendrix. Beatles. To a lesser extent New Order/Joy Division, Kinks, Sonic Youth, Captain Beefheart, Beastie Boys
Captain Beefheart?? he was More 'ahead of his time' then any of the others mentioned here. (exept Hendrix)

Sonically, 10cc were clearly ahead of their time....

It's my opinion that Miles Davis' 70s-era rhythm-fueled throbbadelic minimalism pretty much = precursor to drum-n-bass/jungle tweaky throbbadelic electro music of today, especially in how he in that era was bridging the sonic gap between the minimalist experimentelectro stuff of that era (Stockhausen, fr'instance) with the rhythmic pulsations of funk and african musics.

eh?

from the 60s: Red Crayola's debut (astonishingly so), the Velvet Underground, Beefheart, Hendrix, MC5, The Who's "My generation", some Floyd, Crogmanon, Parson Sound, Silver Apples

70s: Can, Pere Ubu, Schulze, Neu!, Last Poets , and a few others i can't think of

Metal Urbain, Cabaret Voltaire(early), Gary Numan...

Delia Derbyshire's production of the Dr Who theme.