Why can't Europeans rock?

andy i direct you to my thread with the very, very long title about three down on new answers for further possible insight.

(or some sort of reverse-xenophobia, i still haven't sussed out which.)

BTW, Britain's illustrious rock history is obviously unimpeachable... but my last couple visits have left me less than inspired by the current situation, even in the underground...

in the underground? b-but "blowing in the wind" rocks like a bitch...

mark s the only way I can twist your comment into sense is by imagining it as an extremely convoluted reference to Scorpions... actually most things make sense when imagining them as an extremely convoluted reference to The Scorpions.... in lieu of anything to actually say I'll just do this

They love the Ramones in Spain. The Plastic People of the Universe (Czech) are great. There are good black metal bands in Poland and Norway (they don't really rock though). It seems that the more extreme subcultures that rely upon localized "scenes" and word of mouth are the only ones you hear about in these remote places (italian noise-core, eastern european black metal, emocore from malaysia and singapore). There probably isn't a marketing structure in place to promote anything on a larger scale internationally. The most curious absence of rock historically is, to me, white South Africa. Incidentally, what is the great American rock on the charts?

Hey, the Strokes are British, and _they_ rock...

Europe, Helloween, Kreator!

Atari Teenage Riot!

dude rock's like porn you can't define it but you know it when you see it

amon duul?

Anyone seen the Tokyo Dragons yet?

their from London and rock like a rock thing should

Blows this theory

No mention of Turbonegro yet?

Re: Tokyo Dragons

One band with a hokey name does not a trend make, there is precious little good British ROCK now...

Re: Turbonegro

See the thread's header, Nordics are excepted from this for their very worthwhile additions to the ROCK... Nomads, Hellacopters, etc.

What are you saying, hey? In reality perception the continent of Europe is the best place for the Rock.

Woaaahhhhh!

It seems the Japanese can rock, after a fashion.

Not that they're European of course, just saying.

The other thing is that you euro's live in functional social- democracies. I think that is why america has the current edge on Rock and Soul. I am not dogging Europeans for this, I envy you actually. You do not need to rock, you do not live in the richest country in the world which also has the highest child poverty rate in the G8.

It is like that Momus essay about Cute Formalism in Japan. They do not need to tear shit apart, they live in a nice humanistic country. Everything is well designed and aesthetically pleasing, everything is cute. Later in the essay he mentions eminem and how he is forced to deconstruct and recontextualize his environment because everything is caustic and distructive. He creates because that is how he survives in a completely abhorrent situation.

I am always on about Detroit, but think about it. For the last 50 years this little backwater town has been kicking ass in jazz, dance music, soul, and rock n' roll. I do not think there are many people who would argue that Detroit is one of the most screwed up metropolitan regions in the G8. I think there is a definitely connection between the visceral nature of the music that comes out of here and the complete disorder in the region.

Also, you do not have corporate media completely lying to everyone about Afghanistan and Palestine. Europe has not had a CIA backed coup d'etat in recent memory like the US has. People are getting poorer every year and there is nothing we can do about it. This country is a complete mess right now, and people know it.

KICK OUT THE JAMS!

i thought they signed some sort of treaty in the 1970s not to produce anymore embarassing (but curiously enjoyable) hard rock bands like toad, clear blue sky, writing on the wall, silberbart, bodkin, necromandus, antrobus/the flying hat band, ton steine scherben, (early) scorpions, the shiver, mammut, bokaj retsiem... fuck, i might as well go bald and start yelling loudly about the james gang at record shows now.

People are getting poorer every year and there is nothing we can do about it. This country is a complete mess right now, and people know it.

I think that's been the case since about 1870 (it was before then as well, of course).

Ned, I shot the question into yahoo and came up with a few pages with statistics about the decline in real wages in the US. I do not necessarily agree with the politics of any of these groups, but their statistics to do a trend. Here are a few links:

check this out

this is pretty good too

Here was what the epi says about income in equality in Michigan

and for you ned: California in the 90's

apparently California is even worse for working people than Michigan is.

I meant to say: "Their Statistics do point to a trend..."

I really need to stop posting to ilm when I'm tired.

(mt what are you counting as the cia-backed coup "in recent memory"?)

The latins are the only one still doing melodic metal, if you like that shit, anglos haf been eating nu-metal up crazy

Europeans can't rock because they're aware of the utter inconsequentiality of their long-overdue and welcome cultural extinction

hurrah!

Ned, I shot the question into yahoo

Thank you, that was indeed informative. It's just that given that there's always been a notable elite with a hell of a lot of money/cash/ assets, along with continuous struggle for fair wages and rights in exchange for labor, I'd have guessed that the picture has to be tempered somewhat in terms of this being the clear shithole time. Is the fact that there's no obvious current equivalent to the high-profile activism of the IWW, say, a sign that people are more beaten down in the face of plutocracy or a hint that the situation is more leavened than might be thought? Not trying to force an answer here, more just curious.

None of which takes away from the idea that Detroit has had it bad economically and great musically, natch. I'm with Mark S about the CIA-backed coup part -- you mean Florida 2000? If anyone decided anything it was the Supreme Court, as Tad will be happy to talk about. ;-)

Also, the thing about Europeans is that if they're not on the dole they live at home with their parents until they're about 50 - and often they don't even mind doing it

Hey Ned,

Well if you look at Bush family history, they have connections with the American intelligence community (NSA/CIA) since the Office Of Strategic Services back in WWII. George H. was actually the director of the CIA in the 1970's. If you look into who ran the presidential campaigns during the Regan and Bush years, you will notice that there are a lot of formerly high placed CIA spooks running things behind the scenes.

I do not have a lot of time to get into it, but there has been a lot of funny shit going on with the US government since Truman gave the Spooks free reign when the OSS became the CIA. Poke around, there is a lot of information out there. I am not talking about kooky militia publications either, there is a lot of well researched and documented info about this.

Again, this is off topic on ILM, but if the shit that happened in Florida had happened in a third world country, the UN would have been down there to straighten things out. Dubya's brother and his lackeys definitely monkeyed around with those election results. The supreme court might very well have upheld the results, but you cannot tell me that the electoral process was fair and square down there.

That is what a coup d'etat is. It isnt a bunch of guerillas or rebellious military personel running around blowing stuff up and taking over. It is simply putting a candidate with an agenda into the machinery of government and changing things from the top. A well executed coup is one that people will not acknowledge even happened. A coup is just a group of conspiritors that subvert a political process for their own ends.

A family with heavy political and intelligence connections deciding to get the presidency yet again by any means necessary is a coup.

you cannot tell me that the electoral process was fair and square down there

Heavens, I wasn't implying that, give me some credit! As you wisely note with a qualifier about militias, I am wary of conspiracy theories in general -- exposure to some of the Y2K crowd shortly after 2000 switched over (contrails, anyone?) helped in particular with that -- but neither am I so blase to say nothing could have gone on. That said, it seems more interesting to me to consider that, for example, if Gore had his act together more his own home state would have voted for him (c'mon, even *Mondale* won Minnesota), which IIRC would have meant he would have won the election anyway regardless of what Florida decided. Or -- forgive me if I'm wrong in assuming this -- are you suggesting the entire nationwide election was specifically set up so that Florida would in fact be by default the deciding state? I'm perversely impressed if that would be the case!

Also, it might be me, but wasn't the election supervisor in the one district where a lot of votes were recorded for Buchanan in fact a Democrat? So what was her story, then?

And now that I think about it some more, why not use some of those CIA connections more to help Bush Sr. in 1992? Doesn't H. Ross Perot have some level of involvement with the intelligence community or ex-members thereof? His presence in the election then helped seal Bush's fate with a split vote more thoroughly than Nader did with Gore, I'd think.

yeah but ned, bush snr had been their BOSS!! the way he got humiliated by clinton via perot = PROOF the cia did it, far as i'm concerned, same as i'd like to see MY boss fall into a vat of rotten avocado

Heh. Touché.

maybe it's the ADJECTIVES they use to describe themselves that's making them not rock! ok here are some true-life examples: "spacious" "wistful" "ephemeral" "dreamscape"

when you hear words like that, do you hear rock? maybe they just don't know the right words!!

Someone else knows the Plastic People! Can we devote the rest of this thread to a discussion of Leading Horses and the role of the clarinet in the formation of an East European dissident doom-prog aesthetic?

Only if you can tell me where else to go for east european dissident doom-prog (BTW, the Czechs get very offended by the suggestion that they're part of "eastern europe"). The PP have to be one of the most unique bands ever. I saw them a couple years ago in San Francisco and all these old Czech immigrants showed up and turned the show into a dance party. I haven't heard Leading Horses though; I only have a really crappy sounding tape copy of the first album.

Also, Magma and Shub Niggurath (both French, I think) are incredibly inventive "rock" bands. Didn't Magma even get their picture in Rock and the Pop Narcotic? "De Futura" and "Yog Sothoth" are two of the greatest songs ever!

The Rock of Travolta erm... rock. And they're from Oxford.

(MP3s here.)

Yeah, it's really impressive how the PP managed to seamlessly incorporate indigenous folk elements with jazz into a totally viable unique rock sound. It doesn't sound forced and kitschy like a lot of "world music". It sounds totally intuitive and right. Leading Horses is quite good, with the plodding beats, dark tunes, and squealing woodwinds and strings. Passion Play is pretty good too. The Carleton radio station let me dub them when I was writing a paper on the PP. Which is the first album? Egon Bondy? I think I may have actually seen that at a local record store. (How do the Czechs see themselves vis-a-vis "Eastern Europe", BTW?)

There's a quite good book about rock music in the old East Bloc called Rocking the State: Rock Music and Politics In Eastern Europe and Russia (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1994).

I haven't heard enough Magma.