70s Genres

Art Rock
Kosmische
Prog
Classic
Glam
Metal
Proto-Metal
Pub Rock
Power Pop
No Wave
Pre-Punk
Punk
Post-Punk
Synth Pop
New Wave
Country
Folk
Singer-Songwriter
Reggae
Soul
Funk
Disco

I'm in my third month of ripping my collection to flac, and have been forced to think about genre tags more than I've ever cared to. The handy thing is it's an easy way to pick a category aligned with my mood to listen to on random without having to spend the time creating a special playlist. I have two squeezeboxes set up so I can have the same thing playing in the living room, bedroom, and in the office via SoftSqueeze on the computer as I go back and forth between rooms, everything controlled from the remote.

Some artists are a bit slippery, of course, and I sometimes have to shoehorn them into a genre that they normally wouldn't belong, just to fit them somewhere. List what genres you would tag the artists below. Feel free to add a genre if not listed above, but plain "rock" not allowed!

Be Bop Deluxe
Big Star
David Bowie 1974-79
The Boys
John Cale
Captain Beefheart
Cheap Trick
Cockney Rebel
Alice Cooper 1969-70
Alice Cooper 1971-73
John Cooper-Clarke
Deaf School
Defunkt
Devo
Family
Hawkwind
The Jolt
Grace Jones
Kid Creole & the Coconuts
Kiss
Kraftwerk
The Lambrettas
The Last
Led Zeppelin
Nick Lowe
Mink DeVille
Nico
Graham Parker & the Rumour
Pere Ubu
Pink Fairies
The Pretenders
Suzi Quatro
The Real Kids
Lou Reed 1972-75
Lou Reed 1976-79
The Rich Kids
Rockpile
Runaways
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band
Sparks
Talking Heads
Tubeway Army
UFO
Ultravox
The Vapors
Zolar X

A few more:

Badfinger
Steely Dan
10CC

10cc, along with Supertramp, Klaatu and ELO, are for me perfect examples of the genre that I would call "pomp pop". That is, melodic pop with pretty much perfect hi-fi production and considerable prog elements added.

I just saw Klaatu at the store today, but didn't get it. Maybe next time. There's a lot of bands that mix bits of glam and prog. I was lazy and put ELO under classic rock. The one Supertramp circa '74 or so I have is under prog. Pomp Pop is pretty accurate, but I'm thinking glam for 10cc, only because I like to have genre tags include more than just a few bands. Just picked up the first Sparks album, who I've been shoehorning into glam, as well as Todd Rundgren's early 70s solo stuff. Inaccurate I know, but it kind of works.

hi dere, DJ Martian

http://tinyurl.com/o3ywcm

what's the difference between art-rock & prog? I remember art-rock being applied to yes/king crimson/genesis in the 70s while I first encountered the term prog in the late 80s.

A good way to compare art rock vs. prog is to look at some of the solo work of Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel, Robert Wyatt, Peter Hammill and Fred Frith with the bands they came from. Some other stuff I tagged - Dome, Eno, Colin Newman, Robert Calvert, Haruomi Hosono, This Heat, Phil Manzanera, David Axelrod, Residents, Heldon, Massacre, Art Bears and late 70s Bowie.

Isn't prog more of a generalist term for art rock, krautrock, symphonic rock and possibly even recent trends such as prog techno, prog metal, "prog indie" etc?

At least that is my impression. Thus, art rock covers the kind of acts that were sort of sitting in between symphonic rock and krautrock musically: More experimentally oriented, sometimes bordering on (and even occasionally touching) atonality and free tonality, but less improvised and less "punk" than krautrock.

Prog techno? That's getting a little too fragmented. To me prog is pretty easily identifiable, the usual 70s suspects. I wouldn't put kosmische/krautrock under that umbrella. The only other way I might use it is neo-prog, for like Rush, Mars Volta, Tool, Porcupine Tree, etc, and prog metal.

I'm surprised, only one smug putdown for talking about genres? I'm always open to better suggestions for organizing a 11,000+ album digital collection.

to me, art-rock now implies something akin to "art school rock", hence folks like roxy music, bowie, eno, to noisier stuff like capt beefheart. it's not symphonic at all, a bit more influenced by the imagery (or anti imagery) of the performer, and w/perhaps more post-mod conceptual bent. prog, despite its rep, actually conjures a bit less pretension to me, something a bit more meat and potatoes (even if they're covered in three layers of cream sauce)

also, "neo-prog" is a long accepted term amongst prog fans for bands like marillion and spock's beard, not rush or mars volta. ie, it applied to 80s bands carrying on the 70s symphonic prog torch.

That's a pretty good take. I did end up tagging my 70s Beefheart as "art rock," as its certainly more accurate than "pre-punk." Since I'm not a fan of Marillion or Spock's Beard, I'll go ahead and use it for the 00s bands.

to me, art-rock now implies something akin to "art school rock", hence folks like roxy music, bowie, eno, to noisier stuff like capt beefheart. it's not symphonic at all, a bit more influenced by the imagery (or anti imagery) of the performer, and w/perhaps more post-mod conceptual bent. prog, despite its rep, actually conjures a bit less pretension to me, something a bit more meat and potatoes (even if they're covered in three layers of cream sauce)

I would definitely consider King Crimson to be an art rock band, and although not to the same extent as Yes or Genesis, they were definitely symphonic at times.

Captain Beefheart I would classify as avant garde. Yes, he has more in common with John Cage than he does with "rock" or "pop" musicians.

well to be honest, I think genre classifications are only really valid per the individual

i wonder if geir has ever heard a captain beefheart record in his life.

well to be honest, I think genre classifications are only really valid per the individual

― Dominique, Monday, July 6, 2009 4:23 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OTM

If you heard Talking Heads through the CBGB's scene you can list them as "punk," if you associate them with kickstarting Mission Of Burma or whatev you can list them as "post-punk," if you just have Speaking In Tounges and kno wthem for the hits, you can list them as "new wave"

Essentially its however YOU view the band. So asking us is POINTLESS

No, if everything was cut and dried, then asking would be pointless. Hearing about how other people group certain kinds of bands together, when there are many different permutations, is interesting. I'm curious if anyone else would group the handful of late-70s mod-revival bands with power pop, or would they mix better with new wave. Nick Lowe and Graham Parker - classic rock, pub rock or new wave? I could go either way. It's not solely based on experience. I was not aware of those artists in the 70s, when I was a kid listening to ELO and Queen.

Kosmische

What's this?

The new name for Krautrock?

Not exactly new. It's German for cosmic. Don't have to be all German bands though. Like how about Nektar or Hawkwind?

Thank you, I do know what German for cosmic is. So what is it then?

It was used by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser to promote a lot of bands on his label, but, for the most part, all the bands had in common was, er, that they were on his label.

For some a substitution for krautrock. Others might use it more specifically for the space-y beatless work of Klaus Schulze, Cluster and some Tangerine Dream.

I didn't think getting discussion going on this would be like pulling teeth! Has anyone read This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin? He first had a career in the music business in the 80s as a session musician, engineer and producer before becoming a neuroscientist. I was drawn to this book because its overall thesis is that our brains are hardwired for music even more so than language.

Near the end he makes some interesting observations related to simplicity versus complexity. Most people generally like music that strikes the right balance between simplicity and complexity. When music is too simple, it's too predictable. At a certain age, kids outgrow simple nursery rhymes and seek more complex music, just like they lose interest in the game tic-tac-toe and move on to checkers, chess, go, xiangqi, mahjong, etc. On the other hand, music that is too complex can be perceived as too unpredictable, not grounded in anything familiar, a schema. Additionally, consonance is usually preferred over dissonance, but an appreciation of dissonance is sometimes learned, though people differ in how much dissonance they can tolerate.

Levitin's take on how our brains process "goove:"

"Far more than language, music taps into primitive brain structures involved with motivation, reward and emotion. Whether it is the first few hits of the cowbell ["I got the fever, and the only cure is more cowbell!"] on "Honkey Tonk Women," or the first few notes of "Sheherazade," computational systems in the brain synchronize neural oscillators with the pulse of the music, and begin to predict when the next strong beat will occur. As the music unfolds, the brain constantly updates its estimates of whn new beats will occur, and takes satisfaction in matching a mental beat with a real-in-the-world one, and takes delight when a skillful musician violates that expectation in an interesting way. Music breathes, speeds up, and slows down just as the real world does, and our cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself to stay synchronized."

"The story of your brain on music is the story of an exquisite orchestration of brain regions, involving both the oldest and newest parts of the human brain, and regions as far apart as the cerebellum in the back of the head and the frontal lobes just behind your eyes. It involves a precision choreography of neurochemical release and uptake between logical prediction systems and emotional reward systems. When we love a piece of music, it reminds us of other music we have heard, and it activates memory traces of emotional times in our lives. Your brain on music is all about...connections."

Thinking about the way the brain processes music brings up many fascinating questions on how we categorize and group music together. I think the seemingly mundane question of what's art rock versus prog has plenty of potential. Whereas prog leans towards complexity, often modeling itself on classical music, perhaps art rock can be distinguished as being relatively more simple, yet also playing more with dissonance and unfamiliar modes, chord progressions and unusual timbres from experimental instruments and electronics?

How does one distinguish glam from power pop? Glam seems to more often play with proto-metal guitar sounds while still staying close to sixties melodic pop of the Beatles, just as Badfinger, the Raspberries and Cheap Trick. To one unfamiliar with both forms, it may be impossible to tell the difference, because the genres are really more related to culture and geography.

I think even to people very familiar w/the music, genres still have a lot to do w/non musical factors like culture and demographics. Furthermore, I think the individual need/ability/preference to classify music into genres at all varies a great deal, so one person's prog might encompass a huge array of bands, while another's might limit to very specific criteria. It could be an interesting discussion between two people as to the nature of their boundaries for this classification or that...or not. Personally, I'm a bit wary pinning down genres too closely, because to me, a "genre" is always temporary, always fuzzy, and the moment it becomes exclusive is the same moment I stop believing in it (or disengage somewhat from a discussion about it). It's nothing more than a mental tag, and carrying an unofficial "-ish" suffix for every term I use. I totally agree there is a quality about our brains and the chemicals inside them that causes us to classify (and also believe we as a species reap many rewards because of it), but at no point do I believe in a fool proof way of getting everyone to agree on anything at any particular point. And somehow I wonder why my gf keeps calling me a nihilist. ;)