Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2012 8:51 pm
VinnyViolin wrote:Mike Nobody wrote:yod wrote:Mike Nobody wrote:Punk rock bands routinely refuse to charge high prices.
Fugazi has had a policy, since the 80's, to never charge more than $5 bucks admission. They also NEVER sold any merchandise AT ALL. No shirts, no buttons, no glow-in-the-dark-dildos. Nothing.
It used to be pretty common for punk fans to make their own T-Shirts & buttons.
That's a good example of musicians serving the needs of a community, btw.
Punk gave voice to an unsatisfied youth in the UK, and when it came to CBGBs, it was serving the same need in NYC with the addition of presenting new fashion.
I know it's a common misconception that punk originated in the UK.
They grabbed more headlines early on.
But, the Ramones preceded the Sex Pistols by a few years.
At their first show in England, many saw their first punk rock show and formed their own bands which became quite famous.
Malcolm McClaren also borrowed the 'fashion' from guys like Richard Hell, and sold it in his shop.
Also, if you wanna be nitpicky...
BOTH British and New York punks were huge fans of The Stooges & The MC5.
You could say punk rock originated in Detroit then, as well as Funk, Techno, and Motown.
You're welcome.
Funk originated in Detroit? No, definitely not! Try New Orleans.Wikipedia wrote:History (of Funk)
The distinctive characteristics of African-American musical expression are rooted in sub-Saharan African music traditions, and find their earliest expression in spirituals, work chants/songs, praise shouts, gospel, blues, and "body rhythms" (hambone, patting juba, and ring shout clapping and stomping patterns). Funk music is an amalgam of soul music, soul jazz, R&B, and Afro-Cuban rhythms absorbed and reconstituted in New Orleans.
New Orleans
Gerhard Kubik notes that with the exception of New Orleans, early blues lacked complex polyrhythms, and there was a "very specific absence of asymmetric time-line patterns (key patterns) in virtually all early twentieth century African American music . . . only in some New Orleans genres does a hint of simple time line patterns occasionally appear in the form of transient so-called 'stomp' patterns or stop-time chorus. These do not function in the same way as African time lines."[9]
In the late 1940s this changed somewhat when the two-celled time line structure was brought into New Orleans blues. New Orleans musicians were especially receptive to Afro-Cuban influences precisely at the time when R&B was first forming.[10] Dave Bartholomew and Professor Longhair (Henry Roeland Byrd) incorporated Afro-Cuban instruments, as well as the clave pattern and related two-celled figures in songs such as "Carnival Day," (Bartholomew 1949) and "Mardi Gras In New Orleans" (Longhair 1949). Robert Palmer reports that, in the 1940s, Professor Longhair listened to and played with musicians from the islands and "fell under the spell of Perez Prado's mambo records."[7] Professor Longhair's particular style was known locally as rumba-boogie.[11] One of Longhair's great contributions was his particular approach of adopting two-celled, clave-based patterns into New Orleans rhythm and blues (R&B). Longhair's rhythmic approach became a basic template of funk. According to Dr. John (Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr.), the Professor "put funk into music . . . Longhair's thing had a direct bearing I'd say on a large portion of the funk music that evolved in New Orleans."[12] In his "Mardi Gras in New Orleans," the pianist employs the 2-3 clave onbeat/offbeat motif in a rumba-boogie "guajeo" (below).[13] The 2-3 clave time-line is written above the piano excerpt for reference.
Piano excerpt from the rumba boogie "Mardi Gras in New Orleans" (1949) by Professor Longhair. 2-3 clave is written above for rhythmic reference.
The syncopated, but straight subdivision feel of Cuban music (as opposed to swung subdivisions) took root in New Orleans R&B during this time. Stewart states: "Eventually, musicians from outside of New Orleans began to learn some of the rhythmic practices [of the Crescent City]. Most important of these were James Brown and the drummers and arrangers he employed. Brown's early repertoire had used mostly shuffle rhythms, and some of his most successful songs were 12/8 ballads (e.g. 'Please, Please, Please' (1956), 'Bewildered' (1961), 'I Don't Mind' (1961)). Brown's change to a funkier brand of soul required 4/4 metre and a different style of drumming."[14] Stewart makes the point: "The singular style of rhythm & blues that emerged from New Orleans in the years after World War II played an important role in the development of funk. In a related development, the underlying rhythms of American popular music underwent a basic, yet generally unacknowledged transition from triplet or shuffle feel to even or straight eighth notes."[15]
After 1965, Brown's bandleader and arranger was Alfred 'Pee Wee' Ellis. Ellis credits Clyde Stubblefield's adoption of New Orleans drumming techniques, as the basis of modern funk: "If, in a studio, you said 'play it funky' that could imply almost anything. But 'give me a New Orleans beat' - you got exactly what you wanted. And Clyde Stubblefield was just the epitome of this funky drumming."[16] Watch: "Clyde Stubblefield/ Funky Drummer." Stewart states that the popular feel was passed along from "New Orleans—through James Brown's music, to the popular music of the 1970s."[15] Concerning the various funk motifs, Stewart states: "This model, it should be noted, is different from a time line (such as clave and tresillo) in that it is not an exact pattern, but more of a loose organizing principle."[17]
1960s: James Brown and the development of funk
James Brown, one of the founding fathers of funk
Little Richard's saxophone-studded, mid-1950s R&B road band was credited by James Brown and others as being the first to put the funk in the rock'n'roll beat.[18] Following his temporary exit from secular music to become an evangelist in 1957, some of Little Richard's band members joined Brown and The Famous Flames, beginning a long string of hits for them in 1958.
By the mid-1960s, James Brown had developed his signature groove that emphasized the downbeat—with heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure to etch his distinctive sound, rather than the backbeat that typified African American music.[19] Brown often cued his band with the command "On the one!," changing the percussion emphasis/accent from the one-two-three-four backbeat of traditional soul music to the one-two-three-four downbeat – but with an even-note syncopated guitar rhythm (on quarter notes two and four) featuring a hard-driving, repetitive brassy swing. This one-three beat launched the shift in Brown's signature music style, starting with his 1964 hit single, "Out of Sight" and his 1965 hit, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag".
Brown's style of funk was based on interlocking, contrapuntal parts: funky bass lines, drum patterns, and syncopated guitar riffs.[20] The main guitar ostinatos for "Aint" it Funky" (c. late 1960s) is an example of Brown's refinement of New Orleans funk— an irresistibly danceable riff, stripped down to its rhythmic essence. On "Aint" it Funky" the tonal structure is bare bones.
Guitar part for "Aint" it Funky" by James Brown.
"Bring it Up" has an Afro-Cuban guajeo-like structure. If fact, on a 1976 version, Cuban bongos are used.
Guitar part for "Bring it Up" by James Brown (1967).
Brown's innovations led to him and his band becoming the seminal funk act; they also pushed the funk music style further to the forefront with releases such as "Cold Sweat" (1967), "Mother Popcorn" (1969) and "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine" (1970), discarding even the twelve-bar blues featured in his earlier music. Instead, Brown's music was overlaid with "catchy, anthemic vocals" based on "extensive vamps" in which he also used his voice as "a percussive instrument with frequent rhythmic grunts and with rhythm-section patterns ... [resembling] West African polyrhythms" – a tradition evident in African American work songs and chants.[21] Throughout his career, Brown's frenzied vocals, frequently punctuated with screams and grunts, channeled the "ecstatic ambiance of the black church" in a secular context.[21]
In a 1990 interview, Brown offered his reason for switching the rhythm of his music: "I changed from the upbeat to the downbeat.... Simple as that, really."[22] According to Maceo Parker, Brown's former saxophonist, playing on the downbeat was at first hard for him and took some getting used to. Reflecting back to his early days with Brown's band, Parker reported that he had difficulty playing "on the one" during solo performances, since he was used to hearing and playing with the accent on the second beat.
Okay, then I guess Detroit just popularized it in the same way the British popularized punk.
I stand corrected.
I knew James Brown and George Clinton were the linchpins in that happening.