Tangled Threads and Golden Needles
Back when roots rock seemed precarious, it felt like "c'est la vie" all over again
Freedom, Neil Young. Reprise, 1989 and various artists at the dawn of Americana (Boston Phoenix, February 9, 1990)
Reaganism lasted well into Bush’s first term while the music roared forward. Pretty soon the Seattle scene dominated everything. But just before that, calculating the staying power of this whole roots thing turned into a parlor game of sudden twists and head fakes. It leaned on both newcomers and vets, and turned nostalgia its head…
THROUGHOUT THE 1980s, critics constantly proclaimed the end of roots rock. Bands as obsessed with the past as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the early Cars, and the Bo-Deans sounded too retro, too uninventive, and too run-in-place safe to advance the dangerous side of rock’s agenda that punk spat out all too well.
The critics had a point: the two super-powered writers who produced the decade’s greatest roots rock both predated the trend, and they had already built their stature on nostalgic sounds and themes. Bruce Springsteen, who started out a visionary, back shifted into ’50s car-cruising themes and veered off into a whole new perspective on middle age as augmented (instead of arrested) adolescence. Neil Young, a Canadian hippie from the 60s, always had a yen for grungy country calamities, even though his Reagan apologist attitude seemed to cheapen the bulk of his 80s music.
The mission of the 80s roots rock movement was to invent the modern equivalent of the Bob Dylan Band. Not “the new Dylan,” a label that still cows every singer-songwriter’s hype, but a self-contained group that played American R&B with the same searing intelligence as the 60s master. As a brainy upstart with a jump on adult emotions, 60s Dylan was a model for 80s new revivalists who fessed up to the fact that they weren’t teenagers anymore. They set out to make rock that rehashed the ideals of youth (fun, self-discovery) as seen from the horizon of adulthood.
Roots rock grew straight out of punk’s maniacal primitivism, shedding blistering tempos and one-note anger in favor of walking rhythms and guitar snarl as release, not weaponry.
Trading Dylan’s kinky surrealisms for pared-down language, roots rockers settled on a few self-conscious themes: post-adolescent slants on girls, cars, and America; nostalgic sounds with post-nostalgic outlooks. And they held the mainstream as disco self-destructed, punk went underground, Michael Jackson booted black pop into the stratosphere and Prince kept it in orbit, metal went corporate, rap ruled the streets, the Brits rediscovered soul, Top 40 dance pop descended into drum-synthesizer hell, and the next Elvis Beatles failed to materialize (again). Dylan the poet-jester went to sleep while Dylan the pop star sleepwalked through albums and tours.
Roots rock grew straight out of punk’s maniacal primitivism, shedding blistering tempos and one-note anger in favor of walking rhythms and guitar snarl as release, not weaponry. And Reaganism made all middle-of-the-road moves seem more conservative than they actually were—any act following punk was bound to seem a bit tame. Still, it’s been a while since punk’s outburst, the last real explosion in rock, and the holding pattern of Reagan’s aftermath is bound to snap.
The other influences most 80s roots types cited fell into two camps: the arty self-consciousness of the East Coast’s Velvet Underground (who were rootsy by virtue of their limited chord patterns) and the unforced fatalism of the West’s Creedence Clearwater Revival (garage rock with social overtones). With arrows darting toward the 12-string shimmer of the Byrds, and lost psychedelic treasures like the Chocolate Watch Band, the group that bridged the Creedence/ Velvets nexus was R.E.M., especially on their first three records. But R.E.M. proved to be bloated folkies (“Wendell Gee”) with an overrated sense of humor (“It’s the End of the World As We Know It”), and they spent their originality faster than a pick-up guzzles gas.
Since punk laid the groundwork, in form if not attitude, it’s natural that one of roots rock’s most important acts clawed its way up from punk’s ashes. In 1981, Roots rock grew straight out of punk’s maniacal primitivism, shedding blistering tempos and one-note anger in favor of walking rhythms and guitar snarl as release, not weaponry…
gear
Ultimate Ears may dominate the bluetooth portable speaker racket, its Hyperboom fills up a room in ways even musicians admire. But we all listen to music everywhere now, nobody’s safe, and the Tribit line keeps improving. The StormBox 2 has a new pairing feature, and packs enough gusto in a coffee-cup size to make physicists blanch. Dangle it from your shower fixture and watch like noone’s dancing. The StormBox Micro 2 latches onto my belt and streams music all around the house doing chores or yard work. When you don’t want to keep re-attaching to different units in different rooms or your car, this punchy little pug keeps it all happening.
playlist
A dancing conga line of favorite covers updated each year, with current raves alongside can’t-stop won’t-stops. Drive-By Truckers plumb “Moonlight Mile” for even more shivers of recognition, and like the best of these, it sounds like another song inventing the band. The Ivesian touches to Aoife O’Donovan’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” with The Knights, grow on you. (Will this tempt Bonnie Raitt to cut her Dylan session?). And back in 1969, the Brothers and Sisters made “Mighty Quinn” sound like an overlooked gospel abstraction.
noises off
Later this month: review of Robert Hilburn’s Randy Newman biography, A Few Words in Defense of Our Country, for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Next month: Dylan’s 1974 tour across 27 CDs, never too many versions of “Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine”
riley rock index: obits, bylines, youtube finds, reference sites, pinterest, beacons.ai, random deep link