All my heroes are weirdosBut oh I do like old rock and roll. My definition is a bit elastic, time-wise; I doubt many other folks would consider the Clash "old" rock and roll, along the lines of, say, Chuck Berry, even though they might find the musical debts of the former to the latter readily apparent. My cut-off isn't punk, or the first Britsh Invasion, or the end of the sixties, or any of that stuff; hell, perhaps there isn't one. After all, are you going to listen to White Blood Cells and tell me that's not good old fashioned rock and roll? Where's the distinction?
Where indeed? Sure, you could argue that the Berry formula has been amended throughout the years, but what we call rock now is pretty damn close, on a geological scale, to what was called rock and roll way back when. There have been departures - the Beatles injected music hall, Dylan literariness, the Stones menace, the Velvet Underground perversity, the Doors pretension. There has been apostasy, as professionals seeking middle-brow respectability begged, borrowed, and stole jazz and classical music tropes in a bid to move from the garage to the den. There has been Reformation: the Stooges and New York Dolls were martyred, the Ramones nailed the 95 theses to the church door, and the Sex Pistols made sure the breach was irreparable. Even to this very day you have real bona fide rock and rollers making bona fide essential rock and roll music. They're standing on the shoulders of giants, sure, but the only time anybody really cares about that, at least anybody who's not being a spoilsport, is when the tunes are in absentia. Yeah, yeah, the new Oasis sounds like the old Beatles, but next to nobody gave a shit about that when the old Beatles were "Don't Look Back in Anger" and "Wonderwall". Bringing it back to Jack White, I could list you a hundred acts that his band "sounds like", but I can't name you a single other band that's put out "Fell In Love With a Girl".
Today, I bought, used, Robert Quine's official Velvet Underground bootlegs. The tapes, recorded on a portable equipped with a hand-held mic, sound like shit. This is a bootleg in the way that Bob Dylan's official bootlegs aren't really bootlegs. Still, through the hiss, echo, and distortion come the Velvets circa 1969, no two songs the same, excepting three epic renditions of "Sister Ray", clocking in at 24:03, 38:00, and 28:39 respectively. (Rock and roll is here to stay: I have it on good authority that My Bloody Valentine's concert-closing version of "You Made Me Realize" has been known to go upwards of 45 minutes.) Lou Reed et al are weird; that is, after all, their primary contribution to the canon. But they are weird in a distinctly rock and roll way, and given how they rip off "I'm Waiting for the Man", "I Can't Stand It", and a scorching ten minute "White Light/White Heat" here, it's hard not to imagine the dozen or so folks in the club boogieing until the pills fell out of their pockets. Fuck, even "Venus In Furs" fulfills the basic requirements. "Heroin", too. This isn't surprising. The Velvet Underground weren't there to tear rock and roll down. They were coming to the party, too, even if they weren't invited. They wanted in. Even if they had to sneak in through the back door. Or by the window. Or tunnel in through the basement. They rocked. Perhaps more importantly, they rolled.
