Path: mv.asterisco.pt!mvalente
From: mvale…@ruido-visual.pt (Mario Valente)
Newsgroups: mv
Subject: Black Rock
Date: Mon, 02 May 07 03:49:21 GMT
At nearly 4 a.m. this post should probably be titled
“At That Time of the Night, part 3”; its not because
its a followup to the previous post, brought about
because the film I got to watch on late night TV.
Anyone remember “Cobra”? With Stallone?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090859/
Not a piece of cinematic art, for sure; but a great
piece of “designer violence”. Stallone kicks ass left
and right as if there were no tomorrow…
While watching the movie I heard a song and, in
true Buzz zen master style, I recognized the only few
chords played: it was “Feel the Heat”, by Jean Beauvoir,
from one of my favourite albums of all time “Drums Along
the Mohawk”. So there you go, links for the movie, the
album and the two videos for the song:
www.amazon.co.uk/Drums-Along-Mohawk-Beauvoir-Jean/dp/B000006STX/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_2/026-0776094-3478038
www.amazon.co.uk/Cobra-Sylvester-Stallone/dp/B00004CZEJ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-0776094-3478038
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeO5DfdZi7Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgNjVXl9a8
(incidentally, movie and album are from 1986, best year
ever in terms of musical production)
But, in line with my previous rant on hip hop, this
got me thinking: what the hell happened to black musicians
playing black rock? I refuse to accept the current MTV stereotype
where all black music is exploitative (and boring) gangsta rap or
pointless hip hop. Rock n roll is at its heart black music, and
when you get a couple of brothers on the rythm section, you get
one hell of a rock band and some mighty good tunes.
Case in point, see Jean Beauvoir above and also with its
own band “Crown of Thorns”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9H3fSHMV2w
Another good example, although more pop-ish, is Roachford
with “Cuddly Toy (Feel for Me)”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMIHuawR3M8
Still in the pop-ish area you get the true James Brown
heir, Terence Trent D’Arby, that used to kick both Prince’s
and Michael Jackson’s ass when he wasnt singing tearful ballads.
Here’s the man with “Dance Little Sister”, funk rock at its
best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xm3IxHdK5U
(Why INXS didnt get him as the definitive replacement for
Michael Hutchence still pisses me off…)
Getting into the more raw side of the rock stuff I still
find Dan Reed Network one of my favourite bands ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isZxL_uh3pw
And, of course, kick ass band Living Colour. I mean, the
drummer kicks ass, the bass player kicks ass, the singer
rocks and Vernon Reid, the guitar player, is Jimi Hendrix
transposed into modern times (although without the drugs
and with $10.000 of digital effects…):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ5SVDYBNrY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut1H4o_ie8c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4w9YGEiQ4c
Damn!, even Mothers Finest has been rocking since the
70s up until the 21st century:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxUmjLbG2Ko
So whatever happened to black rock? Are we doomed to
the piss poor sort of music that MTV and other channels
feed us, the i-m-angry-with-society sort of stuff, with
endless crappy rhymes over endless samples of Parliament
Funkadelic Bootsy Collins bass lines?
I’m sure that Black Power ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Power )
stood for more than bling and hoes. And in my point of view,
power doesnt come from the barrel of a gun (I’m an anarcho-capitalist
but I do know Mao); power comes from a Marshall amp turned to 11
and going full shred on a 6 string (with your weapon of choice,
mine being a Gibson Les Paul cherry sunburst, Ace Frehley model,
http://www.gibson.com/products/gibson/LesPaul/AceFrehley.html )
Luckily, a few brothers still havent been won over by the
the consensual allucination of the king-of-the-burbs-ghetto-revival:
http://www.blackrockcoalition.org/
— MV
