The genre-busting use of the London Bach Choir in “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” did, in fact, open up the genre (consider “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”). The theremin ( “Good Vibrations”) did, too-an eccentric old sci-fi uncle later surrounded by synthesizer cousins.
The sitar ( “Norwegian Wood”) soon became an accepted member of the rock family of voices. I can’t pretend to determine the canon, but let me touch on a few categories of avant-opportunity to put the topic in some kind of shape. There are so many candidates that the first ten I think of may differ totally from the first ten that occur to someone else-except we would almost certainly both draw from The Beatles. Now thoroughly time-tested, most of them will have long since subsided into ordinary coolness, or embarrassment, or the status of a historical footnote. Mid- to late-60’s rock is the obvious place to look for bold experiments.
I propose to call this magic device an avant hook. If a piece of popular music contained a hook that really sounded and kept on sounding like a challenging, exploratory leap outside the normal-rather an unlikely “if,” under the pop and hook norms of instant gratification and superfamiliarization-then we’d have a ready way of starting all over with music itself, rethinking what it might be, falling in love with it as a stranger. New and cool is one thing but avant-garde is something else.
0 kommentar(er)
