The Inner Sleeve

As has long been prophesied, we may well be nearing end times. The signs are all there. CD sales are flat while digital downloads are on the rise. Album-oriented radio has become a thing of the past as commercial radio’s oligopoly has solidified.

The corporate mergers that have led to shareholder-friendly record labels have fostered an environment in which bands are no longer given time to develop.

And the grand rock tradition that has led us from Little Richard and Elvis through the Beatles and Dylan to Bruce Springsteen and the Clash and onward to Nirvana may have finally painted itself into a corner.

Repent now, rockists, and start embracing Shakira – the end is nigh!

The history of rock as an overarching narrative has been forming over the last 40 years or so, beginning with the advent of rock journalism as a serious force in the late ’60s and, I would argue, reaching its pinnacle with the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in 1995.

At the center of this attempt at mythmaking is the emphasis placed on the LP as the central form, the crowning achievement for the rock artist.

Hundreds of “All-Time Greatest LPs” lists have been compiled, so many that Web sites devoted to chronicling them have developed algorithms that determine which LPs have reached the general consensus of greatness.

In other words, a canon has emerged, much like the canon that exists in classical music or Western literature.

To fully appreciate the narrative of popular music in the postwar era, one must at least be familiar with the benchmark recordings. A quick trip over to acclaimedmusic.net, where hundreds of rock lists have been compiled, fed through an elaborate program, and listed in handy spreadsheet format, reveals what you need to know to be a certified rock geek.

From the obvious (the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, the Beatles’ Revolver, Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On) to the obscure (Love’s 1967 psychedelic Forever Changes, Television’s 1978 noodle-punk Marquee Moon, Captain Beefheart’s inscrutable 1969 Trout Mask Replica), we are essentially arriving at a canon. 

The fundamental tenet behind a list such as this is the placement of the full-length LP at the apex of rock achievement.

After all, the theory generally goes, anyone could hit upon three and a half minutes of pure pop ecstasy, but it takes a true artist to construct a cohesive extended work of art.

Say what you will about this argument; it does mean that a number of great songwriters haven’t received their full due because they never constructed a magnum opus.

Creedence Clearwater Revival had an astonishing run of hit singles between 1968 and 1972, but their albums are generally overlooked.

The closest the Kinks came to a perfect LP was 1968’s Village Green Preservation Society, but because it was overshadowed by the other classic albums from that watershed year, the Kinks have been routinely underestimated as part of the pantheon.

Many R&B acts, including those from the early days of Motown and Stax, have been all but ignored. Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder albums entered the canon once they began making more conceptual albums in the early ’70s.

The rock (some might argue rockist) cognoscenti would argue that to understand the rough history of post-WWII popular music, this canon offers an ideal starting point. Of course, it can’t tell the whole story – no History 101 course ever could.

But if you allow Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon to serve as the point of entry for progressive rock, or Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model to stand in for New Wave music, or Radiohead’s OK Computer to represent everything made after 1995, you’ll still have a good sense for why some people take this stuff so seriously.

So where do we go from here? The Internet has made it possible for people to not just download their favorite tracks, legally or illegally; it’s also given them the opportunity to hear the song on demand for free.

Got a thing for the new song by Fergie? Then just head over to her MySpace page and hear it to your heart’s content. And it’s perfectly legal – her record company put it there.

As a result, the very teenagers that the record companies used to court can now listen to the Top 40 until they’re as sick of it as we are, and their sweet, sweet disposable income is freed up for video games and Boone’s Farm.

This means that the income from teenage rubbish that major labels used to use to subsidize their “prestige” artists is disappearing fast.

The business model that used to sustain this industry, unconscionable as it may have been, is drying up, and they appear to have no idea how to stop the hemorrhaging.

The problem for rock history, then, is that the future classic will have less of a chance to take root in the public consciousness. As brilliant as a new CD may be, it won’t have the same impact as Revolver if no one gets to hear it.

Almost none of the discs to make it into the canon were released on tiny, independent labels. They generally all had the backing of a major label that could distribute them and keep them in print for decades.

Given all this, it’s reasonable to expect that the gap between critical acclaim and commercial success could grow even wider. As such, the likelihood that many more albums will capture the widespread imagination to the extent that, say, Born to Run or Nevermind did grows ever slimmer.

As such, we may well end up seeing the rock canon become ossified into a museum piece, in much the same way that jazz is thought to have ceased to be a vital art form in the mid-1960s or classical music is said to have lost the thread sometime around the turn of the 20th century.

Unless the music industry’s current business model, which appears to consist of failure and litigation, changes soon, we could well be witness to the end of rock history.

As someone who, as a pre-teen in the early ’80s, felt my way into rock using those canonical albums as a guide, and who would love to see it remain a vital point of entry for the next generation, I’d love nothing more than to be proven wrong.

45 Revolutions per Revolution The Singles that Changed Everything

Les Paul and Mary Ford: “How High the Moon” b/w “Walkin’ and Whistlin’ Blues” Capitol 1451, June 1951.

Les Paul is 92 years old, but still plays every Monday night at the Iridium jazz club in New York. Sixty-six years ago, he and his wife Mary Ford made one of the most groundbreaking records of all time.

Paul invented the idea of multi-track recording, overdubbing one part on top of an existing tape recording. While “How High the Moon” wasn’t the first record to feature this technique, it took the process mainstream.

This is due in no small part to Mary Ford’s creamy smooth vocals, recorded multiple times to create sumptuous harmonies.

Most of the rest of Les and Mary’s recordings were actually the kind of sugary pop music that rock and roll came along to rescue us from, but this release has a haunting quality that made it unique for its time and still able to hold up today.

The 1951 public felt the same way – the song stayed at the top of the Billboard charts for more than two months.