Unaccountably, my elder son today exposed me to Kansas’ “Carry On, My Wayward Son” on the way to an appointment; one of his friends had burned it into a CD for him. It occurred to me that it might be the single whitest rock song ever written. And I mean that in a bad way.
Related: Combo Fail
More evidence of ancient Flyover Culture discovered
Aw, how sweet! Hamas supporters think Jews deserve a little lovin’
Oh, Dan, I’m not so sure about that. This is pretty unpigmented.
It is, but torch songs aren’t fundamentally white the way ELP bombast is.
I like the way you put it, though. What’s the albinoest music evah? (Simply Red doesn’t count, obviously, or Edgar Winter).
Journey
Hmm, now you’ve opened the whole prog rock can of worms. I suppose, as a sub-genre of rock, it is fairly removed from the blues/r&b origins of rock, and any old exponent would have served, especially ELP as you mention. Can’t really think of a black prog band at all, now that you mention it, although there were some noted black musicians in prog bands.
Kansas was part of the stadium rock scene of the late seveties. Along with Styx and Boston.
I know, I heard them, my big brother was in high school. He played their tapes, constantly.
I was just happy that MTV came along in the early eighties and broke up the iron playlists of the local radio stations. And then MTV went to ‘all big corporate groups’, but by then I was out of high school and didn’t care.
Add Journey into that list of stadium groups.
Foxworthy claims that honor for Lynyrd Skynyrd, I believe.
Another worthy nominee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYbUCvz1LYE
Oy, lost when it comes to pop, what’s an ELP and is it related to an ELO? Would Schubert’s “Die Forelle” count as albino? How about anything performed by “The Association” back in the 60’s?
Don’t think so, SBP. The polyrhythmic thing is pretty African.
Is “exposed” in your post as in “introduced for the first time”? Or, man I must be getting old! Loved Kansas back then …
The British 70’s prog rock acts were all incredibly albino – think Genesis in the Peter Gabriel era. Or Gong, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Yes, Pink Floyd. Forgive me for leaving any out – I’ve come over all nostalgic for my cheesecloth shirts, flared jeans and Afghan coat.
The Association was a white Ink Spots. The White Outs, I guess.
Asian white nusic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pS5xzOWbwo
This is insane…..
Going further back to “The Days of Future Passed” I say Moody Blues. Or Procul Harum for the whitest song title.
Pat Boone is out, because of the gospel.
They claim she’s 10 yo.
Good point, Dan. On the other hand, it’s David Byrne. I guess it could be argued that he’s dressed sort of like a member of the Nation of Islam…
I sort of associated them with another step in the Four Freshmen to Kingston Trio evolution of things.
Philip Glass is uberwhite, but it’s not rock.
King Crimson is out, though, because of pieces like “Cat Food,” that borrow heavily from jazz.
Dan:
‘Embraceble You’ is a great torch (? – opinons may vary) song. No matter the complexion of the authors.
Oh, you dint specify rocks Dan ’til now, I don’t think…
ELP=Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Very good band, as are the others mentioned. They made music back in the days when…
Men were REAL men…
Women were REAL women…
Rock n roll was REAL rock n roll (none of this recycled metrosexual pussy boy crap you hear nowadays)
…and an ounce and a half bag of good Mexican dirt weed was still $10 a pop…
Ah, the good old days…:)
Embraceable Ewe is Scottish (that ought to bring McGehee).
In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan College, discovered a series of stones – some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon – 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan.
OMG! Global Warming killed the Indians!
“Comment by Dan Collins on 1/10 @ 3:12 pm #
Embraceable Ewe is Scottish (that ought to bring McGehee).”
Do you know why Scotsman wear kilts?
But I agree with many of the commenters – by the late seventies rock had really hit a dead end and needed to find a way out. That it did, and then fell to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ era was heart-breaking.
MTV, I think, helped break it because there wern’t that many band videos, and they had to grab whatever they could find and throw that up on the ‘air’ to fill the space they had. No ‘theme’ could be done because there wasn’t enough to fill a ‘theme’ – here’s the GoGo’s, here’s The Cars, here’s The Police, here’s ZZ Top, here’s Grace Jones, here’s Devo, here’s ABC, etc.
And it was the only game in town; much like HBO put out these really weird shorts to fill in their time – you never knew what you were going to see.
It was like UHF, but with a better reception.
#27 N. O’Brain:
Because sheep can hear zippers.
Do you know we’ve found 2 new uses for sheep in the Highlands? Wool, and meat!
Badda-bing!
Thank you, I’ll be here all week!
Tip you waitress!
Try the veal!
#24 CaveBear:
I agree with your disgust at the whiny-voiced songs. They even have me muttering, “Oh, fer Gawds sake, man-up you little wuss!”
Even a girl-group song from the early sixties sounds more manly than most pop-rock do singers today.
‘My boyfriend’s back and you’re gonna get in trouble,
Hey la,
Hey la,
He’ll kick your ass!’
Little Willy followed by anything by The Cars
Or you could just create a Glenn Gould Pandora station.
Hand claps on “Little Willy”. It’s out.
Camel. Or Soft Machine. Absolutely no colour of any kind whatsoever. Beyond anaemic. Pallid, limp and flaccid.
People look to disco as what “overcame” late 70’s rock (a reaction?) but I would say you need to look to punk rock. Of course, 70’s stuff didn’t go away … I always thought it simply morphed into those awful hair bands. And lets not even mention Asia.
If You’re Happy and You Know It has hand claps. Ain’t rock, tho.
My football buddies thought I was kinda fucked up because I was completely punk by 1977, though I still had a soft place in my heart for Ted Nugent. Kansas was based in Atlanta and were huge. I thought THEY were completely pussy.
These guys should get points just for the name:
http://www.myspace.com/thewhitestboyalive
And best of all, I’m off to see The Long Ryders and get me some punk/gram/burrito/bluegrass/americana that ain’t happening no other frickin place in the world. Tonight I’m the coolest fucker here.
I might have to go with the Carpenters, or Barry Manilow. Don’t know if that is really rock.
Do you know if there are still tickets for that show, donald? I am seriously tempted to go, just had a long day and hate that fucking drive.
The Osmonds haven’t been mentioned yet? Odd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsn4KZkUBeg
“Go Away Little Girl” could have been performed by The Jackson 5.
Bmoe, I got two extra. Drop me a line at my email, leave you’re cell…
dvbbfd@yahoo.com
Whitest song ever written goes to the entire Rush catalog.
Anyone remember those ghastly Krautrock bands? Very milky.
What’s the albinoest music evah?
Can anyone play; or is this just for you youngsters?
If the former, my stuff..
If the latter, eat me.
Scorpions, for example?
Barack the Magic Negro
Whitest.Song.Evah
I was thinking the electronic ones, Dan, like Ash Ra Tempel and Triumvirat. Kraftwerk. Tangerine Dream. Yeuch, I shudder typing the names.
Kraftwerk! Uber. But is it rock?
Strangely, Robin Trower’s somewhat black.
Ironic, since Kraftwerk samples are all over the original rap stuff….
Yes, Trower has too much blues in him. Kraftwerk is definitely in the Krautrock genre, but the rock does seem to have all but disappeared. I guess that’s the point, though.
Robert Fripp would be enormously white in and of himself, except that he’s played session on some African-influenced stuff.
Gary Newman?
Set off by JPS: it’s not rock but it does rock whitely, “Hands Across the Sea” played by the World Accordion Orchestra!
Gary Newman?
Oh Lord, Dan. You win. Now get me a bottle of bleach.
“Barack the Magic Negro
Whitest.Song.Evah”
Except for that whole part about the term “Magic Negro” being made up and expanded upon by Pigmented-Americans.
You really aren’t too quick on the uptake, are you, Parsnip ?
Gary Newman?
I heard he talked to one.
Parsnip, it’s a new year. Can’t you make some sort of resolution in which you strive to be more interesting? I know many here would appreciate it.
“(I Think I’m) Turning Japanese” is really white.
David Bowie
The Thin White Duke was an r&b man in his early days, so I’d say Bowie is way too unwhite.
Sent you an email, Don, would like both those tickets if you can spare, found an old compadre who can drive. I will be the old fat guy with the huge grey beard and a black fedora.
No, not Bowie. I lurv Davie Bowie.
Don and B Moe, that’s totally cool. Way.
Maybe it’s time for PW personals?
Falco?
Ace has moron meet-ups. I don’t know if there is enough of us here …. of course, I’d probably be interested in meeting a higher percentage of commenters HERE than those over at Ace’s.
I was reading comments there today, and I barely recognized anyone. Weird. I don’t hand out there too oftne anymore.
Parsnip, it’s a new year. Can’t you make some sort of resolution in which you strive to be more interesting?
Indeed Carin, perhaps all of us here at PW should pledge to take it up a notch in the new year.
Don’t forget to vote!
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-very-large-blog/
Now you’re sucking diesel, Spies.
Without a firm definition of what a song has to be to be white, I really cannot contribute. Does that mean you’ve taken all the blues out? In which case, is it even rock any more?
“ghastly Krautrock bands” and the first thing to come to my mind was a British band, Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters.
How about Abba?
How about Country Music?
Omg, PW is running against that “jesus General” POS. Ugh. Now I’m gonna vote every day.
Hawkwind, but once again, is it rock at all?
How about Country Music?
Way too much blues in Hank Williams for early country. Ray Charles and Charley Pride later, so I’d say no.
Have you heard any Country Music lately, Silver?
Might as well just call it Victim Card music.
I’d nominate Bowie for whitest album cover for “Hunky Dory”, but his music is as hard to pin down to a genre as Dylan. Every album is different.
Don’t think so, SBP. The polyrhythmic thing is pretty African.
Plus, the live version on “Stop Making Sense” kicked ass.
Kraftwerk! Uber. But is it rock?
I thought it was a high school science project.
And new country grabs onto some of the signatures of rock and roll (which is not to be confused with rock)
No, rock and roll shouldn’t be confused with rock, but there are people who straddle them, like Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe and the Iseley Brothers.
BTW, speaking of the Master Race, has anyone else heard German rap music? We had a German exchange student stay with us a couple of years back, and all he wanted to listen to was this group called “Blumentopf.” After three weeks of that shit, I wrote my Congressman and demanded we send the B-24s over Berlin again.
Might as well just call it Victim Card music.
Yeah, maybe you’re right. Or not.
Todd Rundgren?
Hello it’s me …
No, I like him too.
How ’bout Lionel Richie? That is the whitest black man who ever sang funk. Before he turned into a ballad bore.
Rundgren did a whole album of R&B covers, called “Faithful.”
nope, but I’ve heard a few French things and it always makes me giggle.
Has anyone actually heard the Jack Webb album?
How about Shatner’s Shakespeare rap?
I may have to go with #74 by cranky-d and consider the entire question a category error.
Then again.
I still can’t believe the Leningrad Cowboys aren’t from Athens.
My almost neighbor, Billy Idol. Or Adam Ant. ABC. ABBA…all of whom i like, by the way.
And I mean that in a bad way.
This from the guy that think Warren Zevon is a genius.
David Gates & Bread.
Hey…..it don’t get any fuckin’ whiter than Bread.
Well, Warren Zevon was a genius. Messed up, but a genius, nonetheless.
The Beach Boys.
Beach
It may be the single whitest song ever written; but it’s exponentially better than any of the t rap crap!
I say that as a former playah…
Turns out, Bmoe is a musical super god from years past. And a heckuva guy.
I grew up in Dallas in the era of Texas guitar slingers, legendary truss rod benders playing thrashin’ blues, but also guys like Hash Brown and Gatemouth Brown colored the scene. Then there were the chicks, namely the Dixie Chicks, who actually did play for free on street corners down at the West End as well did Eddie Brickell and her happenin’ hippies who jammed in outdoor alley ways.
There’s something down with the London scene and the chicks. First it was Lily Allen and now it’s M.I.A.. These two chicks remind me of the first time I saw Beck and muttered to myself of him being “so young and talented it’s insane.”
Yeah, M.I.A., she’s unfuckin’ believable good and the chick is only 21. Song of the year, hands down.
Hash Brown? Missed him I reckon. The Dixie Chicks are okay, but Liza Gilkeson and Bonnie Raitt and Precious Bryant and Allison Krause and a whole lot of other women did it first and better. MIA is this years fashion, about as relevant as a postage stamp.
If you really want to understand Texas Blues, you need to get to know
Lightning Hopkins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQQ4YTL1P1A,
or T Bone Walker. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSOYOFQgVMs&feature=related
But seeing as how big an Obama fan you are, you might should study up on some Chicago Blues. The real shit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUv3t91Fxs8&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehq0vVZvm3Q&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RA8NyvzIWk
Thanks for the tickets and the props, Don, but Gods from years past are mostly mythological.
Yeah, BMoe, I’ve even heard of B.B. King, go figure. Tell me about some Chicago blues greats like Albert Collins… from Texas.
Hash Brown is a local talent.
M.I.A. plays to a younger genre but she’s amazingly artistic for her age, sort’a like this talentless loser was when he was her age.
Lil-le-ham-mer had a farm, e-i-e-i-o…
I live in my own fantasy world BMoe!
OMG, Thor, you are killing me with that M.I.A. song. It absolutely sucks.
I like “Planes.”
But it’s chicks, Carin.
Chicks.
Comment by Carin on 1/11 @ 10:46 am #
OMG, Thor, you are killing me with that M.I.A. song. It absolutely sucks.
Planes is like Feist’s 1,2,3,4, both are pop-catchy and unique, one updates folk and the other world music. Didn’t Rolling Stone gave M.I.A. album of the year? M.I.A. looks to be a gifted young artist, very bright in the head too. Then again I’m into praise’n.
I don’t think she’s that young, though. 26, or something.
How about Nina Gordon’s cover of Straight Outta Compton?
Started out as a black song, true, but there’s not much blackness left in her version.
She’s 21. She may be more talented visually and in the graphic arts than musically but that’s the state of affairs in a multimedia world. The young lady is talented, unafraid and smart as a whip. Dance music has a notoriously short shelf life so who knows.
Didn’t Rolling Stone gave M.I.A. album of the year?
lol.
Holy shit, she’s 31. Fuck her then.