koganbot

My friend Michael Freedberg has resumed posting on livejournal under the moniker house_junkie; over the years he's written the freshest, most original ideas ever on the subject of dance music. Here is a startling quote: "House was the 1950s all over again -- though with later rhythm music embedded, and all of it futurized, computered, i-podded, mp3'd. Whatever -- house made me relive, re-taste, re-embed myself in the 1950s."

Mark, you need to listen to this! (Lex too.)

Don't know if there'd been a lot of tracks that were primarily groove - i.e., that didn't feature a melody that developed over one or more chord changes - that hit on the r&b charts before "Bo Diddley" did in 1955. In any event, Bo's grooves reached beyond to a broader, whiter audience, were seized on by Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones, for instance. So what's taken for granted as an option in popular music now - that a groove can be a container for a whole bunch of stuff, that a track doesn't have to build itself around an individual song, doesn't have to follow the demands of the melody or the harmony - had this guy as its main exponent until James Brown went funk in the mid '60s. ( Also, he was a pisser )

( Was probably the first rock star to employ women guitarists )
( 1955 )