narrative structure, or make literal sense. Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' (1991) makes for a telling example. A look at the lyric arguably reveals little literal sense ('a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido'), but combined with the music, a sense of generational torpor, and (perhaps) a fight against this, seems to be transmitted with great force and atmosphere. More to the point, as is often the case with rock recordings, the sound is not designed so that the lyrics are readily decipherable. To concentrate on the lyrics here is to ignore the basic premise of the recording, and, one might say, rock music in general, which is to evoke a state of mind through sound rather than words alone or as the central element. The importance of lyrical content to the reception of a rock track may be lesser or greater depending on the example, but even the work of that most celebrated of lyricists, Bob Dylan, is conveyed at least as much by the overall sound of the recordings, and the timbre and phrasing of his voice, as through the words themselves, and whatever narrative sense they may or may not make.[1]
Walser (1993: 39-41) cautions against the problems that may be encountered when 'oral modes' such as music, by definition episodic, ephemeral and dynamic, are analysed in terms of literate modes, which are narrative, sequential and static. I agree with him to the extent that analyses of rock music which centre on musical scores or song lyrics fall into this trap, but I also regard as valid Gracyk's assertion (1996: viii-x) that rock as a phenomenon is defined by the primacy of the recording as text. I intend to explore this friction between music as a dynamic entity and rock songs as recorded artefacts. Although many writers are cautious about trying to define a nebulous term such as 'rock music',[2] for the purposes of this paper, I suggest that instrumentation is key to what is broadly addressed by the term. We might refer to rock music as relying predominantly upon instrumental combinations of (usually electric) guitars, keyboards, drums and singing, is often (but not always) song-oriented, and stylistically descending from American traditions of blues, country and jazz.[3]
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- ↑ Two examples of popular music studies (chosen relatively at random, as there are many) that concentrate almost exclusively on the lyrics of songs are Smith (2007) and Adelt (2005). While Smith is engaged in an investigation of history and collective memory, and uses blues recordings from 1924-1941 as a primary source, Adelt, to my mind, mistakes the reading of songs' lyrics for a wholesale engagement with Young's output of the mid-1970s.
- ↑ Witness Allan Moore, in the opening paragraph of his Rock: The Primary Text: 'I shall begin by refusing to offer a definition, in the belief that all readers will bring with them common-sense, and highly diverse, understandings of what "rock" is to them' (2001: 1).
- ↑ One of the blind peer-reviewers of this work suggested that rock is 'increasingly experienced as multimedia theatre'. While this is true in many cases, such a consideration is beyond the scope of this paper.
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 1, January
