Return of the rock opera

[Davey]

Funny, a couple weeks ago I was thinking of making a post about all the new rock operas and concept albums that have been hitting the record stores this year but never got around to it. I think it was just after reading a rave review of the (at that time) upcoming new one by Camper Van Beethoven at americana-uk.com. By far, it's been the most I can ever remember in one year. Brian Wilson, Green Day, Honeydogs, Fiery Furnaces, Camper Van Beethoven, Arcade Fire (sorta? maybe not). Who else? Probably some more from the proggy side of the road too.

So I just flipped open today's newspaper to the Entertainment section and guess what I see? That's right, Phil Kloer (who?) made the same observation and got paid for it too! Hehehe, good for him :)

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/music/9952771.htm?1c

[BarryL]

Camper Van Beethoven .



I was shopping at lunch yesterday and Camper Van Beethoven was playing in the record store for about 30 people. I watched for about 20 minutes, and then had to go. I really enjoyed it. It was like being at a private rehearsal. What surprised me was how short the songs were. I'm sure each was under three minutes.

As for prog concept albums. Yep, almost everyone now is a concept album, even if the theme is held together by a thread.

[Slosh]

When the waitress came to take our order I asked her, with beseeching eyes and a hand on her forearm, to bring me the largest piece she could slice without losing her job. She brought me a vast, viscous, canary-yellow wedge of lemon pie. It was a monument to food technology; yellow enough to give you a headache, sweet enough to make your eyeballs roll up into your head. Everything in short you could want in a pie, so long as taste and quality didn't enter into your requirements.

[Davey]

Everything in short you could want in a pie, so long as taste and quality didn't enter into your requirements.
That's funny. Too obscure for my remaining Saturday morning brain cells to conjure a source, and apparently too obscure for Google as well. So what gives, Sloshy? That's not your own little anecdote, is it?

That new Pinback album does rule, eh?

BTW, since the article is no longer posted at the link I gave, here is the text below from the cached view at http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:vR2TuBxiTkQJ:www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/music/9952771.htm...

Posted on Wed, Oct. 20, 2004

Return of the rock opera

CONCEPT ALBUMS MAKE COMEBACK, BUCKING TREND OF DOWNLOADING SINGLE CUTS

By Phil Kloer

Cox News Service

Here's a concept for music fans. Instead of putting out CDs with one or two radio hits and lots of filler, several major musicians and bands are turning back to concept albums and rock operas.

Narratives. Characters. Recurring themes. Nine-minute song suites with drums and guitars. Tommy, can you hear me -- again? You can hardly miss it.

``There's definitely something in the air right now,'' says David Lowery, singer-songwriter for indie rockers Camper Van Beethoven. He says he thought he was doing something bold and experimental (which the group's ``New Roman Times'' is), only to find his album linked to a trend.

That ``something'' in the air might be a reaction against music downloading, whether legal (iTunes, etc.) or illegal (Kazaa, etc.). There has been a lot of talk in the music business about fans preferring to download individual songs (and then play them randomly on iPods or CD mixes). Buying entire albums might be on the way out, some say, as digital downloading becomes the norm.

Check it out:

� Pop-punksters Green Day's ``American Idiot,'' a genuine rock opera that bristles with anger, politics and angry politics, made its debut at No. 1 and still sits in the Top 10 on Billboard's album chart.

� Ex-Beach Boy Brian Wilson's ``Smile,'' abandoned almost 40 years ago, was re-created by Wilson, released at the end of September and declared an instant masterpiece (five stars in Rolling Stone, an A grade in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

� Camper Van Beethoven's ``New Roman Times,'' released last week, is the ambitious story of a U.S. soldier in an alternate reality that feels much like this war-weary world. It's getting added to college radio station playlists.

� The Fiery Furnaces' ``Blueberry Boat,'' four complex song cycles, is also a hit on college radio. The duo calls the dense avant-garde approach ``narrative art music.''

Digital downloading has ``caused artists to think: What is the point of an album?'' says Alan Light, editor in chief of Tracks, a music magazine. ``The more cynical take is that it's a way to keep the album commercially viable. The more generous take is artists are thinking about this and not taking anything for granted.''

Lowery says ``New Roman Times'' was absolutely a reaction to the death-of-the-album talk. ``We felt nobody was taking a collection of songs and tying them together in a way that makes sense to listen straight through.''

A happy accident

Green Day, however, didn't set out to make a rock opera.

``We stumbled into the concept of `American Idiot,' '' says Mike Dirnt, the band's bassist. ``The concept was total serendipity.'' The California punk trio, best known for ``Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)'' and ``Basket Case,'' was recording a CD when lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong wrote ``American Idiot,'' a song about hysteria, paranoia and propaganda.

The trio started writing songs that fit with ``Idiot,'' and ``the story came together,'' Dirnt says, with characters named St. Jimmy, Jesus of Suburbia and Whatshername. ``People started calling it a rock opera, but it's not quite that pretentious.''

So it's back, this rock-concept-opera-album, but what exactly is it? There are no precise, agreed-upon definitions. Even ``Rent,'' a Broadway musical, has been called a rock opera, and why not?

Making a distinction

``I was using `rock opera' and `concept album' interchangeably,'' Lowery says, ``until these friends of mine, old guys who were like 50 who know their rock history, said, `No, they're not the same thing. A concept album is more of a loose narrative, and a rock opera is more of a real narrative.' ''

Alan Light of Tracks takes a stab: ``I guess there's a distinction as to whether it translates to the stage. If it can be played on a stage theatrically, like `Tommy' or `The Wall,' and stand on its own as a performance, then it's a rock opera.''

The term first gained widespread popularity as a description of the Who's ``Tommy,'' Pete Townshend's story of a ``deaf, dumb and blind'' pinball prodigy and would-be messiah, released in 1969 and subsequently made into a movie and Broadway musical. ``Jesus Christ Superstar'' came out in 1970 and was even closer to real opera in the way it had characters sing an entire dramatic story.

Concept albums go back at least to the Beatles' ``Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,'' a then-revolutionary record that they made, in part, because they had heard rumors about the amazing range and unity Wilson was trying to capture on ``Smile,'' which he had called his ``teenage symphony to God.''

From those roots, the ``concept'' concept got bigger, more complex, murkier. Was Pink Floyd's ``Dark Side of the Moon'' a concept album? Depends on your, uh, state of mind. Styx's ``Kilroy Was Here'' obviously was, but was it any good? Frank Zappa tried it (``Joe's Garage''), as did Neil Young (last year's ``Greendale'').

Sometimes it's hard to tell, Light says. ``You can have a theme, like Bruce Springsteen's `The Rising,' about Sept. 11, but that isn't quite the same thing.''

The term seems to be applied to pop and rock albums almost exclusively. If a rapper (OutKast, Jay Z, Kanye West) or a country singer (Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks) makes a concept album, it doesn't seem to register as a concept album with the public.

Concept albums got a little burned out in the '70s when prog-rockers like Jethro Tull and Rick Wakeman overdid them, and they weren't much of a force in the '80s and '90s. Since then, they've popped up occasionally (Drive-By Truckers' ``Southern Rock Opera'' in 2001).

There's an inscrutability or elusiveness to most concept albums. Pop songs generally spell out what you're supposed to feel, but ``Smile'' and ``American Idiot,'' like some of their predecessors, have room for listeners to make their own connections.

For Green Day fans in particular, this means a little head-scratching along with the head-banging. But that's part of good music, too.

[Slosh]

That's not your own little anecdote, is it?

Nah, it's from my favorite author and my second favorite novel, Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods (In A Sunburnt Country is my favorite of his). I read the book years ago and recently my brother let me borrow the 5 disc CD version read by Bryson himself and little stories like that have been stuck in my head lately.



That new Pinback album does rule, eh?

I hereby claim "Fortress" for my year end comp ;) (although absolutely any track off of this album would do :) )

NP: fresh from my mailbox is tentoze's unsolicited (but appreciated none-the-less) Pianomunde!

[tentoze]

Hey, Slosh- I promise not to nick that cut from you.

Hehehee.

[Davey]

Nah, it's from my favorite author and my second favorite novel, Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods (In A Sunburnt Country is my favorite of his). I read the book years ago and recently my brother let me borrow the 5 disc CD version read by Bryson himself and little stories like that have been stuck in my head lately.
Hmmm, I'll have to give him a try. Never read any of his books before. Sounds like fun based on that little snippet.


NP: fresh from my mailbox is tentoze's unsolicited (but appreciated none-the-less) Pianomunde!
Just got my copy too along with a nice little bonus disk. Thanks! Also just scored a big package from Jimmy C yesterday with loads and loads of goodies. Can't seem to get that damn Pinback CD out of the boombox, though. Did play some of the Legends and that disc does seem to have rules potential. Also played some of the Junior Boys and I know what you mean Jim, doesn't quite rise to the level I expected except on a couple songs :)

[tentoze]

Only reason yr listening to Pinback is cuz you haven't put that little bonus disk in yet. I have it wailing right now- gonna go high on the year-end over here.

[Slosh]

Hey, Slosh- I promise not to nick that cut from you.

Hehehee.

I can only assume you haven't heard it yet then! :)

Well, I'm now up to fifteen albums and I'm really hoping I'll find four or five more before mid December so I don't have to use more than one song per album on the comp. Of course I don't have to fill up the entire CDR but the way I see it that's kinda wimping out.

BTW, Biff Rose rulez!! (even though he has a voice like Kermit)

[tentoze]

Nope, haven't hit that one yet.

My end-of-the-year is gonna be tough this go-round, just for what I'll have to leave out!

If Biff could have found some lithium 30 yrs ago, more people would know him, methinks. Ask J, he met him last year. Crazy as a run-over chicken. But a killer left hand on the piano.

[Davey]

I hereby claim "Fortress" for my year end comp ;) (although absolutely any track off of this album would do :) )
Boy, that's the truth from this view as well! This one is chock full of comp-worthy tunes, although maybe not of the universally crowd pleasing variety. Might take a few listens to really soak in since they do harken back to earlier times. Lots of Police influence in the dark but melodic punk sense. And not too far removed from old school mid 90s emo like Sunny Day Real Estate, but not nearly as whiney. Police meet Modest Mouse with the drummer from Appleseed Cast? But there are still hints of that Three Mile Pilot heritage they share with Black Heart Procession. Hehehe, hard to believe that the bulk of this was recorded in their homes cause it sounds so damn good. Very nice mix and lots of great vocal harmonizing. I'll pick the closer for my comp, that nicely aggressive AFK with the pounding drums and shout along lyrics that convey the album title, kind of like Isaac Brock and company, especially in the megaphone-enhanced backing vocal track. Cool stuff :)

<i>Release....
Protect. Embrace. Engulf.
Remember the summer in Abaddon.
Protect. Enslave. In love.
Remember the summer in Abaddon.
</i>

Might be my album of the year right now.....but you never know. This one could be a big Rave Recs fave, one could imagine. Proggy, but not in a calculated sense. Compassionate prog, as Dubya might say. But then again, what's Dubya know besides mindless sloganeering? Oops, where did that unsolicited political content come from? This message has been approved by Davey, who is out to lunch right now ;)

[Slosh]

Hehehe, hard to believe that the bulk of this was recorded in their homes cause it sounds so damn good. Very nice mix and lots of great vocal harmonizing.

Yeah, except for a subtle click at the start and end of every track but that's just me being anal.


Proggy, but not in a calculated sense. Compassionate prog, as Dubya might say. But then again, what's Dubya know besides mindless sloganeering? Oops, where did that unsolicited political content come from? This message has been approved by Davey, who is out to lunch right now ;)

Dubya knows whatever the Saudis tell him. I hope everyone's had their fill of four years living in the United Emirate States of America.

[Davey]

Yeah, except for a subtle click at the start and end of every track but that's just me being anal.
Hmmm, haven't heard any clicks on mine, subtle or not. Or do you have the LP? Sometimes you do get clicks on vinyl, ya know? Hehehe, so just for grins, I just ripped the first coupla tracks and looked at the ends of the wave files in the editor and still no sign of impulses, although right at the end of the fadeout on the second track it does something a bit strange in that the waveform is mostly positive, but by that time I think it's below audibility. Must be some condition in the mastering such as incomplete blocks of data that your player doesn't handle well. Or a bad CD batch. Check the number in the middle - mine says "Made in Canada by Americ Disc (0241-TG237CD) S01005". Or maybe you just have better ears than the average bear. I've only listened to it so far on a not-ready-for-prime-time rig and on my computer.