Roots Bloody Roots: History of American Music

SFMTC Vol. 7a - Freedom Ain't Free 

I can remember back to being a kid and being captivated by some of the early songs and folk tunes that I heard as I grew up. This was in my early years of being in pre-k and elementary school. They were songs that were just fun, catchy, and everyone seemed to know them. Slowly, my musical exposure was co opted by the sounds of Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer and whatever else I heard my older siblings listening to in 1992 on the top 40. This was followed by my own dive into country tunes thanks to my parents, alternative tunes thanks to the kids who made fun of me for liking country, and shortly thereafter the pop punk wave of the mid 90’s featuring the offspring, bad religion, rancid and green day. Overshadowing any of those bands (besides Bad Religion whose song “infected” I clearly remember being intrigued by in 6^th grade on the late night alternative radio show), I can distinctly remember hearing a morbid rendition of “Home on the Range” being sung by the dastardly poacher in ‘The Rescuers Down Under’. It wasn’t the words that caught my attention, but the catchiness of its melody and the ease of being able to sing the chorus. To this day it is a song that resonates in my brain, and one I can’t help but love.

(Bing Crosby)

The reason this is important to me is that there is a rich history of music found here in America that a lot of us experience, and it becomes lost over time as we grow older and become more focus on what our current culture is feeding to us. We are then left with the childhood memories of camp sing-alongs, or obscure references found in pop media. It is not something I cared about when I was younger, I was just fascinated by what at first was happening on the local radio or mall, and then fascinated by the art of discovering underground acts and scenes. When music became something more than just the listening experience, digging into the back catalogues to understand how something came to happen became more interesting. Eventually I have found that it is easy to become disenchanted with the current state of music, and sometimes the only solace you find is sulking in the past when things seemed more pure and less compromised. 

The idea of history is important not for the reason of reliving it, but for an understanding of evolution and better perspective on the present. Punk was the music that encouraged me to start to dig deeper. Of course I had been exposed to the classics of my parents generation, but I didn’t have to search, it was just there. It was actually being a part of something, or feeling a part of the punk scene that made me want to know more about how things came to be. How did Bad Religion come to be played on the radio? For what reason were Flipper, Minutemen, and other odd ball bands punk rock? Why are there a bunch of bands that sound like death metal, experimental noise and Pantera considered hardcore punk? I got curious and wanted to feel educated, and I love to learn when a topic interests me. Digging deeper into a culture and history was just overall exciting, and when my musical tastes expanded beyond just punk, I realized there was a whole history as rich as any science, other cultural phenomena’s.

(Stephen Foster: Father of American Music)

So hopefully you can guess that Punk is not cultural heritage that I am overall referring to, but it plays a part. It is the continuation of a cycle that was created by the early musical pioneers. It is a process of taking what has come before you, and manipulating it into something new, a revolutionary act, a method of expression to fit the current age. You see the likes of Stephen Foster, the father of American music, and other early songwriters taking from the Celtic, and European musical traditions and a little down the line you have bluesmen taking from slave spirituals, African traditions and early Gospel tunes to create a sound that would go on to influence most everything else. All of these styles including jazz, punk, metal, electronica, rock n roll, doo-wop were all revolutionary for their time, and all of them have roots in the music that came before them.  In this mix you will find a lot of Stephen Foster original’s and that is due to the great impact he has had. Over 150 years later, we are still recognizing and singing songs such as “Oh Suzanna” and “Camptown Races”. 

It has been exciting over the past 10 years to really delve in (thanks in part to the internets) and that is where I find the most joy. I love hearing new music and experiencing the present, and it is so easy to do with current media. While it is also easier to find old gems, you still have to dig or be interested to discover it. I have had the enjoyment of hearing more modern day (60’s and so forth) versions of a lot of classic American tunes only to discover their origin goes beyond the artist I would commonly associate them with. “Sittin’ on top of the World” is a prime example of a song that I have seen go back further and further in the music time line, and I still don’t know its full origin, I do know that it has transcended generations of musicians.  That is what I think truly makes a song great, its ability to still be relevant generations after it was created, to have other musicians pay tribute to it by covering it or redoing it in their own style. Either way, it shows how diverse and great that song is when you have old blues and country singers songs being covered and payed homage to today.

(Louis Armstrong)

What I enjoy about this particular mix is that all of these songs are pretty old, and there are artists that span generations playing these songs. The classic styling is there, and there are quite a few who do their own take on a song they probably heard many times growing up. This mix consists of a mix of old spirituals, blues songs, country tunes, and traditional American songs that we have adopted in our society as anthems for American living. I do admit that there are couple songs of British origin on these mixes. “Amazing Grace” was written in 19^th century England, but it is a song that has been adopted by our American culture, and became an important spiritual in African American culture in the post-slavery era. “Will the Circle be Unbroken” is an early 20^th hymn from England, but I have always known it as a country tune. I especially enjoy Mojo and Jello’s tribute version called “Will the Fetus be Aborted”.

(Sons of the Pioneers)

Some of these tunes may be more recognizable than others. The Stephen Foster songs are recognizable to most everyone due to their inclusion in our early educational structures, and music classes. Their simplicity and relatable lyrics make them applicable to almost anyone, and easy songs for children to sing along to in pre-school. We then have a slew of patriotic anthems such as “Star Spangled Mojo(banner)”, “America the Beautiful”, “Home on the Range”, and “This Land is Your Land” (though this is not necessarily a patriotic song, it has been adopted as one). We also have a few newer songs that I feel have become embedded in our culture, “Country Roads” being the prime example. We also have one repeat from a previous mix, “You are my Sunshine”. This song is a classic that is sung to children by their parents from an early age, what we don’t normally notice when we are little is just how depressing this song is. It isn’t about a child being the light of their parents lives, but more about how a person suffers when they lose an important attachment in their life. Well that’s enough for now, here is a mix of some good American roots music!

SFMTC Vol. 7 - Freedom Ain't Free

SFMTC Vol. 7a - Freedom Ain't Free

01. Bing Crosby - home on the range
02. Paul Robeson - amazing grace
03. Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper -This Land Is Your Land
04. Dave Brubeck - camptown races
05. Bob Marley - Go Tell It On The Mountain
06. Sons of the Pioneers - red river valley
07. Bruce Springsteen - Jesse James
08. Louis Armstrong - When the Saints Go Marching In
09. new riders of the purple sage - on top of old smokey
10. Harry McClintok - Big Rock Candy Mountain
11. screamin' jay hawkins - swing low, sweet chariot
12. the nitty gritty dirt band - will the circle be unbroken
13. odetta - he's got the whole world in his hand
14. Johnny Cash - The Legend of John Henry's Hammer
15. Pete Seeger - i've been working on the railroad
16. Ray Charles -Take me home, country roads
17. Norman Blake - You Are My Sunshine
18. howlin' wolf - sittin' on top of the world
19. William Elliot Whitmore - oh susanna
20. Jimi Hendrix - Star Spangled Banner

Rifftastic!!

Judging by the title of this entry, you can probably assume what this article is about. It is a single, four-lettered word that packs a punch and makes every rock n’ roll song a fist pumping anthem, and that word if Riff. Riff’s are an essential piece of music, and people who enjoy some good rock usually can appreciate the power of a single riff. You know the kind that just make you want to take an axe to your couch, or smash a nazi in the knee with a ballpeen hammer. I just get excited thinking about great riffs, it gets my blood flowing and feet stomping. The thing about doing a mix of awesome riffs is that there are more than just a few out there, some peoples of what a good riff is may differ, and therefore some great ones are bound to not make it on. That didn’t stop me though, and I am bringing you a mix that I feel is full of some heavy riffs, catchy riffs, some classic, and some that should be. 

Riffs have been important in rock n roll since the beginning, and in the 60’s we started to really see some hard pounding riffs introduced into the music. You look at some of the inspirations for heavy metal and you will see the Kinks “You really goy me” or Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild”. If you even take a step back further you will find the Troggs hitting heavy with their most known song “Wild Thing” and even “Louie Louie” had such a distinct riff that pounded through and is recognizable by most people. 

Riffs have come along way since “Louie Louie” in terms of sheer heaviness and the punch that they pack. Starting in the late 60’s and 70’s we see the advent of heavy metal and hard rock, we see the sheer loudness of riffs increase and the raw power that comes with it. You know a good riff when you just want to bob along all rock n roll, but you know a great riff when you wanna punch through the stage as the band is blaring it out in true apocalyptic fashion. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are two bands that can easily be seen as the major paths to influence rock n roll riffs to come. Led Zeppelin definitely had  its influence in later day metal with the take of a more bluesy approach, and bangin out straight rockers that makes your fist pump in sequential rhythm. Black Sabbath on the other hand are the forefathers of all that is Doom. Their riffs were slow, heavy, and soul-wrenching. The maniacal feel of the feedback is enough to get the heart racing, and the listener banging their head in succession. One of the most memorable riffs of all time is probably Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”. It is a cadence of the early metal era, and has had long haired vagrants smashing beer cans and fist pumping for over 30 years now. The 70’s overall produced some of the most memorable riffs with  “Cat Scratch Fever” by Ted Nugent, “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain, and many  other acts such as Judas Priest, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy, Motorhead and everything Dio was a part of.

 

The 80’s were a great time for Riffs. Sure the airwaves were saturated with bad pop, new wave and hair bands, and at the same time there was so much else happening that has been overlooked. There was a thriving punk and hardcore scene, hip hop was on the rise, and riffs were still dominated by a lot of the hard rock pioneers of yesteryear, and metal bands were inheriting the torch. Pentagram from D.C. assumed the doom metal throne, and Metallica introduced the world to thrash metal. While they disintegrated in the 90’s into some sort of mall commodity, early Metallica produced 4 of the greatest metal albums and wrote some of the best riffs of the 80’s. Their debut ‘Kill em All’ is loaded from start to finish with fast-paced guitars and a crunching bass guitar that I find impossible to not bang my head to. I can remember so many specific experiences of metallica finding it’s way on a roadtrip or a drive across town and the instant rock out that follows. 

The 90’s saw the emergence of a new wave of current doom/stoner rock bands entire into a more public spotlight with the likes of Sleep, Kyuss, Fu Manchu, and The Obssessed leading the charge. Alternative and grunge music began to make more of a name for itself, and while these bands definitely produced some memorable songs, the sheer power was lacking for most (Alice and Chains and Janes Addiction aside).  All aside, it is safe to say that Sleep produced probably one of the finest albums of the 90’s with ‘Holy Mountain’, and their follow up of the single song LP ‘Dopesmoker/Jerusalem’ left an impression on the doom scene. Bands like Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth started to lose a step, and the baton was passed to a new generation recycling and reinventing the formula's for great riffs.

Now we find our selves in the 2000’s with the advent of the internet, and the ability to search out and find different styles of music greatly increased. We see new directions based off the foundations of old styles, and we also see a lot of throwback and retro sounding groups arising. Mastadon came onto the scene and made a name for themselves with ‘Leviathan’, and while they have released numerous other albums, I don’t feel any of them are as consistently good and as well linked throughout.  Two other bands who have consistently written some great rock n roll are The Atomic Bitchwax and Inepsy. T.A.B. definitely are a throwback to that 70’s hard rock with a modern stoner rock feel to modernize it. You can hear the Mountain, Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer influence in their songs, and while the vocals are minimal, they are made up for with a ton of sweet guitar leads that lambast you any chance they can. Inepsy is clearly influenced heavily by Motorhead as well as Discharge and other 80’s d-beat styled bands. They make me want to buy a motorcycle just so I can live to ride, and ride to live. They definitely create that jean-vested, shit-kicker, bottle smashin biker feel with their songs, riffs that give a person the courage to puke on some dudes girlfriend and pull a blade on him before he has a chance to retaliate. 

 

The thing about these riffs, is that they helped make the song what it is, and without a good riff no solo would be complete. The solo awes you, but it is a good riff that keeps you hooked to the song, and baits you for the solo. Without the consistency of riffs you just get Yngwie Malamsteen, and no one really wants that. So Here you are, some nice meaty riffs for the ears to enjoy!

SFMTC Vol. 6 - Rifftastic! 

SFMTC Vol. 6 - Rifftastic! Playlist 

01. Mastadon - Blood and Thunder

02. Manowar - Kings of Metal

03. Dust - Suicide

04. Graveyard - Dont Take Us For Fools

05. Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

06. Sleep - Dragonaut

07. Metallica - Seek and Destroy

08. AC/DC - Riif Raff

09. Pentagram - Wartime

10. Thin Lizzy - Emerald

11. Pantera - Heresy

12. Deep Purple - Burn

13. The Atomic Bitchwax - Marching on the Skulls of the Dead

14. Inepsy - Warriors of the Wasteland

15. Led Zeppelin - Dazed and Confused

16. Exodus - The Toxic Waltz

17. Dio - Straight Through the Heart

18. Madball - Hold it Down