was HW: Emperors, now Monster Magnet

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On fre 12 feb 1999 13.07 -0500 "Keith Henderson" <henderson.120 at OSU.EDU>
wrote:
> Carl had suggested...
>>     But, anyway, yes--I think spacerock will get more attention
>>as a spacey adjunct of "heavy groove rock" (a term I like better
>>than "stoner rock" or "doom metal")
>
> First off, I don't think 'stoner rock' and 'doom metal' are one and the
> same.  Monster Magnet/Fu Manchu/Nebula being the former, and Orange Goblin
> and a whole slew of other bands I try to avoid being the latter.

     Well, what's in a name and a rose by any other.  These labels
I think get slung around a lot without being very specific.  In
Britain "stoner" seems to be the trendy term--with all the love/hate
relationship that implies.  Media hacks cheerfully apply it to
Kyuss, MM, and Cathedral alike.  I doubt very many people here
would think of Orange Goblin as "Doom Metal" anymore!  Maybe in the
the US still.  That's a term more likely to be kept for old Cathedral,
St. Vitus when they existed, etc.: slow ponderous dirges are the key,
and even Cathedral don't do much in that vein any more.  Orange
Goblin are far too fast and bouncy!  All that stuff got thrown
into "doom" in the UK before the broader, less off-putting "stoner"
label popped up.  Now everything in this ilk is "stoner", and the
bands are scrambling to decide whether they'll sell more records
by claiming to be a stoner band or by heaping abuse on the term :)

     Let's not forget "desert rock", a term which seems to still
have currency in the States, but is seldom found in the UK.

> And secondly, if I had heard someone come up to me and say they liked
'heavy
> groove rock,' I would immediately think Red Hot Chili Peppers and not
> Datura.

     I try to avoid thinking of the Red Hot Chili Peppers :) but
always think of them as some kinda funk-oriented thing.  I would
never have thought of connecting the word "groove" with them.  But
this highlights the whole descriptive problem.

> It don't matter to me whether there's a drug connotation with the
> music that's being labelled thusly, and I say that being totally 'clean'
> myself (well, for the last decade anyway).  I suppose you never liked
'acid
> rock' either.  (Well, I never did either...but that was more because it
> wasn't obvious just what sort of psychedelic bands (SF-type or
> Hawkwind/krautrock-type) were being referred to...same with art rock,
> perhaps the stupidest label).

     All true.  Well, labels are generated by the media, so we
can't expect too much.  I dislike the term "stoner" since it
conjures up an image of music made for and by people who just
sit around wasted and drooling--which I don't think is the
case.

     Where does this leave "space rock"?  Well, no one has heard
of it anyway, so we're safe there :)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/