Word: forme
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...only home he knows. This attempt to reconcile this seemingly violent contradiction of what it means to be negroid and to be American becomes the painful burden of the cutting essays of James Baldwin; a master of form, if ever there was one in America. In this peculiar adaptation of form, Baldwin uses his peculiar gift of language, comingling the art of rapping with the terror and brimstone of the Afro-American sermon which possesses its own peculiar cadences, to orchestrate in an intensely personal manner the intense emotional experiences of Afro-Americans. For Baldwin, of course, this violent synthesis...
Punk rock emerged when rock and roll first became self-conscious, when the obvious possibilities of a new art form had been all but exhausted. The spontaneous creativity of the early years was replaced by an inhibiting historical perspective and a prevailing pessimism, a sense that there was nothing new left to do. George Thorogood, perhaps the most distasteful of a new breed of rock and roll reactionaries, declared his intention never to write his own songs because "Chuck Berry wrote them all already." Keith Emerson and other art-rock enthusiasts tried to lift the medium out of itself...
...history, a cocksure answer to the "Now what?" he mutters once between tracks on this wonderful new album. The answer consisted of a return to three-chord rock and roll and a reworking of old standards in an energetic new style. Their originality relied on performance, not form; rock and roll has always been wrapped up in personality and attitude, and the contumacious stance and demonic vigor the Sex Pistols brought to rock and roll renewed it and transformed...
Seven tracks on Swindle exemplify this refurbishing of old hits. Rotten is in prime sneering form, fairly spitting out the three syllables of old Who warhorse "Substitute," bringing a feral edge to Boyce and Hart's familiar "Stepping Stone" and Faces standard "Whatcha Gonna Do About It." These old songs, worn by rehearing and rote performance, take on a new quality, derived from Rotten's conviction that they really matter, at least to him. Sid Vicious contributes two sock-hop numbers--"Something Else" and "C'mon Everybody"--and a rollicking remake of "Rock Around the Clock." Punk rock wants...
Necessarily, such a self-conscious form as punk will involve parody; as for the doomed Adrian Leverkuhn of Mann's Doctor Faustus, everything is a parody, of previous forms or even of itself. Creation of the new means the "deconstruction" of the old, and a sardonic snipe at other contemporary musical forms. The Pistols start parodying right off on side two with a symphonic version of "God Save the Queen," as much a parody of themselves as of art rock. A bizarre disco medley of "Anarchy in the U. K.," "God Save the Queen," "Pretty Vacant...