tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/1970s-music-23902/articles1970s music – The Conversation2024-02-15T23:16:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222842024-02-15T23:16:04Z2024-02-15T23:16:04ZKiss’s debut album at 50: how the rock legends went from ‘clowns’ to becoming immortalised<p>It has been 50 years since Rock & Roll <a href="https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/kiss">Hall of Famers</a> Kiss launched their thunderock-doused debut album into the pop culture stratosphere. The eponymous album, released on February 18 1974, became a platform-stacked foot in the music industry’s door. </p>
<p>What followed established Kiss as one of the most memorable hard-rock bands of the 1970s and ’80s, with a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac.37.1.19_1">globally recognised legacy</a>.</p>
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<h2>The early days</h2>
<p>In 1972, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons shelved their first ever rock outfit following a short stint in a band called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Lester">Wicked Lester</a>. The pair then <a href="https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/kiss-self-titled-debut-album/">hatched a plan</a> to form a far more aggressive and successful rock band. Drummer Peter Criss and guitarist Ace Frehley were recruited, and the new-generation Fab Four renamed themselves Kiss.</p>
<p>By late <a href="https://www.kissonline.com/history">November of 1973</a>, the band had developed their bombastic live performance style, perfected their makeup and signed a deal with <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kiss-first-record-contract/">Casablanca Records</a>. Yet they dealt with some rocky beginnings.</p>
<p>Armed with reworked songs from Wicked Lester, Kiss entered New York’s Bell Sound Studios to record their debut. A mere three weeks later the album was complete – but the band quickly realised the studio recordings didn’t capture the essence of their high-energy live shows. As vocalist Paul Stanley <a href="https://loudwire.com/kiss-self-titled-album-anniversary/">told Loudwire</a>:</p>
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<p>What was put down on tape was such a timid fraction of what we were in concert. I didn’t understand it because bands who were our contemporaries had much better-sounding albums.</p>
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<p>They took another blow while shooting the album cover with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/31/obituaries/31brodsky.html">Joel Brodsky</a> when, after a mishap with Criss’s makeup, the band were allegedly handed balloons by the photographer since he thought they were clowns.</p>
<p>Then, soon before the album was released, Warner Brothers pulled its financial backing and <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-casablanca-records-story">distribution deal from Casablanca Records</a> after witnessing Kiss play a New Year’s eve show. Although it’s said the band’s makeup was the last straw for the label, the show in question also featured Simmons <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/kiss-early-years-history">setting his hair alight</a> shortly after throwing a fireball at a fan’s face. </p>
<p>Despite the blunders, the release of the first album set Kiss on a path to becoming immortalised. As Stanley says in his book <a href="https://www.paulstanley.com/face-the-music/">Face The Music</a>:</p>
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<p>For all the minuses I felt about the sound or the cover, we now had a finished album which was the prerequisite for all the other things we wanted to do. We were in the game now.</p>
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<h2>The Kiss sound</h2>
<p>I first heard Kiss as a teenager. I’d just thrift-scored a pair of ’80s-era roller-skates with the band’s logo scrawled on the heels in glitter glue. The salesperson, responsible for the glitter glue, enthusiastically recounted seeing Kiss play VFL Park (now <a href="https://footy.fandom.com/wiki/Waverley_Park">Waverley Park</a> stadium) in 1980 and made me promise I’d listen to them.</p>
<p>Overwhelmed by the band’s expansive discography, and the possibility that their name stood for <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/news/kiss-squash-long-standing-rumour-that-their-band-name-is-a-satanic-acronym-were-smart-but-were-not-that-smart">Knights In Satan’s Service</a>, I thought it best to begin from the start.</p>
<p>With their reputation of on-stage pyrotechnics and gore, I’d expected something more akin to Black Sabbath’s Paranoid than the jangly riffs of Let Me Know or Love Theme From Kiss. A 1978 review by <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/kiss-194584/">Gordon Fletcher</a> for the Rolling Stone also noted this rift. Despite calling the album exceptional, Fletcher described its sound as a cross between Deep Purple and the Doobie Brothers. </p>
<p>Stanley and Simmons have <a href="https://www.guitarworld.com/features/kiss-paul-stanley-gene-simmons-classic-tracks">spoken freely</a> about borrowing heavily from a number of mid-century legends, so it’s no surprise that sonically the album was nothing new. The Rolling Stones’ influence can be heard in the songs Deuce and Strutter, while Led Zeppelin and Neil Young are present in Black Diamond. </p>
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<p>The album initially hadn’t risen higher than #87 on <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kiss-kiss-debut-album/">Billboard’s album charts</a>. A studio cover of <a href="https://ultimateclassicrock.com/kiss-nothin-to-lose/?trackback=twitter_mobile">Bobby Rydell’s Kissin’ Time</a> was released next as the lead single, but the track only bumped them up to #83. This <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.A2262575">commercial unviability</a> loomed over Kiss until the release of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alive!_(Kiss_album)">Alive!</a> in 1975. </p>
<h2>Success and beyond</h2>
<p>As the band’s first live album, Alive! bridged the gap between the audacious intensity of Kiss’s performances and the timidness of their studio recordings. Their early tracks were repurposed to let listeners remotely experience the infamous Kiss live spectacle. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFMD7Usflbg&ab_channel=KissVEVO">Rock and Roll All Nite</a> claimed #12 on the <a href="https://loudwire.com/kiss-alive-album-anniversary/">Billboard charts</a>, the platform-stacked foot burst through the door to mainstream success. </p>
<p>Fifty years after Kiss first stepped into Bell Sound Studios, the band played their final sold-out show at Madison Square Garden on December 2 2023. The performance served as a crowning jewel on their End of the Road world tour, a four-year effort with more than 250 live shows. </p>
<p>Promised to be their <a href="https://www.triplem.com.au/story/kiss-add-more-dates-to-their-end-of-the-road-australian-tour-172305">biggest and best shows ever</a>, the farewell became a colossal celebration of the band’s legacy. Theatrical pyrotechnics, fake blood and Stanley’s classic opening line – “you wanted the best, you got the best” – were featured at each performance. </p>
<p>While both Kiss’s anthemic numbers and earlier catalogue were performed in these final shows, the music came second to the celebration of the Kiss live spectacle.</p>
<p>From their carefully designed makeup, to bombastic theatrics and hoards of merchandise, it was Kiss’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1386/ejac.37.1.19_1">brand building</a> that <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/Brands+That+Rock%3A+What+Business+Leaders+Can+Learn+from+the+World+of+Rock+and+Roll-p-9780471455172">set them apart</a> and embedded them in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2009.09.006">heritage bracket</a> of popular culture. </p>
<p>Despite the end of their live shows, Kiss endeavours to stay embedded in public memory. Referring to some of the band’s 2,500 licensed products, Simmons recently spoke on <a href="http://www.tommagazine.com.au/2022/08/19/kiss/">what’s next for Kiss</a>:</p>
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<p>Kiss the entity will continue; what’s happening now is a metamorphosis. The caterpillar is dying, but the butterfly will be born.</p>
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<p>With a <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/kiss-biopic-early-years-netflix-2024-1235291572/">Netflix biopic</a> and holographic <a href="https://www.stereogum.com/2246254/kiss-hologram-era-begins-in-2027/news/">avatars on the way</a>, Stanley and Simmons – the band’s two remaining members – <a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/gene-simmons-says-kiss-farewell-tour-is-end-of-the-road-for-the-band-not-the-brand-3541117">have declared Kiss immortal</a>. </p>
<p>Stanley even suggests the Kiss look has become so iconic it’s now bigger than any band member. This means the torch could be passed on to new-generation Kiss members. </p>
<p>Kiss has (quite literally) breathed fire into live rock performance. Now, they’re breathing fire into our expectations of what rock royalty retirement looks like. I have to ask, who – or what – will wear the makeup next? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-long-dead-soprano-has-taken-to-the-stage-with-the-melbourne-symphony-orchestra-are-holograms-the-future-219716">A long-dead soprano has taken to the stage with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Are holograms the future?</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charlotte Markowitsch does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As their debut album turns 50, we look back on Kiss’s larger-than-life career – and forward to what might come next.Charlotte Markowitsch, PhD candidate in popular music studies, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1655252021-08-09T12:27:11Z2021-08-09T12:27:11ZHip-hop holiday signals a turning point in education for a music form that began at a back-to-school party in the Bronx<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/415012/original/file-20210806-21-s6c8ki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C0%2C4479%2C2807&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DJ Kool Herc is considered the "sonic originator" of hip-hop. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-dj-kool-herc-performs-with-dj-jerry-dee-at-the-news-photo/177754517?adppopup=true">Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whenever I teach courses on hip-hop at the University of Virginia, I provide a brief overview of where hip-hop music began. One of the important dates I use is Aug. 11, 1973. That’s when DJ Kool Herc, who was 18 at the time, threw a “Back To School Jam” for his sister Cindy in the South Bronx – in the rec room at 1520 Sedgwick Ave., to be specific.</p>
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<img alt="Flyer for the Back to School Jam hosted by DJ Kool Herc" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414431/original/file-20210803-25-spxunc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Flyer for the Back To School Jam hosted by DJ Kool Herc.</span>
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<p>The landmark back-to-school party thrown by the Jamaican-American DJ, whose given name is Clive Campbell, will be officially and rightly recognized on Aug. 11, 2021, as <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-resolution/331/text">Hip-Hop Celebration Day</a>, as designated by Congress. August 2021 has also been designated as Hip-Hop Recognition Month, and November 2021 will be recognized as Hip-Hop History Month.</p>
<p>The hip-hop holiday, if you will, represents yet another milestone for hip-hop as its stature and prominence as a literary art and musical form continue to grow. </p>
<h2>Multiple origins</h2>
<p>Of course, the true genealogy of hip-hop is far more varied and complex than a single back-to-school party in the Bronx.</p>
<p>In his introduction to the “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300141917/anthology-rap">Yale Anthology of Rap</a>,” historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes that the first person he heard “rap” was his father, who was born in 1913, as he was “signifying,” or playing “<a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-02-11-1994042244-story.html">the Dozens</a>,” a pastime in which participants trade searing insults about one another’s relatives, typically their mothers, as a way <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-02-11-1994042244-story.html">to teach mental strength</a>.</p>
<p>In the 1968 memoir of Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/28698/soul-on-ice-by-eldridge-cleaver/">Soul On Ice</a>,” Cleaver – in an entry dated Aug. 16, 1965 – describes a type of rap he heard in the wake of the <a href="http://crdl.usg.edu/events/watts_riots/?Welcome">Watts uprising</a>, a six-day-long rebellion in the predominantly Black neighborhood in Los Angeles sparked by a violent exchange between police and bystanders when a young Black motorist was stopped and arrested by a member of the California Highway Patrol. </p>
<p>He refers to young men he calls “low riders” assembled in a circle on the basketball court after leaving the mess hall in Folsom State Prison that previous Sunday morning. The Watts uprising had been going on for four days by then. The men “were wearing jubilant, triumphant smiles, animated by a vicarious spirit.” A round of signifying hand gestures turned to speech after one asked, “What they doing out there? Break it down for me, Baby.”</p>
<p>Cleaver writes that one of the low riders stepped into the middle of the circle and began to speak:</p>
<blockquote><p> “They walking in fours and kicking in doors / dropping Reds and busting heads / drinking wine and committing crime / shooting and looting / high-siding and low-riding / setting fires and slashing tires / turning over cars and burning down bars / making Parker mad and making me glad / putting an end to that ‘go slow’ crap and putting sweet Watts on the map / my black ass is in Folsom this morning but my black heart is in Watts!” </p></blockquote>
<p>Cleaver describes the laugh shared by the men in the cipher – or small, circular gathering – as “cleansing, revolutionary,” as “tears of joy were rolling from (the speaker’s) eyes.”</p>
<p>California rapper Ras Kass named his <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Ras-Kass-Soul-On-Ice/release/405225">debut album</a>, released in 1996, after Cleaver’s book.</p>
<h2>Kool Herc, the pioneer</h2>
<p>Herc is described in the Yale anthology as “the man most often mentioned as the sonic originator of hip-hop.” He invented “the break” by using two turntables – and two copies of the same album – to extend a song’s instrumental, typically highly percussive, portion. He then took the signifying that Gates and Cleaver describe and performed a version of it over the separated song breaks he blasted on his sound system. His breaks and banter bade dancers to improvise to the music he played. Tricia Rose, author of pioneering hip-hop scholarship including “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/black-noise-rap-music-and-black-culture-in-contemporary-america/oclc/29358082">Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America</a>” writes that “DJ Kool Herc was a graffiti writer and dancer first before he began playing records.”</p>
<p>Though modern graffiti writing is said to have originated in the 1960s when a 12-year-old Philadelphia kid named Darryl McCray began tagging his nickname, “Cornbread,” on the Philadelphia Youth Development Center walls, and then eventually all around the city, DJ Kool Herc embodied all of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/hip-hop">original elements</a> of hip-hop: DJing, emceeing, break dancing, and graffiti writing.</p>
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<h2>Worldwide phenomenon</h2>
<p>In the years since that back-to-school party, hip-hop has become a well-recognized global phenomenon. It is <a href="https://www.musicianwave.com/top-music-genres/">one of the most widely consumed musical forms</a> worldwide. It is also a widely sampled and highly scrutinized cultural movement.</p>
<p>Since hip-hop began as a back-to-school party, it follows that it should be taught in the halls of academia. College classes <a href="https://booksandideas.net/U-S-Hip-Hop-Studies-Formation-Flow-and-Trajectory.html">as far back as the 1980s</a> have taken up hip-hop culture and artists as the objects and subjects of study.</p>
<p>In 2013, the Hiphop Archive and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University established the <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/newsplus/nasir-jones-hiphop-fellowship-established-by-hiphop-archive-and-du-bois-institute/">Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship</a>. The fellowship – named after the rapper Nas – is meant for select scholars and artists with “exceptional capacity for productive scholarship and exceptional creative ability in the arts, in connection with Hiphop.”</p>
<p>Kendrick Lamar’s “DAMN.” received the <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kendrick-lamar">2018 Pulitzer Prize for music</a>. In 2019, New Orleans rapper Mia X <a href="https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/article_4a31cb67-7ec1-5964-9a21-503d05170dc5.html">joined the music industry faculty</a> at Loyola University. She is <a href="https://www.xxlmag.com/a-history-of-rappers-in-college-classrooms/">one of many rappers and producers</a> to teach at a university. Black Thought from the widely acclaimed rap band The Roots will be <a href="https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/explore-by-genre/hip-hop/2021-2022/roots-black-thought/">hosting a residency at the Kennedy Center</a> in October 2021 during which he will talk with contemporaries about art, inspiration and creative consciousness.</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p>
<h2>A hip-hop dissertation</h2>
<p>My own forays into academia are squarely rooted in hip-hop. I <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/07/15/537274235/after-rapping-his-dissertation-a-d-carson-is-uvas-new-hip-hop-professor">accepted my current job</a> – assistant professor of hip-hop – after I submitted my doctoral dissertation as a <a href="http://phd.aydeethegreat.com">rap album and digital archive</a> in 2017. </p>
<p>I had few academic models for my work to follow – those laid out by Gates’ father, people like the low riders from Cleaver’s memoir, scholars like Tricia Rose and pioneers like DJ Kool Herc. I wanted my work, in rap form, to <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/11738372/i_used_to_love_to_dream">be the scholarship</a> on its own. Hip-hop has always been academic to me, even though it often seems as though making music, DJing, break dancing or doing graffiti painting as scholarship are usually acceptable only outside of formal spaces of learning, as part of an alternative curriculum. </p>
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<span class="caption">Cover of A.D. Carson’s Dissertation Album, ‘Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions.’</span>
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<p>Congress’ formal establishment of a hip-hop holiday and month of recognition – at least in 2021 – lends credence to the notion that hip-hop finally deserves a place in academia as a discipline of its own. From my perspective, it is long overdue that hip-hop be seen not solely as a subject of study but as a tool to continue to produce new knowledge and new ways of presenting it.</p>
<p>Hip-hop’s influence on other disciplines is as abundant as its influence on other music and art forms. Perhaps soon, in celebration of Cindy and Clive Campbell’s historic “Back To School Jam,” some students will be going back to school to become fully immersed in the academic rigors of the culture being celebrated nationally on Aug. 11.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With Congress designating Aug. 11, 2021, as Hip-Hop Celebration Day, a scholar and performer of the art form makes the case for hip-hop to become more prominent in American academe.A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1344932020-03-26T14:58:32Z2020-03-26T14:58:32ZFunky Drummer: How a James Brown jam session gave us the ‘greatest drum break of them all’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322611/original/file-20200324-155640-1ei5oj4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C10%2C1710%2C1609&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul VanDerWerf via Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Brown-American-singer">James Brown</a> released a seven-inch single called Funky Drummer in March, 1970 – a loosely arranged jam session showcasing the talent for improvisation of drummer <a href="https://www.moderndrummer.com/article/august-2017-clyde-stubblefield-remembered/">Clyde Stubblefield</a>, who was employed in Brown’s band at the time. </p>
<p>Although it failed to crack the top 50 pop charts on release, Funky Drummer was rediscovered in the 1980s by a generation of pioneering hip-hop artists. These have included Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Flash, Eric B. & Rakim, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, and the Beastie Boys – who all sampled Stubblefield’s infectious drum break. The Funky Drummer breakbeat soon spread far beyond hip-hop, appearing on well over 1,000 recordings by pop artists ranging from George Michael and Sinead O’Connor in the 1990s right up to Emeli Sandé and Ed Sheeran in the past decade.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-story-of-the-funky-drummer-the-most-exploited-man-in-modern-music-73473">The story of the funky drummer: the most exploited man in modern music</a>
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<p>Funky Drummer is one of the most sampled drum breaks of all time – and also one of the most discussed (including in my new book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/kick-it-9780190683870">Kick It: A Social History of the Drum Kit</a>). It’s also a prime example of how copyright law has historically failed to compensate drummers. Stubblefield <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/arts/music/clyde-stubblefield-a-drummer-aims-for-royalties.html">famously never received any royalties</a> from all the hits his drum break was used on. </p>
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<p>James Brown typically <a href="https://repository.law.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=umeslr">paid his musicians on a “work-for-hire” basis</a> for recording sessions, and generally credited himself as the sole author of the resulting songs. This was the case even if the music was largely improvised, as in the case of Funky Drummer. It was also in keeping with copyright law conventions at the time, which usually recognised the legal author of a musical composition as the person who wrote <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/42790899_Copyright_the_Work_and_Phonographic_Orality_in_Music">the topline melody and lyrics</a>.</p>
<h2>Anchor for a new sound</h2>
<p>Funky Drummer has various musical elements: simple repeating horn and guitar riffs, a syncopated wandering bass line, occasional instrumental solos on organ and saxophone, as well as vocal improvisations by Brown. We also hear Stubblefield’s performance underpinning the jam session, including the glorious moment when Brown orders the band to drop out while Stubblefield keeps drumming his highly inventive groove unaccompanied – the isolated drum “break” that hip-hop artists love to sample. </p>
<p>But Brown would have deemed all the above musical elements as insignificant compared to his own role as the artistic leader and frontman – this wasn’t necessarily fair, but neither was it uncommon. Ringo Starr did not receive co-writing credits for his drumming contributions on Beatles songs, for example, even though his drum parts have often been <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150707132204/http://www.pas.org/About/the-society/halloffame/StarrRingo.aspx">retrospectively deemed by musical peers</a> to constitute a distinct compositional element of the band’s work.</p>
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<p>Five decades on, in a pop soundscape utterly transformed by hip-hop culture, we now tend to recognise just how important a compelling drum beat is in making a chart hit. Most commercially successful music in the 21st century is anchored by the sounds of the kick drum, snare and cymbals (or electronic percussion serving similar functions). You can now point to plenty of contemporary chart hits that don’t feature an electric guitar, but there are almost none that don’t prominently feature a beat between kick and snare – whether acoustic, sampled or synthesised.</p>
<p>In the hit factories of the present day, the most successful pop artists <a href="https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20191126-the-hidden-beat-makers-behind-musics-big-hits">often bring in producers</a> who have gained reputations by creating alluring beats. They often receive a formal share in songwriting credits as “co-writers” and “producers”. </p>
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<p>We also live in an era when it is increasingly expensive to gain legal permission to sample drum breaks from rights holders (usually songwriters and/or record companies, as opposed to drummers). This has led to a relatively hidden ancillary industry of “sample replay” companies that are hired to painstakingly rerecord well-known drum breaks (and other parts from guitar riffs to vocal samples). These are designed to resemble the original recordings as much as possible.</p>
<p>The rights to these copycat recordings are then bought wholesale and sampled instead of the originals (at least by the handful of pop stars with deep enough pockets to afford such tactics).</p>
<h2>Musical value</h2>
<p>One drummer making a living from sample replay is <a href="http://dylanwissing.com/">Dylan Wissing</a>, an American session musician who has re-recorded impeccable covers of famous drum breaks for the likes of Jay-Z, Kanye West, Drake, Eminem, Rick Ross, John Legend and Alicia Keys. Wissing also runs a website, <a href="https://www.gettingthesound.com">Getting The Sound</a>, which offers tutorials on how to “digitally recreate famous breakbeats” resulting in “a new recording of an existing audio recording that is sonically indistinguishable from the original”.</p>
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<p>Unsurprisingly, one such tutorial demonstrates how to reproduce Funky Drummer – “from choosing the instruments, tuning, muffling, and performance to miking the kit, treating the room and recording the drums for this iconic breakbeat masterpiece.”</p>
<p>The sample replay industry relies on the premise that a particular performance of a work cannot in itself be subject to copyright. Yet part of the legacy of Funky Drummer is the discourse and debate it has generated on exactly this point: everyone seems to agree that Stubblefield was not fairly remunerated for his creativity. But what would be the implications for musical culture if music copyright legislation was changed in his favour?</p>
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<p>Drumming performances are generally considered not to be musical compositions – and this is both a good thing and a bad thing. If every element of musical creation was locked down as a form of intellectual property – from a standard blues chord progression (upon which most blues songs are constructed) to a swinging ride cymbal pattern (the underlying rhythmic pulse upon which countless jazz compositions were built from the 1940s onwards) – we might conceivably be left with no freely available musical building blocks to make new compositions.</p>
<p>It’s a good thing that musicians can borrow, repurpose and build upon previous musical ideas without the fear of getting sued – that’s how new music gets made. But Funky Drummer raises a crucial question: where do we draw the line between a generic part and an original musical composition? This is the tension that Funky Drummer brings sharply into focus, and it is at the heart of understanding how we make sense of musical creativity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matt Brennan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Clyde Stubblefield’s drumming has been sampled or imitated more than 1,000 times since it was recorded in 1970.Matt Brennan, Reader in Popular Music, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/529952016-01-11T15:06:11Z2016-01-11T15:06:11ZDavid Bowie: pop star who fell to earth to teach outsiders they can be heroes<p>Two days after releasing his 25th studio album, Blackstar, to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/07/david-bowie-blackstar-review-a-spellbinding-break-with-his-past">critical acclaim</a>, David Bowie <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/11/david-bowie-dies-at-the-age-of-69">has died at the age of 69</a>. </p>
<p>Even this final act communicates Bowie’s power as a visionary artist who has orchestrated his sonic and visual concepts – as well as his public selves – from beginning to end.</p>
<p>Born David Jones in 1947 in Brixton, the boy who became David Bowie always wanted to be a star. Deeply influenced by Little Richard who combined rock’n’roll music with flamboyant stage shows, Jones performed different styles of music in various bands through the 1960s before he changed his name to Bowie in 1967 and shifted to playing folk music.</p>
<p>Bowie’s first chart success came in 1969 when the BBC played his song Space Oddity during its television broadcast of the moon landing. The song was an early example of Bowie’s ability to tap into the zeitgeist. Over the following few years, Bowie moved to a harder rock sound and absorbed influences from diverse sources including Lindsay Kemp – with whom he studied mime, Japanese kabuki theatre and theatrical traditions of cross-dressing and gender play. Other key influences were his then wife Angie – a model and art student – his glam rock contemporary, Marc Bolan of T Rex, and the pop art guru Andy Warhol. </p>
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<p>Bowie’s time with Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and the drag queens and trans people who congregated around Warhol and the New York club Max’s Kansas City had a big impact on him. In 1971, when he was there, New York City was also a hotbed of radical feminism and the gay liberation movement. </p>
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<span class="caption">Bowie with his friends Iggy Pop and Lou Reed.</span>
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<p>The immediacy of the freedom politics around revolutionising gender roles and sexuality energised Bowie and influenced the content of his lyrics and his public presentation.</p>
<h2>Like a leper messiah</h2>
<p>In 1972, six months after London’s first gay pride parade, Bowie created a media sensation when he <a href="http://www.5years.com/oypt.htm">gave a magazine interview</a> stating that he was gay and said in another that <a href="http://www.5years.com/RRDB.HTM">he was bisexual</a>. With brilliant timing he then released the concept album and stage show The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. </p>
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<span class="caption">Ziggy Stardust album cover, 1972.</span>
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<p>Ziggy, Bowie’s defining and culture-changing persona, was an androgynous rock star messiah, come to save the earth from environmental degradation and eventually destroyed by the excesses of ego, hedonism, and fan worship. The song about the title character was a commentary on the phenomenon of rock stardom – Bowie was deconstructing himself and the world of rock while simultaneously carving his own place in it.</p>
<p>Audiences were divided. Was Bowie infusing the corporate rock world with much-needed rebellion or was he a commercial charlatan? Through playing with notions of authenticity and identity, Bowie challenged ideas of normal and natural. He made explicit in popular music that identity could be imagined by individuals, rather than dictated by society. This, for many, was precisely the problem. As <a href="http://www.5years.com/fanletters.htm">one man wrote</a>: “Why on earth do so many turn on to that freak-faced pop-puff David Bowie – one look at him surely makes you want to vomit.”</p>
<p>For others – especially those who felt alienated from dominant ideas about sex roles and sexuality – Bowie’s identity play signalled freedom and belonging. Through Ziggy Stardust and his multiple costume changes, Bowie literally and metaphorically took the closet to the stage, and proudly opened and flaunted it: with a feather boa draped around his neck he sang in a baritone voice “you are not a victim”. </p>
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<p>In doing so, Bowie helped to empower audience members who felt different. By making androgyny and bisexuality fashionable in the public realm, Bowie helped to create a safe zone in which, by dressing up similarly, fans could explore their gender and sexual identities without necessarily being labelled or identified.</p>
<h2>Soul love</h2>
<p>Through shared taste in music and fashion, individuals who had been closeted by social norms were able to form connections and communities regardless of their individual sexual orientation. The experience helped to liberate people’s attitudes. As one fan <a href="http://www.5years.com/paulm.htm">remembered of a Ziggy Stardust concert</a>: </p>
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<p>The atmosphere was extraordinary. I cannot recall ever witnessing such strange, exciting and weird surroundings. There were so many outlandish people, men wearing dresses, masses of silver and gold lame – totally outrageous but all good natured.</p>
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<p>Ziggy Stardust’s androgyny and bisexual persona were significant at a time when homosexuality had just been decriminalised in Britain and some states in Australia, but not in the United States. By making gender and sexual-bending fashionable, Bowie helped to transform a public culture that was steeped in traditional ideas of how males and females should behave and what people’s sexual behaviour should be.</p>
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<p>For his heterosexual female fans, Bowie’s gender-bending and bisexuality presented a newly desirable masculinity stripped of its traditional and off-putting machismo. As rock stars before him had done, Bowie appealed to women who sought a life beyond the suffocating confines of suburban family life. Yet unlike female fans of Elvis, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, Bowie’s female fans dressed like him. </p>
<p>Perhaps Bowie presented to young women the subversive glamour of gender play, giving them hope for new feminine possibilities in an era when gender was changing but no one knew quite what its future would look like.</p>
<p>Bowie’s albums in the 1970s showed how rapidly his own interests and influences changed, from Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs, to Young Americans and Station to Station. In the mid-to-late 1970s he collaborated with Brian Eno on the critically acclaimed Berlin Trilogy, which featured one of his signature songs, Heroes. His 1987 performance of the song at an open-air concert in Berlin has been linked to the successful uprising against the Berlin Wall.</p>
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<h2>We can be heroes</h2>
<p>His biggest commercial success was the 1983 album Let’s Dance, co-produced with Nile Rodgers. The title song’s film clip was unique in its positive <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/14/david-bowie-in-australia-an-alien-from-another-planet-who-sang-for-this-one">representation of indigenous Australians</a>. </p>
<p>In 2013, after a ten-year silence, Bowie surprised the world when, without warning, he released – The Next Day, his 24th studio album. It received widespread critical acclaim. And now, after giving us a final album, without warning David Bowie has gone.</p>
<p>Rock and Roll Suicide was the final song on the Ziggy Stardust album and was often performed as the final song of the Ziggy Stardust encore. Nihilism, meaninglessness, mortality and the inevitable end – these were among the themes of this song and the album. </p>
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<p>Yet Ziggy offered a moment of connection and redemption when he exhorted with the passion of an evangelical preacher:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Oh no love you’re not alone…<br>
no matter who or what you’ve been,<br>
no matter when or where you’ve seen…<br>
I’ll help you with the pain…<br>
turn on with me and you’re not alone.“</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this, in the 1970s and now, Ziggy Stardust forgives and encourages connection, transgression and rebellion in his listeners. For many he has fostered <a href="http://www.bloomsbury.com/au/enchanting-david-bowie-9781628923056/">communities of belonging and hope</a>. In his various personas, David Bowie enabled the imagining of new selves. "It was not only music,” <a href="http://www.5years.com/pf.htm">one fan wrote of what Bowie inspired</a>, “it was a way to be.”</p>
<p>His legacy on record sings across time, space, and now mortality with this simple message: “You’re not alone”.</p>
<p>And we’re not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Sheehan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bowie’s fast-moving and ground-breaking ideas about sexuality and gender allowed millions of young people to come to terms with their sense of difference.Rebecca Sheehan, Lecturer in US History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.