The Inception of a Genre - Music - Forums : Best Ever Albums

creator

Age: 36
Location: chicago

I often see genre specific charts (e.g. best indie rock albums) on other blogs or websites, but I don't think I've ever seen a chart that mapped out the inception of a genre (e.g. the most important albums to indie rock). I think it would be interesting to put together some charts of this type so that other users can appreciate the development of a genre and potentially find a new genre to explore by tracing back one of their favorite genres.

Let me know what you think or if you'd be interested in contributing to a genre. Very Happy

Kiki

This would actually be quite a hard thing to do. Think

People have too many descriptions of genres and there will be conflicts over what goes where. It would be very helpful if completed though.

benpaco
Who's gonna watch you die?

Age: 27
Location: California

an_outlaw wrote:

This would actually be quite a hard thing to do. Think

People have too many descriptions of genres and there will be conflicts over what goes where. It would be very helpful if completed though.

My thoughts exactly. Though it would be fun to try, I mean, just take punk for example. First ever band who ever labeled themselves "punk" was Suicide in 1970. But then you look before 1970, do you have punk? I've met people who insist The Trashmen was the earliest punk. Others say The Sonics. Others say MC5, and others still would say nothing until The Velvet Underground really counts. But is any of that punk? It's hard to say ...

I'd still love to do these and I think it could be a lot of fun. But even Grunge or Hip Hop isn't as hardlined a start as some might think.
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creator

Age: 36
Location: chicago

an_outlaw wrote:

This would actually be quite a hard thing to do. Think

People have too many descriptions of genres and there will be conflicts over what goes where. It would be very helpful if completed though.

benpaco wrote:

Though it would be fun to try, I mean, just take punk for example. First ever band who ever labeled themselves "punk" was Suicide in 1970. But then you look before 1970, do you have punk? I've met people who insist The Trashmen was the earliest punk. Others say The Sonics. Others say MC5, and others still would say nothing until The Velvet Underground really counts. But is any of that punk? It's hard to say ...

Great points. I assume that if we limit the number of members working on each proposed genre, there should be at least some consensus.

As an example of how we could accomplish this, I'll use punk rock as an example. The first step is to establish important bands or albums of the genre. I'm not familiar with punk rock, so the actual list of bands should be more in depth, but I'll just consider The Clash, The Ramones, and The Sex Pistols. The next step is to find bands that influenced these bands and note any similarities.

Ramones -> The Stooges, The Rolling Stones, New York Dolls, T. Rex, The Who, MC5, The Velvet Underground

The Sex Pistols -> New York Dolls, T. Rex, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Modern Lovers, MC5, The Who, The Velvet Underground, Mott the Hoople

The Clash -> Mott the Hoople, The Who, The Stooges, New York Dolls, MC5

We can already see some similarities. With a few more punk rock bands, we can begin to get a better picture of bands or genres that influenced punk rock.

benpaco
Who's gonna watch you die?

Age: 27
Location: California

creator wrote:

Great points. I assume that if we limit the number of members working on each proposed genre, there should be at least some consensus.

As an example of how we could accomplish this, I'll use punk rock as an example. The first step is to establish important bands or albums of the genre. I'm not familiar with punk rock, so the actual list of bands should be more in depth, but I'll just consider The Clash, The Ramones, and The Sex Pistols. The next step is to find bands that influenced these bands and note any similarities.

Ramones -> The Stooges, The Rolling Stones, New York Dolls, T. Rex, The Who, MC5, The Velvet Underground

The Sex Pistols -> New York Dolls, T. Rex, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Modern Lovers, MC5, The Who, The Velvet Underground, Mott the Hoople

The Clash -> Mott the Hoople, The Who, The Stooges, New York Dolls, MC5

We can already see some similarities. With a few more punk rock bands, we can begin to get a better picture of bands or genres that influenced punk rock.

It's an interesting way to look at it, and I think as long as people were civil in discussion, this would be a fun discussion to be had.
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SuedeSwede
Ognoo

Gender: Female
Age: 26
Location: On a cloud

Forget about the genre kind of stuff, it'd take too long. You could have so many charts, too many. You'll be moving on from "most important folk albums" to "most important albums to the movement and popularisation of the anti-folk culture in the 90's", I mean come on lists could go on forever.

"Most popular albums in rock"
"Most popular albums in music"

More interesting and less bullshit. What crafts an artist is hard to do, when I write I can get influences from all over, what it sounds like I ultimately don't know and frankly don't care, but the fact is I've crafted something that sounds good, whether it's "indie rock" or "heavy metal" and whether it's influenced by Beach House or The Beatles, there is no difference, it is still music.

I just don't think this will be beneficial to any newcomers, the most "important" and "influential" are so hard to calculate, whereas most "popular" and "best" are certainly a lot easier to calculate and considering these lists are being calculated on this website anyway, I really don't see the point.

By the way, I like the idea of hearing an album and saying "what sounds like this", then finding an album a lot like it and enjoying it a little bit more, but if you were to do the inception of a genre, you'd be going back for ages to be fair, no artist has ever created music with no influence, and the pure root of one genre would date back too far for anyone to actually care.

I support the idea, I think it's an interesting study, don't support the reasoning for doing it.
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undefined

It's a great idea, and coincidentally a few days ago I started work on a chart illustrating the history and evolution of electronic music. I could turn it into a group project if anyone would want to help, or just get suggestions for things to add after my draft is finished

NickVolos
Segnahc Reve4

Gender: Male
Location: Land of the Argonauts, Centaurs and other such creatures

creator wrote:

I often see genre specific charts (e.g. best indie rock albums) on other blogs or websites, but I don't think I've ever seen a chart that mapped out the inception of a genre (e.g. the most important albums to indie rock). I think it would be interesting to put together some charts of this type so that other users can appreciate the development of a genre and potentially find a new genre to explore by tracing back one of their favorite genres.

Let me know what you think or if you'd be interested in contributing to a genre. Very Happy

Sounds like a good idea, it would be something good to have around here, although not sure about contributing myself. Usually albums or artists contributing to the inception of a genre qualify as "proto" (meaning first), such proto-punk, proto-power pop, proto-post punk and so on. Many Krautrock albums could easily qualify as proto-post punk, while many artists of the mid-70's NY rock scene qualify as proto-punk. Many such albums per genre have already been identified by third part sites (allmusic for instance).

creator

Age: 36
Location: chicago

Mod wrote:

I support the idea, I think it's an interesting study, don't support the reasoning for doing it.

I agree that it would be quite cumbersome to collect the influences on a broad label such as contemporary folk, but if we consider a subset of contemporary folk, such as anti-folk or indie folk, we should be able to select albums that were integral to the defining bands of that genre. How far back we trace a genre is debatable and I would leave it to the discretion of the group. Perhaps an important question to ask is, at what point does the influence of an earlier artist lose relevance to the genre? I can trace indie rock to The Velvet Underground, but I can also trace The Velvet Underground back to Scott Joplin. While Scott Joplin's influence on music should not be undermined, I'm not convinced that prominent indie rock artists were drawing inspiration from his music.

Despite who (if anyone) will benefit from the charts, I feel that it would be an interesting project. I'm open to suggestions.

dividesbyzero wrote:

It's a great idea, and coincidentally a few days ago I started work on a chart illustrating the history and evolution of electronic music. I could turn it into a group project if anyone would want to help, or just get suggestions for things to add after my draft is finished

I wish I could contribute, but my experience with electronic music is nil. I'd love to see the chart when you're done, though!

NickVolos wrote:

Sounds like a good idea, it would be something good to have around here, although not sure about contributing myself. Usually albums or artists contributing to the inception of a genre qualify as "proto" (meaning first), such proto-punk, proto-power pop, proto-post punk and so on. Many Krautrock albums could easily qualify as proto-post punk, while many artists of the mid-70's NY rock scene qualify as proto-punk. Many such albums per genre have already been identified by third part sites (allmusic for instance).

Yeah, the "proto-" genres sound like a great starting point! I'm going to check out allmusic because I've never heard of it before, thanks!