what the funk?!?
lamest post title.before we go anywhere else, insane props to the sox. yeah, poorly pitched game (both sides), and irksome defensive gaffes (uh, manny? wake the fuck up, please!), but this shit continues to be surreal. sox up in the HUNDREDTH WORLD SERIES 1-0?!? jeepers.
anyways, a drunken observation on funk guitar players. tom morello, john frusciante and andy gill earn the highest marks in my admittedly nascent and limited knowledge of funk music. why? because funk music is the disruption of the rhythmic expectation rooted so deeply in rock and pop music (look no farther than the eternally bleeding heart of blues to know why), and these players push against this bruised and stubborn touchstone in the most rigorous way. it's not just that they can nail those upbeats with the stolid rigidity of a cracked-out drill sergeant, but that they fuck with the tone, the melody, the essence, the shades of feeling, the color. juxtaposition really sets us up musically to be open to the sounds that jump out, and the effect is at its most potent when it hits where the head and the feet connect. it's a laughably obvious point, but in music, melody and rhythm combine to create meaning, and thus the harmonic attack is just as important to the funk player. there's a great deal to be said of working AGAINST expected tones and creating harmonic tension (i think in a fundamentally technical sense, frusciante and gill a greater handle with regard to melody and have a better facility with jazzy blue notes, but morello has an overwhelming edge in the funky monster-rock riff department), and in a sense, it's the protest that matters, protest on every musical front distilled into one. the best funk? well, it embodies punk's spirit, metal's dark anger, dance's hip-shaking controverting of propriety -- pieces of the same puzzle that, when they all actually come together, can create magic.
posted by jomilkman @ 11:10 PM
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