To Tear Down Definitions that Defy Listening, Part One: Glam Rock

In America, there has been a bias toward popular music that reflects "street smarts", "street toughness", and emotionality carried to the manic level. Every sub-genre has its place and mood, but there are whole worlds of music people do not listen to because they have been led to believe that they are somehow "alien" to what is "authentic rock'n'roll". The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is reflective of American narrow-mindedness. Prog(ressive) rock and glam rock are the two most glaring absences in their roster of inductees. Inductees David Bowie and Genesis don't count because they were chosen for their pop contributions to the music business, not for the glam and prog eras of their careers. I have seen definitions for glam and prog, but they really don't entirely get at why I fell in love with various exponents of these forms of popular music -- well before I knew they belonged to these categories (I did not grow up in the eras in which they emerged). Just like any branch of popular music, there are strong and weak artists in both these categories. But these aforementioned areas of music have artists that equal the best of any of the other so-called "real" rock artists. So let me propose some working realistic definitions of these two much misunderstood subgenres, starting with glam rock. Glam is a celebratory kind of music; even when it deals with melancholic subjects, there is an heroic take on the emotions of disappointment or tragedy. Glam makes use of early rock'n'roll performance art, musical tropes and instrumentation (e.g., saxophones and pianos, along with the usual guitars, bass and drums). Glam is typically energetic or at least melodramatic in a delightfully knowing sort of way. Glam has humor, wit and gusto, and often plays the persevering underdog or the mystical social alchemy of androgyny in its musical/theatrical stage personae. It is also keenly sensitive to the Romantic identifications and aspirations of youth. Glam's lyrics are often science fictional, baroquely poetic, and have multiple levels of meaning or delightfully nonsensical meaning. We no longer can experience authentic glam on stage -- the cultural context of its time has come and gone. Yet perhaps its stage presence more than anything else is what turned off the hippie generation (though their younger siblings loved it), and caused its later rejection by the punk generation with its angst-ridden aesthetic (though punk borrowed from glam's rootsiness, just as glam had before, in its turn, borrowed from hippie music to create its unique psychedelic-styled updating of '50s rock music). Glam performance was all about entertaining the crowd, and outrageous costumes were often worn, referencing everything from science fiction, to the Golden Age of Hollywood, to Art Deco expressionistic musical theater. With glam you do not have prolonged guitar or drum solos, but you do have skilled and tight musicianship. Yet glam also addressed itself to real feelings and real social situations (especially adolescent ones), otherwise it would not have been so hugely popular. Glam just had its own way of doing this; instead of stewing indecisively or introspectively in unresolved unhappiness, it sent a clear message to not let anything or anyone get you down, but to stand up for your individual self and find your crowd of like-minded individuals! This individuality of spirit made the t-shirt and jeans uniform of puritan hippiedom NOT de rigeur among its practitioners and fans. In a way, it was a liberating art form to young white people the way its musical contemporary, funk, was to young black people; both these genres said: "life is hard, so let's lighten up and fight back with humor and bravado!" Then of course, there is the elephant in the room: glam was often very accepting and frank about celebrating people with a gay identity in its lyrics and dress, which in machismo-minded, homophobic America was probably the chief reason it was not as big a success as in more cosmopolitan England. Yet glam musicians could be anything from heterosexuals, to bisexuals, to homosexuals; the point was, they saw gender and identity as running in a natural and creative continuum. Glam artists generally recognized for their real musical and lyrical merit were: T. Rex, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople and Slade; others accord some estimation for cross-dressing camp groups like The New York Dolls. There are other famous bands and artists that carried the glam moniker, but they are so superficial that they should be more properly classed as early '70s "bubblegum music".