Whose Tube? Black Rock Rocks Black
rock songs black people love
Friday, November 16, 2007
VeTalle Fusilier
Recently someone wrote a blog post on “ The top ten rock songs black people love as a companion piece for rap songs white people like on catsandbeer.com. And he’s right, while many of us don’t admit it, we rock out, given the chance. Truth be told, many of the songs he listed can’t really be called “rock” and there were a couple he missed. If we back it up, think we have to add these:
Kashmir, Led Zepplin
The bridge is the bomb, and the song contains the grandfather of ominous great guitar riffs. I mean. C’mon P. Diddy sampled this for Godzilla. Can’t get bigger than Godzilla. And I learned Herman Hesse was a great author not in literature class, but from John Kay, listening to his band, Steppenwolf do Magic Carpet Ride
And when I think back to my infancy, it seems to me before Joe Walsh was wowing everyone in the Eagles, I remember my neighbor Adrian and his band playing James Gang’s Funk 49
note for note at the junior high school talent show, and winning over the other band and their percussive version of Santana’s Evil Ways. Okay…so that was my band.
And the Police and the B-52’s, Clash, Devo and Talking Heads all crept into our psyche, even if they were the new wave. But was it black minds rocking or those bands rocking black style that captured our ears? Same as it ever was.
Either way, no mention would be complete without giving props to those bands who continue to carry the black rock torch. Which has to start with the baddest rock band on the planet, Living Colour. Vernon Reid was always a guitar hero, beginning in the days when he would look heavenward while playing in Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society and Corey Glover has one the best rock voices in the known world. But the drummer Wil Calhoun has evolved into beats extraordinaire and Dr. Doug Wimbush finally made everyone forget that they didn’t get Meshell Ndegeocello to play bass when they could have.
If Living Colour are The Beatles, 24-7 Spyz are the Rolling Stones, and will be rocking out in their 70’s. After all, what is a better name for a black rock guitarist than the Spyz’s Jimi Hazel (Hendrix and Maggot Brain’s Eddie Hazel, if you didn’t know).
Speaking of baddest band on the planet, the highest of the most high are the space children, Funkadelic. When everyone else looked away, they still kept the foot on the rock. Even today, their show is church and reunion for all funkateers, regardless of color, age, or gender. And Prince, that’s a story in itself.
In solemn respect, we all know the Bad Brains would have been the baddest rock band on the planet, but they couldn’t stay together long enough for the uninitiated to figure it out. Almighty watches I Against I with a pained heart, knowing that all the little black children can’t see them do what they do.
Even as black rockers mimicked their white counterparts by feuding and breaking up faster than anyone could find and sign them, this music could always be heard. Thankfully, in the last years of the 20th century, you could hear its influence in pop, hip hop, and hear it uncut, through the Black Rock Coalition with its home town New York bands, Eye and I, JJ Jumpers, Harlem Yacht Club, Sophia’s Toy (baby, where are you?). Not that the whole country didn’t have its presence, from Follow for Now and the Good Guys down South, to Body Count and Fishbone in the West, and Kings X with dogman, Doug Pinnock.
And England never lost the flava, giving us Tricky and Skunk Anansie’s Skin.
Today, New York is still the fertile ground for black rock, presented by afropunk with torch bearers Shrine for the Black Madonna, Game Rebellion, and Apollo Heights leading the never ending line of hard music purveyors of African descent. And there is the new, being handled so well by Grammy winner and the heir to the throne, Van Hunt. Watch for this kid, he is Neo.
VeTalle Fusilier is a producer and writer based in Washington, DC. It's pronounced VEE-tal few-suh-LEER.
Photo Credit: Shrine for the Black Madonna performing live. Tyrone Brown Osborne.