Monday, August 20, 2018

The Man

Somehow none of us had ever seen the movie School of Rock, and when rock band camp came around, it was a must. So much fun!! I love knowing that the kids played all their own instruments, I love how their musicianship is visibly due to their classical training, I love how Jack Black respects their skills while also wanting them to let loose, and I love what he has to say about the nature of rock: that at its heart, it’s about sticking it to The Man.


Aaron and I had a great talk about this. Who is The Man? In the movie, The Man is a woman – the principal of the snobby prep school. That’s a good start. But the man need not even be a person; the man can be a system, like the expectation that the kids will behave and get good grades and play only proper classical music. That’s ultimately what they’re sticking it to. Aaron and I are thinking that maybe this is a key difference between rock music and pop music: rock music is about sticking it to the man, and pop music is about dancing and being in love. Aaron also thinks that rock’s sticking-it-to-the-man shows in the music itself, because it breaks the rules of proper composition and performance: sometimes the singers yell instead of singing beautifully, and sometimes the chords are parallel fifths. Great stuff.

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