5 Comments on “Episode 173: The Butt Rock of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and Today”

1. Rich Aug 23rd 2015 1:20 am #

   When I listened to Jordan talk about what Butt Rock is not it made me wonder about the kind of genre Butt Rock is not. Butt Rock does not do ballads, does not do sentiment, does not do virtuosity.

   Maybe there are not Butt Rock bands and no Butt Rock albums, just Butt Rock songs. The commercial needs of music in the two Butt Rock waves made bands could do more. Labels told bands they would make more money if they had a ballad.

   In my mind, Cheap Trick is who I hear when I think about Butt Rock, but that is not all they did. Maybe Ugly Kid Joe release the only full Butt Rock album.

   PS. I want to see the list of rejected TFT episodes.

   PPS. This album sounds like Jr High to me. That is when it came out and that is the people that loved it Jr High Students.

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   • Mark Lee OTI Staff Aug 25th 2015 6:53 pm #

     “Maybe there are not Butt Rock bands and no Butt Rock albums, just Butt Rock songs.”

     Well, it’s sort of the same with any “genre” of music that’s more well-defined than butt rock, right? KISS is a hard rock band that releases hard rock albums, and the vast majority of its songs are hard rock. But there’s the occasional exception (the power ballad “Beth,” the disco song “I Was Made for Lovin’ You,” etc.).

     You could replace “hard rock” with “butt rock” in the above two sentenced and that would still be accurate, I think.

     Rich, interesting that you point to Cheap Trick as a butt rock band, or at least a band that has a lot of butt rock songs. They weren’t on my mental list of butt rock acts at all; can you point to some examples?

     (We are intensely interested in the topic of butt rock and have A LOT more to say on this subject. Stay tuned…)

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     • Rich Aug 25th 2015 8:03 pm #

       There is something about Cheap Trick Guitar solos that are so messy and so forceful, like the one at the bridge of I Want You To Want Me, that just say Butt Rock, not just Hard Rock.

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       • Mark Lee OTI Staff Aug 27th 2015 12:54 pm #

         Interesting. When I think about Cheap Trick musically, I first think about the “clean” high pitched lead singing voice, not about the “dirty,” messy guitar solos. Which made me realize that my internal working definition of “butt ruck” entails a sort of shouted, gritty vocal delivery.

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         • Rich Aug 27th 2015 1:44 pm #

           I always seen Butt Rock coming out of a Camearo and Hard Rock coming out of a Trans Am