Every Song: The Robot Beat (We're Back)

[NathanJN]

"The Robot Beat (We're Back)" is the sixth song on the Robot Rock album.

Here's some possible topics for discussion:
1. Favorite Line
2. Least Favorite Line
3. Musical Quality
4. Images the Song Brings to Mind
5. Overall Rating (Using the entire body of JE music as a means of comparison . . . not just the album the song appears on.)



Lyrics:

The Robot Beat (We’re Back)

synthesizers play
and the mockers will be
through pretending
we’re back from the grave
we’ve been cut up spit out
we’re back swinging
we’re back with the…

robot beat
we’ve been here from
the start
with the robot beat
we are the sound of
tomorrow

punk boys make the claim
“this is not my style” is
what they all say
rock rules state the same
(we don’t care)
turn the tape machine
up to eleven
we’re back with the…

hey boy you’re to blame
the detractors are the
typical ones
we are here to stay
we’re the bold the saved
we are the christians
we’re back with the
robot beat

WE ARE THE SOUND OF TOMORROW

[NathanJN]

I'll comment more later . . . but I love how "we are the sound of tomorrow" is all in caps in the official lyrics on the website:

WE ARE THE SOUND OF TOMORROW !!!!!!!!

[xoxos]

i've been fortunate enough to avoid the "popular music" for a few years now. i was refamiliarised via a tour through airports and other public places 2009/2010.

it seemed to me that most of the music i was hearing, be it alt rock (was it smashing pumpkins that established the ~'brainy ego driven lean guitar driven sound' that seems to predominate alt rock now..) or hiphop or even dance (that monarch girl who did E.T., can't think of her name), almost all the tracks seemed to have real guitar, real bass, and real drums, in all cases played robotically to be indistinguishable from drum machines to the undiscerning ear.

"fooled ya! it's not really a machine! we're sneaking rock back in!"

no, wait. before i go on, you think about that.. think about it until you agree that, while not absolutely ubiquitous, the trend of real instruments being used in popular format has increased significantly since say a decade ago. because you know what i'm going to say next.

rock and roll is an undead, artificially/economically perpetuated mode of expression. when electric guitars were first available, they were novel and exciting to young people hoping for a greater future.. something beyond the life they were given in the present. something beyond social security cards and lifeless, overseasoned and sweetened food wrapped in plastic.

things got pretty out of hand in the nineties. a lot of people like ronnie were able to make contemporary sounding music for only a few thousand dollars. people were starting to get used to sampling, and inevitably people would soon tire of whatever technological advances would be made via software. but in the nineties, there were a lot of dedicated people who were able to generate interest in their own music.

now Old Man Rock.. he got pretty miffed by this.

for one thing, Rock doesn't like to think he's an old man. you probably know him.. he's in his sixties now, and he *still* thinks he (or she) is a teenager. he drinks too much, and when he gets a mind to do it, he'll listen to those same songs over again like prerecorded media is some form of heaven. he watches t.v. like it's going out of style too.

Rock can be an okay guy to get along with, but Rock can lose his temper, and do stupid things now and then that would make you wonder how they can even live like that.

the Deal is that Rock has (forgive me for my clumsy use of a christian analogy) made a deal with the devil. if you continue to cling to the things of your youth, i'll make you feel young forever. now go binge drink. and stare at the magic box for six hours every night.

so Rock does the devils work. many people don't realise this because Rock is Everywhere, and everything they have ever known. especially americans don't know a world without popular records, suburbs and the same exact food everywhere they go like it's a god given right.

Rock certainly does work in the music industry, and the reason why those records are like that is because that's the way Rock likes them. guitar, bass and drums were good enough for the kids back then, they're good enough for the kids today. and that's what you're going to get. we'll tolerate your 100% electronic weirdos because we'll get them by the time they're twenty six anyway.

don't try and change anything visceral about the expression of music preteens hear. you can add a few synthesizers but we're keeping the "you need three guys, three notes and three minutes" thing.

the good news is that Rock is of course living in a fantasy world and growing increasingly out of touch with any world anyone else lives in, and is getting older, despite his immense work in pharmaceuticals.

yes, Rock will still try and pull a fast one on you. yes, Rock still owns the entire industry. every industry. yes, Rock has many young people who have bought into Rock's deal.

but never forget that Rock shagged himself from the beginning, and in the long run, that's not a good way to go about it.


appreciative of diversity and, whatever,

come on then if you think you're hard enough

[WhiteSongBoy]

I hate rock. The generic rock. The radio rock. I went to a dance last night, and all the music was pretty crappy. Same stuff that's been played for the last 5-6 years I have paid attention. Nothing ever changes.

I hate people.

[NathanJN]

So I'm curious of all your impressions of Ronnie self-identifying JE as "Rock" in "We are Rock" as featured in the White Song Book and the Art and Craft of Popular Music?

[Nikmis]

He is the worst person to ask, unless we are talking about the meaning of lyrics

[xoxos]

you're curious? about what i think? well.. lol

one of the them there things aobut ppl who ask questions here often is they seem utterly out of touch with the actual use of symbols (and language). the same sound can have different meanings. the same meaning can be its antithesis in context. artistry gives itself the freedom to be able to say things that have more than one meaning. that's so elementary.

to a new waver rock is oppression. to a hippy it's liberation. to someone who can move amongst hippy and new wave thoughts, it's about context.. and context, or a real instance of "meaning" is a real thing, unlike symbols of meanings, which is an abstraction. oppression is oppression, not a stick figure representation of oppression.

like when some strange person asks you, "do you think there is more power in mjolnir or in the word mjolnir?" lol (thanks danny) one is exasperated by the complete irrelavence/absurdity of the enquiry. this is how i feel when people are confused by artistry in ronnie's songs.

we're rock together, we're rock forever.. certainly it suggests rock as a planet. but maybe we should gang up and beat up ronnie in the bathroom for confusing us with using one word in different places.

[Jono]

"what all have you done with your guitar guitar bass and drum?"
(Anna Ranger)

[seedsower]

Probabaly the most in-your-face Joy E gets! I think I really connected to this song because my old band always seemed like the "odd man out" when we first started.
How much more awkward must it have been at times for Ronnie! He weathered thru the grunge scene, the punk scene, the ska scene, and the screamo scene.
When I first heard this one, it was an automatic hit with me.

[benjamin]

with the ROBOT BEAT!!!

[Dr. M]

Ok so most of xoxos' post about rock was lost on me, I feel like most of what you hear on the Billboard top 10 has its roots in hip hop and/or eighties electronic pop, not rock. Most of it is that bland pop-dance-hip-hop crossover garbage, which has nothing to do with rock at all. In fact, what I wanted to point out was that in 1997 Ronnie sang "we are the sound of tomorrow", and to varying degrees I think this was quite prophetic, as sequencers and synthesizers have completely and utterly dominated the pop charts for the last couple years. Of course you still have your Tailor Swifts and other artists making their own awful bland rock/country/pop concoctions, but the joke is that most of those have completely sequenced beats too. Or, drum tracks that have been so doctored up they might as well be sequenced. Ronnie may have been the weird boy with his synthesizers at one point, but who just won a grammy and has millions of youtube views? Skrillex, a weird boy with his synthesizers. A little different, of course... less fairies, more robot fart noises... but you get the idea.


Oh, and as a side note, I'm quite certain when Ronnie sang "We Are Rock" he meant rock and roll at least as much as he may have meant rock as in terra firma. Expressions such as "let's rock" can just mean "hell yeah let's get up and go", referring to a mindset and not necessarily the music itself.

[xoxos]

since it's a fair bet that you're not going to drop out of your Music Education course anytime soon, it's also a fair bet that you will continue to disagree with me on every and any consideration of music as a cultural phenomenon.

so if you want, you can skip the in regards to xoxos preamble to your own thoughts from here on. unless of course, your thesis is simply disagreement with said individual.

[Dr. M]

I don't think we're on the same page. I'm not arguing that music isn't a cultural phenomenon. And I'm not disagreeing with you for the sake of disagreeing, what would be the point of that?

[xoxos]

no, i think we are on the same page. you're an authoritarian, i'm not, and each of us can be relied upon to faithfully post from these positions. even when we're not in disagreement, you're still happy to make statements emphasising the discrepancy, eg. that we are not on the same page, or i am the one whose statements you find incomprehensible.

instead of issuing these periodic public announcements that citizens are having difficulty understanding my posts or finding concurrence with me, you could refrain from mentioning me altogether if it's not pertinent to the discussion, and that way we can avoid the inevitable disagreement between our paradigms.

you might see no issue with posting once per month that you have found no meaning in what i write, but i don't appreciate it, and i'm asking you to refrain from doing so.

[Dr. M]

I think you're accusing me unfairly. I didn't say "nobody understands you", I said that I didn't understand, which is simply a statement of fact, not an insult. There wasn't any malice intended. My intention was actually just to get you to explain your point a little more, to help me understand what you were saying. I was expecting a response like "radio stations here are obviously very different from the ones where you live" or something like that. I wanted to provoke discussion, not make a "public announcement". Again, what would be the point of that?

I mentioned you because of course it was pertinent to the discussion, I was responding to your post. That was actually my original motive for posting, and then I meandered into something else, as I tend to do.

The fact that we've disagreed in the past I see as simply a matter of chance (since we're both two of the most frequent posters on the board), not a pattern of behavior. But if we are destined to keep disagreeing with each other due to some deep-seated fundamental worldview, then it would probably be more conducive to the discussion if we'd discuss the actual point of disagreement, not my motives for posting.

But, it seems you got the impression I was attacking you, and for that I apologize. I don't mean to bully or discourage you from posting. In fact, I don't respond to someone's posts unless I find them interesting somehow, and I almost always find yours interesting. I don't always understand or agree with them, but when I read this opinion on music that sounds like the beginning of a doctoral thesis, of course I'll make an effort to follow what it's saying, and I thought the fact that I didn't understand warranted a response.

EDIT: Rereading my original post, it does sound a little dismissive and rude, so I apologize for the poor wording, it must have been the mood I was in.

[xoxos]

EDIT: Rereading my original post, it does sound a little dismissive and rude, so I apologize for the poor wording, it must have been the mood I was in.

it's because you're an authoritarian, and you are accustomed to a culture where things are either correct or aren't, which authorises you to grace the public with exhibitions of your judgements.

as i say, the nature and content of our posts are both highly predictable in this regard and therefore it is entirely unnecessary for either of us to mention our reaction to the others perspective.


but if you want something to chew on, consider the amount of time i put into making posts expressing antiauthoritarian thought. i am hoping you'll pick up on it, and stop thinking it is Haute to come here or anywhere and grace others with opinions about what is liked or not liked, what is good and not good. it's not the matter of your opinion, it is the matter of your mode of being right or wrong, valuing or discarding, having these back and white regions in your thought, or more importantly, the region that divides them.

how different life would be if people weren't so willing to dispense praise or condemnation, and if you were more capable of latching onto concepts beyond rightness and wrongness.

well, keep at it, it will get you through school and give you a nice comfy place dispensing sensibility for others.

[david]

it's because you're an authoritarian, and you are accustomed to a culture where things are either correct or aren't, which authorises you to grace the public with exhibitions of your judgements.

err...

nice example?

[Dr. M]

My thoughts can be summed up thusly:

I DISAGREE.