Anti-Rock: When Musicians Deliberately Break the Rules w/ Ferruccio Quercetti - 367

This week we're tackling the wonderfully niche concept of anti-rock. Or more specifically, we're trying to work out what the hell it actually is, why Google doesn't seem to know either, and how it connects to everything from Frank Zappa taking the piss out of The Beatles to bands who are so talented they deliberately make themselves sound rubbish.

Chris has dragged poor Mark and our resident punk professor Ferro down a rabbit hole that starts with French composers banging bits of concrete in the 1940s and somehow ends up at US Maple, a band that sounds like they're actively trying to annoy you. Along the way we encounter Captain Beefheart's deliberately mental Trout Mask Replica, The Residents being mysterious weirdos in eyeball masks, and Suicide essentially inventing electronic music with what amounts to a homemade fuzz box.

We get properly stuck into the prehistory of experimental music, from Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrète through to the New York art scene of the 1970s. Our main thesis is that anti-rock isn't just noise for the sake of it - it's what happens when genuinely skilled musicians decide to systematically tear apart rock conventions from the inside. Think of it as punk's more cerebral, art school cousin who's read too much Derrida.

This is part one of three. Next week we'll tackle the No Wave explosion in late 70s New York, and part three will finally explain why US Maple exist and why anyone would voluntarily listen to them. We also touch on Glenn Branca's guitar symphonies, Pere Ubu's Cleveland weirdness, and try to work out why some of the most influential experimental music came from artists who could absolutely play it straight if they wanted to. Spoiler: they definitely didn't want to.

Timestamps:

Episode Highlights:

00:00 Introduction and Initial Banter
00:51 Meet the Guest: Ferro (Not Pharaoh)
01:47 Ferro's Musical Journey and PhD in Punk
04:16 What the Hell Is Anti-Rock?
09:37 French Blokes Banging Concrete: The Birth of Musique Concrète
22:01 When Classical Composers Lost Their Minds
27:48 Moondog: The Homeless Viking of Sixth Avenue
28:25 How American Music Got Properly Weird
29:15 Snake Time Rhythms and Native American Influences
30:04 From Experimental Composers to Rock Subversion
30:36 Captain Beefheart's Deliberately Mental Masterpiece
35:05 Red Crayola: Texan Psychedelic Deconstructionists
40:42 The Residents: Eyeball Masks and Musical Terrorism
47:09 Suicide: Two Blokes and a Homemade Fuzz Box
52:06 Pere Ubu: Cleveland's Contribution to Musical Chaos
55:38 Setting Up the No Wave Explosion