It might seem a bit odd to put dead rock musicians on the same list as old choral pieces but that is exactly what I am doing today. At Zeenium they are pushing a list of The 10 Most Tragic Deaths in Rock and Roll History. I agree that these are ten tragic deaths but I am not sure I would have put Bob Marley and Patsy Cline on the list for the simple fact that rock music wasn’t their genre and their influence on the style was minimal. They are certainly important musicians don’t get me wrong, but I just don’t think they belong in the rock category. There are any number of people you could have put there that would have fit the bill.
Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens both had great influence on the style and the way the genre was thought by a diverse group of people. Not as iconic a Janis Joplin Momma Cass Elliot certainly had potential to be a great in the folk rock revival that was to hit a few in the later 1970’s. For that matter so Jim Croce and Harry Chapin both had careers cut too short. Back to the rock scene though We can include Keith Moon of The Who, incidentally he died in the same flat that Momma Cass did, just four years after her. We also have Brian Jones a founding member of the Rolling Stones whose sound was just as important to the band as the Keith Richards sound. Also noted stars such as John Bonham, Bon Scott, and Stevie Ray Vaughn are absent. If we wanted to add a more modern musician left off the list who had potential written all over them we could include Shannon Hoon.
As for why I include the choral works in this list post I do it for one reason, to tell you the more things change the more they stay the same. Twenty Great Choral Works Before 1750 has quite a few youtube videos of modern performances of the choral works, and is interesting if you are eclectic enough to appreciate that sort of music. Back to the point though, this is work that doesn’t get enough attention for what it is or what it could be, a lot of the time these pieces were considered cutting edge or often over the edge in the time they were produced just as many of the musicians on the other list are and were in their day. These pieces are also considered horrid screeching noise by a lot of people who think the same thing of most songs done by any of the other mentioned musicians in this post.
