Chris Nash wrote:
Take things back far enough and surely the 'godfather' of modern rock music was Mozart. He was the rebellious 'bad boy' of his time, broke with convention and played with the rules of scale, rhythm and harmony.
Yes, but modern pop and or rock doesn't does it, and the further back you go in the history of popular music, which is probably the 30's (ish), the less mould-breaking it becomes. Most of it is basic cycle of fifths, dominant resolution, and pentatonic, melodic minor, and mixoliydian melodies. Rocket science it aint.
However I suppose you could equate what Mozart did with melody, rhythm and harmony, to what modern music does with sounds. Mozart shocked by using notes in a different way, modern music uses distortion pedals and redlined amps, synths and effects to inflict the same stunning blow to the senses.
Fuckin hate 90% of his tunes too, most of em are like supermarket musak. Give me Gustav Holst any day.
Went to a gig in the symphony hall on the lakefront in Chicago...the program....Mozart chamber music, Schnitka, Messien, stockhausen, Mozart orchestral stuff. OMG it was torture sitting through that. We were out the front smoking after the first Mozart and the first "wrong" compositions, talking to this ancient American lady who said "it's like a sandwich, they've stuck the most exquisite filling in between bread that I really don't like, in fact it's like they made the bread from crap". What a nice lady.
Chicago symphony orchestra BTW...quite a band lemme tell you especially with about 90 of them on stage to accomodate all the weird instruments used in The Planets.