What Was “The Whitest Music Ever?” ELP or the Ramones?

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> … As a breed, the proggers were hook-averse, earworm-allergic; they disdained the tune, which is the infinitely precious sound of the universe rhyming with one’s own brain. What’s more, they showed no reverence before the sacred mystery of repetition …

Presumably, prog rock fans tended to have more musical intelligence and thus got bored faster. Punk rock fans tend to have more verbal than musical intelligence. Punk is musically repetitive but fast, so it appeals to people who aren’t that good at music, but whose brains are set to a higher megahertz rating, which includes many critics.

> … And then, like justice, came the Ramones.
Actually, “the whitest music ever” of the later 20th Century was punk rock. Johnny Ramone explained his style as “pure, white rock ‘n’ roll, with no blues influence.”

Johnny came up with a sort of ideological explanation for the Ramones’ linear, utterly unfunky style: the blues had dominated electric guitar music for so long that it was getting boring, so it was time for white people to come up with their own form of rock stripped of black influence. As The Clash’s first single, the extremely Ramonesish “White Riot,” explained: “I want a riot of me own.”

Strikingly, Johnny’s ideology of stylistic racial separatism proved hugely influential and remains relatively dominant even today. It fit in well with black grievances over whites “stealing” their stylistic innovations. Very few blacks have ever accused the Ramones of “cultural appropriation.”

P.S., If Johnny Ramone were alive today, he’d be Trump’s Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.