Style
Roll the Bones marks further transition from the band's 1980s style to their sound in the 1990s. The roles of the instruments have generally been reversed; guitar is beginning to creep to the front of the song arrangements, while bursts of keyboard and organ are played in the background. "Dreamline" and "Roll the Bones" were popular radio staples of the early 90s, with the former reaching #1 on the Album Rock Tracks chart, while "Where's My Thing?" became the band’s third instrumental and was their second song to be nominated for a Grammy, in 1991, losing to Eric Johnson's "Cliffs of Dover". Coincidentally, Eric Johnson went on to provide support for the Roll the Bones tour in fall of 1991. The musical style of Roll the Bones paved the way for the "alternative" style of 1993’s Counterparts.
In the Roll the Bones tourbook of 1991-1992, drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart, described both the mindset of the lyrics written for not only the title track, but also the album.
| “ | “No matter what kind of song you choose to play, you’re betting your life on it, for good or ill, and what you believe is what you are….No one can ever be sure, in this best of all possible random universes.
That’s why the essence of these songs is: if there’s a chance, you might as well take it. So what if some parts of life are a crap shoot? Get out there and shoot the crap. A random universe doesn’t have to be futile; we can change the odds, load the dice, and roll again….For anyone who hasn’t seen Groucho Marx’s game show “You Bet Your Life,” I mean that no one but Groucho knows the secret word, and one guess is as good as another….Anything can happen. That is called fate.” |
” |
Read more about this topic: Roll The Bones
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it’s a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself—or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind.... You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the calibre of a bullet, teething beads.... One’s style holds one, thankfully, at bay from the enemies of it but not from the stupid crucifixions by those who must willfully misunderstand it.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)