So I finally got around to watching "The Seven Ages of Rock", which I taped over a month ago on VH1 (originally aired 12/16/07). It ended up being pretty decent overall, though not as good as I had hoped.

First and foremost the biggest problem I had with it is it kept feeling like maybe they should have had "The Eight Ages of Rock" instead of just seven. It started out slap-bang in 1965 and went into great detail about "The Who" and their influences from American Blues music but only mentioned "The Beatles" in passing (nothing really in-depth) and not Elvis Presley at all nor a handful of other "pre British Invasion" American rock pioneers which I could probably throw out off the top of my head, but won't simply to keep the article concise and to the point. Now the films were produced by the BBC, so it wasn't that much of a surprise that it kept swinging over into Brit Rock territory except when it was absolutely necessary to mention American rock, but still how do you have a concise history of Rock & Roll without "The Beatles" except as a sort of footnote? There was definitely at least a whole episode of history they left out, maybe just in the interest of fitting it into a week long schedule, I don't know... but disappointing nonetheless. Despite my initial shock of having a history without the "history, I trudged on intent on at the very least being visually and auditorily stimulated.

The first episode: The Birth of Rock concentrated almost solely on "The Who" with some emphasis on "The Rolling Stones", "Bob Dylan", "Cream", "The Kinks", and closing out with a mention of Jimi Hendrix. I actually thought this was one of the better episodes of the bunch, they had some decent samples of the Blues which directly influenced Pete Townshend including "Howlin' Wolf" and "John Lee Hooker" interspersed strategically to emphasize the fact that this is where the sound came from. As with all seven episodes, there was lots of pretty archive footage, and brilliant interviews.

The second episode: "White Light, White Heat" was focused towards early 70's Art Rock/Glam Rock. This was possibly my favorite episode, maybe because I was a little biased, but because I feel like Glam Rock is often ignored in the annuls of Rock history simply on the basis that it's time period was so short and sweet (appx. 1969-1973). It featured first and foremost a mention of two bands which people often forget skirted this era of rock at all, mainly because of their later accomplishments: "Pink Floyd" (Syd Barrett era) and "Genesis" (Peter Gabriel era). This episode also had the brilliance to recognize the contributions of both "The Velvet Underground" and "Roxy Music" instead of just pretending like David Bowie came up with the entire movement as I have seen happen countless times. All in this entire episode almost made up for the omission of the years 1960-1964, almost... but not quite.

The third episode: "Blank Generation" was all about punk, or was it? This was by far my least favorite of all the episodes. The best explanation I can provide is that due to the formulaic way in which they filmed this series, the episode in fact quite by accident turned out to be so very not Punk. They were trying to explain the rebellious spirit that ignited this era, but because it was a documentary it was as if the entire point they were trying to make was washed away, the only entertainment value at all being provided by Johnny Lydon's interviews. Though I do have to give this episode kudos for at least admitting that Sid Vicious had no talent and was only there to "look punk", I'm not sure but that was possibly a first for a Rockumentary. Other bands covered, "The Ramones", Patti Smith, and "The Clash".

The fourth episode: "Never Say Die" was about Heavy Metal. Similar to the Punk episode, I felt as if the spirit of this genre was being quelled by the attempt to explain it. The beauty of some music is its ability to make you "feel" something, and is often lost when trying to put actual words to it. Despite this fact they did alright with it. Citing such bands as "Black Sabbath", "Judas Priest", "Iron Maiden", and oddly enough "Motley Crue" (did I miss a memo somewhere?) the main focus ended up being mostly on "Metallica" and their struggle to keep up with the changing face of music. Ironically while this episode talks about their "Black Album" as if it is some great achievement I kept feeling like somewhere there had to be a group of people like myself who in fact saw it as their "fall from grace", but alas if they do exist, the documentary didn't bother to mention it. Maybe Brits don't understand that "selling out" is not a positive thing?

The fifth episode: "We Are the Champions" focuses on stadium rock, with particular emphasis on "Queen" (as evidenced by the title) and Bruce Springsteen... which to me seems a bit like trying to vote for the Democrats and the Republicans at the same time.. yet somehow they managed to explain it in a way that made sense. I think mainly because they focused on the fact of the first Stadium bands kind of happening upon it by accident that it made it easier to group these two together. "Led Zeppelin" and "Kiss" also both feature in this episode as well as "The Police" and "U2". There was even a small segment regarding "Live Aid" and how these bands kind of realized that they had an enormous opportunity to touch and shape peoples opinions on social issues simply due to the sheer sizes of the audiences they were pulling in. All in all for a fringe of rock that I'm a bit ambivalent towards (and not because I don't like these bands, because I do: but more because of a point I will be making in my comments regarding episode seven) they managed to make it a pretty compelling story.

The sixth episode: "Left of the Dial" is surprisingly solely about American Alternative Rock. Surprising only because up until this point, the series was doing their best to stay away from our neighborhood as much as humanly possible (without compromising the validity of their show). The focus of this episode lay mainly in one Kurt Cobain (it only mentions the other members of Nirvana, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic as if it begrudgingly had to) and "R.E.M.", though it at least bothers to mention "Black Flag", "The Pixies", "Sonic Youth", "Pearl Jam" and "Smashing Pumpkins" in brief spurts. Considering that usually I'm pretty much at a "been there, done that" point in regards to Kurt, only because I get sick of hearing about him as if he was the second coming of Jesus... I actually enjoyed the fact that this episode brought some of his more human qualities into focus. It was a lot easier to identify with his pain and alienation the way they presented him, as a person from a broken home, who struggled economically, and whose final conflict rest in the struggle between the integrity of his music and his own popularity. So all in all, despite the fact that I felt like they could have also gone into more detail in regards to the other bands mentioned (and many I felt were not) it was at least not another "Kurt Cobain is God" "Why?" "Because he just is" story.

The final episode: "What the World is Waiting For" focused on British Indy Rock. It mainly concentrated on Oasis, and in a defining moment an interview with one of its members (I forget which now, but it was not one of the Gallaghers, though it was also definitely amusing listening to Liam swear every other word in his interviews) the whole reason I realized Stadium Rock annoyed me. There was a segment on the famous Knebworth concert in which an estimated 125,000 people attended. The band member in question thought that this concert was in fact a mistake, due to the fact that all he could think of is how somewhere in the very back a mile away was some kid wondering what he spent his money on, as you could no longer see or hear the band, and the video screens put up were unable to keep in sync with the music due to the distances. On top of that this episode had the insight to mention several bands which I truly adored at one point or another, but which for whatever reasons (I guess because they weren't that popular here) we Americans often forget about, mainly "The Stone Roses" and "Suede". "The Smiths", "Pulp", "The Libertines", "Arctic Monkeys" and "Franz Ferdinand" were also covered.

One thing I did notice, production wise that bothered me a lot: often the footage they were using was not linked up to the audio they were using. It was rather like they were using examples of the most "popular" songs by the artists to prove their point about the greatness of the bands, or at the very least make some sort of link-up to people that don't know that much about rock history. It's hard to explain unless you watched it, but basically they would show a clip of the band performing one song, and dub over it with a different song, and it was very obvious too because the lips didn't sync up, kind of like watching a poorly dubbed foreign film. One really strong example I can think of was during the Patti Smith segment, I'm assuming mostly because what she was probably actually saying in the video clip wasn't "television friendly" enough to air.

Overall I found this a bit of a "bare bones" approach to the history of rock. I suppose you could learn something, if you've been living under a rock someplace or if you're currently under the age of say 21 (I still have this longstanding belief that the youth of today doesn't have enough appreciation for where music comes from), but if you're a hardcore enthusiast this is going to leave you with more questions than answers.

For additional information on this series: BBC has a nicely arranged companion website, which provides all the information on everything they left out of the documentary. Kind of wish I had just spent my time surfing over there instead.
In addition VH1 is offering some sample videos for each episode, albeit only a couple that were actually shown in the documentary and more ones that don't relate at all to the time period in question (for example the just posted a bunch of Lou Reed stuff that has very little to do with the Velvet Underground).