american music as metal ‘n’ wood.
Metal and Wood: The Electromatic Bo Diddley Guitar
Crackpot theory #316: Anglo-American popular music in the twentieth century can be divided into two elements: wood and metal. This music has either sounded like wood, earthy, thuddy, full of grain, bark, and veiny leaves. Or it has sounded like metal: clanging, gonging, thundering, absorbing lightning strikes, conducting electrical currents, shocking those who touch the sound. One end of the continuum: Woody Guthrie. The other end: Lou Reed’s Metal Music.
The most interesting pop music has combined wood and metal in varying formulations, splitting the wood with muscle and force; getting the metal to breathe and grow rings.
Sounds fine to me. And it seems embodied in the person of Bob Dylan, yes? – TL