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WELL, YES, but
also “no,” because Chuck Berry is the guy who perfected this
formula. As surely as the basic blues chord structure informs all rock
songs, Chuck Berry’s innovations in form point all rock songs in a
direction from which they can deviate only by putting a Sisyphean effort
into it. The best Chuck Berry songs feel lighter than air, and they almost
never seem to take themselves very seriously; when you hear somebody else
give a decent treatment to one of them, its depth and complexity has a way
of coming to the fore and announcing itself all bright and brash-like. These
songs jump out of the speakers and into a room with the shocking force of
a bagpipe reel or the sound of a car skidding across a hundred feet of hot
blacktop.
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