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Post by Kapitan on Jan 12, 2020 15:25:14 GMT
I wanted to highlight this article and we didn't really have any general music, general conversation for/from stories and such. So this thread can be that: if you come across any music-related writing you want to raise for review or discussion, do so!
The idea came from this article from The Critic wherein Dominic Green doesn't just repeat the oft-noted fact that rock and roll is, for all practical purposes, but he nails down the date of the crime, more or less: somewhere between mid-December 1979 and mid-October 1980. Interesting article, anyway, if not something I'd quite agree with.
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Post by jk on Jan 13, 2020 13:06:13 GMT
I wanted to highlight this article and we didn't really have any general music, general conversation for/from stories and such. So this thread can be that: if you come across any music-related writing you want to raise for review or discussion, do so! The idea came from this article from The Critic wherein Dominic Green doesn't just repeat the oft-noted fact that rock and roll is, for all practical purposes, but he nails down the date of the crime, more or less: somewhere between mid-December 1979 and mid-October 1980. Interesting article, anyway, if not something I'd quite agree with.
Interesting, yes, but it's all so gosh darn subjective. I had to laugh at this: "In 1980, while Springsteen toured The River, The Clash had added a Jamaican toaster and DJ, Mikey Dread. Springsteen, who presumably thought a toaster was a device for heating bread, stuck with the rockabilly." Cool idea for a thread, Cap'n--I hope to contribute to it sometime.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jan 14, 2020 0:36:32 GMT
I finally had a chance to read the article. A coupla thoughts...
I never heard before that Bruce Springsteen wrote "Hungry Heart" for the Ramones, and I have a hard time imagining how that version might've sounded.
I think the date(s) the author is using as the "end of rock music" is a little premature. I definitely think rock and roll survived the 80's and the MTV era, and went well into the grunge years of the 90's.
After that, well, it does make you think. On this forum, we occasionally will frustratingly(?) talk about the state of rock and wonder out loud if it is, in fact, dead and never to return - at least not in the form WE would like to hear. This author really dug in his heels and stands behind it. I really don't know, but again, it is starting to make me think more about it.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 14, 2020 16:46:14 GMT
This isn't an article, just a line. But my-oh-my.
In a review of Selena Gomez's new album Rare, Pitchfork's Quinn Moreland writes a few paragraphs about a heroic Gomez becoming an adult over her career--as if maturing into an adult were anything other than normal?--and overcoming some challenges ranging from the totally common (anxiety) to an apparently serious illness (lupus).
OK, fine. Barely music-related, but whatever. Fine.
But then in discussing this new album, Moreland writes, "Gomez's biggest hurdle as a musician has long been her voice."
Reread that sentence.
OK, now understand: as far as I can tell, Gomez's only qualification as a musician is her voice. A quick perusal of her credits includes no playing of instruments. While she has been increasingly credited as a songwriter over her career, one suspects her role is more about ensuring royalties than artistic input: while credited on all 13 songs on her new album, she is joined by teams of three to five other people on every single song.
This isn't someone questioning the singing voice of a lyrical genius, a la Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen. It isn't questioning the singing voice of an instrumental whiz, a la Ry Cooder. It isn't questioning the singing of a talented composer or producer, a la Joanna Newsom or John Simon.
A singer's biggest musical hurdle is her voice.
This is the world in which we live.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 17, 2020 18:35:00 GMT
Relevant to the first article linked in this thread, I saw a YouTube video in which prominent YouTuber (and producer) Rick Beato talks with session musician Tim Pierce (tons of credits from Crowded House to Michael Jackson to Alice Cooper) about the alleged "death of rock and roll in 1979."
The discussion, while only about half an hour, covers a lot of ground: the disrespect to '80s forms of rock leading to the author's premise; how the actual recording process changed over that time; how rock and roll just got enveloped within broader popular music (much as I often argue hip hop and R 'n' B did in the 00s); and a lengthy chat about the Edge.
If you've got a little time, enjoy this in the background.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jan 18, 2020 5:26:55 GMT
Well, I definitely agree with these two guys' perspectives more than the author of the above article.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 18, 2020 13:42:23 GMT
I did, too.
For me, the overwhelming takeaway was that the article's author had a particular sensibility, and that music that suited his taste "died" in 1979. OK, he was into so-called serious, maybe politically activist rock that was trying to change the world. And he had aesthetic tastes that forbade synthesizers, or some of the hallmarks of later years (e.g. drum machines, heavy use of reverb, delay, and other effects). That's fine ... but there is always more to a genre than one person's taste within it!
You can say all the various rock music of the '80s--whether the Smiths, U2, Bon Jovi, or Metallica (which I'd note represent four wildly different styles that were all rock and roll music)--was shit in your opinion, but it was rock and roll. And it sold albums, and it sold tickets, so it sure as hell wasn't dead. And you can even take that conversation into the '90s, where you start getting into Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Hootie & the Blowfish, and Korn. Again, plenty of ground to cover, but it's still in the rock and roll realm. (That's the decade where my inner curmudgeon really came out and I would say the music died ... but perspective of my later years tells me it didn't. It just changed away from my taste.)
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 19, 2020 13:28:44 GMT
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on Jan 19, 2020 14:14:21 GMT
Back in the 1980's, I attended Beach Boys' concerts that barely lasted 75 minutes. I remember because we used to travel pretty far (to The Spectrum in Philadelphia or The Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland) and the travel time was easily longer than the concert itself.
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Post by Kapitan on Jan 19, 2020 21:32:39 GMT
While I have an intuitive sense of it, I can't actually say I can recall having ever been at a too-short show. I read about them, those early rock and roll revues with people playing a couple hits apiece, but I've never felt shortchanged at a show. Sure, I've seen many 1-hour sets, but only in the context of bars and smaller clubs where that's the expectation going in (with that band one among several who also do 45+ minute shows).
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Post by Kapitan on Feb 27, 2020 18:57:07 GMT
Pitchfork ran a story on an interesting development in how popular music is being released: not just in singles, not just in albums, but in EPs or chunks that are eventually compiled as albums. They call it “split release dates” and seem to consider streaming services the primary driver. pitchfork.com/thepitch/breaking-up-albums-into-parts-hayley-williams-moses-sumney-bill-callahan/They say critically acclaimed singer songwriter Bill Callahan, indie singer songwriter Moses Sumney, country duo Maddie and Tae, rapper Denzel Curry, and pop punkster Hayley Williams have all released albums in the form of multiple EPs first. While they didn’t name them, I had noticed something similar in the past couple of years. Rock band the Hold Steady released Thrashing Thru the Passion last year after first releasing over half of its tracks as singles and B-sides over the preceding year. (Not as pre-album singles, mind you: standalone singles.) Indie pop band Belle & Sebastian was the first band I knew of to do it, releasing three EPs from late 2017 to early 2018, How to Solve Our Human Problems Vols. 1-3, before releasing them together as an album of the same name. I admit I kind of like the practice—at least unless I end up having to buy the same batches of songs multiple times just to get a few extra goodies. (That was the drill with the Hold Steady, for example; Belle & Sebastian’s full album was simply the three EPs with nothing added.) Obviously this is a bigger issue for people looking for physical releases. Since most people—not most of us, but most people in general—don’t even buy digital music anymore but only stream, this is obviously not the primary concern for most people. What I like about it is getting a few new songs to enjoy and digest without having to wait a year, two years, three years for a new album. It’s a more immediate satisfaction. It’s also much easier to really absorb three to five songs than it is to really sit with an album of 10-15 songs, especially if you are a pretty regular buyer of new music. I can’t tell you how many times in the past few years I’ve ended up feeling I didn’t even really get to know an album just because I happened to buy it the same day I bought a couple of others, and for whatever reason, I didn’t spend quality time with it right away.
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Post by Kapitan on Mar 30, 2020 17:11:27 GMT
I see from this Washington Post review that there is a new book examining the career of Weird Al Yankovic, "Weird Al: Seriously," by Lily E. Hirsch.
I'm not the biggest or most consistent fan, but I loved him from the mid 80s to early 90s (being in that all-important tween age group when he's so likely to hook a person) and kept a casual eye on what he has done since. I think he's a great one.
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Post by Kapitan on Apr 7, 2020 13:02:36 GMT
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Post by Kapitan on May 2, 2020 15:41:04 GMT
Not an article, a video interview. But we don't need a new thread for every little variant, do we?
I came across this channel because this man, Samuel Andreyev, had interviewed most of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band over the past few years. Well lo and behold, he had also interviewed the always amusing, sometimes believable, rarely humble Van Dyke Parks.
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Post by Sheriff John Stone on May 2, 2020 18:19:22 GMT
Not an article, a video interview. But we don't need a new thread for every little variant, do we?
I came across this channel because this man, Samuel Andreyev, had interviewed most of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band over the past few years. Well lo and behold, he had also interviewed the always amusing, sometimes believable, rarely humble Van Dyke Parks.
Good find! So, I actually sat through the whole interview while doing some other things on the computer. It's hard to believe Van Dyke went 1:40:27 without discussing Brian Wilson and /or SMiLE. And, Sam kept bringing up Orange Crate Art and I thought VDP had to mention Brian then, but he really didn't. In some recent interviews and this one, I've heard Parks allude to being short of funds or something to that effect. Has he ever written a book? The stories he could tell...If he didn't have a career in music, with his delivery and facial expressions, he could've made it as actor, maybe a stage actor.
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