I read that a couple days ago myself and got a big laugh out of it. I've heard that Earl's health (which had been pretty bad for a while, I'm told) is improving.
A melody which consists in large part of minor 2nd intervals is unlikely to grab me. Alternating back and forth over a minor 2nd is likely to really annoy me. Doing it in Roger Waters' voice is likely to make me want to stick icepicks in my ears. Obviously anyone who makes music (even if they're not offering it up to other people) is being self-indulgent; the involvement of others isn't required. But to me, there is such a thing as too much so. It's the difference between doing your thing, and doing it with a puffed up chest and a regal air and an announcement that I Am A Serious Artist And You Are Ignorant If You Don't Appreciate The Tremendous Import Of What I Am Doing. To me, the latter is a real turn-off. YMMV.
That's not what I'm hearing the melody doing, but if you don't like it, you don't. Any artist with something to say about the state of the earth or some part of it is going to FEEL that way because IHO, it isn't about him (and part of it isn't). Any fan of such an artist is going to feel that way. You pretty much just dismissed every human interest or human condition work by an artist, from Marvin Gaye (What's Going On, Mercy, Mercy Me) to Aretha Franklin (Young, Gifted & Black) to Edwin Starr (War) to something by Billy Bragg. But... C'mon, man! Have you actually seen anyone DO that, even in jazz or classical? I contend that these guys just set up their rigs and play like anyone else, and are bombarded with comments about overplaying from guys whose total knowledge of a guitar is three chords and some great dance moves or hairflinging. The snobbery is coming from the other side, where Gene Simmons is considered the greatest bassist of all time and guys like James Jamerson and Anthony Jackson and Mike Porcaro and Willie Weeks and Bob Babbitt are grudgingly awarded honorable mentions only after someone else tells them who these guys are and what recordings they played on. Being better than Wolfgang doesn't make Michael Anthony a great player. I don't know how great a player Michael Anthony is, because I haven't yet heard him do anything that requires a lot of time and effort to perfect. Billy Sheehan's a great player, both as a soloist and as an ensemble player (expressions of talent can happen in all sorts of music), but no one calls him a snob. I haven't even gotten into double bassists because the other side so looks down on jazz that there's not even a context for comparison (but they looooves them some o' that music where people grow ducktails, repaint perfectly good basses in gaudy colors and then stand on them while doing some semblence of playing). I'm not going to call it "reverse snobbery", because it's been going on ever since Sears and Western Auto and Leo Fender flooded the planet with inexpensive solidbody instruments and made everyone a future composer. I think I can say this because my simple/popular music cred is secure- you can see my appreciation for it in the Youtube thread and in little comments all over this site.
FYI, I want to reply to this, but I'm finding it almost impossible with the way BS is broken right now (yet again). I'll come back to this when I can . . .
I hear you. No prob, I'll check back from time to time. I also wanna add Chuck Rainey, Joe Osborn and Oteil Burbridge to that list. Again, I know you didn't intend it this way, but man, "Gee, that looks pretty/makes me wanna dance" isn't the beginning or end to all art. I just have a problem believing that prog rockers (I know I haven't listed any actual ones other than maybe Fripp) or the prog community has done the sort of insulting stuff you're saying they have. Nobody puffs their chests out like those 80s hair band guys used to. And now the chest puffers are diva vocalists who sing about much of nothing. Musicians (as opposed to entertainers) have generally toiled in the background, accepting that their training and mastery of the musical instrument isn't going to get them huge numbers of fans. So when they decide to get together and make their own music for people who like the music they make, there doesn't have to be any chest-pumping or regal air involved. I promise you, these guys are happy just to be able to create. There aren't fifty people on this site who could pick Mike Oldfield out of a police lineup otherwise full of Black guys. Why would he have delusions of grandeur?
Forget Michael Anthony. Peter Hook! Actually all the Joy Division/New Order musicians were great save for that mannequin Gillian tap-tapping away on the synth. Stephen Morris was a human drum machine as evidenced here:
I've heard of Hook, and I'll check out more of his stuff. But I do know he's more associated with upper range riffs (like he's doing here, and it's full of effects as well) that would normally be played by a guitarist while he held down the bottom. It's not easy to place this kind of bassist among even the more note-y accompanists. I'm going to have to politely disagree on the great musicians comment in your post if this is what I can expect from them most of the time. These guys (no, not even the drummer, who IMO sounds less interesting than, say, Larry Mullen) aren't doing anything here that would make most professional musicians take notice, and I'm not a full-timer by any means. It's the overall sound (which is kinda cool- reminds me of Modern English) that's greater than the sum of its parts, like with U2*. I think there's a sound that comes from bands where the players have learned how to play... something... on their own, get together with some other guys and form a band. The end result songs can be great in terms of emotional impact and danceability if you dance a certain way, and they can create memorable moments. The 80s and the grunge era were full of bands like that. *The guys who play with Sting --including Stewart and Andy-- can play with a lot of folks. He is and has always been the least talented musician on stage (and he's a good player), but it's him everyone comes to see. The guys who play with Stevie Wonder can play with pretty much anyone on Earth. The guys who play with Bono wouldn't get a call-up in Nashville most days, because AFAIK their playing is limited to what they learned on their own in the basement as young men. I love all three bands and sounds.
Adam Clayton errr..."borrowed" Hook's style. Especially on U2's early stuff. Larry Mullen isn't half the drummer that Morris is. Selling a zillion albums makes ppl better.
I don't doubt it. I think I'm maybe not being clear. I didn't say Mullen OR Morris was good. I don't think either of them is, at least in a way that would make me want them in any of my favorite fantasy band lineups. I'm saying they're similar in that they both have that unorthodox, homemade* way with licks and rhythms, so to speak. There's a way a lot of these guys play --and what they play-- that comes from just buying a kit and sitting down behind it and making some noise and hitting different things while their pals fill up the space with distortion and feedback. I call it the Indie style, with no insult intended. It's a completely different way of thinking about drumming than you'd get from a drummer who plays classic rock or R&B or jazz or various forms of Latin. Those styles have "rules" that I can tell up front* these two could not follow on their best days, unless Morris is adept at concealing his talent and training for the purpose of fitting in with the rest of the overall sound. This music doesn't have any "rules"*, and what I'm hearing is two guys who IMO never learned the rules and yet managed to break them in a pleasing way only because everyone else in the band is breaking rules*. But there's a distinct sameness to the rulebreaking, because you can only drag that stuff* so far before the song becomes less musical. * = This is difficult. I feel like I'm still being confusing. Do you play drums? I can explain my thoughts a lot more easily if you do.
This is actually well said IMHO; it resembles similar explanations as to why abstract art is better produced by people who learned composition, anatomy, etc. The critic is not necessarily dismissive of more amateur efforts because of the names involved; but rather because, except for the occasional savant, the artists involved aren't able to break the rules in a meaningful way. Indie rock is in many ways a horrible hash of clumsy noise, tolerated only in order to provide an opportunity for the occasional savant to be heard. Thing is though, in rock'n'roll when that savant is heard it can be almost like meeting Jesus...
Well most jazz is never-ending, tuneless tinkering to me because A) i don't like it and B) i'm not a musician who may be able to appreciate it more. Just as in any genre - there's a lot of bad rock, indie, jazz, soul, hip-hop, etc. Not to get all list-y but usually people who listen to a lot of music know a thing or two. In Stylus magazine Morris was ranked in the top 5 of rock drummers behind Bonzo, Moon, Watts & the kraut in Can and ahead of Peart, Stewart Copeland & Dave Grohl.
It's not just for musicians, never has been. And IMO it's rock that took the young listeners away from jazz. The early 60s Village Vanguard patrons weren't old fogeys, you know. And they weren't necessarily players- they just liked the music, same as anyone else. Who's the Kraut in Can? What's Can? Bonham's playing was boisterous and loud and had a sort of R&B sound to his backbeats when other rock drummers were still fighting against funk-ish stuff in their playing. And he played with Led Zeppelin- that's why we know him. Dave Grohl isn't anything special. Copeland is IMO, but the Police's demise left him with no showcase. Neil Peart is a better player with one hand than Moon, Bonham, or Watts could ever dream about and it's not because he plays a lot of notes. Pizza, I'm-a gonna say it plain. Morris isn't impressive. He isn't even Alex Van Halen impressive. He's just got a fanbase that digs the music created by him and his unconventional band. And none of these other guys but Peart and Copeland could carry Terry Bozzio's, Simon Phillips' or Vinnie Colaiuta's stick bag for them. That Stylus omitted the last three says to me they've falsely equated "great music (or in the case of the Stones or The Who, fair to good music)" with "players who have great talent".
I don't agree at all. Let me cite two extreme examples to illustrate. At one end, the work that irritates me the most in this regard (not a musical work at all, but I'm trying to illustrate how I feel): Finnegan's Wake, by James Joyce. The book has several messages; but the very first message of the book is 'what I've written is so important that you need to spend a half-hour to an hour per page deciphering the brand-new invented language in which I've decided to write it, after which you can re-parse it and think about it what it says.' The hubris associated with this is at a level I find difficult to imagine. In contrast (and back to music), I think of the jazz pianist Bill Evans, who created an absolutely amazing body of work, made contributions to jazz harmony I think of as equal to those of Monk, and more than any other single composer or player in jazz showed how utterly gorgeous jazz music can be. He was tremendously serious about his work and it mattered greatly to him; and yet he never, ever, came across as full of himself, never gave the impression either through his music or how he presented it that those who didn't give it their full attention and love it were people who didn't deserve it anyway, etc. To be an artist you have to love what you do, and you have to believe in its significance to you. I don't think you necessarily have to believe that it *must be* significant to everyone else; and I definitely don't think you have to believe that anyone that doesn't perceive its brilliance or importance is wrong or flawed in some way. That said, I've been thinking about this a fair bit in the last couple of days, and there's a fair question to ask myself: even taking the above as a basis, and accepting that such a thing as "overly self-indulgent" exists when it comes to music, what it is about "Kashmir," or ELP's Works, or Peter Brotzmann's Machine Gun, or Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, or any number of rock operas out there, that makes it seem pretentious or condescending to me? And I'm not sure I know (or can articulate in a straightforward fashion) what the answer to that is. And I'm always intrigued when I have strong feelings about/reactions to something, but suck at articulating what's producing that reaction. So I have to think about this.
I think Tommy was something new to rock n roll so "over-indulgent" might not be the right word. The 70s was full of 5 minute drum & keyboard solos. The Ramones cited this as a reason why they got back to early rock's 2-3 minutes & out approach to songwriting. Hell, Elton John & Queen's entire careers might be considered over-indulgent. For a more recent take on over-indulgence check out R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet "rap opera" videos. It's hard to explain how bizarre it is.
I know next to nothing about R. Kelly other than Dave Chappelle doing a skit where he pees all over the place. But this was on IFC and it was just so out there I had to watch.
Did you read Finnegan's Wake or anything afterward by Joyce? I do understand what you're saying about hubris. But- first, I think part of it is that maybe you're too affected by perceiving it, and second, I don't know that anyone can determine for anyone else that a given musician's presentation comes across as hi being "full of himself". It's just never occurred to me to look for that in someone, and I suppose maybe that's why I find it so rarely. Perceiving arrogance in others has rarely caused me to alter my opinion of them when I didn't perceive it to be directed at me or something that I was part of. I'm cool with the prog musicians I know about and the bits and pieces of prog that I'm familiar with, so that probably plays a role. And, as I said earlier in a different way, those guys who boast (thru poor-mouthing) of playing or enjoying only that music that moves the majority of listeners are displaying the hubris of their own tastes. The bolded you've said here that Evans tells me that you've probably encountered or read about the "arrogance of some other musician(s), but you haven't named any specifically. If you do that, I may have more of an understanding of what it is that grabs you in a negative way. As it stands, you've listed only a style or genre (or two) of music where solos that cover more than an eight-measure chorus are part of the game. I'm attracted by that, so it isn't likely that we're going to share an opinion about the people who play these genres. Name some folks that you think ARE full of themselves about their music. I'll be able to respond by saying "I agree", "I disagree", or "I agree, and they're right to be so about this one aspect of their lives". Frankly, I see some who identify arrogance in others as having too little confidence in themselves or achievement in their own lives. I don't know anything about you other than what you type on this site, so that doesn't apply here. But knowing people over years who use descriptive terms like "stuck up" has generally revealed those people to be lacking somewhere themselves and wanting everyone else to lack as much as they do so they can feel comfy. Well, there are flaws and there are flaws. Were I a published composer, yeah, I'd think less of the musical tastes of anyone who didn't like my compositions. It doesn't follow that I'd think less of their ability to, say, judge food or clothing or any other subjective artform. It doesn't follow that I think less of them as people. But someone, somewhere, decided that music that calls for more training was "for the elites". I can't express deeply enough my doubt that the persons or people responsible for successfully putting that message out there were prog rockers or jazzmen. It's a bullshit message. That's the point. I can't accept that for myself. That's probably due in some part to the fact that I love and play a style of music that's been derided as being self-indulgent. I can accept that there will be music that I don't understand right off the bat, but when that happens, I try to decide whether there's merit in my listening further (I almost always decide that there is) and if so, I listen and study and review my studies until I DO understand it. I think you've done a good job explaining your feelings already, and I appreciate the input.
Pizza, I still want to know who the Kraut drummer is. I really have no idea who you're talking about, but would like to.
I don't know that the Ramones could have done differently and been successful. Do any of those guys have enough talent to hold anyone's attention for five minutes individually? I'd like for someone to put a band together with guys from a studio background, tell them to forget everything they've done in the past and see what comes out. You're right about Elton and Queen, and no one ought to be giving them stick about it (not saying you are). Both were great. And Freddie absolutely was self-indulgent, but in such an over-the-top way that it couldn't possibly offend anybody.
I don't know myself. Can were that experimental 70s Krautrock outfit that I know little about. Everything's on youtube if you want to check there. Speaking of German percussionists. In the late 80s i saw Einsturzende Neubauten in NYC. It was part performance art, part concert but was fascinating to watch. They'd "play" on large sheets of metal, use grinders, jackhammers & miked up shopping carts. Those Germans...they're nuts!
I remember in the 80s a PBS documentary on avant garde underground music in the USSR. They featured an ensemble called Popular Mechanics that had a similar make up. It was great, but I can't find any video. The best part was the leader (Sergei Kuriokhin, according to the internet, or Kuryokhin) conducting the ensemble using pretty much every part of his body save his wang. Hmmm. I can find downloads available, but I can't read whatever Asian language is on my screen. http://www.raig.ru/kuriokhin.asp Sergei Kuriokhin was born on June 16, 1954 in Murmansk. In 1971, his family moved to Leningrad. Kuriokhin entered the Musorgsky Music College, and since that time his life turned into a wild quest for new ideas, new forms, and new music. He started his career as a pianist for a few underground rock-bands: POST, THE BIG IRON BELL, and GOLFSTREAM. Then he discovered jazz-music, joined the Anatoly Vapirov’s Quartet/Trio, and for several years was chosen Soviet jazz pianist of the year. Then he got fascinated with modern electronics, and returned to rock-music as a keyboardist and sound-manipulator with AQUARIUM, ALISA, KINO among other local heroes of the scene. In 1984, developing the concept of constant melting variable art-elements, aesthetics, traditions, and cliches to achieve the signs of new-art, he founded his own project known as POPULAR MECHANICS. Through the years, Kuriokhin invited lots of very different artists to participate performances and recording sessions. They came from jazz and folklore ensembles, popular Russian and European rock bands, symphonic orchestras, opera scene, theatre and circus, and just from the street, bringing multiple colors and moods to the show. Sometimes, he gathered at once 300 personages on stage to make a performance! His music could be best described as a sort of spontaneous improvisation with strong elements of avant-garde jazz and rock, though there are quite many works which could easily satisfy tastes of admires of solo-instrumental, chamber, minimalist, or post-industrial music. He also scored for a number of popular movies, theatre spectacles, and documentaries. Sergei Kuriokhin died on July 9, 1996 in St. Petersburg. He still remains one of the most innovative and unpredictable modern Russian composers and performers whose art-heritage still waits to be comprehended and whose influence on modern Russian culture can’t be overestimated.
Okay, listened to Paperhouse and am now listening to Old Grey Whistle Test. Interesting stuff. Drummer's name is Jaki Leibezeit, and while he's got a raw, unpolished sound (and is working himself waaay too hard, with 3-4" between his open hihat cymbals and all that height on his ride and crash), he's still worlds more trained than Mullen or Morris. And you got a keyboard player there as well. Keyboard players generally (like, almost always) have some theory and training behind them. It's not an instrument like guitar where guys find a record or five and take it from there. Sounds like the precursor to Stomp.
I also saw Swans around the same time. Forget death metal. They sounded like the soundtrack the Devil might play while slowly torturing a hapless victim on the rack. And to bring it full circle back to Joy Division, Swans did a great cover of JD's "Love Will Tear Us Apart"