wow, whatta blast from the past, not sure I ever watched the video...no need to be embarrassed...it was a pretty popular tune at the time!!!
Nothing to be ashamed of here-- well conceived and crafted, it is not "Imagine" or "Gimme Shelter" but it ain't bad. i
Huh. Never knew who sang that tune, but I thought they were Black, ngl. Never paid enough attention to it. Was always a cool tune, tho. IMO there's no reason to be embarrassed about anything I repped on the previous pages. I admit to thinking Mike Post is a little predictable. And occasionally lazy. He stole money with Hill Street Blues, straight stole money. Some friends and I used to cue up the CD player and try to pick out the Post influences in Metheny arrangements. Of course, you never knew when you were right, but we all generally agreed. It's interesting to me that you have several varied choices from the same era, but you are embarrassed by them. Does the era embarrass you as a whole? If you grew up with those songs in your listening culture (like I did), they should not be an embarrassment, IMO. If you're too young to have lived them at their most popular, it seems weird that you'd be going out of your way to be embarrassed. These songs were... on mainstream Top 40 radio, being enjoyed by millions of happy listeners. The people who were embarrassed to have liked what they liked _______ years ago didn't like it for the right reasons. If the 10 year-old me liked a song, the 61 year-old me is as likely to like it today as then. and on the occasions where I got caught up in a trend, I generally dropped it while it was fashionable for many others, so I didn't really have time to be embarrassed by any of it. Not even disco embarrasses me. I admit that If I paid more attention to lyrics, I could probably be shamed more easily. I'm very much a blue-collar music populist outside of my jazz and drum corps tastes. I'm proud of my fondness for Wings, Queen, Billy Joel, The Eagles... in part because they were the order of the day when I was in peak listening mode.
Yeah, I am age 62...so the same era, embarrassed is probably not exactly the correct word, I enjoyed these tunes but do think some of these tunes are a bit predictable. The Eagles were ok, but Hotel California got way too much airplay and just looking at the album cover makes me nauseous. Drum corps, eh??? Tell me more...
Sounds like you somehow ended up in classes with the dead enders. Did you have an extracurricular to participate in that might have allowed you to hang with better reared students? This is one of two or three singer fronted songs I care about enough to actually one day look for a singer to play it with in a jazz setting. I wasn't a huge fan overall, but I didn't change the station, and this one tune I'd place ahead of most jazz ballads just on how it hits ME.
So far, the present and future offer nothing worthy of the past. I think the songwriting style of the rock era thru at least the late 70s (verses that resemble stanzas, choruses that repeat to give the listener a message, the direct ties to poetry)... educated culture lost out to punk rock. It took a while, and we got one great DIY band out of it in U2, but the structure just kind of dropped out and everybody went their own little college radio way. Hotel California got exactly the amount of airplay it deserved based on the people who bought the album. Why does the cover make you sick? Drum corps is the highest expression of marching musical talent. If you're on the lookout for unpredictability, I'd keep looking. DCI is precision and perfection. Used to be even better before drills became choreography. I'll start with a drumline warm up, before the other stuff gets involved
Ha, so I saw U2 play SUNY Albany at Springfest in 1983 I think it was and really wondered what the fuss about them was all about...I soon learned more about songwriting and their musicianship, I think that their bass player lives in the next town over from me. Hotel California was just way overplayed and commercial success for me means little, I have yet to see any of the Star Wars and will never watch them. Some of the Eagles stuff is great, I just can not listen to that one album.
Yeah, I'd be embarrassed to like that. I stay away from humor in most music. I do find both comedy and meaning in altering lyrics, tho. Slight tangent: what do you like that doesn't embarrass you? I'm just curious, because we're the same age and probably heard similar stuff growing up.
oh it ranges from...Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Santana, ELP, Yes, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Floyd, Kinks, Bo Diddley, Bill Withers, Jackson Browne, Otis Redding, Bonnie Raitt, Aretha, John Prine, Van Morrison, much of Motown, and yes even classical makes my list...Mahler being among my fave.
Can't hate on any of those! I admit I don't have any knowledge of Raitt or Santana, SRV or the Kinks other than their hits. Meaning I don't have any of their albums. I know no Prine, but heard in the Politics section when he died of COVID early in. Jackson Browne covers my two good song minimum (unless your one hit is REALLY great) with Doctir My Eyes and Running On Empty. I was a huge fan of the Police in HS, got to see them in ATL in undergrad in 1983. My non jazz tastes run fairly close to the mainstream, as I said before, and I kind of miss the days when I could turn on the radio and know I was going to hear something I liked within five minutes or so. Before, you could turn on the radio and you'd hear The Spinners, Elton John, The Commodores, the Eagles, KISS, Chicago, Floyd, Linda Ronstadt and Wings all in the same hour, all on the same station. All these genres getting to people's ears and keeping them open.
Yep, early Chicago is great as was early Elton, the Temptations, Smokey Robinson, the Police were ok but I just got the feeling they chased commercial success too much which kinda turned me off.
I'm truly curious about your cutoff number for pursuit of an audience or an amount of financial compensation that exceeds a limit a band should earn for their work. I don't know which fairly common result of learning to play a musical instrument well turns you off the most, so either definition of "commercial success" could apply here. I know of no way of getting to hear bands that don't want someone, somewhere, to hear them. I already know arena rock is sour grapes to the alt-crowd- half of 'em can't play well enough to get there, and the other half can't write well enough to do it, lol. Their delusions of exclusivity tend to eventually disappear unless said music is being made by trust fund kids who can afford to indulge their hipster tastes.