Music

[Bartender]

This subject is mentioned quite often within this forum, so I though I’d express a few of my opinions. Obviously we all have different tastes (fortunately). I was in the mood for rhythm and blues. I started out with Big Joe Turner and his ballad: After a While. After which I moved on to Fats Domino. There are great similarities between these two gentlemen, especially their ability to carry a tune with ease and a relaxed, carefree sense of power and jovial kind of self-assurance.

 

[Tea]

For some reason I seem to have got out of the habit of listening to music lately. I hardly ever put music on anymore, and when I do it often bugs me so I turn it down. I can't concentrate properly with all that noise going on. Even classical music does that to me these days.

But I did happen to put on a very old recording the other day: a best of, and the band was Cream. Most of it was the predictable stuff, but there are two or three tracks where EC gets to mellow out and play some proper blues. God damn it, that man was a genius! There is something very, very special about the way Clapton plays blues guitar, something indefinable that lifts his playing out of the "very competent but ordinary" category in to the "sheer bliss" class.

You know, I think EC is simply the best blues player that ever lived. But, of course, I never heard Robert Johnson.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm normally the type who comes home, turns a stereo on and does not shut it off until it's time to sleep. Lately I haven't listened to much of my music, though.

I've been listening to some of the music Amy has always liked. I have a bit of a hard time understanding pop vocals, but I'm straining to get through her collection. I don't much care for the music but there is a great deal of insight as to her feelings to be found in some of the lyrics.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

James Last rulez, Bartender, thanx! :wink:

 

[time]

You know, I think EC is simply the best blues player that ever lived. But, of course, I never heard Robert Johnson.

Hmmm, I think that's pushing it. EC is the best EC-style player that ever lived, but there are plenty of others with more blues in their soul.

In electric blues, Hendrix was obviously a standout, but then he excelled at every style he cared to try. Red House is a modern blues classic (which he also wrote).

In my opinion though, the best electric blues player was Roy Buchanan. You can feel the pathos in every note. It's tragic that his work is fading into obscurity. For anyone wanting an introduction, look for his rendition of Hey Joe. It's a knockout.

 

[Tea]

Hendrix and Roy Buchanan. Yes. Wondorful guitarists both. But hardly bluesmen. Unless you want to take a definition of blues that is so wide that it is almost meaningless. Or alternatively, unless Buchanan's later work was rather differenbt to the stuff that I'm familiar with.

I used to love Roy Buchanan's stuff. Thankyou for reminding me of him. I wonder if I still have a recording anywhere? Doubt it.

 

[time]

I really don't think I need to even bother defending Hendrix's status as a blues player. Go and check other people's opinions.

 

[flagreen]

Isn't "Blues" short for "Rhythm and Blues"? I believe that's where R&R has it's roots but I could be wrong. I know I've heard not only Hendrix play what I would call "Blues" but also Slow Hand and even Bill Wyman (SP?). OK so the last two are white. But as I heard The Giver say once, "They're blue eyed and pale but they sure can wail".

 

[Bartender]

James Last rulez, Bartender, thanx! :wink:

I don't know which songs you are listening to, but the albums I prefer are: James Last - Russland Zwischen Tag und Nacht, James Last - Kaept'n James bittet zum Tanz, James Last - Polka Party, and James Last - Sing mit 4. Unfortunately, the last album was only compiled and recorded as an 8-track tape, and has hence been worn out (if only I could find a remastered version on CD). There are other good albums from James Last, such as Fiesta Tropical and Party Power. The music appeals to me because I used to dance to it (polka, waltz, foxtrot).

James Last is a bit old now, and his band doesn't seem to have the same feeling as it once did, but he is still good to listen to.

 

[Bartender]

Isn't "Blues" short for "Rhythm and Blues"? I believe that's where R&R has it's roots but I could be wrong. I know I've heard not only Hendrix play what I would call "Blues" but also Slow Hand and even Bill Wyman (SP?). OK so the last two are white. But as I heard The Giver say once, "They're blue eyed and pale but they sure can wail".

Flagreen, I'm sure you meant R&B. When I saw you mention "wail", I thought of Louis Prima - many of his songs have great rhythm.

 

[time]

Continuing the blues theme, I'd like to recommend the "Mr Lucky" album from John Lee Hooker. It's a collaboration involving Albert Collins, Ry Cooder, Robert Cray, John Hammond, Johnnie Johnson, Booker T Jones, Van Morrison, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana and Johnny Winter.

It's not really a blues album, but it's a lot more accessible than purist blues, and it's hard for JLH to completely abandon his roots. And all those people bring such a spectrum of different colors to each song.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

James Last is a bit old now, and his band doesn't seem to have the same feeling as it once did, but he is still good to listen to.

Don't worry, it's the kind of music I wanna here after a long day of studying maladies...

 

[flagreen]

Isn't "Blues" short for "Rhythm and Blues"? I believe that's where R&R has it's roots but I could be wrong. I know I've heard not only Hendrix play what I would call "Blues" but also Slow Hand and even Bill Wyman (SP?). OK so the last two are white. But as I heard The Giver say once, "They're blue eyed and pale but they sure can wail".

Flagreen, I'm sure you meant R&B. When I saw you mention "wail", I thought of Louis Prima - many of his songs have great rhythm.

Actually I did mean Rock and Roll. But I don't know enough about music aside from what I like and dislike to say so. I'm not a fan of J L Hooker though I like his brand of music in general. I just don't care for his vocals or guitar playing. Not that I can do either. Keith Richards (actually when I said Bill Wyman above I was thinking of Richards) is very talented though as are the rest of the people time mentions. Clapton in particular is an excellent R&B man. Van Morrison is also one of my favorites.

 

[P5-133XL]

I have to admit that I definately have music opinions. I was brought up on Alice Cooper and what, at the time, was considered hard rock. I have gone through periods that I listen solely to classical, jazz, New-age, Techno, POP, and my current kick is, disgustingly, country (specificly female). I find as I get older, the less appeal anything hard and discourdant has to me. I detest hip-hop, loud fighting guitars, and rap.

 

[flagreen]

I used to detest country music when I was young. It has changed so much in the last 4 or 5 years though. I like some of the latest female C&W stars now although I don't listen to it much. And where do they find all these gorgeous women in Country these days? Every time I flip through the channels I'll spot a new as I pass the Country MTV station (or whatever it is) and stop to listen and watch. They sing with heart which I enjoy which I enjoy very much. That seems to missing from Pop these days.

 

[flagreen]

I'm not stuttering that's obviously a typo in the second to last sentence.

 

[James]

I thought your needle had hit a scratch in your record.

 

[time]

... my current kick is, disgustingly, country (specificly female).

That would be Shania, Mark? :wink:

Do you consider Shawn Mullins 'country'?

 

[time]

Hmmm, I hope that last post doesn't come across as cynical, because it's not meant to. I like Shania Twain and Shawn Mullins. That's why I'm asking.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Shania Twain is gorgeous! :drl:

BTW, I thought she was Canadian...

 

[Bartender]

Isn't "Blues" short for "Rhythm and Blues"? I believe that's where R&R has it's roots but I could be wrong. I know I've heard not only Hendrix play what I would call "Blues" but also Slow Hand and even Bill Wyman (SP?). OK so the last two are white. But as I heard The Giver say once, "They're blue eyed and pale but they sure can wail".

Flagreen, I'm sure you meant R&B. When I saw you mention "wail", I thought of Louis Prima - many of his songs have great rhythm.

Actually I did mean Rock and Roll. But I don't know enough about music aside from what I like and dislike to say so. I'm not a fan of J L Hooker though I like his brand of music in general. I just don't care for his vocals or guitar playing. Not that I can do either. Keith Richards (actually when I said Bill Wyman above I was thinking of Richards) is very talented though as are the rest of the people time mentions. Clapton in particular is an excellent R&B man. Van Morrison is also one of my favorites.

You are right Flagreen, Rock & Roll does have its roots in R&B - they just took the rhythm section and ran! Elvis, Bill Haley, Johnny and the Hurricanes – great music from that era.

 

[Corvair]

I really don't think I need to even bother defending Hendrix's status as a blues player. Go and check other people's opinions.

Hendrix was without a doubt GREAT, but you'd be surprised just how much he "borrowed" from other electric guitarists before him. A short list of people Hendrix borrowed ideas / sounds / styles from would be: Robert Johnson, Buddy Guy, Albert King, Son House, Blind Willie McTell -- even Pete Townshend (guitar/amp smashing). What a lot of people miss is that Hendrix was also an excellent record producer.

 

[Corvair]

Isn't "Blues" short for "Rhythm and Blues"?...

uhhhh... NO!

...Keith Richards (actually when I said Bill Wyman above I was thinking of Richards) is very talented though as are the rest of the people time mentions...

Forget Keef. He's certainly good, but the best guitar player the Rolling Stones ever had was Mick Taylor. He was a member of the Rolling Stones from about 1969 ~ 1974.

 

[adriel]

I don't know anything about that rhythm and blues stuff, but if it is recorded well I can stand it. I usually close my eyes and concentrate when I listen to music so that I become part of it.

Currently, I've got these rotating in and out:

Blackalicious - Blazing Arrow
Blümchen
Built to Spill - Perfect From Now On
Chicane - Behind The Sun
Digable Planets - Reachin'
Eva Cassidy - Live At Blues Alley
Maná - Unplugged
My Fair Lady (SACD)

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Chicane - Behind The Sun

Maná - Unplugged

These two are pretty good! :wink:

 

[Corvair]

I don't know anything about that rhythm and blues stuff, but if it is recorded well I can stand it...

I rarely ever listen to blues music and basically never listen to R&B music. It's not that I hate any of these musicforms, it's just that I have little interest in them. I used to follow blues music a bit on and off a fairly long time ago (back in the late '60s), and I've seen a number of bona fide blues legends play live that are no longer with us now, such as Lightnin' Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Albert King.

 

[The Grammar Police]

Keef often used to be regarded as "the best rhythm guitarist in the world". So far as rock and roll goes, I'd find that claim pretty difficult to argue with. But if you are looking for the sort of lead guitar that makes your heart alternately sing and cry, then Mick Taylor was indeed the man.

I saw him live once, in a pickup band that toured here. Members, as I recall, were: John Mayal (sp), Mick Taylor, Mick Fleetwood and Steve McVie (i.e., the Fleetwood and "Mac" from Fleetwood Mac), and one other equally famous player. Was it Stevie Winwood? No. Can't remember.

But it was, alas, a great disappointment. There were five champion musicians, and they didn't put a note out of place. But as a band, they just didn't spark together. It was boring.

It was one of the most dissapointing concerts I have ever been to. But in hindsight I had unrealistic expectations. They were, after all, just a pickup band. And even musicians of their calibre need to play together a while and develop a spirit and a unique direction. I would have been better to go watch five unknown local kids with a dream and a vision of their own, five kids for whom playing a ~300 seat venue was a career-best event, not just a way to pay the rent.

But sometime I put on one of those mid-period Stones albums from the Seventies, close my eyes, and ....

He was the man.

 

[James]

Who'd have thought the Grammar Police would be so musical?

 

[The Grammar Police]

Music and grammar are very similar, I think.

(That is, of course, in my off-duty moments. While on duty I am naturally required not to think, but merely enforce the rules of correct English in as mindless and rigid a manner as possible.)

Do music and grammar not share a very similar underlying structure? A structure of many rules which are only rarely made explicit, or taught in a formal and organised manner. In both music and language the finest artists of any age are (generally speaking) superbly schooled in the rules that govern their chosen medium, are able to follow these rules almost without effort or conscious thought, and able to break them or re-cast them in new and creative ways. Consider Jimi Hendrix on the one hand, Dylan Thomas on the other.

Even if one chooses to restrict oneself to more-or-less complete compliance with the rules and structures as they stand, a true master in either field is not constrained to produce mere repetitious, rule-bound parroting. Consider Buddy Holly on the one hand, Winston Churchill on the other.

The structure of both language and music is remarkably well defined and surprisingly restrictive. From time to time composers and poets seek to lash out in glorious rebellion against the rules, all rules and usually produce a single inspired piece or two before they either lapse into well-deserved obscurity (consider 'most any forgotten radical poet on the one hand) or else erect themselves a new and equally restrictive but different set of rules (consider Schonberg on the other - or Johnny Rotten if you prefer).

I often wonder if the human flair for music is not very closely related to the human gift for language, in both evolutionary and psychological terms. The peculiar and distinctive type of "intuitive reasoning" (if I can coin that term for it) that one uses to construct a complex sentence or to improvise a bass line seem to me very similar.

But excuse me, I think my coffee break is over. Alas for he that has only one red pen, but a million punctuation errors to correct!

 

[time]

This may surprise or even alarm you, but I'm rather impressed with Malcolm Young as a rhythm guitarist. I realize the genre is somewhat limited, but the tightness of his playing and sense of rhythm are probably unsurpassed.

At the end of the day, he is the engine room of AC/DC, a band somewhat renowned for its strong rhythmic style. It's interesting to note that he has always been an accomplished lead guitarist as well, but has usually yielded the spotlight to his little brother Angus.

I went to college with a guy who thought Keef was the greatest guitarist ever. He nearly cried when he discovered his favourite RS leads were by Mick Taylor or Ronnie Wood.

But seriously, Keef is great. His contribution to the album I mentioned is one of my favourite tracks.

However, how many here reckon the Stones owe their fame and fortune to one Brian Jones, deceased?

 

[flagreen]

The best concert I was fortunate enough to attend was the Allman Brothers in Las Cruces N.M. in '71. Duane Allman & Dickie Betts playing guitar together were phenomenal. Best of all they played for hours until they were played out. No time schedual BS.

 

[Tannin]

Time is "rather impressed with Malcolm Young as a rhythm guitarist". Yes, I agree. Also, the guy from the Angels, though I can't remember his name. To me, that's half the secret of lifting a band out of the mediochre catogery: getting a really good sound in the first place, and then letting things build from there. I hesitate to admit this, but it is true: I still get a shiver down my spine when I hear the opening chords to "Take a Long Line".

Showing my age, I guess.

 

[time]

I dunno about that. My daughter was desperately seeking 'study music' a few days ago, and demanded punk or similar. I scratched around and came up with Radio Birdman (self titled) and The Angels - Face to Face.

She liked it a lot. But then The Angels were always before their time. In hindsight, it's hard to believe a band was producing this sort of music circa 1977.

Surely they were the quintessential Oz band, and therefore barely understood anywhere else?

This site came up on Google if anyone's interested.

As ever, excellent taste, Tannin. 8)

 

[Cliptin]

My daughter...

Age?
I'm not surprisd kids who may have never heard music played from the heart go looking for it. Most music today is crap.

 

[Cliptin]

I purchased a Who box set that I've been listening to for the last few days, "Thirty Years of Maximum R&B". 79 songs on 4 CDs. Quite a few of the songs I've never heard before give me the goose bumps.

 

[Tannin]

Ahh, how could I have forgotten Radio Birdman? Well do I remember reading some half-brained gig review in Juke or RAM or one of those rags I tremble to admit I used to consumme assidously as a younger man, and - seeing as I spent every spare penny on records in those days - figuring I'd give this unheard-of Sydney band a try: Radio Birdman, Radios Appear. One of the best $6.95 I've ever spent.

I should still have it somewhere about the place. Maybe. But it motivated me to go looking for The Hand of Law. Didn't find it, but I found this page and relived Murder City Nights ('lived?' 'murder?" - whatever). Alas, it's a poor recording of a poor live performance, perhaps some of the other tracks hosted there are better.

(Note to mods: this, believe it or not, is the very first MP3 I have ever downloaded from the net. Oh, except for some bird calls. It seems to be public enough so I presume it's legal, but if not, please mutilate my URL suitably. I have no idea about this stuff. In general, the music I'm interested in these days has no copyright. Mozart has been deal a long while now.)

ALLRIGHT!!!! I just finished downloading Descent Into The Maelstrom, the one and only studio recording listed on that page. Much more like it. Apparently it's a 1995 digital remaster of the original 1976ish track from Radios Appear. Remaster? Or a different recording? Sounds more like the latter: I could swear the lead guitar is different (and inferior). Also, unless it's my ordinary-quality sound rig that's playing tricks on me, the mix is pox. It seems more spacious, more open, more accessible to the casual ear - and it's lost that vital key to any serious headbanging piece: the driving rhythm guitar that hammers at your brain until it turns to custard and dribbles out your ears.

Idiot! Good God! Do you play a Mozart serenade with a 105-man orchestra? Do you play Bach on electric guitar and Moog synthesiser? Do you try for a nice, clean, professional sound with strings and girl singers in the background when you do a digital remaster of Pretty Vacant? Seems to me like some moron in the booth tried to make the Birdman sound like a 90s band. Still, it's better than nothing.

 

[Tea]

Hey you old farts! Not every young person has had their musical taste destroyed, you know. I might be only seven (or is it three - I forget) but I like Buddy Holly a lot. Also the Beach Boys, Santana, Lynyard Skynard, and I even dragged out some of Tannin's old Dave Warner's From the Suburbs recordings. Sixties and Seventies music rocks!

PS: And my friend Kristi is 21 but she has never heard of any of these crap modern bands. She listens to The Who, the Stones, Bob Dylan, Led Zepplin, all that stuff, She's no dummy.

 

[Tea]

By the way, that Cream recording of Tannin's I mentioned right up near the top of the thread. I happened to play it because it happened to be laying around on top of a pile. A bit later on I happened to wonder what it was doing on top of the pile, and Kristi told me that she had forgotten to put it away after getting it out to make a strictly-legitimate-personal-backup-copy of it.

But then, Kristi never remembers to put anything away. It's lucky Tannin is around, otherwise we would be totally disorganised.

 

[Tannin]

Ahhh. It's about time you stood up for yourself.

 

[The Grammar Police]

You are right, Tannin. There is no doubt: it's a different recording, and an inferior one at that. It sounds to me like a band that is drugged out or shagged out or just pissed off and bored: they are trying to do different things, trying to recapture a feel, but it just doesn't hang together properly. The original recording was crafted - yes even chaos such as the Birdman explore requires supreme craftsmanship to express itself properly; indeed, sometimes I think it requires more paitence and restraint and finesse to portray serious frustration and anger than it does to produce a song about some more gentle topic.

By the way, you split an infinitive in your last post but one. Please pay more attention in future.