E Street Brat
Footballguy
wikkidpissah said:
okay @wikkidpissah let it fly.
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** Official Jack White Thread ** SNL Offshoot (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter E Street Brat
- Start date
okay @wikkidpissah let it fly.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
okey- dokey
There's a reason we've gone the longest we ever have (25 yrs), since Louis Armstrong translated the blues into popular music, without a significant new wave, variant, expressive explosion to the art. There's a reason that the Top 40 is presently irrelevant when, not long ago, it was the bulletin board for all kinds of music (rock, soul, country, hiphop, showtunes, jazz) and music fans to talk to each other. There is a reason why after almost 50 years dead, Hendryx is more relevant than one of the great musicians (and perhaps the best musicologist) on the planet, Jack White.
It is because there is no longer an Aesthetic Mean, an evolutionary point to the art. The same dissolute force is after virtually every aspect of culture and is already why we are amid the first generation not improving the lot of humanity in the history of generations.
There's a reason we've gone the longest we ever have (25 yrs), since Louis Armstrong translated the blues into popular music, without a significant new wave, variant, expressive explosion to the art. There's a reason that the Top 40 is presently irrelevant when, not long ago, it was the bulletin board for all kinds of music (rock, soul, country, hiphop, showtunes, jazz) and music fans to talk to each other. There is a reason why after almost 50 years dead, Hendryx is more relevant than one of the great musicians (and perhaps the best musicologist) on the planet, Jack White.
It is because there is no longer an Aesthetic Mean, an evolutionary point to the art. The same dissolute force is after virtually every aspect of culture and is already why we are amid the first generation not improving the lot of humanity in the history of generations.
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wikkidpissah
Footballguy
The reason for this is that there is no one keeping an Aesthetic Mean established, current, progressive, tended. Producers and Artist&Repertoire agents used to do the job as part & parcel of both making music profitable & adventurous, and coordinated the flow of artists into and out from the fame process.
I was an A&R guy once. I leveraged being a Mr Fixit for a few rock acts of the early 70s into a mgmt share of a band w 2 Top 5 hits into a position to work with the yet-famous person i most wanted to help make famous. A NDA keeps me from disclosing names, but i can say my attempt to help her ended up with me being sued out of the business. This artist's career (and she was on the Next Joplin short list @ the time) was over within a few years of my kerfuffle and never resurrected and she was as talented as Hendrix (with whom she used to jam in after-hour joints in Greenwich Village).
If i had played ball and not tried to put this artist's amazing talent in front of the American public in the best possible light, i'd be richer than Chet right now. Will be a brokeass pensioner the rest of my life. Yet, i wouldnt change a thing (except be a wiser 22yo than i was @ the time), because that is how important the Aesthetic Mean and it's need for tending is to the people who believe in it.
Questions, comments before i go into the Jack White part of this?
I was an A&R guy once. I leveraged being a Mr Fixit for a few rock acts of the early 70s into a mgmt share of a band w 2 Top 5 hits into a position to work with the yet-famous person i most wanted to help make famous. A NDA keeps me from disclosing names, but i can say my attempt to help her ended up with me being sued out of the business. This artist's career (and she was on the Next Joplin short list @ the time) was over within a few years of my kerfuffle and never resurrected and she was as talented as Hendrix (with whom she used to jam in after-hour joints in Greenwich Village).
If i had played ball and not tried to put this artist's amazing talent in front of the American public in the best possible light, i'd be richer than Chet right now. Will be a brokeass pensioner the rest of my life. Yet, i wouldnt change a thing (except be a wiser 22yo than i was @ the time), because that is how important the Aesthetic Mean and it's need for tending is to the people who believe in it.
Questions, comments before i go into the Jack White part of this?
rockaction
Footballguy
Jack White is awesome?
Seriously, I love his derivative stuff. Even his covers are inspired.
Seriously, I love his derivative stuff. Even his covers are inspired.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
You may be right, just as pharma has gone from a 80-20 ratio of research-to-marketing outlay to the exact opposite, music and most of showbiz has moved from steak to sizzle in their concentration. All i know is the creative end was always respected as the engine of profit and source of renewal backinaday, and armies of support were lended to making everything the most singular and original product possible. The spirits of Bach, Beethoven, Foster, Joplin, Jellyroll, Satchmo, Johnson, Duke, Miles, Hank, Elvis, Berry, Penniman were invested in almost every soul in a position to influence the output of recorded rock material to make them ask, "is there a way to make this like nothing heard before?" when i was in the biz, no matter the financial machinations that went on around it. If there wasn't, it didn't get a chance to play.
Punk - an absolutely necessary response to popular music - paved the way for "this is what i got" to be acceptable and greed did the rest to stop the snowball from rolling & growing and begin the melting process. Since there has been one total revolution, hiphop (which has been feeding on itself like dog with a skin allergy for 20 yrs), and one market correction, grunge, and now the "starmaking machinery behind the popular song" has become the art itself. And woe is us.
Eephus
Footballguy
This has absolutely nothing to do with Jack White but you can make a legitimate case that EDM is both the dominant genre of music today and a relatively recent phenomenon. I don't listen to enough of it to play spot the influence; there are certainly strands back to Eurodisco, Afrika Bambaata, Kraftwerk, Techno, etc. but the new stuff is probably different enough to stand alone.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
rockaction
Footballguy
prosopis
Arizona Chupacabra
I know nothing about this genre. I am amazed at how many folks I know who really like it. I have thought about checking it out but I am not sure I have enough time in life to do that. At some point I think we know what we like and we just stick with it.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
Next to my Mary, the most important woman in my life is my HS sweetheart, the woman who originally invited me out to her NM commune when showbiz 'sploded my innards, the best friend-w-benefits a man has ever had for almost 50 yrs. She is the most sexual person i have ever known - tho she's 65 now, her kids' friends still follow datass when they come over because her life rhythm is still THAT bodacious - and she's a helluva singer. Every person, musicians included, i've ever known who knows her shuts up & swoons every time Elizabeth sings to herself when she's making rellenos or driving or dusting, whatever. It's something to behold - akin to what Stevie Wonder must do when he's being cornrowed, really. She can't write, can't sing onstage without sitting behind her piano and plays terrible clunky piano, plus i'm too close to her, so i never pushed to have her make sumn of it. But i'll take her version of 'Round Midnight over anybody's, and Amy Frikkin Winehouse has sung 'Round Midnight.
Her middle son, 33 next wk, was a skate-or-die dood who went to art school, started making films @ school and, without any hint of musical talent or interest his first 18 yrs, found himself better at soundtracking than shooting films. Within a year, he was an EDM artist (never DJ'd or anything) and has made his entire living that way (his own studio in Brooklyn now & everything) ever since. He's mostly just really good at being rad and stylish and creating moods and fresh sounds. I've asked him several times if he's a musician and he continues to deny he is and just giggles that he has seven albums to his mom's none. "Just 'tude, Uncle Wik". That's going to be my orientation toward EDM until someone changes it.
Her middle son, 33 next wk, was a skate-or-die dood who went to art school, started making films @ school and, without any hint of musical talent or interest his first 18 yrs, found himself better at soundtracking than shooting films. Within a year, he was an EDM artist (never DJ'd or anything) and has made his entire living that way (his own studio in Brooklyn now & everything) ever since. He's mostly just really good at being rad and stylish and creating moods and fresh sounds. I've asked him several times if he's a musician and he continues to deny he is and just giggles that he has seven albums to his mom's none. "Just 'tude, Uncle Wik". That's going to be my orientation toward EDM until someone changes it.
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Ilov80s
Footballguy
I agree and disagree with Wikkid. EDM is clearly the most influential style of recent music and it does seem to be like disco in how disposable it is. However, there are lots of really great electronic artists and forms of electronic music. I don't think it has destroyed music or anything. It's just the music of the times. Classical, jazz, rock, rap...it has all been a progression. Each style has been maxed out and each new form gets maxed out quicker than the one before.
Here is some electronic music that I think is quality music and art:
Dan Deacon:
Feel the Lighting
U.S.A. I-IV [Is a Monster // The Great American Desert // Rail // Manifest]
deadmau5
Raise Your Weapon
Daftpunk
Aerodynamic
Fatboy Slim
Right Here Right Now
@Steve Tasker is likely the guy to talk to about electronic music
Here is some electronic music that I think is quality music and art:
Dan Deacon:
Feel the Lighting
U.S.A. I-IV [Is a Monster // The Great American Desert // Rail // Manifest]
deadmau5
Raise Your Weapon
Daftpunk
Aerodynamic
Fatboy Slim
Right Here Right Now
@Steve Tasker is likely the guy to talk to about electronic music
Eephus
Footballguy
You can't spell EDM without Dance which is part of the problem for me. My increasingly rare chances to cut the rug generally don't happen where EDM is being played.
If I'm just listening to the music, my interest tends to drift. The repetitious patterns of EDM work better on the dance floor than in my headphones. Maybe I'm on the wrong drugs.
If I'm just listening to the music, my interest tends to drift. The repetitious patterns of EDM work better on the dance floor than in my headphones. Maybe I'm on the wrong drugs.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
EDM's not an art, it's a delivery system. I equate it to swing - what makes it attractive is what limits it. No reason art can't be made of it, as Ellington, Strayhorn, Goodman did w swing, but it's essentially what the hard-working person wants to be playing when they're trying to meet someone, then hear the morse code of that experience later on to set their mood in the same vein. Comforting art, confirming art rather than challenging art. Essentially, though, gimme a week with good electronic music personnel and i can deliver you as much one-groove truth & novelty as anything Chainsmokers, Daft Punk or LCD Soundsystem has put out.
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wikkidpissah
Footballguy
OK. As i suspected, nobody's really interested but, before i let this drift to pg 14, let me more-specifically address the difference between Jimi Hendrix & Jack White.
Jimi was a oner, no doubt. Everybody said so from the start. But the Machine didn't know what to do with him while he was backing Curtis Knight and the Isleys and such. He had to leave the country to find complimentary players in a system which wouldnt trap him in black music. He played a lot of clubs & parties, worked the bottom of a lot of major bills, amazed a ton of people focused on what Music's step beyond the blues was going to be and pretty much became a God without a record. Cuz records have hits on em and no one knew how humping feedback out of a Marshall stack integrated with hit music. But Jimi watched while being watched, constructed a monstrously-underrated vocal style from scratch and learned how to create little worlds, both temporal & eternal, in 3-minute chunks. That his most-acclaimed album, Electric Ladyland, came after Are You Experienced and Axis is no accident. He'd learned the craft which set his art so more free than if allowed to star-spangle from the start.
In between Hendrix & Jack White was an artist who may have suffered as much from the Machine as Hendrix thrived. Prince Rogers Nelson was Mozart & Gershwin with Hendrix's chops & dead sexy, as well as otherworldy showmanship. He made the musical equivalent of Redd Foxx race records to attract interest but keep distance from the Machine. Then he hit and They swallowed Prince up as much as We did. Because the Machine never got his cooperation, though, it tried to conquer him and we missed out on a great number of deftly constructed & deeply felt musical projects as he submerged himself in Paisley Paradise in response to the conflict.
Jack White hears & processes music as well as the first two. Over & over are we astounded by how often his stuff can be old & new at the same time, the mark of musical genius. Don't think i've ever heard a Jack White song that didn't have something utterly special in it. Then again, don't think i've ever heard a Jack White song that was utterly complete. He leaves so much unresolved as his badge of not being part of anything but what he hears inside and the what-i-got gearless machine which music was becoming didn't/couldn't do anything about it if they wanted what he had. In many respects that is something more abhorrent to people like me* or George Martin or Todd Rundgren or Michael Tilson Thomas than purely bad music because it denies itself eternity, posterity, elevation of the species. That he and artists like Sufjan Stevens are allowed to canoodle as they please is robbing humanity of its next models of raison d'etre (reason to continue, to reach). That............is............wrong.
* if it isn't obvious, i am only grouping myself with those giants in how much we care about finished, full-realized musical projects
Jimi was a oner, no doubt. Everybody said so from the start. But the Machine didn't know what to do with him while he was backing Curtis Knight and the Isleys and such. He had to leave the country to find complimentary players in a system which wouldnt trap him in black music. He played a lot of clubs & parties, worked the bottom of a lot of major bills, amazed a ton of people focused on what Music's step beyond the blues was going to be and pretty much became a God without a record. Cuz records have hits on em and no one knew how humping feedback out of a Marshall stack integrated with hit music. But Jimi watched while being watched, constructed a monstrously-underrated vocal style from scratch and learned how to create little worlds, both temporal & eternal, in 3-minute chunks. That his most-acclaimed album, Electric Ladyland, came after Are You Experienced and Axis is no accident. He'd learned the craft which set his art so more free than if allowed to star-spangle from the start.
In between Hendrix & Jack White was an artist who may have suffered as much from the Machine as Hendrix thrived. Prince Rogers Nelson was Mozart & Gershwin with Hendrix's chops & dead sexy, as well as otherworldy showmanship. He made the musical equivalent of Redd Foxx race records to attract interest but keep distance from the Machine. Then he hit and They swallowed Prince up as much as We did. Because the Machine never got his cooperation, though, it tried to conquer him and we missed out on a great number of deftly constructed & deeply felt musical projects as he submerged himself in Paisley Paradise in response to the conflict.
Jack White hears & processes music as well as the first two. Over & over are we astounded by how often his stuff can be old & new at the same time, the mark of musical genius. Don't think i've ever heard a Jack White song that didn't have something utterly special in it. Then again, don't think i've ever heard a Jack White song that was utterly complete. He leaves so much unresolved as his badge of not being part of anything but what he hears inside and the what-i-got gearless machine which music was becoming didn't/couldn't do anything about it if they wanted what he had. In many respects that is something more abhorrent to people like me* or George Martin or Todd Rundgren or Michael Tilson Thomas than purely bad music because it denies itself eternity, posterity, elevation of the species. That he and artists like Sufjan Stevens are allowed to canoodle as they please is robbing humanity of its next models of raison d'etre (reason to continue, to reach). That............is............wrong.
* if it isn't obvious, i am only grouping myself with those giants in how much we care about finished, full-realized musical projects
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
Ilov80s
Footballguy
Every Chainsmokers song is the same, but no I don't think in a weekend you and good electronic music personnel could replicate LCD or Daft. The difference between Chainsmokers and LCD/Daft is like the difference between Good Charlotte and Green Day. Same style of music around the same time frame, but there is a chasm between the quality of the artistry.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
Crissakes, one-groove tunes are easier to write than country and i could spew four of them a day
rockaction
Footballguy
Loved me some Fatboy Slim in the nineties. An underrated great. So stoney. Praise You.
Steve Tasker
Footballguy
In a way, EDM strikes me as a logical evolution of pop music. At times, it's difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish what is "EDM" from what is standard "pop music" these days. EDM can almost be viewed as the next step in pop music's "industrial revolution" - producers have been able to discern exactly what the people want, and can mass-produce unlike anyone ever could before. It is entirely disposable and fleeting, good luck finding a full LP from an EDM act (though they do exist). I am certainly not an "EDM guy", but I like plenty of electronic music in certain niche genres.
But at the same time, there are virtually no barriers to entry, which I find really fascinating. Eephus and Wikkid talked about the death of the A&R, but hell, with electronic music you literally just need a laptop, a few pieces of software, and a Soundcloud account. You don't need a MIDI keyboard or ProTools or Reason or a drum machine like you needed even 10 years ago. You don't even need to know how to read sheet music anymore. Sure, any of the major acts are going to have these things, but there's a reason that "Soundcloud artists" and "Soundcloud rappers" are a thing.
I have, however, noticed a very distinct shift in how people consume live music, and I think EDM has a big part to play in that. It used to be that people would go to the show to see the band perform; now you go to the show to party with your friends. You used to wait for that guitar solo and hope that they'd add a little flair, maybe a jam session at the end of the song or an unexpected cover. Now, the performer presses play and you hear literally the exact same song you've heard a million times before.
Live music has become less about the artistic performance and more about the shared experience among the group. But maybe that's what EDM is....the music is less of the focal point but moreso the vehicle to bring a bunch of people together. There will always be a market for the Jack Whites and the My Morning Jackets of the world, but maybe EDM is the new live music for people who don't actually care so much about the music. I'll freely admit that much of the pop music that I enjoy isn't really [finger-quotes] good music, but that doesn't mean that you can't love it and enjoy it. The artsy part of me hates the lack of emphasis on performance, but at the same time, the music is bringing people together and creating happiness - isn't that really what it's all about?
But at the same time, there are virtually no barriers to entry, which I find really fascinating. Eephus and Wikkid talked about the death of the A&R, but hell, with electronic music you literally just need a laptop, a few pieces of software, and a Soundcloud account. You don't need a MIDI keyboard or ProTools or Reason or a drum machine like you needed even 10 years ago. You don't even need to know how to read sheet music anymore. Sure, any of the major acts are going to have these things, but there's a reason that "Soundcloud artists" and "Soundcloud rappers" are a thing.
I have, however, noticed a very distinct shift in how people consume live music, and I think EDM has a big part to play in that. It used to be that people would go to the show to see the band perform; now you go to the show to party with your friends. You used to wait for that guitar solo and hope that they'd add a little flair, maybe a jam session at the end of the song or an unexpected cover. Now, the performer presses play and you hear literally the exact same song you've heard a million times before.
Live music has become less about the artistic performance and more about the shared experience among the group. But maybe that's what EDM is....the music is less of the focal point but moreso the vehicle to bring a bunch of people together. There will always be a market for the Jack Whites and the My Morning Jackets of the world, but maybe EDM is the new live music for people who don't actually care so much about the music. I'll freely admit that much of the pop music that I enjoy isn't really [finger-quotes] good music, but that doesn't mean that you can't love it and enjoy it. The artsy part of me hates the lack of emphasis on performance, but at the same time, the music is bringing people together and creating happiness - isn't that really what it's all about?
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NeverEnough
Footballguy
NeverEnough
Footballguy
Steve Tasker
Footballguy
I'd never presume that an artist isn't musically talented because he or she produces EDM music. I am also curious as to how you define EDM, because if you expand into broader regions like dance-punk or modern synth-pop, there are absolutely some wildly talented artists out there.
NeverEnough
Footballguy
A former co-worker would go to those EDM shows. It's just people playing with their laptop.
You want talent in that arena? We have to go back to old school when DJs would actually spin records.
Leroy Hoard
Footballguy
Steve Tasker
Footballguy
That brand of "press play" isn't really my thing, but I'd consider EDM more along the lines of this guy - he's pretty incredibly talented.
I'm still not sure it's fair to assume "talent" based on the style of music an artist makes. For example, someone like Skrillex, one of the "press play" guys you're talking about, spent years as the lead singer of a punk band.
In the end, it's all about the music. If the music is good, I'll listen to it.
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Leroy Hoard
Footballguy
The end justifies the means. I'm not impressed by people making things look harder than they are, just play something good.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
As an old-timer, here's what bothers me - single-groove. First time i ever got kicked out of a club, it wasn't for violence or wild, drunken behavior. It was for song predicting. A white blues band was the entertainment and all their songs followed the ol' delta pattern - repeat the opening stanza line (gonna pack my bags, grab a train & ride, twice) then a rhyme (cuz my baby done lef me & it done hoit my pride). The pure lameness of this band's efforts in this vein was grinding so badly into the drunken brains of a buddy & me, that we sought lyrical relief. While they repeated their first line, Rod & me would come up with a rhyme line that made fun of them and shout it out over theirs (small room). We were soon asked to leave.
Kids for years have giggled at my instant music satires over stuff on the car radio. I'm just incredibly sensitive to and impatient with people attempting to charge me money to enjoy roteness of any kind. I guess it's why i express myself on these pages in the frenetic garble i do. If i know who will prevail in a movie fight or chase, that action is of no value to me, no matter how exciting it is.
I'd always wrote lyrics before but, at the beginning of this decade, i got an idea for a musical - my Wizard of Oz - and have written 23 songs for it. Those who've heard em are impressed, but that's still pretty flimsy standing upon which to base major assertions about song-writing. And song-writing is what it's all about - you can play your fingers off, break my heart with a single note, sail straight to the clouds with your sound, but if you aint got songs you aint got it.
What surprised the musicians who helped me with arrangements of my stuff is the amount of counterpoint in it. Well, every musical has numbers with multiple voices in them so, if you can't reconcile separate, if not disparate, themes, you got no bidness trying to write one. But the reason there's is so much of it in my work is that my 23 songs used to be about 400 songs.
I can't play an instrument passably, have no one to bounce ideas off of, have nothing but time & the patchy new skills of old mind to work with. The one talent i have is deconstruction. That's what joke writing is, that's what psych is, it's actually what playing difference-making poker is (my three lifetime professions) - the reverse engineering of situations and coming up with a model of their re-fashioned constituents which catches the eye with its novelty.
I got a DUI when i was a methhead and had to ride the bus into Reno to work for six months. There's nothing worse for a methhead than waiting and life moving slower than it's supposed to. The only thing i had to shut it out with was the tune in my head, usually the last tune i heard. Well that can drive you just as crazy as not, so i made it into a game. Whether the song was I Got the Power or Sweet Child o Mine, i would try to hum it as a country song, an r&b song, a jazz, a classical, etc etc. I'd had a tune in my head for over 50 yrs and now i could move those notes and phrases around and look at them from different angles and see this part of this and wonder if it would fit into that etc etc. Suddenly, without real musical skill, i had enough facility with the parts of music that, when the idea of a musical came along, i wasn't afraid to try.
Believe me, if i could have yadayadayadaed some of that i would have, but i want somebody to understand. The 23 songs in my musical begin with strong ideas and a solid foundation to lyrical themes. To cite the greatest, Stephen Sondheim, the world must be a different place at the end of a song than at the beginning or it shouldn't be in a musical and that's a formula i have avidly adhered to. But bridges and fanfares and vamps and and re-quotes and semi-quotes and reprises and things i dont yet know the names of, man o man o man. But it's all there, #####es. Almost broke my head, but it's all there.
I could say that's made me even more impatient with song construction, but it hasn't. I just know why i'm impatient now. My best friend, a musician who likes either jazz or str8up 'Mer'can music like the Band, van Zandt, Steve Earle, for decades has used a word of mine when he's trying to excuse a song he likes but figures i wont. "i know it's strummy, but...." He knows a song has to be exceptional if i can hear the point-of-conception, that usually being picking up a guitar, hitting some chords and coming up with some words. It can still be great, but mostly isn't
We're owed more than that. My sister's a very unique singer, she channels some ol gutbucket roadhouse blues singer with an Oprah outlook which makes her awfulness very distinct. She does a cabaret with a few other singers 3-4 times a year and she runs songs past me (she's sung a couple of mine with decent result) and, like most singers who've watched too much American Idol, she hammers the #### out of the things. "Trust the song", i'm always saying to her "if it's in the American Songbook, the songwriter has thought an awful lot more about those notes & tones & sounds than you ever will."
Well, i can't say that about the vast majority of sounds which make airplay these days. Hard to find bridges even, nm theme & variation. I had a point when i started this but i'm 65 so i dont remember what it was so let's say that i'm proud of the 23 songs in my musical, even if they're never heard together in succession, because every note respects the old and threatens to be new BECAUSE i considered every aspect of every note and their connections to the other notes & themes in the piece. I had to do it that way because i dont have the musical talent, but i know what musical talent is and have been close (personally & musically) to some of the greatest musical talents of the rock era.
Enjoy your "all i got" bands and their tunes all you want, no matter the format. Just know that requiring more is our job as listeners as much as making more is the artist's. Two generations ago, we suffered unto a total democratization of music. Beethoven & Schubert & Wagner and Rossini surrendered to Glen Miller & Mantovani & Patti Page & the Ray Conniff Singers and the ghost of Robert Johnson was swimming in the bileless guilelessness of Pat Boone because hard-working folk didn't want to be challenged by music at the end of a hard day, they wanted to be comforted and maybe go dancing on Friday. That's what made rock & roll necessary. Think of that - i gotta go take a pill or sumn.
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What about Dubstep? I guess it's kind of a sub-genre of EDM, but that stuff went in and out like the wind. Noone can say it wasn't unique as anyone that heard it was like, "WTF am I listening to?!" It was successfully incorporated into some huge pop songs that were everywhere you turned, but it seems to be done for now.
Jayrod
Footballguy
I still feel like Jack does his own thing in a way that is just more palatable mainstream. I'm looking at him from a million miles away, but he seems like an odd dude who is more about the joy of making great sounding songs than the art of saying something important.
Curious to know your thoughts on Rage Against the Machine, @wikkidpissah?
Along a similar but different vein, Radiohead as well. Both seem like bands willing to make the art they want the way they want.
Curious to know your thoughts on Rage Against the Machine, @wikkidpissah?
Along a similar but different vein, Radiohead as well. Both seem like bands willing to make the art they want the way they want.
PIK95
Footballguy
I love all of this fwiw, and I'm a 60's and 70's music guy. Dan Deacon is a fun show if you ever get the chance.
I actually played Daft Punk Alive yesterday when I was driving the kids around.
Arcade Fire is my favorite band. But they are ruining it for me by trying to change up with the times.
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wikkidpissah
Footballguy
RATM is not a band i'm generationally inclined to care about, though they and SoaD & Perfect Circle, NIN, Dream Theater seem like they would be my orientation if i were of that gen. I only like the outsiderness, because my criticism of them is similar to that of EDM - it's single-groove stuff. I like more song construction than that. Just as i am known for saying, "if blues aint done right, it's just complaining" the inheritors of punk's democratization of hard music must find either total chaos or new order to be more than petulant whining &/or screaming and make its place my head.
Radiohead has done some of both, and that's why they're on my 'Top 5 bands' list in that thread. They have done with rock what Bill Evans did with jazz - suggest new orders of notes in ways that not only cause one to re-order his own orientation (or is that asianation?) to embrace it or let it play the imp at the borders of the mind to appreciate what it does HERE........or maybe He....nope, but i suppose it couHERE!!!....whoa!....but it's still a song, just not the kind i expected. Eventually, it's not only the notes that are there but the ones who could be there, like when Joni Mitchell's 70s albums had her writing melodies, finding the harmonies, then throwing out the melody, singing only the harmony and letting her bass player find the grace notes and hit harmonics of them to highlight where the original melody was. And THAT's a ####### hippiechick folksinger, lads & ladies!
Jack White is the subject of this thread because he can do that kinda stuff, does a little of it in virtually every song he writes. He is simply not making full-on songs for humankind with it like his similarly-gifted predecessors. He is putting out John Lennon albums and Plastic Ono albums when he should be putting out Beatles albums. That is what is so violently violently wrong with music these days. There should be management & production people strong enough to wrangle, hogtie and, yes, brand generational geniuses like Jack White & Sufjan Stevens til they put out product which bespeaks & eases our pain & joy, inspires the young to do as well or better and MAKES THE BEST POSSIBLE TOMORROW HAPPEN. If they dont, we become closer to bugs than gods and God won't have we image fetishes around anymore.
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Psychopav
Help us, Joebi-Wan Brynobi, you're our only ho
I've been following along in this thread with interest, and here's where I finally get what you're saying. And I agree.
Tomorrow's Jack White needs Jack White to be today's Jimmy Paige, not yesterday's Jimmy Paige deconstructed or sampled.
Ilov80s
Footballguy
I'm not even a huge electronuc music fan (alhough like Steve said, almost all popular music now is really electronic music) but now we ####ting on Swing and Glenn Miller?
I think it has less to do with genres and more to do with purpose. Electronic music, rock, classical, jazz, hip-hop or whatever can be made 2 major intentions:
1. To be easy to digest, popular and successful. Something fun to dance to or easy to enjoy as background music orto appeal to kids.
2. To be art. To challenge people, express interesting ideas in unconvetional ways.
Rarely there are artists that can do both at the same time.
When it comes to electronic music, one can go the Chainsmokers direction and make throwaway songs for college kids or they can go the Dan Deacon route and compose electronic tone poems.
I think it has less to do with genres and more to do with purpose. Electronic music, rock, classical, jazz, hip-hop or whatever can be made 2 major intentions:
1. To be easy to digest, popular and successful. Something fun to dance to or easy to enjoy as background music orto appeal to kids.
2. To be art. To challenge people, express interesting ideas in unconvetional ways.
Rarely there are artists that can do both at the same time.
When it comes to electronic music, one can go the Chainsmokers direction and make throwaway songs for college kids or they can go the Dan Deacon route and compose electronic tone poems.
wikkidpissah
Footballguy
Covered that. Lub me some Glen Miller - it's the only thing me and the old man have agreed about in 65 years & if it don't get you out yo seat, you daid. But it's canned, beautifully so, like SSPierce tinned squab that Chaahles Emerson Winchester used to eat, but any ol' jazzbo or older player will tell you it's engineered material, a product of the chart and not the heart and it's as much what killed swing as what delivered some of its greatest moments.
Listen - last thing i'm trying to do is snob anybody off what they love. Love it, love it more, love it again. But the human race is only elevated from its status as creation's most rapacious pests by the special ones and what they add. I dont like the fascism of that but it's true. You waste a great engineer, there are others ready to take their place. Those with special sight, thought, feeling, however, must be made to rule realms, the yoke of dragging humanity to the next base placed upon them. We move too fitfully these days to turn our progressions into regressions. Our expectations and relentless outlook upon excellence will be part of how we survive and transcend the explosions, erosions and pits of virulent filth we create. Other than that, i'm OK with it.
