wait... whut?? The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, right??? 8^)
Posted on 01/01/2014 7:18:16 PM PST by hecht
Last night we watched ABC's Dick Clarks New Years Eve Show. When they began to show music performers, the first I saw was Billy Joel. You could tell that it was one of his bona fide live performance as he sounded different from the studio versions, some minor errors etc. In my genervation ( I'm in my 50s) the best albums were often live , where the performers would jam, experiment and ad lib. The Allmans Live at Fillmore East is an example , or the Live version of Led Zepellin's "Dazed and Confused" -filmed in San Francisco - where Robert Plant ad libbed" going to San Francisco" in the middle of the song. After Joel the show went to a series of Millenial performers who all had auto-tuned lip synched performances, where they basically just aerobic danced to songs written by someone else, don't play instruments and have a few clones dancing in synch behind them. I joked to my guests" imagine if the Beatles were part of the Millenial generation. John Lennon would be lip synching an aerobic dance with George , Ringo and Paul would dance in unison behind him. What gives Millenials? have you no sense ? don't you realize that these "performers" are manufactured pretty boys/girls ? they are live action "Archies" If your taste in music is so vacuous , is there any hope for them? Is there any hope to wan them from Obama?
Even the non song writing performers of our generation i.e..e Elvis could at least perform.
wait... whut?? The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, right??? 8^)
Gee, I guess that’s why there are so many “classic rock” and “oldies” radio stations all over the country still getting audiences young and old playing 70’s and 80’s rock.
How many “oldie 90’s” stations are there?
Yup, I know about VG ;)
The Shannon chick surely has talent. But I can tell you exactly why she will never be mainstream...and of course, you know this so I’m not telling you anything ;)
She isn’t immeadiately shoveable into a size 0 dress for a 1 year popularity throwaway cycle, nor can she be mistaken for a just out of high school girl.
Katy perry can be autotuned or revoiced entirely with Melodyne...and is. But this woman, talented as she is, cannot so easily be ‘photoshopped’ on stage and built into an image to sell to tween girls as a pseudo stripper.
Of all the things wrong with this business...that’s the biggest problem.
Exactly. But as long as such artists as Shannon are out there, I am going to support them, and try to turn on to them as many people as I can, I don’t need them to be on top of the charts to feel better, I’d only want them to be there so I don’t have to feel smug and snobbish and isolated in my tastes while everybody is listening to and ‘bonding’ over some Rihannas.
Here’s Shannon with Charlie Faye, another great singer of her own, and Will Sexton.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlezhD1nu5k
I think there’s hope because of the underground, be it for her type of music or esoteric electro-whatever. Much as I cant deal with hipster types, pretensious aholes that they are, There’s a ton of them and I think their aversiion to all things mainstream (their idea of it if not the reality of it) is rubbing off beyond their Brooklyn borders.
I see a lot of hate on production forums for the autotuning to death of everything. There are a lot more wannabee bedroom producers on those forums than real ones and there’s a growing movement away from 100% on the beat gridded and quantized music even in the people who MAKE 100% gridded and quantized music like trance/techno etc. The buzzwords are analog and a more ‘human feel’.
The vocals themselves are included in said backlash with more people discussing minimizing the use of autorune because in their own words “it all sounds too perfect”.
I have Melodyne and some other autotune software and I’ll tell you that you may not be able to make Vanilla Ice sound like Kate Smith, but you could get him damn close if you are a talented user of the program. Pitch/formant/length/tambre and more are all adjustable to extremes.
But the way it’s used in reality, a marginal singer can be made ‘sellable’ and that’s all that matters now. But that ‘sellable’ comes at a cost. Perfect pitch singing is more unnatural sounding than bad singing since it just can’t happen in nature. It sounds ‘wrong’. And the fact that it’s nearly ‘all’ perfect pitch now means it’s generic/boring. So people seek out ‘the next big thing.
Hopefully that’s dynamic and minimal/no autotuned singing (and they autotune bass/guitar/piano etc too for anyone that doesn’t know so the same applies there.)
Can’t say it will happen, but people ARE tiring of ‘perfection’.
When I walk into a Trader Joe’s market, the music is always of a bygone era. One day, I’ll hear songs from the early ‘60’s, the next, songs from the mid and late ‘60’s, etc. You never hear songs from the ‘80’s, ‘90’s or 2000’s.
The same is true in other stores.
Probably to target the Boomer market that shops there and ‘enhance the experience’.
I was just in a Trader Joe’s store patronized mostly by students, and oldsters and no music was played.
Who would want to correct the pitch of this voice? Listen to it breaking in the second song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsnE3bvJ4nM
The woman is a diva!
he and his band played live instead of pretending
No, he's not everyone's cup of tea. Never was. Even in his heyday, when the top rock guitarists of the world were prostrating themselves at his feet, there were some who just didn't 'get' his music. It's one of the nicer aspects of humans -- we're all unique, and no two of us have the exact same tastes or considerations on things.
Before you dismiss Jimi's technical proficiency, you might want to give a listen to his albums, 'Cry of Love', and 'War Heroes'. The work he did on those disks was the gold standard of technical perfection in electric guitar work for decades. There's no question that guys like Steve Vai and Eric Johnson were inspired to greater heights of technical perfection by him.
As to the subject of bands not listening to each other, I don’t understand how you can think that at all. Every guitarist mag, interview and album liner notes namechecks their influences.
Did I really say that? Whatever I said, I surely didn't mean to make that claim. I don't think I've ever seen an in depth interview with any well known player who didn't cite their musical influences. Most of the greats were very humble when it came to that sort of stuff. They were all too happy to give props to their own heroes.
Hey, speaking of Eric Johnson. I love that guy's music, but haven't heard from him in a dog's age. Is he still recording?
No, you didn’t say that, it was RevCat I was responding to with those comments, I just pinged you in to see me grovel about the feel of Johnny Hendricks ;)
On the Hendrix tech thing, it’s not that I think he has none/little ect. Because he obviously does. I meant it mor in the way that the feel thing greatly outweighs the technical aspects. It’s hard to put into words what I mean I guess. Yes he does IMO have high tech skill, nut its not clinical. He knew the notes and does whatever he wanted at will. but if Vai hits an A, it’s an A. If Hendrix hits an A, it’s an A with a bit of microtonal variation, some vibrato and 5 other unquantifiable things that make Vai playing All along the Watchtower in G# videos a vastly different thing than Hendrix doing it. One is nearly technically perfect and the other is Hendrix. And most prefer the Hendrix version.
If that makes any sense at all.
I’ve got you beat Aurorales. I’m nearly 53 years old, I turn 53 next month and I find that there is some very good music being written and performed now days. But yes, you won’t find it on pop music stations; what we used to call “Top 40”. And heck a lot of pop and Top 40 back in the 70’s was dreck too. Who my age doesn’t remember Disco Duck or Chipmunk Love or My Chevy Van or Having My Baby or Billy Don’t Be A Hero or Gypsies Tramps and Thieves or Seasons In The Sun or S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y HEY (Saturday Night) and….Feelings…whoa, oh, oh Feelings…blech!
I have some friends my age who listen only to “classic rock” stations, as if any good music stopped being produced circa 1979 when we graduated HS or during the early 80’s before we got married and got full time jobs and mortgage payments and had kids, but personally if I hear Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” or any number of other songs that were in heavy rotation “back in the day” like Skynyrd’s Free Bird or Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop Believing one more time it would be a thousand times too many. That’s not to say that I don’t like and enjoy hearing again lot of 70’s, 60’s 50’s music or for that matter 40’s Big Band, turn of the century Rag Time and classical music – Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Mauler, Liszt, or modern classics like Copland, Von Williams, Gershwin, (although I’m personally most found of ancient, medieval and renaissance music) and I also like Cuban jazz and 1950’s and 1960’ jazz and instrumental traditional blue grass but I also like contemporary blue grass like Alison Krauss and Nickel Creek, and I also like to listen to good and varied new rock music too.
For instance I like Mumford & Sons, The Avett Brothers, Death Cab for Cutie, The Black Keys, The Raconteurs, Arctic Monkeys, Of Monsters and Men, Alabama Shakes, Delta Rae, Janelle Monae, The Lumineers and J.D. McPherson. Heck I even like Daft Punk – the lyrics are not much but I love those funky groves. LOL! I also like some “electronica” like Zero 7, Massive Attack and Air.
As far as radio stations, I look for what is called “Adult Contemporary” or “Adult Alternative” stations. I have this station tuned in on my car radio and at work:
http://xpn.org/playlists/xpn-playlist
That’s one very varied play list. They just don’t play new music and local musicians, but also a lot of deep album cuts from classic artists even going back to the early 60’s or 50’s. I’m always surprised what they play. One minute they are playing Arcade Fire and Daft Punk, the next it’s the Carpenter’s Close to you and the The Everly Brothers Cathy’s Clown.
Variety and sampling new things while appreciating the “classics” is IMO the spice of life! If anyone were to look at my music collection they might think that I either suffer from a multiple personality disorder or that 20 different people of many different ages and with widely varied tastes live in my apartment. : O
But for some, it seems to more a case of “Hey you! Get Off Of My Lawn” while forgetting how our parents really hated this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq3YdpB6N9M
Then again I remember my parents telling me how their parents hated Swing music and the jitter bug – how “loud and immoral it was”. And I bet my grandparents parents thought that the music of the 1920’s was equally abhorrent.
Oh and yes, Johnson is still at it. Got his own speaker line now too. At $250 each for 12s....
Grrrr...Vai playing it in the G3 (tour) videos.
I vowed that when I grew up, I would not be so narrow-minded and would have an open mind to the music that my own children would listen to.
For the next 20 years, I would hold to that vow. During the 1980s, I was into U2, The Police, and the dozens of "New Wave" bands that were popular during that time.
When it turned to the 1990s and I started reaching middle age, I still had an ear for the music of the day. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, none of that stuff fazed me. I actually liked most of it.
However, the past 10-15 years has been an utter wasteland music-wise. There is virtually nothing in the "Top 40" these days worth listening to. And I'm not some old man who reminisces about music "in my day". I'm more than willing to hear new sounds. Sometimes I find good music on the college stations like Arcade Fire and The Decemberists. But nothing groundbreaking. Nobody seems to be writing great pop songs anymore or producing classic albums that you listen to all the way through.
Yep, I get that. It was Jimi's 'feel' technique that brought out all those overtones and extra coloration. He rarely just hit a note. His usual approach was to grab a note and wring everything possible out of it before letting it go.
Even when he was moving fast, he'd sometimes give a passing note a tug or a yank to add a bit of 'something' to it. And then there were all of the electronic effects, wah-wah, tremolo, feedback, etc. And that's when he was just playing quietly .. LOL
No, I grokked everything you said. I slung the strings long enough myself to have lots of reality on it.
Charlene--Johnny Staton & the Feathers
Irene, My Darling--Johnny Staton & the Feathers
So, if after all this, you still feel (note I said ‘feel’ not ‘think’) that music was better when you were 16 and knew that you know everything back in the 70s or 60s or 80s (not Fiji, for as long as Heino rules Das Top 40 Schlager List) I have a suggestion for you. As I said to Linda (I think that was her name) the other evening, bare with me!
Every several years, 5 I think, but you can check, international music competitions are held in Moscow and Warsaw called, respectively, the Tchaikovsky Competition and Chopin Competition for young up and coming musicians. (Eddie Von Helen rules here, I know, but a bit too old to enter.) (They’re not like the World Series which happens every year and features teams from a single country!) In them, young virtuosos from around the world compete playing the piano works of those two (important to note) long dead composers. A jury of older musicians, musicologists and critics choses the best ones. These are very prestigious contests and some of the later well known international stars such as Vladimir Ashkenazy and Martha Argerich have emerged from them.
Now, according to the rules, the entrants must play certain works in each phase of the contest (the two composers were as prolific as that awful band called Chicago), and then have a choice of their own pieces to play. But the rules are very strict, and certain works are played by everybody who enters (Imagine the boredom of the jurors and the audience. Been there, done that!)
Here’s the solution to your today’s music sucks blues (thanks for baring yourself, Linda, if that’s your real name!) - the music in those competitions never ever changes, it is always the same (that’s why it was important to note that the composers happen to be dead.) It will never get worse or better, because it is and will remain. Guaranteed!
Think a little of this proposal, while you meditate and enjoy listening to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpBkUY62TtM
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