Fine, I agree with you pretty much on Hendrix and feel players. Isn’t Keith Richards, a rhythm guitarist in his band (that unofortunately for itself hired another rhythm guitarist after their 2nd lead guitarist departed) a feel player?
So bands listen to each other? Maybe that’s how I end up liking some (those who listen to their predecessors and folk root musicians), and dislike those who only listen to their contemporaries. I disliked the Dreadful Grape for their musical boredom, but I could hear that Garcia had listened to a lot of old stuff and not just to Buffalo Springfield. Who does Jack White listen to? We pretty much know who David Byrne listens to, and it ain’t Pink Floyd, that’s for sure.
There are two sources of popular music in my fave theory: folklore, and city craftmanship. Blues, bluegrass are folklore, obviously, Broadway, Tin Pan Alley are city craftmanship (for lack of a better term, or perhaps we can say, city or country.) Burt Bacharach, however good he was, was city, a classically trained musician, that is trained on previous centuries court music, not the street and village music, made rootless city music. Jimi Hendrix came from the folk tradition. So did Carl Perkins. Iron Butterfly, to use an extreme example was as rootless a band, as you they come. It showed in their pretensions like a sore thumb. The Stones remembered their roots, the Beatles, especially the post-Beatles, not so much. I prefer the rootsy music, if you will, and the roots are not always so obvious, but they are felt. Pop, Broadway are throwaway stuff. Everybody’s all time favorite Terry Jacks. German schlager tradition, that Fiji can tell you more about. Why is contemporary country coming out of Nashville so bad as most of us agree)? Because it is rootless, hack music.
This sums up what happened to country and the rest of the music industry. If you have 2 hours, this is well worth watching by anyone on this thread.
http://www.pensadosplace.tv/2013/11/28/nashvillept1/
Dave Pensado is one of the top mixers in the biz with his own youtube show on the tech/industry stuff. they took the show to do a thanksgiving special at Blackbird Studio, Which is a high dollar super top to the world whizbang studio lauded as perhaps ‘the’ best. It is Martina McBride and her husband’s venture.
They sit around a table for thanksgiving dinner with a bynch of Nashville old and new pros/writers/musicians and discuss a lot of what we are talking about now with a focus on country, but an overall nod. It’s 2 videos, an hour each.
Dex Romwebber/Flat Duo Jets (often a two piece, sometimes a soloist, sometimes more)
Also he had to be aware of the Dirtbombs (namechecked elsewhere in this thread) because they were both living in/playing Detroit in roughly the same circles (but from different musical camps).
Sorry, I forgot to write the most important part. DUH!
What they don’t ssay in this vid but id blatantly obvious is that for all the things they do explain and get right, they are so ‘inside baseball’ that they in some ways look like totally clueless rubes unaware about the reality around them. They are still very locked into saving the old model even as they speak of a brave new world.
Thats the TLDR version.