Entertainment For Lively Minds
Enough is enough?
Posted by TheologyJen on 21 March 2009 - 5:54pm.
Pressing on with the task of transferring CDs to my Walkman, I find myself mining a rich seam of PattiSmithitude this fine afternoon. So my question to you all is:
3 versions of Gloria (one studio and two live) - is this:
(A) too few?
(2) too many?
(iii) just right?
(z) I'll have a pint of mild please, and while you're at it, you couldn't get us a bag of scratchings, could you?
Ta very much.
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Never enough!!!
Love Patti.
Somehow
I have six copies of Patti's Gloria lurking in iTunes from a range of sources.
So you've some way to go yet!
One version
is all you need. It's like those jazz re-issues which give you take 17 or something. Who needs it, or has time to listen to it?
Including all the bootleg shows...
iTunes tells me I have 364 versions of Zeppelin's Since I've Been Loving You.
?????????????
I love Led Zeppelin, but 364 versions?! Get one more and you'll have one for every day of the year...
Received a new boot of a '75 show yesterday
365 versions now :-)
Wow...that's a lot of
Backdoors slamming...I've only got thirteen. Are there better boots than Deep Striker and Four Blocks in the Snow?
I tend not to go by names
as many names were re-used, often for different recordings of the same show.
I guess it depends what you mean by 'best' - in terms of pure quality, there are many soundboards out there that capture everything that happened on stage but have little or no audience atmosphere. The best balance of quality and atmosphere is often from 'matrix' boots where the best soundboard of a show is mixed with the best audience boot - to give a composite. There are a couple of people who do these VERY well, using professional kit. The best matrices are as good as the officially released live albums - and far better than 'The Song Remains The Same' :-)
The Gloria Quartuplets.
The sneering counter staff of a good independent record shop should be able to provide you with a list of versions of Gloria that are worth owning, along with those versions that were previously considered uncool, but are now on their way to being rehabilitated (e.g. Patti Smith & Foghat, Rockin’ It Live In Wisconsin).
19 year old, record shop employee, Ben Riley, discovered Patti Smith in February 2009. He is now Shoreditch’s leading expert on the singer. Below he talks us through the different incarnations of Gloria:
Gloria: “The classic original cover version. To hear the song in its full glory you need to hunt down the unreleased vinyl edition of its parent album - Horses, where this track plays at end of side one, after Free Money.”
Gloria (Digitally Remastered 1996): “Can any song claim to have been definitively remastered in the year when Nurse With Wound’s seminal album - When Can I Turn To Stereo? spread seismic waves through the music industry? A year later the Tory government was ousted from Number 10. Coincidence?"
Patti Smith – Gloria: "This is a mis-tagged digital file of the original version of Gloria. Me and my mate spent hours playing it back- to-back with the version on Horses, while we were DJing at Shoreditch Town Hall. Even though both tracks are identical, we agree that this version sounds better."
Gloria (Live): "A recording of a secret gig that you were not invited to attend."
I really try to like Patti Smith...
..really I do. I know how influential she has been to other artists and I've listened to her albums almost forcing myself to like her. But I'm afraid I just don't get it. So I therefore put her in the category of 'probably great artists that are not for me' (I know a lot of people feel the same way about PSB, who can do no wrong in my opinion). My record collection is therefore Patti Smith-free.
I feel the same about that whole NYC 'art' movement
Patti Smith, The Velvets, Television, Richard Hell etc etc.
To me, it's too self-conciously distanced from the music - people who can probably play very well, pretending that they can't really, and striking a pose that it doesn't really matter anyway because it's all being done in the service of some bigger, more important 'art'.
On top of that, the whole nihilist performance poetry, heroin-chic vibe never did it for me.
Talking Heads seemed merely to be a watered-down, mass-consumption version of that scene.
Television?
Admittedly Tom's voice takes a bit of getting used to, but pretending they can't play very well?
I'd love to have heard them when they were really pulling out all the stops, Stimpy :-) http://open.spotify.com/track/2ZlafrtFJ58SrOQxuNZZga
or http://open.spotify.com/track/4LIrbw2NjfdpGwHpHvjJfO
Tom Verlaine
I hold him in high esteem as a guitarist, particularly on songs like Little Johnny Jewel and Marquee Moon. There's a touch of Coltrane in his best solos, I don't think it too far-fetched to say. I have a tape of them live called The Blow Up which is very good, possibly better versions than some of the recordings on Marquee Moon (album). And interesting, surreal lyrics on songs like Marquee Moon (again) and Venus De Milo.
Mmmm...
I have half-a-dozen Television boots including a 2005 reunion show but I'm not a great fan.
The Velvets on the other hand just baffle me. I genuinely can't see what people see in them. John Cale is obviously a fine musician but the rest of them were dreadful musicians (in the loosest sense of the word)
We're all baffled
Well, frankly, I'm baffled that you're baffled. But then I dare say I'd be baffled by some of your favoured musical choices. Such is music. I just respond to the sounds I hear on a record, and they either move me or they don't, I don't really consider the quality of the musicianship or singing - I mean I don't think about how much technical skill is involved - unless it doesn't sound right.
*shrug*
Maybe it's being a trained musician myself or something but I can't not listen to the musicians. To me, that's what music is about - people playing their instruments supremely well.
When I hear something like the Velvet Underground I just think "either stop pretending you can't play or go away and learn your instrument"
Think you are dismissing some really good stuff there
I don't really recognise that music from your description Stimpy, except for some of Patti Smith's excesses, her lengthy poetry read over dirge-like backing, but most of Horses isn't like that. Richard Hell - don't really know, more of a punk thing. At it's best all that stuff is just good songs and rock 'n' roll to me, looking beyond the apparent style. I suppose Television and Talking Heads came at the right time for me, I was the right age to get into them. It was what I was looking for - coming after punk but more interesting and intelligent. I think those bands and The Velvets were totally committed to their music. I don't agree with Talking Heads being watered down either. Theirs was more a nerdy, college kids thing but they had a really funky aspect from the start that was interesting, and they had the tunes, most importantly. Plus there is a lot of top quality lyrics to be found from much of those artists. Still, each to their own etc.
Mild?
You'll be lucky. Haven't seen a decent pint of mild available in a pub round these parts in a while. Do you want the bland brand scratchings or the real dentally threatening buggers from the farm up the road?