Entertainment For Lively Minds
I Would Pay Not To Have This Crap Clutter Up My Home
Posted by Burt Kocain on 30 October 2011 - 8:49am.
- More from Burt Kocain.
- Login or register to post comments
-
User login
Recently Updated
Hot Topics - Last 7 Days
Hot Topics - Last 4 Weeks
The Sites We Like
- And Another Thing
- Another Nickel In The Machine
- Crying All The Way To The Chip Shop
- Freaky Trigger
- Fula Fula Ord
- The Ghosts Of Electricity
- Guardian Music Blog
- Idolator
- I Love Music
- The Lefsetz Letter
- McSweeney's
- Mixmag
- My Band T-shirt
- No Rock And Roll Fun
- Paul Du Noyer
- Planet Mondo
- Popjustice
- Pretty Goes With Pretty
- Tales Of The City
- The Arts Desk
- The Rising Storm
- The Rocking Vicar
- Scarlet Mist
- WFMU Blog
Your invoice....
... is in the mail.
I'd like my money
to go towards a deserving cause, to alleviate suffering and global warming. Obviously I can't just give my money to anybody (and unfortunately you, Dan, fall under this heading for the purposes of this initiative). I need a go-between, a broker; someone with international stature and connections at governmental level; someone with a global perspective and deeply-held convictions who will ensure my money won't be frittered away or lost in bureaucratic procedure. Someone who can Make A Difference, a mover and a shaker with the ability to cross generational, cultural, and national borders. A man with both the common touch and the respect of the noble dynasties of this world.
Where would I find such a man? I mean, I'm talking maybe a couple of quid here ...
Look down
he may not have his heels on.
I'd be interested to know
...how many of these they sell. I'm lucky enough to have a larger than average abode, but Mrs. NigelT would go mental!
You need to be careful
It may be All That You Can't Leave Behind.
All this...
...and the bass player had no f**king idea what a 12 bar blues was for half of it (source: a recent Word podcast)
What's that line about chimpanzees and typewriters?
Serious question.
Does that matter? It doesn't seem to have held them back.
Considering
it's the basic building blocks of rock & roll - the DNA, if you will - it matters hugely to anyone who might be thinking of taking their music seriously.
I wonder if someone took him aside and had a quiet word when they made that single with B.B. King?
Meh, I guess.
I'm not sure I totally follow that argument, but then I guess my views on the importance of these things are pretty well rehearsed.
Nope
I don't think it does matter. The band had come out of the spirit of post-punk, year zero and all that. For most of those bands, the Blues meant very little (explicitly, anyway.) For a band in hock to Television and NY punk, to play anything remotely bluesy would've been laughably antiquated. It was only in the lead up to The Joshua Tree that the band made an attempt to discover the "roots of rock n' roll" as self-confessed "fans". Hamfisted and misunderstood as it may've been, Rattle & Hum was an expression of discovery by people who were new to the whole thing. (Worth remembering too that they didn't serve their apprenticeships in working covers bands where many of these musical rudiments are learned) Whether you can convey that sense of naive homage with a film crew and gazillion dollar budget is a different story.
The name is perhaps misleading
Playing blues doesn't really come into it. The 12 bar structure forms the basis of all rock & roll, as well as much of country and jazz.
I accept the "we can't play" punk argument, but knowing how to play a 12 bar is really knowing how to speak the language of rock music.
And speaking of punks, the Sex Pistols and The Clash (and loads of other new wave bands) were playing Chuck Berry songs and other 50s material with a 12 bar structure as early as 1976/77.
Poor BB King:
70 years grunting away in the axe factory, still without a single good tune to show for it - whiney old dullard.
Give me "rock illiteracy" any day of the week:
Yeah great Pax..
..but I wouldn't exchange the first note of any B.B. King solo, for all of that "bloke who works in a record shop" tat you're parading there.
You might not.
But why be so dismissive, Shane? You like what you like. That's lovely for you. But writing off Neu!, Television and Aphex Twin as hipster "tat" is a bit unworthy of you.
Yeah great Shane
..but I wouldn't sniff at the recommentation of any bloke who worked in a record shop, especially during the formative years of my record buying life. One bloke turned me onto the Lloyd/Verlaine sparring of Television, Muddy Waters, Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac and John McGeoch. For him, as it is for me, it had nothing to do with "knowledge" but everything to do with the guitar sound being right for the music.
Not having a go but this kind of strutting about virtuosity and the merits of "keeping it real" is almost as dull as one of Bono's pronouncements.
Shane
Was reacting to Pax's outrageous dissing of one of the great musicians. Why did Pax feel the need to call a great player and human being a whiney old dullard with no decent tunes? Even in this day and age a bit of respect isn't out of the question. Call me old fashioned.
I have to say...
...I read Pax's post as being jokey, because he usually is. But maybe it came across badly to others. (Not speaking for him, just explaining why I took slight issue with Shane's post and not Pax's.)
I replied to Pax's post in the same spirit..
..as his.
I own the Neu albums, and don't mind Television (If it weren't for the execrable singing)
Fair do's
:-)
There's a non-too-fine line
between respect and reverence, and while BB King is as worthy of respect as many musicians and human beings, he certainly doesn't warrant hagiography - no human being does if their ability to play the blues, krautrock, schlager or whatever is used as the sole measure of their worth.
I've got nothing against BBK at all, but my purist klaxon was set off by more of the portentous anilingual nonsense which takes over here when we're discussing Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny, Kate Bush, yada yada (Bob talks about that stuff better than I ever could).
One of the really nice things about music between about 1978 and 1983 was the very healthy deschooling which seemed to force a lot of new bands to work in as narrow a spectrum as possible without relying too heavily on the blues idiom. It was too spartan to last, but it meant that for a while at least there were loads of fantastic, diverse new records by Joy Division, The Bunnymen, Young Marble Giants, Talking Heads, ESG, A Certain Ratio, The Slits, Orange Juice, OMD, Simple Minds, Human League, The Go-Betweens, The Sound, Cabaret Voltaire, and U2 amongst masses of others.
The fact that Adam Clayton couldn't play the blues was great, and probably necessary, particularly when you remember that the blues itself was originally exciting because it was a bastard, degenerate, anti-music performed by itinerants. Sadly though, familiarity with blues and folk idioms is now seen as a badge of authenticity or sincerity in a way which is becoming increasingly comical, and it's hampering innovation.
Here - have some anti-music from another planet:
Forgive me
but I think we are at cross purposes here and have been for some time.
A 12 bar progression (to give it another less confusing name) is not "The Blues", far from it. It has absolutely nothing at all to do with being able to play the blues as such.
It's simply a very common chord progression which has been used in a million songs from nearly all musical genres for a hundred years or more.
Ironically, the Howlin' Wolf clip above does not use a 12 bar progression, but stays on one chord throughout. In this instance it’s the pentatonic scale that makes it a blues song.
I think...
...all Pax and I would argue is that not knowing what the label "12-bar blues" means doesn't connote anything at all about a person's ability to make great music. I don't think Clayton's not knowing that particular bit of terminology tells you anything apart from, perhaps, that he's not beholden to any particular orthodoxies.
Disrespect for orthodox methods, rules, received wisdom and "heroes" has produced more great music than reverence has, as far as I'm concerned.
That's fair enough
although U2 and "great music" don't sit easily in the same sentence, I must say.
Yeah
NB, I'm not endorsing U2 here, although I think they've made *some* good stuff. Just making a general point.
Your point is taken
as, I hope, is mine?
Yes indeed.
:-)
Just how tiny
will these comment boxes go?
Pretty small.
They will get
to the part of the horizon that has no line.
I'm
scared.
Keep going
When we get to the Edge we can lift up his hat.
"Help
me!"
I like
U2
Oh
no!
Seriously!
Yes!
!
.
It's
n
o
t
g
e
t
t
i
n
g
a
n
y
t
h
i
n
n
e
r
n
o
w
!
Did
I tip over the edge?
What about a song?
Did you notice
the air getting thinner out here? It's a strange feeling - beyond the horizon. Sometimes I look back and - but no! We boldly go where no man has boldly gone before, our faces turned to the mystical brightness of dawn in the east ...
Does this mean
that Adam Clayton is a a better musician than Mozart now he knows what a 12 bar progression is?
Interestingly...
...of course, Mozart is a cracking example of someone who ignored the received wisdom and deliberately courted the outrage of people who thought there was such a thing as "proper music"!
(A technical genius too, of course, but still. Basically a punk, but with different tools.)
Oops
Sorry. I've made my point. No need to bludgeon. *note to self face*
I'll shut up now.
I enjoy skilled
musicianship but only if it's in service of the music itself.
There are plenty of talented musicians out there but often the music they play is bland and uninteresting to my ears. There seems to be a large consensus - which I don't go along with - for building an edifice around accepted mores when it comes to "how to play an instrument" which, in my considered opinion, actually stifle creativity and the pursuit of musical ideas and ultimately flies in the face of what jazz, blues, rock 'n' roll, punk and pretty much any popular music genre were/are actually about, which was largely to project what was within, rather than to invite admiration from others. Artists/musicians want an audience but it shouldn't be on the audience's terms.
The Blues is a prime example of a genre of music that has attracted a host of skilled musicians but many of them seem intent on creating a polished and palatable version of the music whereby they trade their wares from the coat-tails of the originators rather than design some clobber of their own. The process of adding studio production values to "enhance" the Blues (e.g. to give the musician more of a "wow look at my skills" soundboard) and/or the listening experience invariably diminishes what the music is about rather than enhances it. The Blues is not about accepted mores, clarity and precision, it is about externalising the opaque and ambiguous traits of the human condition. The human condition is messy and by default doesn't have a rule base of values common to everyone. So neither should music. Once music/art subscribes to a consensus of what it is or how it should be delivered then the individual artist compromises themselves if they proceed to develop their talent based on that consensus.
Other opinions etc..
All blues..
(Except for the first bloke who did it) Is built on the coat-tails of them that went before.
Muddy owed to RJ, Buddy Guy owes to Muddy, Clapton owed to Buddy etc.
It's such a blank canvas that it's bound to offer up all manner of interpretation.
I like a bit of slick jazzy blues me, like Mel Brown or Johnny Adams,
Just don't ask me listen to Seasick Steve or our Aussie mate who sounds suspiciously like an old record.
Built on
is not the same as squating on. And I realise that is down to individual taste and knowledge of the genre as much as anything else. Slick's OK as well. I enjoy plenty of slick music. Mel Brown is slick but he's funky, melodic and paints the blues on other canvasses. It's his style of playing that is slick, rather than how his style is presented in production and arrangement terms. If that makes sense.
The key is in your word: interpretation. Interpretation isn't about copying or mimicing but it can be about rejecting and over-turning.
So I agree with you about Seasick Steve and (I presume you mean) Mr Stoneking. Music as a World Heritage Site. Yawn.
I heartily applaud your willingness...
..to stick up for "your era" ('cause that's all it is, really)
It should be my era as well, but I hated most punk and post punk for the very reasons that you hold it in high esteem.
Most great rock music is based on the players making the best of their limitations (even prog) , but not to the extent of revelling in it and calling it a virtue.
Music changed in 76 or 77, like it tends to do in ten year cycles anyway. What was complex became simple.
We are now experiencing a new resurgence of progressive music, probably as a reaction to the mind-numbing dullness of British rock in the last ten years.
It would be a brave journalist who, this late in the game, attempted to report this in the same stalinistic way that punk was.
No-one falls for crap like that these days.
Do they?
It's not my era.
I was born in '78. I'm not a punk, or a punk revivalist. I think a lot of the stuff that went along with punk is bollocks. Insisting on limited musicianship is absolutely ridiculous, but so is insisting on advanced musicianship and/or knowledge or record-collector credentials. I don't care what the rules are supposed to be, as long as good music is being made. I just happen to feel that an awful lot of music that people say "ooh, GREAT guitarist" about is bloody boring. Music's not a sport; I don't care how well anyone can play, or how badly, or how much they know. The songs are what counts.
(Matter of interest, what do you see as being the resurgence of "progressive" music? The old stuff being popular again, or new bands getting their epic widdle on?)
Well it's happening on two fronts..
..but it couldn't be a resurgence without a whole slew of new artists, and some of them are really fab.
Sorry, I meant...
...which bands? I've genuinely not noticed any proggy stuff around, apart from the likes of Muse, and at a push the Decemberists, but then I've not been looking. I'd be interested.
Porcupine Tree..
Big Red Train, Spock's Beard, Pineapple Thief, Flower Kings, Transatlantic..there are hundreds, some of them have been around for a while, but they're all part of the resurgence, I guess.
BTW Bob, the "your era" comment was directed at Pax and his list, it just landed under one of your comments.
I generally agree with you.
That's fine
but it wasn't my era either.
He didn't go to Rock School
therefore if someone asked him to play "12 Bar blues" in 1986 he may well not have known quite what that meant...but he probably picked it up fairly quick! He'd have doubtless already got the rudiments, second hand over his years touring relentlessly with the already quite sucessful beat combo he was in. But they'd played together since school and they'll have learned by jamming and playing together, they probably had their internal language and didn't think in formal terms like that.
The Pistols clearly learned a few Chuck Berry riffs but that doens't mean they started with formal training and learned something called 12 Bar blues before moving on to create their own music.
I play bass and I certainly didn't start by learning 12 Bar etc. I started by trying to copy the bass parts of songs I liked, I learned all Hooky's bits from Joy Division and New Order and also tried to copy Dub or Funk basslines. Everyone learns their own way.
Yeah.
It's the difference between knowing how a song's structured and knowing what that structure's called. Anyone who likes pop music enough to want to be in a band instinctively knows the first of those. The second's pretty irrelevant, IMO.
Well, BB didn't know any chords...
so they met in the middle.
I seem to remember
an issue of Q from many years back in which they claimed that When Love Comes To Town was a singular example of a thirteen bar blues
Guess an Arpeggio
is out of the question then?
i will never be rich and famous
but if by chance i was, and had to sign into hotels under an assumed name, it will be R Peggio
Who? What?
...the picture hasn't made it down the pipe to my rural outpost. But everybody have an up anyway.
Fixed
The server it was hosted on was unavailable, so I've replaced it.
That's what I call service...
...I understand now.
Dear Mr Lewry
... may I call you Fraser? (*simper*). Thank you so much!
Enter your credit card number here.
Box sets, re-unions, 85quid for a concert ticket, badges, poster, stickers and t-shirts. The ghost of Larry Parnes lives on.
This is bonkers. REALLY bonkers.
... it would be cheaper to buy a Trabi.
...and more fun...
I love Achtung Baby, but, er, nein danke.
I love Achtung Baby too...
I love Achtung Baby too... so much so that I'll admit to asking for the cheaper box set (Cd's & DVD's) as a Christmas pressie this year.
This album got me into music properly. I first heard it when I was 15 years old, and I spent a lot of money on music after that point. It holds a special place in my heart.
So, hoping I've been a good boy and Father Christmas brings me it, I'm looking forward to hearing allof the extras.
BTW - Has anyone actually heard the extras - particularly the Kindergarten disc? Intregued by that one the most!
Sorry U2 haters!
What's the odd black and white thing
at the lower right of the picture?
Looks like a single clog to me!
A pair of sunglasses.
Fly-era ones, by the look of it. Not bell-end yellow wrap-round ones.
Oops... It's suddenly very obvious what they are (blush)
Thanks :-)
I like the idea of a single official U2 clog
For one thing you'd have to buy two box sets to have a wearable pair.
It would, I guess, be appropriate given U2's Dutch connection
What would you do
With two left footed U2 branded clogs?
Dance like Bonio presumably?
What a lovely package
If I was a massive U2 fan I'm sure I would be delighted with that.
Well. I *like* U2
and would welcome said item into my modest mid terraced house at any time, should Mr Bono and/or Island records wish to donate one this way.
FWIW - Couldn't care less whether Adam Clayton knows what a 12 Bar Blues is, same as I couldn't care less whether Jo Whiley has ever heard of Keith Jarrett. I don't think Clayton has ever claimed beard stroking musicianship or knowledge on a par with Pino Palladino or Herbie Flowers either. Providing he can master the cogs he needs to know, surely that's all that's needed.
U2 are still essentially four ambitious kids out of a Dublin school with a little bit of talent who were lucky enough within their midst to have a chap who could play the guitar a little bit and a singer who saw everything in HD Widescreen.
Good luck to them.
You know Six Dog
I couldn't have put it better myself!
I don't like U2
it's one of those irrational dislikes of which I'm not proud but I continually bring up to appear a little bit cooler than I actually am. Your post will make me think twice, "a singer who saw everything in HD Widescreen", is the fairest description of that ridiculous, odious, self important prick I have heard and I will not cheapen myself by criticising him again, have an up.
Bang on
Laser precision wisdom Six Dog.
Just to point out...
I think the idea is that it all packs into the box (top of the picture) so it is not cluttering the house up.
There are a few Costello albums I'd like to see given this treatment.
I already have the glasses
what else could they include?
A 'My Aim Is True' darkboard?
An Airfix 'The Years Model' kit?
Get Happy!! Prozac?
Some red shoes?
a book of motel matches, a Radio Radio radio, a green shirt, some new lace sleeves, etc.
In that case
I wouldn't be looking forward to Blood And Chocolate...
Ok, not exactly the same thing..
but is it time to take a deep breath and say "Here goes"?
http://view.umusic-mail.com/?j=fe5215777c6c077b771d&m=fe6b15707564017a73...
When will I learn to keep my mouth shut....
Email
Neil, you are aware that your emai is on display at the bottom of that link aren't you? If not, you may wish to tidy it up. I'm sure no-one from this blog will use it for nefarious means, but who knows who else might see it? Cheers.
A normal bog standard release
of that material will appear around the time of teh Euro tour. £200 for that is just obscenely stupid.
Bonio.
WOOF!
All this sort of limited edition release.....
.....was dished out in the 1980s for those 'deserving' of such things (i.e. record company executives) and went a long way to making U2 being seen as a 'collectable' band.
What on earth has the general public done to deserve such tosh?
Heh... Good point
Perhaps the box should have also contained a satin tour jacket, or even one of those bomber jackets with the leather sleeves that were so prevalent back then :-)
Yeah you're right
bands gave away Press Kits and promo packs full of stuff like that in the old days. Funny how nowadays, these are now premium items to sell to die-hard fans and make up some of the shortfall from illegal downloads.
Exhibit A: Limited Rattle & Hum in a custom Flight case. I wonder how much these go for? (I don't own this item btw..I had a copy on cassette which long since went to live in Oxfam)
It begs the question......
.....whether the Record Industry bods now get something a little bit more sumptuous than the great unwashed.
Perhaps in the 'Bono's best mates' box there is an extra keyring that sends its eBay value soaring into the stratosphere?
And 'The Edge's best mates' box probably has a miniature Edge hat that you can put on your boiled egg to keep it warm.
Successful capitalists
in making more money shocker!
zactly
"I hope you like all this shit. 'Cause, er, you paid for it"
Bono