Entertainment For Lively Minds
Mandatory adjectives ahoy!
Posted by stimpy on 9 August 2010 - 12:36pm.
There are, it seems, certain artists which are, by some law, always associated with a specific adjective. It's almost as if the tyro music writer is issued with a secret booklet defining how certain artists must be described...
This thread is an attempt to tease out the contents of that booklet.
Van Morrison - curmudgeonly
Neu - a motorik beat
Badfinger - Beatlesesque
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Prince - diminutive
Morrissey - miserable
Pet Shop Boys - arch
Paul Weller - The Modfather
Amy Winehouse - troubled
Gary Glitter - disgraced
Also diminutive
Paul Simon.
Evidently it wasn't a tag he was happy with, either.
During a performance at the London Palladium in 1975, Simon reached into his pocket and produced a cutting from the Evening Standard. It seems the paper had described Paul as "diminutive" in a preview of the concert and he was bent on revenge.
The following 10 minutes were spent ripping into the Standard writer responsible in quite bizarre fashion, before the next song was performed.
More info please!
In what way was it bizarre? I am most intrigued! :-)
From memory
Simon mentioned the hapless writer by name several times and proceeded to make speculative and derogatory comments about his appearance (presumably based on the tiny mug shot alongside the journalist's by line).
It was a tremendous concert however, made even better by a guest appearance by the great Toots Thielemans on mouth organ.
I'm jealous...
One of the concerts I'd most like to have seen was Paul Simon at Hammersmith Odeon in 1980 with the One Trick Pony band.
I'm not a particularly huge
Paul Simon fan, but I have to say, the sound quality, performance and level of musicianship at those Palladium shows (there were several during December 1975) was the best I've ever seen at any concert.
Read 'em and weep - the band was :
Steve Gadd - Drums
Randy Brecker - Trumpet
Richard Tee - Piano, Vocals
Tony Levin - Bass
Michael Brecker - Saxophone, EWI
Hugh McCracken - Guitars
Toots Thielemans - Harmonica
Phoebe Snow - Vocals
I dread to think how much those guys were charging Simon.
Steve Gadd is/was known for demanding session rates even when on tour so, you want him for a month, you're paying him hourly for all that time.
The Brecker Bros and Tony Levin were amongst the very highest paid session players at that time, with Richard Tee not far behind.
And further to
the "diminutive" business, here's what I found on this website:
http://www.paul-simon.info/
The relevant part of Bob Wolffinden's 1975 review follows:
The second half proceeded in similar style, though we noted that Thielmans did not reappear. Simon then took time out for an´ articulate, witty and caustic attack on an old colleague of ours, James Johnson, who had written in his Evening Standard review that Simon lacked the physical stature normally granted legendary figures.
If there´s one thing Simon´s self-conscious about; to the point of paranoia, it´s his deficiency in the inches department, Johnson came in for a severe lambasting.
If I were in a band and could afford Steve Gadd...
I'd just say "Name your price and I'll pay it." Then I'd have Steve Gadd in my band for gawd's sake - "On the drums, Steve Gadd", every night. Worth every penny!
all true about Gadd
and his session fees at a certain point in his career, like the 80s. But in 1975, his fees wouldn't have been any more than other players, and Tony Levin (before he took up the Chapman stick) wasn't as in-demand as Gadd or the Brecker Brothers at that point.
In a musical context, in 1975 Gadd was famous (with drummers anyway) for two things: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover and the middle section of Aja; and if you were a jazz fan, for things like Chick Corea's Night Sprite.
What a line-up
Paul! Paul!
There's a caterpillar crawling under your nose!
Attention all Gadd-worshippers!
Now you can prostrate yourselves before his holy paradiddle - in person!:
http://www.londondrumshow.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&...
Steve Gadd was, by the mid-70s, one of the most
in-demand session drummers in the US. I was doing sessions around the same era and I know what I was getting paid, and I remember the tales of what he charged.
Never met the chap though, he didn't do many sessions for baked bean adverts :-)
sorry to be a pedant
But Steve Gadd couldn't have been famous for the middle section of Aja in 1975 as it wasn't recorded or released until 1977.
As you were
you are, of course, right
The Dan's drummer of choice was then Jeff Porcaro, shortly to be replaced by Bernard Purdie.
As far as I know...
You could all be making this sh*t up...
God, I love this place.
I am not going to google/wiki this so I might be wrong...
...but wasn't Jeff Porcaro the singer for "Africa" Hitmakers, Toto?
Drummer.
His brother Steve played keyboards, and other brother Jeff played bass.
My favourite part of the story is this:
It isn't funny.. but it is very Spın̈al Tap...
I Googled it. Sometimes you have too.
um, sorry
Mike played bass, two brothers called Jeff would just be weird
...no need to apologise...
serves me right for -
1. Getting involved in a discussion where I have no background knowledge
2. Consulting Google
3. Doing so with a head full of red wine
Can we start a campaign, please?
To stop calling Amy Winehouse 'troubled'.
And instead refer to her as 'discombobulated'.
I prefer
"pillock."
Any artist whose album is advertised on the telly.
Slightly tangential to this, the most ubiquitous mandatory adjective : "The stunning new album."
"Stunning" turns up everywhere. The word is now standard issue and therefore meaningless. It is like PR releases where a mega-corp pronounces itself "delighted".
The latest album by some nice young men with guitars is unlikely to be truly stunning. Surely PR companies can stretch to a thesaurus ?
Morrissey - take your pick
Devious, truculent, unreliable ...
The Grateful Dead - lengthy
Sting - tantric
Nick Drake - depressed
Syd Barrett - mad
Nick Rhodes - pretentious
Lemmy - warty
Bette Midler - divine
True, but swap them around a bit and
you get a slightly different perspective on these artists
Grateful Dead - tantric
Sting - lengthy
Nick Drake - pretentious
Syd Barrett - warty
Nick Rhodes - depressed
Lemmy - divine
Bette Midler - mad
bowie
Chameleon-like
Geezer with acoustic & gob iron = New Dylan.
Geezer with electric & denim/plaid shirt = New Springsteen.
Scantily clad tuneless strumpet = Pop Princess.
Nickelback
Shit
Oh bloody hell...
I hope the Canadians aren't reading this.
I did think about putting
Bono - twat in the original post but I thought it would be petty and churlish of me so to do :-)
Or as Viz referred to him
The little twat with the big heart
I thought that was ...
... the big twat with the little willy
or maybe I'm fixing up me muckin' words again
Then there's
Jamiroquai - the twat in the hat
Shit Nickelback
is a tautology.
As in, 'a great big, ugly, offensive, steaming pile of Nickelback'.
If that describes
Nickelback, I dread to think what words you would choose for the world's worst band, Limp Bizkit?
An adjective unto itself:
George W Bush's political legacy is utterly Limp Bizkit.
Alternatively:
Australia's performance in the Beldisloe Cup was complete Maroon 5.
Um...
Neil Young - grizzled, uncompromising
The Stones - ageing rockers
REM - alternative (still? really?)
Kurt Cobain - doomed
Noel Gallagher - light fingered, magpie
Aging
You beat me to it with The Stones. However, once something is pointed out to you...David Hepworth alerted me to the fact that we are *all* aging. Which may be obvious, but I think of it every time I see it in print. It's ridiculous. It's like referring to someone as breathing.
I prefer Ringo's
still vertical (i.e. not horizontal aka dead)...
Inspired his album 'Vertical Man.'
It is ridiculous, and these days it is normal for 'rockers' to age. Maybe because the Stones were the first band to conspicuously age in public, and stayed together all the while, they got the tag.
Björk
Björk – elfin
Rolling Stones – superannuated
Rod Stewart
Gravelly-throated.
Prince
Diminutive (short arsed to me and you)
As a fellow short-arse, myself
I like to think of Prince as a 'diminutive lady-magnet.'
He's out there batting for all of us vertically challenged guys!
Lee 'Scratch' Perry
Eccentric.
Kylie
seems to split the hacks: is she 'antipodean' or 'fragrant' or 'diminutive' or perhaps all three?
A short, smelly, Aussie?
I think you're confusing her
with Sir Les Patterson. (Allegedly!)
Ahem
I think you'll find in 2010 that Kylie is 'Brave Kylie'.
As Harry Enfield described her
everyone's favourite antipodean sex dwarf
Black Eyed Peas
- deathless
Ageing rocker
Anyone over the age of 45 who has ever sang or played a guitar/keyboard/bass/drumkit on a piece of popular music
Hoary old rockers..
could be Status Quo!
Six of the best
Regina Spektor, Muse, Lemmy, Paul Weller, David Bowie and Elvis Costello are quirky, bombastic, indestructible, uncompromising, chameleon-like and bespectacled, respectively.
King Of Pop
The title awarded to Michael Jackson by his people.
Jim Morrison
The Lizard King.
shop-worn
Iggy - leathery, wild-man, deranged
Led Zep - debauched, swaggering
Jim Morrison - shamanistic
Keith - human riff
Mick - rubber-lipped
U2 - anthemic
Bjork - elfin
Pixies - loud/quiet
Beethoven - deaf
Beethoven
He was so deaf he thought he was a painter.
Bruce Springsteen
'Blue Collar'.
Kinks
Quintessentially English
Sometimes applied to others, often XTC.
more
joni mitchell - difficult
frank zappa -eccentric
lou reed - caustic , difficult, hostile, belligerent, bellicose, terse, surly, argumentative , hostile, survivor,and err ageing rocker
Delving further
into the trusty cliché manual.
Defeated tennis players never simply lose. They are invariably "bundled out" of Wimbledon.
Tributes for the dead are always "flooding in"
Football teams usually "crash out" of the FA Cup
Couple more;
Cocteau Twins - ethereal
Sigur Ros - gossamer
Slowdive/Ride - sonic cathedral
Essential
(Insert artist name here) when applied to any artist's compilation comprising a combination of tracks which are
obvious
very likely one-label-only
stuff where artist has no control over publishing/usage
re-recorded
out of copyright
otherwise random selections
not the artist's most interesting work
There are honourable exceptions, but this is the general usage.
'...of their generation'
Tom Jones = windbag
Alison Moyet = well-upholstered
Numan = robotic
Woman from M People = foghorn
P J Harvey = kooky
Val Doonican = cardiganed
Bjork = bonkers
Cliff = Peter Pan
Any woman singer who's not Kylie or Joanna Newsom = Diva
Any man over age of 45 = legendary
Joe Cocker = earthy
Matt Monro = crooner
Liam Gallagher = tit
Any male singer
with a decent baritone voice, if accompanied at any point by strings = Scott Walker influenced
A football one
Expect any Tottenham transfer story to include the words "wheeler-dealing Harry Redknapp".
Another football one
Eric Cantona - mercurial