Still can't make my mind up weather to have my LP12 ( Blown circuit board ) repaired + new cartridge ( Current one is a 1986 ish Asaka ) not been used in years , been advised it will need changing due to stuff perishing over time ) or go for something like a Rega RP6 . Not there yet but certainly will be by the time this bloody Isolation ends .
You love Glee! You just don't realise it yet! Here are some of my favourite Glee covers, so you can see how wonderful it is: I'll, er, stop now.
It reminds me of something Mark LaMarr once said, while reviewing a song by Dido. “It’s music for people who don’t like music.”
Oddly enough, this is something I have often felt about a lot of popular music as you do wonder just how much people are really listening to what is happening. There are several bug-bears I have about music which nicely fits in with the Dido comment:- 1. Music where the backing had not been made by a readily discernible instrument which , in my book, usually includes used of programming / synths for harmony or "beats" which are not produced by a drummer. I really hate this kind of slick, soulless production. I think it was last month I caught something on the radio where the music was just a processed voice with some sampled "beats." It just seemed that this was something that could have been assembled with a computer in someone's bedroom. If you have grown up listening to drummers like Jo Jones, Buddy Rich, Philly Jo Jones, Tony Williams, Jack De Johnette, Paul Motian, Elvin Jones, Nasheet Waits, Hamid Drake, etc, etc, why would you ever tolerate a drum machine? 2. I am not too fussed by music which is just a one chord vamp. It is shocking just how prevalent this is. It is common in pop music ("Fire starter") but you also find it a lot in some African music as well as quite a bit of jazz. At least Coltrane uses interesting scales when he improvised on this kind of thing but it is staggering how enduring this approach has been in jazz. Pharoah Sanders has built a whole career on it. A few years ago I caught the Canadian band "Girls in airports" doing a set where everything seemed to be based on single chord vamps. 3. Inoffensive pop music - Got to say that there is so much pap out there and it is so popular that I am totally baffled. The appeal of someone like Adele is beyond me. You hear people say she has an "amazing voice" yet you wonder just how wide their listening experience is if they find her remarkable. How bad must the rest of the music they listen be for her to be singled out as exceptional? Her piano playing is pretty banal too. To be honest, it is not worth discussing music with anyone who is a fan of this kind of material simply because you know their taste is very going to go beyond the anodyne. 4. Singers who "emote." - This is so irritating. It is staggering how often the BBC entertainment page seems to focus on these kinds of singers. I find a lot of this stuff very shallow but if you want emotional clout from a singer, it seems odd not to select someone who has actually lived a life that is reflected in their music whether we are talking about Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, Shirley Horn, Bessie Smith or countless country Blues singers from the 1920s and 30s. You wonder what someone like Muddy Waters would have made of a singer like Adele!!
That's not me then, because music is my life. And I like all (most) music. As for Dido, she's done some good songs IMO. White Flag, Here with Me, Life for Rent. Though I think my favourite is possibly this. I like the video too. It makes me want to go into a forest at night, though only during a full moon. They're creepy the rest of the time. And possibly then too. As for Adele, she's alright... But I kinda like the song Someone Like You. Not from any technical point of view, just because the message and lyrics and the images it creates. I guess when it comes to music, I like a song based on the lyrics and/or how it makes me feel or what images it creates in my mind rather than necessarily the quality of the production, or whatever.
I agree with a lot of what you say there Ian. My musical taste is very eclectic, and I’ll give anything a listen at least once, but I am more put off by bland, anodyne pap than I am by assonant or discordant pieces, which are at least challenging. I have no particular beef with covers of original songs, but I do expect that the song is given the respect that any song deserves. If the song has a story behind it which inspired the writer, that story should come through in the performance of the cover. Just playing the tune and reciting the words, even with a clever arrangement, just isn’t enough. The performers on shows like Glee are no doubt very talented, but the music is invariably reduced to the lowest common denominator. I suppose we should be grateful that however bad stuff like that is, we haven’t (yet) reached the depths of Orwell’s 1984: “The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub−section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.”
Something mellow (Lapras) to sooth the soul for these troubled times, you can't fail to be lifted by this classic from Van the man...
Chilcs I is funny that your quote Orwell because this passage always crosses my mind whenever I hear something banal. I think the genius of "1984" is that whenever you read it, something within the book resonates with what is happening at that particular time. I grew up with a passion for jazz through my Dad but it was something that quickly grew beyond the kind of jazz he liked. My Dad was a massive fan of people like Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington but once I has become hooked on this kind of music too I needed to find out who inspired these musicians. This opened me up to listen to a lot of jazz from the 20s and 30s before I then went in the other direction I explore who musicians who started their careers in these bands before going on to do something different. My the time I was 18 I had already ploughed through the likes of Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk and had become a fan of Miles Davis. Hearing Miles work with Gil Evans then got me exploring Classical music too. It has become a feature with my music listening habits that I never get tired of exploring although it is less easy to be shocked by something nowadays and the situation of have to work on something to appreciate it is not so prevalent. I suppose my ears have got used to things. I can never forget hearing John Surman and Karin Krog perform a piece of music called "My friend" in the mid 80s and staggered that anyone could create music like that. It is actually very interesting how the process of popular music has evolved and actually to discover just how cynical music production is. This has been something which has existed throughout the 20th century and right from the point where many early record producers in the States like Gennett evolved from manufacturing furniture which then included early gramophones. The idea was that selling records would create demand for the gramophones they sold and prior to 1929( after which the record industry initially collapsed), there was a recording free for all solely with the emphasis of recording anything which might have commercial value. The commercial pressures came to a head in the Depression when radio out competed record production since it could continually feature an ever - changing play list. This is how the vogue for crooners started with Tin Pan Alley songwriters falling over each other to get their material performed no matter how crass. By the end of the 1930s commercialism had become far more sophisticated so by the close of that decade you ended up with big bands led by the likes of Glenn Miller who essentially produced a lot of material which followed a strict format. There are some excellent books by Gunther Schuller which concern the evolution of jazz and he pointed out that Miller limited his arrangers to the use of (I think) 16 voicings for the reeds and brass that the arrangers he employed were not permitted to deviate from. Irrespective of the repertoire (which was frequently execrable) , by limited how the band sounded like and sticking to a strict formula, Miller ensured he had an identity which was recognisable and popular. These days this might seem quite clever yet , at that time, a lot of his contemporaries has sussed what he was doing and were uncomfortable with this because it stifled creativity. Glenn Miller's success effectively still serves as a model today where you will find that the music which is popular all sounds the same with regard to tempo, key, patterns within the music and the use of things such as hooks. There are loads of examples of this on YouTube if you think I am being sceptical but, in a nutshell, the reason anyone who has more discerning tastes find a lot of pop boring is generally because the musical ideas are often simple and if someone has success with something, other artists will be encouraged to produce something similar. I find it really fascinating as to what it is that makes piece of music interesting and once you start to hear where these elements are missing in music, it does make you less tolerant! I think that it is things such as key changes / modulations as well as cross and polyrhythms which help to make music more interesting. If you have several things going on in a piece of music such as counterpoint or the use of counter melody or even a riff, then there is more to listen to. This is particularly the case with pop music. I think the way musicians voice their harmonies is also a giveaway as to whether anyone is actually any cop as a performer. Someone like Miller knew how to tailor their music but 80 years later the standards have really slipped. I would also add that I think improvisation in music is hugely important whether you are talking about Bach, Chopin, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Buddy Buy or Jimi Hendrix. I cannot comment on some think like "Glee" which I am unaware of but there are artists like Adele where there strikes me that there is a paucity of imagination. Whenever I hear stuff like that, I tend to want to return to hearing someone like the pianist Paul Bley where the concept employed is purely musical. I often wish someone would highjack a commercial radio station and play a load of Albert Ayler to see what the reaction would be!
A cover of Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music originally written for Glynis Johns but here coved by Dame Judi Dench. I think this meets Ian's criteria for being a good cover of someone else's song.
Showed my mate this tonight and he asked if It was inspired by Nick Drake.... I didn’t know who he was. I do now. Sad story, but I liked the track:
