And do it quite well, I might add. Although so far away, she's got a friend.
Showing posts with label demos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label demos. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
10 Ribs & All / Carrot Pod Pod (Pod)
In which the mighty Led Zeppelin apparently wonders what it would sound like if they wrote a song for Carole King to add lyrics to.
And do it quite well, I might add. Although so far away, she's got a friend.
And do it quite well, I might add. Although so far away, she's got a friend.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Owner of a Lonely Heart
Been listening to a lot of Yes since Chris Squire's passing which is how I got to this and, well, it's pretty revelatory. I'd read that Trevor Horn had heard this Trevor Rabin demo and convinced a skeptical Rabin to work on it, but I'd never actually heard the demo and holy god does Trevor Horn have golden ears. How the hell do you hear a #1 hit in this sporadically really interesting but generally really generic 80s AOR skeleton?
Going from that to this
is...unlikely. And yet.
Alan White's drum part is magnificently understated, while this may be the most underplayed bass part Squire ever played. Also, damn, Rabin's one hell of a rock guitarist.
Going from that to this
is...unlikely. And yet.
Alan White's drum part is magnificently understated, while this may be the most underplayed bass part Squire ever played. Also, damn, Rabin's one hell of a rock guitarist.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Time
People, man. People. You see or hear the things others say and do and just shake your head, wondering how on earth they could be so foolish, ignoring—or trying to—how guilty you are of the exact same damn thing.
That Roger Waters wasn't fully cognizant of how integral David Gilmour's contributions to his artistic successes just boggles the mind. I can understand Roger being proud of his own lyrical prowess—and well he should be. I understand that Gilmour could be lazy, something David himself has admitted. I get that Roger wrote more and more of the music as well, and it wasn't entirely his own megalomaniacal tendencies (although those certainly contributed), and that by the time you've composed most of The Wall you're feeling pretty confident in your own abilities. I get that.
What I don't get is how someone can forget that they wrote this:
which is certainly a nice piece of writing, with good if not yet finished lyrics and a decent melody, but which musically doesn't sound any more advanced than the stuff he'd been writing three or four years earlier. And then the phenomenal guitarist/outstanding singer and excellent keyboardist/good singer and, yes, even the not technically accomplished but stylistically identifiable and tasteful drummer—your best friend—in your band turn it into this:
and you don't think, huh...maybe I've got a pretty good thing going, but instead, sod 'em—I'm going solo and I'll show them...I'll show them all!
32 years down the road and Roger Waters has yet to record a single song as notable as any of dozens he created in the last decade of the band. (Nor, for that matter, has David Gilmour or Rick Wright.) It's a thing that happens, when musicians begin to fancy themselves auteurs, and it's a shame. For them and for the rest of us.
That Roger Waters wasn't fully cognizant of how integral David Gilmour's contributions to his artistic successes just boggles the mind. I can understand Roger being proud of his own lyrical prowess—and well he should be. I understand that Gilmour could be lazy, something David himself has admitted. I get that Roger wrote more and more of the music as well, and it wasn't entirely his own megalomaniacal tendencies (although those certainly contributed), and that by the time you've composed most of The Wall you're feeling pretty confident in your own abilities. I get that.
What I don't get is how someone can forget that they wrote this:
which is certainly a nice piece of writing, with good if not yet finished lyrics and a decent melody, but which musically doesn't sound any more advanced than the stuff he'd been writing three or four years earlier. And then the phenomenal guitarist/outstanding singer and excellent keyboardist/good singer and, yes, even the not technically accomplished but stylistically identifiable and tasteful drummer—your best friend—in your band turn it into this:
and you don't think, huh...maybe I've got a pretty good thing going, but instead, sod 'em—I'm going solo and I'll show them...I'll show them all!
32 years down the road and Roger Waters has yet to record a single song as notable as any of dozens he created in the last decade of the band. (Nor, for that matter, has David Gilmour or Rick Wright.) It's a thing that happens, when musicians begin to fancy themselves auteurs, and it's a shame. For them and for the rest of us.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Imprinting
Imprinting is a funny thing. When DT and I were in high school, every year there'd be ducks that would come and nest and lay eggs and raise little ducklings. You'd be trying and failing to concentrate on, say, trigonometry because there'd be a momma duck leading a row of ducklings around the courtyard right outside the window and how on earth could trig compete with that?
(Also, you lost all respect for your very nice trig teacher when she mentioned that René Descartes was not only a mathematician but a philosopher and his most famous insight was the saying, "I exist, therefore I am," and you looked around the room, slack-jawed, and saw all the other students writing that down and wondered if you were the only one who'd watched Monty Python sing "The Philosopher Song" and how was it possible that Monty Python were a more reliable teacher than the very nice woman who was paid to teach trig at your high school and yet the evidence was inescapable?)
Every year there were strict warnings, more from the fellow students than the teachers or administrators, not to touch the ducklings, no matter how adorbs they were, as if you did, the mother would from that point on refuse to have anything to do with the duckling, as the slightest touch of a human would embue it with the human's stench forever and ever and it would die a horrible death of starvation and neglect. Years later, I was told that such a horrific scenario was not, in fact, true. Be that as it may, the result was that no one, as far as I know, ever did actually touch one of the ducklings. (Although, yes, it is possible one young jackass jumped out the chemistry window and tried to catch a duckling but found the little bugger too fast and yes he was kinda relieved to fail at least that one time.)
We've all seen the videos of ducklings or goslings or whatever having imprinted upon a creature that's clearly not its mother—another kind of bird or a deer or a person or a scooter or whatever. It's a real thing, something which isn't news to most music fans.
What we first liked or at least first heard tends to have a long and lasting impression upon us. Even if we later grow out of our, say, Barry Manilow phase, there's often a lingering fondness for his fluffy cheese (ew) that never quite dissipates entirely. Or we find ourselves so sick of and turned off by an early love (hello, Doors!) that you very much run in the other direction. Either way, those earliest impressions make a big impact on us and our development.
Which can make objective listening a difficult thing. A good friend, hearing some later Elvis alternate takes without the huge backing choirs and strings, wondered why he always preferred hearing songs stripped down. Part of it, maybe most of it, I think, is the simple novelty factor of hearing something as familiar as "Suspicious Minds" in a new way (and also too, admittedly, much as I love the official release, more and clearer Elvis does tend to be better Elvis to my ears).
This is why I often prefer hearing R.E.M.'s "Finest Worksong" in one of its alternate mixes, with the cool guitar intro and horns. Meaning, if we only knew the barebones version of "In the Ghetto," would the full orchestral version be spine-tingling or would it seem hopelessly overwrought? (I love both but if forced to choose would instead eat a downy little baby duckling.)
And so "Talent Show" by the Replacements. I loved the official release from the first and all these decades later still love it. But it's hard to deny the power of the original studio demo. The question I can't answer is, if this was the version I'd imprinted on, would the official version seem terribly soft or would it feel as though a rough masterpiece had finally been brought to completion.
As the boys themselves said on the previous album, I don't know. I understand why they did what they did and I think, conventional wisdom be damned, it was a fine idea and done quite well indeed, commercial failure aside. But it's hard not to feel something was lost in the process and impossible to know how I'd feel if the order had been reversed.
(Also, you lost all respect for your very nice trig teacher when she mentioned that René Descartes was not only a mathematician but a philosopher and his most famous insight was the saying, "I exist, therefore I am," and you looked around the room, slack-jawed, and saw all the other students writing that down and wondered if you were the only one who'd watched Monty Python sing "The Philosopher Song" and how was it possible that Monty Python were a more reliable teacher than the very nice woman who was paid to teach trig at your high school and yet the evidence was inescapable?)
Every year there were strict warnings, more from the fellow students than the teachers or administrators, not to touch the ducklings, no matter how adorbs they were, as if you did, the mother would from that point on refuse to have anything to do with the duckling, as the slightest touch of a human would embue it with the human's stench forever and ever and it would die a horrible death of starvation and neglect. Years later, I was told that such a horrific scenario was not, in fact, true. Be that as it may, the result was that no one, as far as I know, ever did actually touch one of the ducklings. (Although, yes, it is possible one young jackass jumped out the chemistry window and tried to catch a duckling but found the little bugger too fast and yes he was kinda relieved to fail at least that one time.)
We've all seen the videos of ducklings or goslings or whatever having imprinted upon a creature that's clearly not its mother—another kind of bird or a deer or a person or a scooter or whatever. It's a real thing, something which isn't news to most music fans.
Hey! Hey! DT! Check it out! A new live Bruce album! Yeah, another one! I know! Isn't it great?! Let's go get! Oh, wait, I think it's over here! No, no, it's over here! It's over there now!
Which can make objective listening a difficult thing. A good friend, hearing some later Elvis alternate takes without the huge backing choirs and strings, wondered why he always preferred hearing songs stripped down. Part of it, maybe most of it, I think, is the simple novelty factor of hearing something as familiar as "Suspicious Minds" in a new way (and also too, admittedly, much as I love the official release, more and clearer Elvis does tend to be better Elvis to my ears).
This is why I often prefer hearing R.E.M.'s "Finest Worksong" in one of its alternate mixes, with the cool guitar intro and horns. Meaning, if we only knew the barebones version of "In the Ghetto," would the full orchestral version be spine-tingling or would it seem hopelessly overwrought? (I love both but if forced to choose would instead eat a downy little baby duckling.)
And so "Talent Show" by the Replacements. I loved the official release from the first and all these decades later still love it. But it's hard to deny the power of the original studio demo. The question I can't answer is, if this was the version I'd imprinted on, would the official version seem terribly soft or would it feel as though a rough masterpiece had finally been brought to completion.
As the boys themselves said on the previous album, I don't know. I understand why they did what they did and I think, conventional wisdom be damned, it was a fine idea and done quite well indeed, commercial failure aside. But it's hard not to feel something was lost in the process and impossible to know how I'd feel if the order had been reversed.
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