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Ghost of Electricity

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Posts posted by Ghost of Electricity

    Parquet Courts

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    apparantly they're touring Oz soon, according to my friend. she said "best modern band of all time" (i've never heard their stuff)

    from their "website"

     

    JAN 29th @ The Corner

    Melbourne, Victoria

    w/ Total Control, Constant Mongrel

     

    JAN 31st @ Laneway Festival

    Brisbane, Queensland

     

    FEB 1st @ Laneway Festvial

    Melbourne, Victoria

     

    FEB 2nd @ Laneway Festival

    Sydney, NSW

     

    FEB 5th @ The Standard

    Sydney, NSW

    w/ Total Control, Bed Wettin' Bad Boys

     

    FEB 7th @ Laneway Festival

    Adelaide, SA

     

    FEB 8th @ Laneway Festival

    Fremantle, W. AUS

     

    then to Uk it looks like.  not quite close enough for me to get there:(

    Parquet Courts

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    Sometimes I hear Pavement, sometimes Television, sometimes VU, sometimes the Feelies, some Beck on the new ep as well.  If we consider those bands to be in the same extended family, rather than call PC derivative, I'd say that they're just carrying on the family tradition. And doing it justice, methinks.

    lets see pics of your gear

    in Solid State Technology

    Posted

    They really are.  I really should be playing my 94 strat more often at shows because it weighs half as much and is probably worth 2 or 3 times more, but I just can't put my Epi Les Paul Custom down.. 

    the true worth of a guitar isn't determined by the price tag.  I love my cheapo Danelectro 59DC RI.

    worst sounding albums

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    Not trying to offend anybody but.....YHF, Summerteeth, Being There

     

    I tried selling those CDs at Reckless recently and they wouldnt buy 'em. They were in good shape too.

    well, ST, i'll give you...definitely should be put on trial in the Hague crimes committed in the loudness wars.

    A Thread for Musical Blasphemy you Truly Believe

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    This is a good point of discussion I think. Maybe too complex for a threaded discussion like this, but let's give it a shot.

     

    Singers singing their own songs is a relatively new phenomenon. Not that it didn't happen, it did, but in the "good old days" songwriters who were not singers wrote for people with pipes. No one can ever say that the really good singers Billy Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby (take or leave those and add your own) could inhabit and convince the listener that the song WAS theirs. Fast forward to the Bob Dylan era. Not only did Bob Dylan write songs that everyone wanted to sing (and convince folks were really theirs), he also managed to convince people that they had to write their own material to prove that they were real artists. Hence plenty of folks sing their own songs to sometimes mixed effect, leaving better songs to others. I have seen many a band break into a cover of someone else's and light up a stage they couldn't light up with their own work. What continues to be the most popular band? Any band in a bar covering songs that are famous in their own right. Songs that become standards last forever when the next generation and subsequent generations pick them up and sing them. In some cases we don't even know who the writer was because there were many writers and those are so called folk songs and have the benefit of all the rough edges being smoothed out over years of constant repetition and small editing. (From another thread....you can enjoy Bob Dylan singing a gem like Copper Kettle and think he wrote it, but he didn't, lots of people did.)

     

    That is not to say that individuals can't strike gold. They can and do all the time. New songs are added to the cannon and each musician can and should take a shot at immortality. (One of my first arguments here on VC involved the songs "City of New Orleans" and "Gentle on My Mind" from back in the day when VCers were less literate than they are now. Both made the now deceased writers and singers both famous and rich. I assume you can name them because everyone is literate now days, more literate than I am.) And it is very exciting to see a singer or a group shoot for this. It is less enthralling to see singers sing the same old shit even when they are singing something new (yea Jay Farrar, I am talking about you.) I have also said this before. The reason Bob Dylan is called "the voice of his generation" (whatever the fuck that means anyway since he now seem to be the voice of every generation since), is that not only was he singing stuff that people really enjoyed hearing, but he wrote songs everyone could and wanted to sing. And all significant artists understand that the songs others wrote are of equal significance to their own. Dylan covers Warren Zevon, nearly everyone covers Townes Van Zandt, when artists get tired of writing new stuff (or just plan tired and lame) they put out covers or standards albums. Hell Harry Nilsson put out a great standards album and he wasn't even finished writing his own great songs. For some reason the Gershwin's never go out of style. Hank Williams wrote great original material along with singing plenty of songs written by others. If a singer/songwriter can claim just one endearing song he or she can be called a legend.

     

    Meanwhile I understand why people like Bright Eyes/Oberst. I am not a big fan, but most people know that. I don't think he qualifies as a legend. I finally saw the Hold Steady this year for the first time (I'm starting to lose it because I simply can't remember which festival it was at...gawd....) They were totally enjoyable, but as you point out, verbose to the max. I kept wanting them to pare it down a touch, but that is their shtick and I they do it pretty well. Seeing them didn't make me a fan, but I understand why others are.

     

    Awhile ago my daughter and did a show on families where there were more than one famous musician. In nearly every case the siblings were less than the parents through no fault of their own. (The only one even close to equal are the Buckley's and I maintain even that isn't close.) (Actually Justin Earle does kick ass...) This is a totally different subject to be sure. While I am looking forward to Sarah Guthrie's record produced by Jeff, nothing from her previous album I have heard even comes close to either Woody or Arlo. Not because she isn't a good singer, but because she hasn't found her own voice yet. I hope she does. It would be pretty cool.

     

    Each summer when some song gets dubbed the song of the summer (whatever the hell that is), I keep trying to figure out how many summers from now anyone will remember it. The one song in recent memory like that was "Crazy" (not the Patsy Cline single obviously). Others did cover that, although not widely. I hope someone does cover it in years to come because it is a great song (although weird) in its own right, separate and apart from Celo's singing and Danger Mouse's production. Despite the very catchy nature of Blurred Lines, I doubt anyone will really want to cover that. Although I did see someone cover the Daft Punk song, which isn't really a song anyway, but a pretty catchy dance rift. (Strangely the last group I can figure that people really do like covering are the Pixies, and maybe the Replacements.) But as sure as can be and as sure as Janis Joplin covered Summertime by George Gershwin and brought his music to my generation who could have given a rats ass about him, someone will cover songs from years ago. I noticed that someone has put out an album of Childe Ballads. Go figure. Look for someone to start covering the more obscure songs on the mondo Paramount box set that just came out (If someone wants to buy it for me, feel free....) Because ultimately all artists will sing songs from those that came before and do it well and expose an entire new generation to the past. Thank goodness. Because no matter how big Kanye West gets, I doubt anyone is going to put out an album of his material. I sort of hope someone does and proves me wrong about him and his songs.

     

    LouieB

    You're sounding a bit like a Hold Steady song yourself with that post!  I'm not going to disagree with anything you say above, except for maybe the part about folk songs.  Because a folk song, unaccredited and existing in many different versions, anyone can take that change a few words, add a verse, delete another, vary it to some degree large or small that makes it their own.  

     

    But i think a distinction should be drawn between folk songs and covers.  A cover song is one that (generally speaking) references the original for the sake of referencing the original.  (It's true you get your Elvis Presleys occasionally who try to steal outright from your Arthur Crudups) These sort of covers have an established precedent, the record of the original (unlike folk music). In a way, recorded music has pretty much killed folk music off, at least folk music in the sense that Harry Smith and Alan Lomax set out to document. Now "folk" is largely synonymous with "singer-songwriter" and the sense that there is a source that musicians can draw on that comes from culturally somewhere deep and remote, that no longer exists.

     

    The songs being written today that will one day be considered iconic are things that the music snobs that hang around here (and believe me I include myself in this group) are all to quick to discount.  I have a very talented friend who plays guitar/sings.  She swears by a Miley Cyrus song.  I've never even heard a Miley Cyrus song to the best of my knowledge, and have zero desire to do so, unless it is her (my friend) doing it.  maybe curiosity will prompt me to check out the original, but i doubt it.  Too bad I can't find it on youtube (maybe it's there but i don't know what it's called) but here she is doing a Big Star cover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3XJv2lKNMA&list=UUuKcJL678XILxtcO88ZQmvg

    A Thread for Musical Blasphemy you Truly Believe

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    Some nice observations Louis, although one or two of your points which were intended to be negatives i would put down as positives:

     

    they don't need to have anything to interest anyone else besides themselves. ... but no one cares that anyone else is going to cover their work.

     

    especially the second one.  If someone writes a song with the intent that someone else will sing it, then that singer is that much more remote from the material, and the writer isn't necessarily writing from a personal perspective to begin with. And as Dylan says "if you believe what you're singing that elevates it."  (or words to that effect) So those songs may come out more universal in a sense, but also more generic and therefore less meaningful.

     

    There are some good lyricists working today (okay, a broad definition of today)Two that spring to mind without having to think too hard Connor Oberst can turn a fantastic phrase, and the guy from the Hold Steady (whose name escapes me at the moment) is a good storyteller, albeit perhaps a bit too verbose. 

    Is Wilco your favorite band?

    in Just A Fan

    Posted

    The term "favorite band" doesn't have as much meaning for me as it did twenty years ago, or even ten.  What does it mean, really? does it mean that I listen to them more than any other band? Does it mean they've had more of an affect on my life than any other band?  Does it mean (as someone suggested) that they're the band I would see live, if given a choice?  Are we talking right now at this moment or in the scope of my entire life?  What counts as a band? Does Dylan count?  Sparklehorse? Are we considering the body of work as a whole or the importance of just the best examples? The more I think about it, the more I don't want to.

    Pedal Talk

    in Solid State Technology

    Posted

    I find myself moving away from pedals.  I'm currently at three, a fuzz face clone, a timmy od and a tuner.  I miss the trem and delay a bit, but I have trem on my amp and i only ever really used the delay for slapback.  What I don't miss is lugging all that shit around.  And, I've found that by using the guitar volume knob i can get most (ok, all) the tones I need anyway.

     

    I'd still like to try a hotcake, though, since i use a vox...

    Your children's taste in music

    in Someone Else's Song

    Posted

    When they were younger "Casino Queen" was a favorite, and "Reckoning"  a proud father moment happened when my older son rushed to turn off Beethoven and put in Velvet Underground (he was 7 or 8 at the time) another was when my younger son (the 3 or 4) asked to hear "country music" by which he meant the Harry Smith Anthology.

     

    Then they saw Iron Man, and it's been nothing but ACDC.  Until recently, when Kiss became acceptable. They're young, they have time to discover, but I'm getting a bit sick of Back in Black.  A glimmer of hope earlier today when my older son (almost 12 now) asked about The Who.  

     

    What about you?  Are your kids listening to things that you find agreeable?

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