Noise We Enjoys
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Brantly B.
- Woah Dangsaurus
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Re: Noise We Enjoys
He has slipped the surly bonds of this gay earth.
Re: Noise We Enjoys
Talking with Beat, about how The Spirit of Apollo by N.A.S.A. is basically a perfect album the entire way through is making me think about what other albums are near perfect and I think two come to mind for me: Haunted by Poe and Frances the Mute by The Mars Volta. If I catch any of the songs from those albums, I just NEED to listen to the whole thing.
It was hard to pick an example song from Haunted, so many of the songs are completely different styles from the rest.
So now I know what I'm doing for the evening.
It was hard to pick an example song from Haunted, so many of the songs are completely different styles from the rest.
So now I know what I'm doing for the evening.
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Mongrel
- Posts: 21336
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- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: Noise We Enjoys
I've talked about protest music before. Well, here's LL Cool J with a monster freestyle.
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Mongrel
- Posts: 21336
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- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: Noise We Enjoys
This one's stuck in my head somewhat (almost certain I've posted it before), but I thought I'd post it here because I wanted to talk a little bit about the blues in general as they have a bit of an orthagonal relationship to stuff happening even today.
The Blues is something that has touched me pretty deeply.
At first, I'd peripherally come at as many modern white kids did, through rock. Getting curious and seeking out the original versions of songs sung by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Ram Jam, Three Dog Night and dozens upon dozens of others you never even knew were covers. But as a comics nerd, it was Robert Crumb, a massive blues fan and a collector of rare, original records, who did the most to introduce me to the real, original blues, and its various regional forms (Piedmont blues, Delta blues, etc.), with his books about them, and even a CD full of tracks. So, thanks, Mr. Crumb.
It's fascinating to see how much a century of music is owed to a handful of understated but brilliant talents, where the blues has contributed a staggeringly enormous amount of modern musical language. I remember one quote (which, for the life of me I can't find the source, though I'm pretty sure it was either by or about Chuck Berry) that went "the first time I ever listened to a rock and roll song, it felt like breaking out of jail.", well, there really was a jail, and the Blues is the songs from it.
It's amazing to see how much bluesmen made given how little they had to work with. A single instrument, usually a cheap guitar, made to sound like two or even three people playing. Some without even instruments. The cliche about washboards and jugs was real - household items made to sing and play like a church choir, using whatever was at hand. They worked from memory, on slim training, with barely the resources to even keep a songbook sometimes.
It's sobering to feel the weight of history these songs (usually unintentionally) carry. To think of what it grew out of (slave songs, spirituals, prison work gang songs), what great weight society had laid on the poor, sometimes desperate musicians, who often died destitute (some did prosper modestly, but even among those, many still died relatively young), whose only venues were street corners, tin-walled Juke Joints, and other poor folks' concert halls. . What an important and valuable record of the impoverished lives of the oppressed these songs left, that we can see the continuity of the hardships laid upon them traced from years untold before all the way up to today, and the rough lives many bluesmen led - "The Gangsta Rap of the Segregated South" was a comment that I always remember. That as with so many forms of art, beautiful things are made from the spirits of crushed people, and the Blues bears witness to this as few other art forms do.
It's inspiring to see how much of themselves the singers and players gave to their music. Nothing is held back. Every erg of emotion, every bit of energy that could be mustered was poured into the music. For the most desperate, their next meal depended on it.
Yet it's heartbreaking to hear the pain in some of the deepest blues, to know there is nothing you or anyone else will ever be able to do to alleviate the suffering these artists went through. In the song above, Tommy Johnson is singing about his inescapable addiction to cheap methanol cooking fuel, which he knows is quite literally killing him (it almost certainly did), at a time when this would have been seen entirely as a moral failing, condemned by blacks and whites alike.
It's a blessing that we have these recordings, scattered and often barely made, with at most a handful of takes, sometimes only one, at a time when recording was still in relative infancy, costly, imprecise, and highly perishable. How near and narrow a thing it is that we have these songs at all, for them to survive, sometimes in only one or two copies of a record of only one or two songs of a given artist, for artists to be conflated with each other, sometimes only known by a name with not so much as a sentence to describe them - other than their recording - to today where they can be multiplied and shared nearly infinitely to touch millions, even billions of lives, at least indirectly.
It's a heavy legacy, and the men who carried it are gone. It's on us to make sure they're never forgotten, that they're preserved, hopefully for as long as human society exists on this blue goofball of insanity.
The Blues is something that has touched me pretty deeply.
At first, I'd peripherally come at as many modern white kids did, through rock. Getting curious and seeking out the original versions of songs sung by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Ram Jam, Three Dog Night and dozens upon dozens of others you never even knew were covers. But as a comics nerd, it was Robert Crumb, a massive blues fan and a collector of rare, original records, who did the most to introduce me to the real, original blues, and its various regional forms (Piedmont blues, Delta blues, etc.), with his books about them, and even a CD full of tracks. So, thanks, Mr. Crumb.
It's fascinating to see how much a century of music is owed to a handful of understated but brilliant talents, where the blues has contributed a staggeringly enormous amount of modern musical language. I remember one quote (which, for the life of me I can't find the source, though I'm pretty sure it was either by or about Chuck Berry) that went "the first time I ever listened to a rock and roll song, it felt like breaking out of jail.", well, there really was a jail, and the Blues is the songs from it.
It's amazing to see how much bluesmen made given how little they had to work with. A single instrument, usually a cheap guitar, made to sound like two or even three people playing. Some without even instruments. The cliche about washboards and jugs was real - household items made to sing and play like a church choir, using whatever was at hand. They worked from memory, on slim training, with barely the resources to even keep a songbook sometimes.
It's sobering to feel the weight of history these songs (usually unintentionally) carry. To think of what it grew out of (slave songs, spirituals, prison work gang songs), what great weight society had laid on the poor, sometimes desperate musicians, who often died destitute (some did prosper modestly, but even among those, many still died relatively young), whose only venues were street corners, tin-walled Juke Joints, and other poor folks' concert halls. . What an important and valuable record of the impoverished lives of the oppressed these songs left, that we can see the continuity of the hardships laid upon them traced from years untold before all the way up to today, and the rough lives many bluesmen led - "The Gangsta Rap of the Segregated South" was a comment that I always remember. That as with so many forms of art, beautiful things are made from the spirits of crushed people, and the Blues bears witness to this as few other art forms do.
It's inspiring to see how much of themselves the singers and players gave to their music. Nothing is held back. Every erg of emotion, every bit of energy that could be mustered was poured into the music. For the most desperate, their next meal depended on it.
Yet it's heartbreaking to hear the pain in some of the deepest blues, to know there is nothing you or anyone else will ever be able to do to alleviate the suffering these artists went through. In the song above, Tommy Johnson is singing about his inescapable addiction to cheap methanol cooking fuel, which he knows is quite literally killing him (it almost certainly did), at a time when this would have been seen entirely as a moral failing, condemned by blacks and whites alike.
It's a blessing that we have these recordings, scattered and often barely made, with at most a handful of takes, sometimes only one, at a time when recording was still in relative infancy, costly, imprecise, and highly perishable. How near and narrow a thing it is that we have these songs at all, for them to survive, sometimes in only one or two copies of a record of only one or two songs of a given artist, for artists to be conflated with each other, sometimes only known by a name with not so much as a sentence to describe them - other than their recording - to today where they can be multiplied and shared nearly infinitely to touch millions, even billions of lives, at least indirectly.
It's a heavy legacy, and the men who carried it are gone. It's on us to make sure they're never forgotten, that they're preserved, hopefully for as long as human society exists on this blue goofball of insanity.
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beatbandito
- Posts: 4306
- Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:04 am
Re: Noise We Enjoys
Neil Cicierega dropped Mouth Dreams yesterday afternoon. It is good.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Re: Noise We Enjoys
For anyone that missed it in Outerheaven. Or if you didn't miss the video but missed me saying who it was.
Re: Noise We Enjoys
New track from Bad Religion:
Always liked their lyrics. Their sound is much the same as it was twenty years ago; reminds me of college road trips and Crazy Taxi.
Always liked their lyrics. Their sound is much the same as it was twenty years ago; reminds me of college road trips and Crazy Taxi.
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beatbandito
- Posts: 4306
- Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:04 am
Re: Noise We Enjoys
I posted one of the songs in Song Stuck in Your Head a while back, but since rewatching the series I've basically been playing these five songs on repeat whenever I just need background noise.
Re: Noise We Enjoys
Add Frank Sinatra to the list of artists I developed a huge new appreciation for when high on edibles. Has there ever been anyone with as good a sense of pitch as this asshole? Every single note is correct within a Mhz. A perfectly tuned french horn of a voice.
It's a good thing he was a jazz singer because I think maybe more than any other genre jazz is about the notes.
It's a good thing he was a jazz singer because I think maybe more than any other genre jazz is about the notes.
Re: Noise We Enjoys
And there's nobody else who phrases and enunciates quite the way he did.
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Mongrel
- Posts: 21336
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- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: Noise We Enjoys
I put up some early Bob Seger a couple days ago, and I just wanna talk blabber stupidly about Seger a little more.
Like a lot of musicians, Bob went through a couple phases, and like a lot of frontmen, he's also had more than one band over the years. His most famous stuff is of course the more pop-style rock from his long tenure with the Silver Bullet Band (1974-onwards).
And like so many artists, he was much more raw in his youth. But raw isn't unrefined here, it's quite excellent even if his songwriting hadn't quite caught up to his playing chops yet. On some of these songs Seger didn't just rock, he fucking SHREDDED; he screeches, screams, and all but rips the strings off his guitar. There's a protest-song vibe to a lot of his tracks which I always like, and his having TWO songs (and an eponymous album!) named 'Mongrel' doesn't hurt either, lol.
Here's one which barely sounds like Seger singing at all; it's like someone managed to mash up Dylan and the Yardbirds. Like something that would go on inspire Guitarwolf.
Unfortunately, also like many other musicians, as Seger changed, he dismissed his earliest tracks - but in his case there's more than a bit of a mystery here as he's actually outright refused to release any of his earliest material and doesn't talk about them at all (I've read conflicting reports about whether some of these older songs get played at live shows. If they do at all, it's rarely and selectively).
It's a bit wild the way he's not just denying them, but outright suppressed his early work, George Lucas-style. Never had I ever heard any of these songs on a rock radio station in the 25-odd years I was a big radio fan. If you look at any "Best of" album Seger's released, it's all post-1974 material. And this isn't just a record or two, it's nearly a decade of his career and like eight albums!
Literally the story of me discovering this entire phase of Seger's career, was because someone posted an ancient trailer for a horrifically bad C movie (which you guys might remember, because there's no way I didn't put it up here):
(Seriously, the movie is just incredibly bad... I took weeks to find a copy of it because of that trailer looked so fucking goofy that I just had to watch, but it's mostly just these long stretches of completely incoherent boredom. I - and everyone else with me! - literally fell asleep while watching this movie I'd been trying to get for so long. If you're really curious, the full 3-minute trailer contains pretty much every frame worth watching as-is).
Anyway, the backing music (which IIRC is NOT in the movie, lol) also fascinated me. It was clearly rockin' and the artist sounded so familiar but I couldn't quite place it. This ALSO led to a search that went on for a few days, since the lyrics in the short trailer are sporadic and tough to hear and just "Heavy Music" isn't enough of a search term on it's own. For all I knew while searching, it was a forgotten one-hit wonder or even something written just for the film.
Luckily "don't you ever feel like going insane?" was enough once I parsed it out (look, my ears are shot, okay?). But even then! The lyrics didn't just pop up on a google search (at least a few years ago when I was looking), I had to dig for a bit through the first couple pages. Felt kind of dumb for not recognizing the voice when I did get the answer though.
Maybe it was this roundabout way of discovery that endeared me to it. It's basically all up on YouTube so after that it was easy to get the full collection. But I still think it's wild that there's this whole phase of Seger's career that's so biting, that rocks so hard, and yet he seems to wish it never happened. In fact he had it deleted from the Columbia Records catalogue in the mid-80's (although someone managed to get some of them them released on CD just once in '95).
If you're curious, I think the best albums to give a listen to are in his run from '70-'73:
Mongrel (1970)
Smokin OP's (1972)
Back in '72 (1973)
The first album he did with the Silver Bullet Band has also been similarly shunned by Seger and never re-released. Its not as raucous as the previous albums, but is also considered a lost classic and one of his very best Silver-Bullet era albums.
Seven (1974)
"Back in '72" also includes the original studio cut of "Turn the Page", which IMO (or should that be IMO opinion?) is much better than the commonly-heard radio version. The popular version always kind of annoys me with it's overproduction and the overbearing saxophone, but they're both much lighter and spare in the original, which allows the singing and guitar to shine a lot more.
Funny how things go. I can't help but wonder at the road from this era to Like A Rock
And I stood arrow straight
Unencumbered by the weight
Of all these hustlers and their schemes
I stood proud, I stood tall
High above it all
I still believed in my dreams
Twenty years now
Where'd they go?
Twenty years
I don't know
Like a lot of musicians, Bob went through a couple phases, and like a lot of frontmen, he's also had more than one band over the years. His most famous stuff is of course the more pop-style rock from his long tenure with the Silver Bullet Band (1974-onwards).
And like so many artists, he was much more raw in his youth. But raw isn't unrefined here, it's quite excellent even if his songwriting hadn't quite caught up to his playing chops yet. On some of these songs Seger didn't just rock, he fucking SHREDDED; he screeches, screams, and all but rips the strings off his guitar. There's a protest-song vibe to a lot of his tracks which I always like, and his having TWO songs (and an eponymous album!) named 'Mongrel' doesn't hurt either, lol.
Here's one which barely sounds like Seger singing at all; it's like someone managed to mash up Dylan and the Yardbirds. Like something that would go on inspire Guitarwolf.
Unfortunately, also like many other musicians, as Seger changed, he dismissed his earliest tracks - but in his case there's more than a bit of a mystery here as he's actually outright refused to release any of his earliest material and doesn't talk about them at all (I've read conflicting reports about whether some of these older songs get played at live shows. If they do at all, it's rarely and selectively).
It's a bit wild the way he's not just denying them, but outright suppressed his early work, George Lucas-style. Never had I ever heard any of these songs on a rock radio station in the 25-odd years I was a big radio fan. If you look at any "Best of" album Seger's released, it's all post-1974 material. And this isn't just a record or two, it's nearly a decade of his career and like eight albums!
Literally the story of me discovering this entire phase of Seger's career, was because someone posted an ancient trailer for a horrifically bad C movie (which you guys might remember, because there's no way I didn't put it up here):
(Seriously, the movie is just incredibly bad... I took weeks to find a copy of it because of that trailer looked so fucking goofy that I just had to watch, but it's mostly just these long stretches of completely incoherent boredom. I - and everyone else with me! - literally fell asleep while watching this movie I'd been trying to get for so long. If you're really curious, the full 3-minute trailer contains pretty much every frame worth watching as-is).
Anyway, the backing music (which IIRC is NOT in the movie, lol) also fascinated me. It was clearly rockin' and the artist sounded so familiar but I couldn't quite place it. This ALSO led to a search that went on for a few days, since the lyrics in the short trailer are sporadic and tough to hear and just "Heavy Music" isn't enough of a search term on it's own. For all I knew while searching, it was a forgotten one-hit wonder or even something written just for the film.
Luckily "don't you ever feel like going insane?" was enough once I parsed it out (look, my ears are shot, okay?). But even then! The lyrics didn't just pop up on a google search (at least a few years ago when I was looking), I had to dig for a bit through the first couple pages. Felt kind of dumb for not recognizing the voice when I did get the answer though.
Maybe it was this roundabout way of discovery that endeared me to it. It's basically all up on YouTube so after that it was easy to get the full collection. But I still think it's wild that there's this whole phase of Seger's career that's so biting, that rocks so hard, and yet he seems to wish it never happened. In fact he had it deleted from the Columbia Records catalogue in the mid-80's (although someone managed to get some of them them released on CD just once in '95).
If you're curious, I think the best albums to give a listen to are in his run from '70-'73:
Mongrel (1970)
Smokin OP's (1972)
Back in '72 (1973)
The first album he did with the Silver Bullet Band has also been similarly shunned by Seger and never re-released. Its not as raucous as the previous albums, but is also considered a lost classic and one of his very best Silver-Bullet era albums.
Seven (1974)
"Back in '72" also includes the original studio cut of "Turn the Page", which IMO (or should that be IMO opinion?) is much better than the commonly-heard radio version. The popular version always kind of annoys me with it's overproduction and the overbearing saxophone, but they're both much lighter and spare in the original, which allows the singing and guitar to shine a lot more.
Funny how things go. I can't help but wonder at the road from this era to Like A Rock
And I stood arrow straight
Unencumbered by the weight
Of all these hustlers and their schemes
I stood proud, I stood tall
High above it all
I still believed in my dreams
Twenty years now
Where'd they go?
Twenty years
I don't know
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