This is a thread to talk about music.
Music Thread
- This topic has 996 replies, 32 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 8 months ago by
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Let’s get this thread started:
Actually I’m tempted to let it be ended. It seems to be a succession of Youtube clips nobody much else ever comments on. I have strong doubts anyone even clicks on them.
It’s maybe just my foible but I have seen a couple of people leave this board and post on Twitter, making comments nobody ever responds or reacts to. It may make them happy but it all seems very pointless to me.
The Music Thread is more interesting as people actually discuss things in it every now and again. The point of this message board thing is it isn’t ‘broadcast’. Unless there’s strong defence of its appeal I think I’ll delete it.
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JR, I actually enjoy seeing what you are listening to; I’m pretty sure I’ve commented that your enjoyment of ’70s soul/R&B/pop is similar to mine. Even if I don’t always comment on your choices, I like to be reminded occasionally that great music exists in 3- and 4-minute segments.
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I saw these guys live tonight.
The style of music took me right back to college gigs and they were very good fun, but the acoustics in the basement venue meant that I heard none of their lyrics and none of their banter.
Now, with better audio at home, I’m appreciating them more.
EDIT:
The BBC have better acoustics in their studios of course; -
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(Take 2 after failed edit)
I enjoy seeing what people are listening to, but to be honest the videos fall into three categories: (1) I already know and like that song so I don’t bother clicking it. (2) I can pre-judge from the band name, thumbnail, or knowledge of the poster that I won’t like the song (e.g. it’s clearly hip hop or something) so I don’t bother clicking it. (3) It’s something I don’t know but it looks intriguing or it’s from a poster I know aligns with my tastes, so I’ll watch it in the hope of discovering something new.
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(3) is a tiny minority :| . So I can see why Gar is against having the thread, and if it wasn’t here I wouldn’t miss it that much.
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Anyway, as long as it’s here, this is what I’m listening to: Marya Orchesta, the band I saw live on Friday night.
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On Friday afternoon, I had never ever heard of this band. I was on a train to London for some events on Saturday, and expecting to spend Friday night in my hotel room with Alan Moore (not in person
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And it was worth it. They were superb:
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They were on a tiny stage in a grotty basement venue beneath a pub, tickets were £5 on the door, the place was half empty, and I think they shared the take with the four other bands on the bill, so I’m sure they made a loss on the night when you factor in travelling from Holland. I hope they made something in CD sales anyway (I bought everything they had)
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They only had half the musicians you see here, but they still played about 20 instruments between them and managed a full symphonic prog sound despite the indifferent sound system and barely any soundcheck time.A really impressive live band :)
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New Sturgill Simpson. It feels a little different than previous material but I think I’m liking it. Almost more like The Black Keys or something in that vein. The videos look like they’ll be anime as well.
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Looks like he even appeared at SDCC to promote it.
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The second performer I saw on Saturday was percussionist Joby Burgess. He played two new(ish) pieces, one for vibraphone and one for solo bass drum. You wouldn’t think a solo bass drum could do much musically until you see Joby Burgess play it.
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Annoyingly I can’t find a recording of it. So here’s a different percussion piece chosen at random:
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That doesn’t really work for me, to be honest. I find it hard to follow the structure. Solo bass drum still rules
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Nothing from this millennium in the top 10, and only one track in the entire list from this decade.
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As usual, the BBC obsessed with old men’s music
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I realise it’s an old genre, but it’s also a *current* genre. I know people are still making hip hop albums today. It’s a little sad that over 100 “critics” couldn’t find something current to put on the list.
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It’s also a universal problem. Here’s Prog Magazine’s best 25 albums of all time, compiled in 2014:1. Close To The Edge – Yes
2. In The Court of the Crimson King – King Crimson
3. Selling England By The Pound – Genesis
4. Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd
5. Thick As A Brick – Jethro Tull
6. Foxtrot – Genesis
7. Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
8. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – Genesis
9. The Raven Who Refused To Sing – Steven Wilson
10. Fragile – Yes
11. Brain Salad Surgery – Emerson, Lake & Palmer
12. Red – King Crimson
13. Moving Pictures – Rush
14. Animals – Pink Floyd
15. 2112 – Rush
16. The Wall – Pink Floyd
17. Scenes From A Memory – Dream Theater
18. Fear of a Blank Planet – Porcupine Tree
19. Relayer – Yes
20. Misplaced Childhood – Marillion
21. A Trick of the Tail – Genesis
22. Tales from Topographic Oceans – Yes
23. Hemispheres – Rush
24. Pawn Hearts – Van Der Graaf Generator
25. Images and Words – Dream Theater
.At least They managed to include one current album (The Raven Who Refused To Sing at #11, released a year before the poll), but there’s only one more album from this millenium (Fear of a Blank Planet, 2007) and everything else is decades old. There are awesome prog albums being recorded by the bucketload every year, but people still gravitate to the oldies.
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I wonder if modern musicians are ever disheartened to think that no matter how hard they try they will never be considered “the best” at anything? -
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I think part of the reason that ‘best of’ lists typically feature older tracks is that they’ve proved they can stand the test of time.
It might be tempting to put current tracks in there sometimes, but it inevitably looks a bit presumptuous to put a song by today’s hot new artist next to tracks that have lasted decades.
That’s a fair point. I suppose that when you look at what’s actually selling today rather than what’s just fondly remembered, you’ll get a better picture of how much people like new music.
*checks current album chart*
Oh…
In case you’re not aware, Abbey Road is currently topping the UK charts: https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/albums-chart/
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Third of the performers from Saturday’s concert: Janek Schaefer. He composes by mixing repetitive sounds, such as in this, which was one of the pieces he played on Saturday. You won’t get the full impact, as much of what he is doing is transmitting to different speakers around the room, and you obviously won’t get that sense of space and motion from a single video source. But you should still be able to hear how beautiful it is:
And I’m sorry, although I do like to champion new music, this is a pretty old piece: composed in 2003 I think :(
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Been listening to the new KMFDM album a lot. Surprising nobody who knows me. It’s their 35th anniversary this year, their 21st album (as KMFDM, not including MDFMK, Excessive Force, KGC, Schwein and whatever other projects most of the band have been in) and Sascha is closing on 60, married with kids. Maybe he’s losing his edge?
The opening track begins with a loop of him yelling KILL MOTHERFUCKER FUCKING KILL MOTHERFUCKER KILL MOTHERFUCKER. So, he hasn’t changed much. The album’s 11 tacks range back and forth along the different styles the band has incorporated over the years, from opening track K M F’s politically charged rap, Oh My Goth a bass-driven groove that’s a highlight for Lucia Cifarelli’s melodic singing voice, while the lead single Paradise features her and Sascha delivering angry shouts against metal riffs and industrial noise before segueing into a reggae-fused outro. The closing track No God has more of that reggae sound, with its use of samples and minimal vocals calling back to a lot of the earliest KMFDM tracks, like What Do You Know, Deutschland? As is usual, there’s a cover on here too – a trance reworking of their own club hit Megalomaniac.
Perhaps most exciting for me is the return of Raymond Watts to the bad for the first time since 2003. His track, Binge Boil and Blow is a great merging of the kind of sound he uses for Pig, his own band and the usual KMFDM sound. It’s got these great discordant drum track, complemented by percussive synths at points, and a guitar that drops in and out against his sleazy, raspy vocals. And it reminded me I really need to track down his last couple of albums.
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I click on ’embed tweet’ copy the code and paste it here. It actually works better than it did on Millarworld where that didn’t work.
Par example:
I wasn't going to do this, because I had no time immediately after the gig and it's difficult to honestly review it when I've had another one in between, but this is my best stab at yesterday's lunchtime concert: https://t.co/W0v5AUZrs9
— David Meadows (@DavidMeadows11) October 6, 2019
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I went to the O2 Arena in London last night to see Alice Cooper in concert.
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Support bands were MC50 and The Stranglers.
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I got the impression that The Stranglers weren’t necessarily happy to be supporting and they’re absolutely established enough (after how many decades and hit singles???) to have a lot of fans in the audience, but people were arriving “late” during their set (I completely missed MC50 as I was stuck at work) so I can understand if that’s annoying to a musician with a long and successful career, and the lead singer did mention it at one point. I still enjoyed their performance though and the crowd was singing along to the hits.
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Cooper was on great form and he and his current band pretty much blew the doors off the venue.
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It’s an incredibly kitschy and camp, 24/7 Halloween celebration from the 80’s. Aside from Cooper (who went through several costume changes (including a straight jacket of course)) the other musicians were all rocking a selection of mid-80’s, metal looks and ran around stage shaking their long hair like it was a shampoo commercial! It was brilliant!
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The Castle set, on stage, reminded me of a Castle Grayskull Playset. Again; brilliant!
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My only regret is that I chose to save money and get average seats. I don’t need to be right by the stage, but I think those people in the mid-floor area had the best time. They were close enough without going deaf.
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A great night.
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P.S. Not my picture, but better than anything I took;
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I saw the Dropkick Murphys very early in their career when they were the opening act for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones on tour. They were horrible. They had a different lead singer and hadn’t developed their Celtic Punk sound. They were just a shitty Oi! Punk band. The lead singer kept antagonizing the crowd and saying we “didn’t know what was up.” The only break in their set was when Dicky Barrett from the Bosstones came out and did a cover (I can’t remember if it was ACDC’s Thunderstruck or Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion as he did both at different times during the night) with them. The next band, Bim Skala Bim, had to settle the crowd down a bit after that.
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It’s a shame because the Murphys ended up becoming a really great band that I really like but that was my experience with them.
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If you’re not familiar with the Dropkick Murphys, they’re probably best known for their song I’m Shipping Up to Boston that was used pretty heavily in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed.
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I’ve heard some really funny stories about this phenomenon too.
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There was a point where David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar tried to tour together. They would flip which was the opener and which was the headliner with each gig and had prearranged which Van Halen songs each would do. Evidently, it all broke down about halfway through the tour with both thinking they should be the headliner and should be able to do whatever songs they pleased in their set.
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Another one I heard was a bit of the reverse. I think it was a show in St. Louis that Metallica was opening for Guns ‘n Roses. An accident happened with the pyrotechnics and James Hetfield caught on fire. Supposedly, Axl Rose refused to go on because he felt he had been upstaged.
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One of my favorites stories of a band vs the crowd is from Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister that he tells on himself. It’s better if you hear him tell it.
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It looks like two stories have been mixed up with the Metallica/Guns n’ Roses thing. There was a riot in St. Louis, there was an incident with where James Hetfield caught fire and they are reminiscent of each other but they were not the same incident.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverport_RiotDuring the band’s performance of “Rocket Queen”, the fifteenth song in the set (counting drum and guitar solos), singer Axl Rose, in the middle of the chorus, pointed out a fan who was taking still pictures of the show, saying, “Hey, take that! Take that! Now, get that guy and take that!”. With security unable to confront the person, Rose decided to confiscate the camera himself, saying “I’ll take it, goddamn it!” and then jumped into the audience and tackled the person. After taking the camera, striking members of the audience and the security team, and being pulled out of the audience by crew members, Rose grabbed his microphone and said “Well, thanks to the lame-ass security, I’m going home!”, slammed his microphone on the stage and left.[1]
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After Rose left, guitarist Slash quickly told the audience, “He just smashed the microphone. We’re out of here.” This infuriated the audience, setting off a three-hour riot in which dozens were injured.[2] The footage was captured by Robert John, who was documenting the tour for the band. Rose was charged with having incited the riot, but police were unable to arrest him until almost a year later, as the band went overseas to continue the tour. Charges were filed against Rose but a judge ruled that he did not directly incite the riot.[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_N%27_Roses/Metallica_Stadium_Tour#History
The most infamous event during the tour took place during a show on August 8, 1992 at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. Metallica frontman James Hetfield suffered second and third degree burns to the left half of his body, both arms and left hand after standing in the way of a pyrotechnics reaction during the opening of “Fade to Black”. Hetfield himself has said “There were extra pyro in addition to the original pyro and I got too close the original pyro.” Metallica had to prematurely end their performance, but promised to return to the city for another show. After a lengthy delay, during which the audience became increasingly upset and restless, Guns N’ Roses took the stage. However, the shortened time between sets did not allow for adequate tuning of stage monitors, resulting in musicians not being able to hear themselves. In addition, Rose, claimed that his throat was hurt, causing the band to prematurely leave the stage themselves. The early departure led to a riot by audience members, reminiscent of the rioting that had occurred during a Guns N’ Roses show near St. Louis, Missouri one year earlier. The aggrieved audience members took to the streets of Montreal, overturning cars, smashing windows, looting local stores, and setting fires. Local authorities were barely able to bring the riot under control. Footage from the debacle was later included in the 1992 documentary A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica.
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I’ve had people tell me worse stories about themselves. There seems to be something in humans that want to confess and also, the worse the fuck up the better the story, even when they’re talking about their own fuck ups.
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Additionally, I’m not sure this story is true, at least the way he tells it. No matter how arrogant he was/is he’d also have to be totally stupid not to figure out that there’s a reason why a block of 50 people are all remaining in their seats despite the spotlight (literally) being turned on them.
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So, I think it’s very likely that he was asked for an anecdote and he came up with one, and the amount of truth in it is uncertain? -
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There’s a dilemma I’ve had for quite a while. The version of Deep Purple’s Cal Jam concert I have is the 1996 California Jamming release:
Now, as everybody knows, while this is perfectly serviceable as far as it goes, it omits the song Lay Down Stay Down from the set. To get the full set I would need the 2003 Ontario Motor Speedway disc:
At the time I resisted it as I didn’t like the idea of double-dipping just for one single track. But as time goes on, I feel more and more that my life is incomplete. Not to mention the embarrassment I suffer when I have to admit it to other Deep Purple fans.
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I just don’t know whether I can nor justify the high price now being asked for the disc just for this song:
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And to be completely honest, it’s not the best version of the song anyway. The version from San Diego a few days later leaves this in the dust. -
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That one song you’re thinking of is probably this, isn’t it?
This is the song I was thinking of but I’m not sure who this band is that is covering it. The old guy with his gut hanging out of the vest playing air guitar with the guitarist is super weird. He seems to struggle a bit with the song too.
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Also, heard In the Court of the Crimson King on the radio over the weekend and thought of you. -
That’s Montreux, 2006. Decent performance, disappointing set list. I saw them in a few months before that in an “unpublicised” show in a London club, and they played 11 new songs. By the time they got to Montreux most of them had been replaced with the same old material they always do.
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I mean, I can understand why they do it. The London audience must have been exclusively hard-core fans, and we’re always asking for new songs. When they play those songs in an arena, you can feel the energy level drop. I guess most of an arena crowd are only there for one song. It’s really frustrating. Other bands seem to be able to get away with playing new songs and obscurities, but Purple are trapped in this greatest hits image.
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Much as I love Smoke on the Water, if they swapped it out for another guitar solo like the one I posted above, I would be ecstatic.Edit: my review of the 2006 London show, if anyone’s interested: http://dmeadows.co.uk/music/dp-2006.html
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Yeah, but that one remaining guy, guitarist/singer/songwriter Mick Jones, IS Foreigner.
So he’s heading up a cover band of his old group?
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Oddly enough, my parents saw them earlier in the year at a completely separate gig to the ones my friend played at. -
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