This is a thread to talk about music.
Music Thread
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Among current bands, TV On the Radio is a fantastic multi-ethnicity band. In the 1990s, we had The Roots and The Dave Matthews Band. And saxophonist Clarence Clemons was a key member of Springsteen’s E Street Band from the ’70s until his death in 2011.
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I’m a big TV on the Radio fan too. I think Nine Types of Light is an underrated album but my favorite is Return to Cookie Mountain. Tunde Adebimpe is a great singer and Dave Sitek has done some cool production work in hip hop and R&B (Solange, Run the Jewels, etc).
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TV on the Radio is a band? Ok, that clears up a confusion :D
In my day, “it’s TV on the radio” was the catchphrase of DJ Tommy Vance, who’s Friday Rock Show was the only thing ever worth listening to on Radio 1. I thought it was weird when the phrase was turning up in random places recently.
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TVotR is just one of a handful of really great rock/alternative bands of the 21st Century that, to my surprise, have not achieved the recognition they deserve, like My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Silversun Pickups, and (my current favorite) The National.
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I could claim that 2004 is very recent
But really, it’s within the last few months that I’ve seen the name pop up in a few places. Maybe they had a mini-burst of recent popularity.
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Jerry is cool. I reckon it’s because he’s Irish.
I love all those bands except I’m not familiar with My Morning Jacket. I’ll have to check them out.
Clarence Clemons
The Big Man
They have his nephew Jake now.I heard a lad busking on Saturday. Great voice. Andrew would have loved him. He sang a bunch of Oasis songs.
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Have you ever seen them both together at the same time?
It must be a Superman kinda deal with the Bono sunglasses I mean.
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Jerry is cool. I reckon it’s because he’s Irish.
Yacht bias.
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Not hugely surprising but feels like a shame.
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Hmm, I seem to have fallen victim to vanishing post syndrome (for the first time, I think.) My post was there, but I edited it to remove some embedded mark-up crap, and now it’s gone. So apologies if this is a duplicate:
Not hugely surprising but feels like a shame.
It’s really a shame. We need quality print magazines with intelligent writing (which I know Q was, even if it didn’t cross over with my tastes sufficiently). Or we’ll end up with nothing but lowest-common-denominator trash like “Adele’s Shameless Fat Secret Revealed”.
They blame Covid, in their press release, but I think that’s an oversimplification at best. Other magazines, even other music magazines, are surviving in this climate, so I’m sure Q must have been near collapse regardless.
Another music magazine I used to read, fRoots, ran massively in debt for years, even ran a crowdfunding campaign to allow them to stagger on a little, and eventually collapsed because, presumably, the readership wasn’t there in sufficient numbers to support the production of high-quality print journalism.
It’s weird, because the audience that should be supporting fRoots, as well as Q, should be the demographic that values hard-copy print (and physical CDs, and real live music) over digital delivery. But apparently there aren’t enough of us.
But there are also success stories. A few years ago, Prog magazine went into liquidation, and they were acquired by a new company and bounced back stronger than ever. It emerged that the magazine itself was always doing well, it was the old parent company that was fiscally irresponsible and dragged the magazine into collapse with them. Even while in lockdown they are still producing monthly issues, because the editorial team is tiny and can work remotely, interviews with artists can be conducted on skype, and there are still dozens of new albums (but no new gigs ) to review every month. So I don’t buy that Covid lockdown is really the cause of Q’s demise.I didn’t subscribe to Q, but I do subscribe to other magazines. Q’s problem was not finding enough people who are interested in their content the way that I’m interested in, for example, progressive music. But if they couldn’t find them, it’s still an editorial failing, it’s not because of Covid-19.
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This has blown my mind. What you can actually do with autotune. I mean, I was aware of what it does, but never seen it demonstrated before.
The video is fairly long, but the first five minutes gives you the gist.
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It’s really a shame. We need quality print magazines with intelligent writing (which I know Q was, even if it didn’t cross over with my tastes sufficiently).
I was a regular reader/buyer for many years, and spent many hours trawling the second hand music and bookshops for key back issues – second hand book and music shops are all gone now too. Q was a huge part of shaping my music knowledge, and expanding my range. There were plenty of times where their cover CD introduced me to a new artist or track; later on they’d instead print a playlist of 20 or 50 new songs each month that had supposedly been on high rotation in their office. And then there was of course the more in depth, meaningful stuff – the articles, interviews and reviews.
We also can’t forget their list-addiction – always a great topic of friendly conversation, even if the run of consecutive “Top 50” and “Top 100” covers got a bit tired.
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It’s really a shame. We need quality print magazines with intelligent writing (which I know Q was, even if it didn’t cross over with my tastes sufficiently). Or we’ll end up with nothing but lowest-common-denominator trash like “Adele’s Shameless Fat Secret Revealed”.
I fear something similar will happen soon to Rolling Stone magazine here in the States. In the 70s and 80s it was the Bible of modern music, to the point where musician Dr. Hook had a hit single about how you know you’ve hit it big when you appear on “The Cover of the Rolling Stone”. But these days American culture has passed it by.
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I do think Covid had to play a part; magazines have their regular readers but surely a massive chunk of monthly churn is casual sales; people walking past a newsagent or passing through an airport and wanting something other than their phone to pass the time.
Quite unfortunately NME launched an Australian version of their now defunct UK print publication late last year – it was a risky proposition to begin with, surely its days are truly numbered after 4 months of quasi-lockdown barring massive subscriber numbers (AU$100.00 per year).
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I do think Covid had to play a part; magazines have their regular readers but surely a massive chunk of monthly churn is casual sales; people walking past a newsagent or passing through an airport and wanting something other than their phone to pass the time.
That’s a fair point, it must have played some part. But I still think the magazine can’t have been very healthy anyway if it couldn’t weather this when plenty of other magazines have. Maybe the wrong ratio of subscribers to casual readers, maybe the wrong price point to attract the casual readers, maybe the wrong distribution outlets (it’s not there in the impulse buy supermarket racks next to Hello etc.), maybe just the wrong editorial content. Whatever the reason, there must have been something there that allowed the Covid sales dip to tip it over the edge.
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Maybe the wrong ratio of subscribers to casual readers, maybe the wrong price point to attract the casual readers, maybe the wrong distribution outlets (it’s not there in the impulse buy supermarket racks next to Hello etc.), maybe just the wrong editorial content.
Wait…are we still talking about music magazines? ‘Cause this sounds an awful lot like comic books.
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That’s a fair point, it must have played some part. But I still think the magazine can’t have been very healthy anyway if it couldn’t weather this when plenty of other magazines have.
Yup, the editor said Covid hit the deathblow, with non essential shops closed for a couple of months they had sales massively hit but if the business is generally healthy then you should be able to weather that. For magazines or otherwise I think Covid has hit those on the brink rather than killed healthy businesses.
It’s another sign of the end of generalist magazines. I wouldn’t have guessed in 1990 that the music mags that would survive would be the specialist ones with what you’d think was the lowest potential audience. Kerrang is still going, Metal Hammer and DJ but not NME and Q.
Q was always a bit of an oddity. Editorially it was deliberately unfashionable to begin with, while the NME and Melody Maker courted the next big thing they had Dire Straits and Eric Clapton on the covers. I picked up a few (like David they didn’t really cover a huge amount I was into) and the quality of the writing was excellent to be fair.
I think they all struggled with lower circulation to find their place. NME went all retro with Oasis and Stone Roses on covers all the time (when at their peak their entire raison d’etre was only new bands and music), and I was reading that Q went the other way and tried to cover more new stuff. I guess the urge when sales are falling is to change tack but maybe there was no solution, it’s just the change in the medium.
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IT CAN BE TWO THINGS!
I own that book. Just sayin’…
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Editorially it was deliberately unfashionable to begin with, while the NME and Melody Maker courted the next big thing they had Dire Straits and Eric Clapton on the covers.
They were positioned in between the cool/hip/trendy NME/Melody Maker, and the daggy/pretentious/retro Uncut/Mojo. Perfect for me, for ages. Yes, they loved Oasis and could count on a big sales boost with Oasis on the cover (even if it was just related to a “greatest live gigs” list years after the band imploded), but they featured and championed lower key stuff from the get go like Goldfrapp and Laura Marling and Doves.
From what I can see the last time they did a reader poll for greatest albums ever in 2006, the top 20 was:
OK Computer – Radiohead
The Bends – Radiohead
Nevermind – Nirvana
Revolver – The Beatles
Definitely Maybe – Oasis
The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses
Automatic For The People – R.E.M.
(What’s The Story) Morning Glory – Oasis
Achung Baby – U2
Kid A – Radiohead
The Joshua Tree – U2
The Queen Is Dead – The Smiths
Grace – Jeff Buckley
Abbey Road – The Beatles
The Dark Side Of The Moon – Pink Floyd
Urban Hymns – The Verve
The Beatles [White Album] – The Beatles
Pet Sounds – Beach Boys
Sgt. Peppers Loney Hears Club Band – The Beatles
London Calling – The Clash
And the greatest songs of all time as polled that same year:
Live Forever – Oasis
Wonderwall – Oasis
Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
A Day In The Life – The Beatles
One – U2
Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
Stairway To Heaven – Led Zeppelin
Bitter Sweet Symphony – The Verve
Paranoid Android – Radiohead
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Yup and that’s pretty much Q. Those are all great albums, they are all rock albums without a single black musician or woman in the list.
Which is fine because that was their point at the start. The weekly mags were always trying to break the next big thing and genre, Q was celebrating the mainstream rock album and nobody else at the time was.
Mojo and Uncut copied a whole load of their template but went more retro and niche (bear in mind Mojo and Uncut started 7 and 11 years after Q so that wasn’t a counterpoint when they started). I see Mojo is still going so another example of niche product outlasting the mainstream one.
For me it was a pity Q’s musical focus was not hugely to my tastes which are more eclectic but I also understand not everything needs to be made for me and when I did pick it up the standard of journalism was very good.
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From what I can see the last time they did a reader poll for greatest albums ever in 2006, the top 20 was: OK Computer – Radiohead The Bends – Radiohead
A prog rock band takes the top two spots? I’m amazed.
I’d be more impressed if it were a good prog band, but still, points for effort
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But better than all of those, I think, with the possible exception of Elbow.
One thing I liked about them was that they were multi-instrumentalists, so midway through a show you’d have one of them climbing out from behind the drums and swapping to guitar for the next part of the set, depending on the song.
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My mobile phone carrier has offered a 6 month free trial to Apple Music so I’ve made the leap. It’s fun to be able to get any song (pretty much) to play in the car just by vocally asking for it, but I’ve largely so far just played things I already had downloaded on my device anyway.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k8craCGpgs
The best song ever recorded by an American band. Prove me wrong.
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Prove me wrong.
Prove yourself right.
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Has there even been a performance of a verified classic rock song without a single white male involved?
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Prove me wrong.
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Has there even been a performance of a verified classic rock song without a single white male involved?
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Has there even been a performance of a verified classic rock song without a single white male involved?
Prince’s voice always irritated me, so I never became a fan. But I can’t deny his talent, as a writer and a performer he was phenomenal.
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It’s weird, as a kid I never even thought or knew that Prince was black.
Unrelated, the guy that runs the Oasis podcast has started a new show, 1001 albums, based on the series of books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1001_Albums_You_Must_Hear_Before_You_Die
I wasn’t at all interested in the project based on the first few albums he’s featured, but with Apple Music at my fingertips I figured why not – so I listened to a The Who album in full for the first time yesterday as preparation for an episode of the podcast; Quadrophenia. It was certainly listenable, and I’ll probably give it a few more listens to really try to get into it.
There are also episodes on Tommy, Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, and Green Day’s Dookie so far (it started only a little while ago).
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And don’t get me started on that time Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to star in a movie as his favourite composer.
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I’ve always liked Gettouda Choppa’s 3rd symphony personally.
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The hard truth on “Don’t Stop Believin’” is that it’s only listenable if you’re watching the last episode of The Sopranos.
No, Chris Evans does a good version.
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In the early 90s we used to buy mix tapes by various DJs in record shops. They’d act as house music albums withe the DJs selecting the track order so you’d forever connect them together.
Technically these were illegal, in practice nobody cared because the dance music scene was powered by vinyl single sales to DJs, there was no real album market until a few years later. It’s still a bit that way but people like Leftfield and Underworld did manage to penetrate the album market. They were sold very openly on display in shop windows even though they were technically pirate material.
Anyway the point being they were tapes, cassettes with no other way to purchase. They were long lost. Then came Youtube, I found someone uploading a lot of the tapes I had as a late teen so I can enjoy them again, albeit they are still technically illegal and still nobody cares. It’s like finding an album that was deleted for 25 years and finally put back to press.
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My wife still has a couple of those original tapes from her favourite local DJs, and it’s one of the few reasons we still hang on to a tape deck.
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Been listetning a lot to Bloodhound Gangs album One Fierce Beer Coaster to unwind while biking and busing home from work lately. It’s always been one of my favourite albums but I still have a hard time classifying it. It’s nihilistic punk rap metal?
Either way, it’s very good.
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It’s weird, as a kid I never even thought or knew that Prince was black.
Prince was light skinned and played with strange expressions of sexuality and his early song ‘Controversy’ song asked”Am I Black or White? Am I Straight or Gay?” without giving an answer, which was very daring in 1981.
He was black and straight.
One of his last songs echoes so much of what’s in the news today:
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He was black and straight.
I’ve often heard it said that Prince was the only dude who could steal your girl while wearing her heels.
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I’ve been making a mixtape for me and a friend. A sequel to a legendary mixtape we did back in around 2003-4. We decided during a recent hook-up that we should make a sequel that is even better, and I think we’ve got it. Had a bit of back and forth about what songs to include, and we brought it home. A good mix of stuff. The mission statement is “A Mixtape to listen to outdoors while drinking beer”.
Today, I’ve gone through the various songs and made the order complete. Next comes the mixing. Here’s what we got, would love to know what you think of it!
Side A:
Side B:
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found another song by these kids
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Hippy dream or total nightmare? The untold story of Isle of Wight 1970
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Mark Mothersbaugh nearly died from COVID-19. FaceTiming with his family kept him alive
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Hippy dream or total nightmare? The untold story of Isle of Wight 1970
There have been some interesting articles on the Isle of Wight festival. I’ve know of it for ages because it was Hendrix’s last big performance before he died but I hadn’t quite grasped the scale (over half a million people).
There was a great story on how its reputation had been sullied because a guy filing a documentary on it was annoyed at some people and kept interspersing it with images of fighting, so it got into the consciousness that it was catastrophe that go out of control. In truth from all eye witness reports and the local and national coverage at the time there were a couple of small isolated events and nothing more.
Its real flaw was just bad planning, the site could be easily viewed from adjoining land so most of the punters didn’t pay to go in.
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There’s a lot of footage of the IOW festival because Murray Lerner filmed most of it. A lot of bands have had their full sets released, possibly slightly unofficially (I’ve got Jethro Tull, ELP and The Who, as well as bits of others).
This is part of a longer documentary that has recent interviews with people who were there, as well as a lot of Lerner’s footage:
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