Music: What Are You Listening To?

Topic

If music be the food of love, let’s eat it.

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Compared to her success in the UK, Kate Bush was relatively unknown and unplayed in the US, even at her commercial peak. I would estimate that only 15-20% of my peers in the 80s could tell you who Kate Bush is, and those 20-percenters likely only knew her because of that one song (which only reached #30 in the Billboard singles chart) or because Pat Benatar’s cover of her song “Wuthering Heights” got a lot of FM radio play at the time. So there are likely lots of Americans who are streaming or purchasing that song now, not from nostalgia so much as “discovering” a really good song for the first time.

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DavidM, Todd

Yes, she’s much less well known in the US. Hope they stream the album because Hounds of Love for me is a work of genius.

Astonishingly later than you’d think, Wuthering Heights in 1978 was the first ever UK number 1 single written and performed by a woman.

garjones wrote:

Astonishingly later than you’d think, Wuthering Heights in 1978 was the first ever UK number 1 single written and performed by a woman.

Was Donna Summer’s I Feel Love not earlier than that?

Dave wrote:

garjones wrote:

Astonishingly later than you’d think, Wuthering Heights in 1978 was the first ever UK number 1 single written and performed by a woman.

Was Donna Summer’s I Feel Love not earlier than that?

On a technicality, Summer only co-wrote I Feel Love.

But anyway, as Al will tell you, we don’t acknowledge black singers.

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njerry, Dave

DavidM wrote:

On a technicality, Summer only co-wrote I Feel Love.

Well I reckon that on a technicality, Emily Brontë would argue that Kate Bush only co-wrote Wuthering Heights.

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njerry, DavidM

DavidM wrote:

But anyway, as Al will tell you, we don’t acknowledge black singers.

Is that what you got from all those postings back and forth?

https://loudwire.com/kiss-backing-tracks-exposed-video/

In concert this week, KISS flubbed part of their song “Detroit Rock City,” seemingly exposing singer-guitarist Paul Stanley’s pre-recorded backing vocal tracks that were apparently used during the performance.

The onstage incident occurred amid the storied rock band’s “End of the Road World Tour” stop at Sportpaleis in Antwerp, Belgium, on Monday (June 6).

A rhythmic mistake by KISS drummer Eric Singer evidently evoked the musical pileup that, as video suggests, caused backing cues to misalign. Stanley then “missed” part of a vocal that was still heard.

In 2015, KISS bassist-vocalist Gene Simmons criticized bands who use tracks live.

“I have a problem when you charge $100 to see a live show and the artist uses backing tracks,” the rocker told Australia’s News.com. “It’s like the ingredients in food — if the first ingredient on the label is sugar, that’s at least honest.”

He continued, “It should be on every ticket — you’re paying $100, 30 to 50 percent of the show is [on] backing tracks, and they’ll sing sometimes, sometimes they’ll lip synch. At least be honest. It’s not about backing tracks; it’s about dishonesty.”

Thanks for the honesty there, Gene.

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garjones, Todd

Dave wrote:

Was Donna Summer’s I Feel Love not earlier than that?

It’s a good point, as David says she’s one of 3 writers credited on that.

If you actually try and Google the first number 1 co-written and performed by a woman it comes up with nothing useful but it took me down a rabbit hole looking at a list of number 1 singles.

That revealed there are fewer than you think, before around 1973 the charts are very male dominated and the earliest I could find in a cursory search was  Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand By Your Man’ when it was re-released in 1975. ‘Woodstock’ was number 1 in 1970, written by Joni Mitchell solo but not performed by her but by Matthews Southern Comfort.

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Dave, DavidM

I suspect there were a lot of hit songs written by women that we just had no idea were written by women (because who ever pays attention to the writer of a pop song?)

For example, just recently I found that the Everly Brothers’ Crying in the Rain was co-written by Carole King. I discovered this accidentally while trying to educate a “young person” that the song wasn’t originally by AHA.

For comparison, the Every Brothers:

AHA:

Whitesnake

There were a few more co-writing credits for women I didn’t go into as they were not the performers. Also number 1 singles are a somewhat random sampling. Joni Mitchell had self penned UK hits long before, they just didn’t make number 1. Stevie Nicks wrote and sang Dreams in 1976 but it only got to 26.

That’s why the 1978 seems so surprisingly late as many women were solo writing and performing and reaching no.1 before that but never all 3 at once.

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DavidM

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njerry

The Nena story is interesting, that the German version got played on a radio station and picked up across the US and became a hit.

They decided to record an English language version for Anglophone countries but nobody in the US cared and kept buying the German one. In the UK the English version became the hit and it was only many years later I found the original was 99 Lufballons and not 99 Red Balloons.

The German versions works better with the 4 syllables for 99 instead of 3 – it’s a more satisfying rhythm.

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Rocket, Todd

[Al-x]

For your brief viewing pleasure… What happened to MTV and no more music videos

And  @garjones:

IF you are interested, the latest debate on both Twitter and TikTok is about the origin of house music.
Just input the hashtag “#house music” and the feed will give you the whole collection of the debate postings.

Funny how when there is a hot trend, every group wants to claim it as their own. Even people like the golfer Tiger Woods
in his beginning and the tennis star Naomi Osaka.
🤣

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Al-x.

Al-x wrote:

IF you are interested, the latest debate on both Twitter and TikTok is about the origin of house music.

Dumb thing to debate when it’s all very well documented. House music originated in the black gay clubs in Chicago when the disco implosion meant the DJs had to make their own new music for the dancefloors.  There’s an excellent Channel 4 documentary on the whole story on Youtube.

It is an interesting genre though because largely it remained restricted to that small market in the USA and the only only people buying it and getting it into the charts were Europeans.  They quickly started filling the gap themselves of the great demand in Europe but small number of records coming out of a handful of producers in the US. Steve Silk Hurley and Farley Jackmaster Funk were getting UK number 1 records while nobody outside of those Chicago clubs knew who they were back home.

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Al-x, Todd

On a Who kick today at work, from TOMMY through (at the moment) WHO ARE YOU? If there’s time before I go home I’ll get to FACE DANCES.

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Andrew, DavidM, Al-x

garjones wrote:

Dumb thing to debate when it’s all very well documented. House music originated in the black gay clubs in Chicago when the disco implosion meant the DJs had to make their own new music for the dancefloors. There’s an excellent Channel 4 documentary on the whole story on Youtube.

Well, you know that but you also know how people are online and so kept out of the loop…

I’ve seen the context now of the house music thing from a Guardian article. Some people claiming Drake and Beyonce are diverging from black music by using house beats instead of R&B or hip-hop ones.

1) It’s complete ignorance, beyond house being invented by black guys in Chicago, even the beat Beyonce is sampling is “Show Me Love’ by Robin S. This was a big club and chart hit in the early 90s and I saw her do a live PA. She looked suspiciously black.

2) What’s with this musical apartheid? Beyonce can make whatever the fuck music she wants. Let her put out a heavy metal song if that makes her happy. Drake can play Spanish guitar on the backing.

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DavidM, Al-x

[Al-x]

Wow @garjones …

That was nice!!!

I didn’t really mean to get you on a roll/tirade.
I just wanted to inform you on the latest music debate going on

———————————

For the record:
I am not a keyboard sjw

and

It is not so much about Elvis for example, but the greater society’s reaction acting as if he was the original
Like it is not so much Bo Derek in that movie, but the greater society’s media attention…

Same with Harry Styles, the Kardashians… It is all over and everywhere
and it is all VERY frustrating.

Exactly what Nicki Minaj said in that video snippet posted a few pages back.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Al-x.

Al-x wrote:

That was nice!!!

Robin was great. Such a fantastic voice.

Al-x wrote:

Exactly what Nicki Minaj said in that video snippet posted a few pages back.

Minaj made a record called Chun-Li, is that her area to claim? She also made records with a house beat but maybe she’s not as famous as Beyonce so the ‘neo segregationists’ felt it not worthy to chime in.

@garjones… fellow

I was referring to this snippet from the last page. Particularly if you skip to the 50 second mark:

It was her observation of the greater society and media and it is so true…

Saw Kathryn Tickell live last night. Included this song, which is a religious song written by a Roman poet 1800 years ago, with a chorus taken from a 1000-year-old Anglo Saxon chant. Which is a shocking abuse of cultural appropriation, I was frankly appalled by her insensitivity to those cultures.

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Todd, Dave

DavidM wrote:

Saw Kathryn Tickell live last night. Included this song, which is a religious song written by a Roman poet 1800 years ago, with a chorus taken from a 1000-year-old Anglo Saxon chant.

So is she just a covers band?

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DavidM, Todd, garjones

I’ve been now and again revisiting this Stereogum series about every number 1 single on the US Billboard chart, really from ’63 onwards – it’s interesting to see the songs that have had no real cultural legacy; most of them after a certain point are still “radio” staples but there’s always a few each year that I’ve never heard before and that are surely not loved by many.

I’m on 1987 at the moment and this song is a favourite power ballad, but I never knew it wasn’t written by Heart:

https://www.stereogum.com/2117644/the-number-ones-hearts-alone/columns/the-number-ones/

What a song!

Olivia Rodrigo at Glastonbury yesterday with guest star Lily Allen. A bit of politics and I love this song, it’s a bit off when they sing together but they are having a lot of fun.

 

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Christian, Bruce

BBC Music Youtube has some amazing stuff on Glasto weekend. McCartney and Dave Grohl.

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Rocket, Andrew, Al-x

I am watching “It Might Get Loud”
with Jack White, The Edge, and Jimmy Page
talking shop.

Amazing!

Dave wrote:

DavidM wrote:

Saw Kathryn Tickell live last night. Included this song, which is a religious song written by a Roman poet 1800 years ago, with a chorus taken from a 1000-year-old Anglo Saxon chant.

So is she just a covers band?

Most folk singers are.

 

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective

Andrew wrote:

I’m on 1987 at the moment and this song is a favourite power ballad, but I never knew it wasn’t written by Heart:

I think you might be amazed by how many 80s songs that you know really well were written by Steinberg & Kelly. They were a practically a soft-rock hit making factory.

I seem to recall that the Wilson sisters wrote almost nothing on Bad Animals, or on Heart preceding it. But they wrote almost everything on the albums prior to those, and there’s a radical shift in style (and level of success) with Heart. I don’t know the story behind that, but my assumption is that they really wanted to play their folky-bluesy-Led-Zep music, but that’s the point where the record company noticed them and realised they could promote them to megastars instead of letting them carry on with anything resembling artistic integrity.

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Andrew, Todd, njerry

Since “Running Up That Hill” was on the Stranger Things” soundtrack, now all the young ones are discovering Kate Bush
from the 80s. (They also got into that song “Pass the Dutchie” by Musical Youth from the early 80s).
These shows like “Stranger Things” and “Euphoria” use old songs in their soundtracks and everyone runs to them.

I remember when Placebo did a cover of that song. Before that in the late 90s it was Maxwell covering “This Woman’s Work”
and it was also on the show “Alias with Jennifer Garner.

Hope Kate gets a huge royalty check.

As this link says, Kate Bush’s will-to-power messages in her songs still resonate to this day.

https://angelanagle.substack.com/p/the-kate-bush-revival?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

This situation in some strange way is like those younger generation “discovering”, respecting, and getting into Batman in the original Dark Knight Returns
story…

Al-x wrote:

Hope Kate gets a huge royalty check.

She’s doing fine, she wrote, performed and produced those songs. Full payment due.

I had a fun conversation today. My daughter is 13 and her best friend came round and they binge watched the end of Stranger Things for 4 hours. They enthused about the music and I said I was almost exactly their age when the show is set. Her friend asked if I listened to Kate Bush, I replied accurately I have every song she ever recorded.

Don’t just listen to this one track, Kate Bush is a genius.  At 13 years of age she was spotted by Dave Gilmour for writing and performing this:

 

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DavidM, lorcan_nagle

Here’s a cover where I’ve a feeling you know the original tune, @davidm

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DavidM

Apple Music featured the ELVIS soundtrack so I gave it a spin. It’s ambitious and considered, with a mix of covers, remixes, reworkings, and original recordings – I haven’t seen the film and probably never will, and maybe that’s why it doesn’t really work for me. There are maybe half a dozen tracks I’d return to, two of them being the same song (my fave Elvis track):

[Al-x]

garjones wrote:

She’s doing fine, she wrote, performed and produced those songs. Full payment due.

Exactly…

If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, the last two minutes state that because she owned just about EVERYTHING
with regards to her music rights, she gets a HUGE percentage/cut of the song 37 years later!

It reminds me now of why Prince wanted the rights to everything about his material.
——————————


@garjones

You know I “sometimes” talk about thievery.

Well, you might like this report about Beyonce stealing from this Belgian artist:

They all either “steal” or the record company/producer “gives” them hit songs meant for others.

https://youtube.com/shorts/kGZAajzCswM?feature=share

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Al-x.

I had this “3 free articles” deal for the Atlantic and one of the “essays” I read was on the 2010 era in
pop culture.

The article centered on Katy Perry and her “Teen Age Dream” album, as well as the similar vibes at the time
from Lady Gaga, Kesha, some Taylor Swift, Beyonce, etc. The writer went on to say that as the years went on
and the cultural trends and the country changed, the “innocent” cartoonish vibes of that album are long gone.

Interesting how as events change people’s moods, trends, vibes, images, etc. are abandoned. ie. Zooey Deschanel
(The New Girl) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim) had this niche of this “Pixie Girl” trope as they were
called, but when that was over and everyone goes into some new “phase” then…

During my LSD trip, I decided to listen to something familiar, chill and loopable. So I settled for my favourite album of all time, Röyksopps debut MELODY A.M.

I can not imagine a better album.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Al-x wrote:

Well, you might like this report about Beyonce stealing from this Belgian artist:

It’s not something I would take any enjoyment from.

To be honest that video is so similar, not just the moves but camera shots and setting, it has been pinched.

My only argument really is musically we have run out of new genres in the 21st century. It hit me when The Strokes were the darlings of the music press and they just basically re-recorded a Blondie single but like it was by The Ramones.

K-Pop isn’t a genre, it’s pop sung by Koreans, ‘grime’ isn’t a new genre of music, it’s rap with a British accent. “Drill” is gangster rap with a British accent. American EDM is just the same stuff I was dancing to in UK clubs in 1992.

So if you have endless people making the same styles of music, and anyone can upload it on Youtube – you no longer need a record contract, we are going to hit a critical mass where any melody I made up today completely independently will already be recorded by someone else. We may have to eventually rethink how we manage this kind of copyright because pure originality may be impossible.

Dance moves similarly, if you copy an entire sequence then fair enough but there are only so many shapes a body can throw and if Tik-Tok is uploading 10,000 dance videos a minute then originality is equally next to impossible.

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DavidM

That vid was just to say that people are alike all over and that some black and Hispanic artists are really no better.

That vid was the most succinct one. There are other YT videos with side by side footage of Beyonce  or her producers
ripping off from the European music scene, or stealing from lesser known American up and coming artists. She was given
hit beats and songs that were supposed to have gone to others. As a result, artists like Amerie, Ashanti, and
others never did have the career they should have had. Same with JLo: Either she siphoned songs from others or the producers did. What can be said about the music industry?

Songs “that were supposed to go to others” is a vague area, though. Somebody writes a song. Who is to say who it was “supposed” to be for? Maybe the writer did have somebody in mind, but in truth it’s just a song that any singer (who pays the writer) could sing. That’s legally, morally, and artistically indisputable.

This has happened since at least back in the 60s. The pop charts back then were full of people singing other people’s songs, sometimes multiple artists singing the same song within weeks of each other. As long as they all pay the writer, that’s fine.

One famous example: Neil Sedaka (a monster hit song writer) wrote two songs in around 1971 and offered them to Tony Christie: Solitaire and Amarillo. Christie’s manger didn’t like Solitaire, so he took Amarillo and had a pretty big hit with it. Sedaka recorded Solitaire himself, but nobody knows that version. Christie then released Solitaire on an album, but nobody knows that version either. Solitaire first appeared as a single by the Searchers, but nobody remembers that either. What everybody *does* remember is that Andy Williams released it as a single just a few months after the Searchers, and it became the defining song of his career.

So, who was Solitaire “supposed to have gone to”?

And just to add more confusion into the mix: Sedaka swiped the melody from Frederic Chopin, so morally was it even his to give away?

Fwiw, here are just two links:

https://popcrush.com/hit-songs-originally-written-for-other-artists/
https://www.glamour.com/story/pop-songs-that-were-originally-written-for-other-artists

There are of course, artists who do their own songs and artists who do songs offered to them by the producers, company, etc.
Maybe a producer feels that one artist could do a given song more “justice” and that sort of thing.

But that is not exactly the case with Beyonce. There are more YT videos of the artist Amerie in concert and Beyonce (who was with Destiny’s Child) was in the audience. She got in touch with Amerie’s producer and pretty much mimicked Amerie. It’s why the guy said in the podcast that Amerie was the original Beyonce. All this is documented on YT if you just type in the search “Beyonce a thief” and all the vids will come up. Stands to reason that the producers give the best material to whoever they feel could bring in the most cash. Would those songs have been a huge hit with Amerie? We’ll never know. It is all cutthroat.

I saw this in the popbitch.com email newsletter:

The Smile – a band whose line-up features Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke – are on tour in Europe at the minute. Each night, their tourbus driver runs a themed pub quiz, pitting the band against their crew.

One night the theme was “Radiohead”.

The crew won.

😳😜

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Rocket, njerry

Then there is the case of doing cover versions or a followup rendition.

The Wiki article had Tom Waits originally releasing the song “Downtown Train” in 1985. Bob Seger recorded his version in 1989, then a month later Rod Stewart released his version. (They must both have been working on it at the same time and didn’t know the other artist was doing it. Something like House of Pain and Kris Kross both rapping about jumping).  Who did that “Down Town train” song the most “justice”? It is up to you.

I won’t rehash the thread “Original and the cover version”, Dolly Parton and Whitney, Kate Bush and Maxwell. Already done along with the threads of credit and royalty money.

————————————————-

In the late 90s we had the female rapper Lil Kim always being promoted as this tough, take no prisoners, “bad “b*tch” persona. She had these pictures of her crouching down etc. Now there are some parallels being drawn with the latest women rappers now like Cardi B, and these days Megan Thee Stallion who are promoted in similar manner and not really being allowed to deviate from it.

To be frank I have absolutely zero issue with this ‘written for me’ or ‘recorded first’ debate.

In the end the writer has the ability to control who sings it or the artist can write their own songs and control it that way. This seem a confected ‘debate’ to get Youtube hits.

It not even always the case the bigger star wins out. Prince (a massive global superstar) wrote ‘Nothing Compares 2U’, he gave it to The Family – one of his offshoot projects and nobody cared. Sinead O’Connor made it into a global hit by just doing it better, and she was  not a big name anywhere, she had one minor hit as an indie artist. Prince made loads of money off that as he owned the publishing rights and added it to his setlist in concerts.

So I think we should just let this one go, it’s not important, nobody is being exploited. If you want exclusive rights to a song – write it yourself. Tom Jones and Elvis did fine writing fuck all their entire careers.

 

 

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DavidM

garjones wrote:

Elvis did fine

Well, no, he died.

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Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Well, no, he died.

We all die.

He did well up to that point, squirrel sandwiches, hit songs and movies, hot wife, drugs.

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garjones wrote:

We all die.

Quite the opposite, all we do is live.

Anonymous wrote:

garjones wrote:

We all die.

Quite the opposite, all we do is live.

The most important thing to remember about life is that no one gets out alive.

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[Al-x]

garjones wrote:

To be frank I have absolutely zero issue with this ‘written for me’ or ‘recorded first’ debate. In the end the writer has the ability to control who sings it or the artist can write their own songs and control it that way. This seem a confected ‘debate’ to get Youtube hits. It not even always the case the bigger star wins out. Prince (a massive global superstar) wrote ‘Nothing Compares 2U’, he gave it to The Family – one of his offshoot projects and nobody cared. Sinead O’Connor made it into a global hit by just doing it better, and she was not a big name anywhere, she had one minor hit as an indie artist. Prince made loads of money off that as he owned the publishing rights and added it to his setlist in concerts.

What came across me about all that was the “sabotage” elements of it all and how other artists lost out on “hits” MILLIONS, career advancement. A little something like what was going on in that “Dreamgirls” movie, which ironically had Beyonce in it!

But that’s that.

It is all VERY cutthroat but then again…What else is new?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Al-x.

Yeah but my point is they don’t have rights to those ‘hits’. Someone else wrote them, it’s maybe unlucky sometimes a higher profile artist picked them up but them’s the breaks. If your career relies on someone else writing hits for you then you live and die by that. If you want exclusivity, then write your own tune.

It’s not really the case that if I recorded ‘Firework’ instead of Katie Perry I would have had a worldwide hit. A lot is in the version, again Prince wrote ‘I Feel For You’, Chaka Kahn took it to a UK number 1. If it’s just the song he would have been number 1 with it years earlier.

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njerry, DavidM

[DavidM]

Anonymous wrote:

I remember the first time I saw Argent in concert and Rod Argent took great pains to explain that “You might know this song by another band but we wrote it and we recorded it first.”

And obviously the Argent version is better than the one by that other band. But why did that band have a worldwide hit while Argent didn’t? Marketing.

I believe that the biggest single factor in getting a hit record is marketing. Why does one version of the same song do better than another? It’s nothing to do with a different arrangement or the other person having a better voice. It’s purely and simply marketing.

garjones wrote:

It’s not really the case that if I recorded ‘Firework’ instead of Katie Perry I would have had a worldwide hit. A lot is in the version,

Nope, it’s marketing. Get Simon Cowell behind you and your version will be a hit.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by DavidM.

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DavidM wrote:

And obviously the Argent version is better than the one by that other band. But why did that band have a worldwide hit while Argent didn’t? Marketing.

I’m partial to the version in Bill and Ted, partly because of that amazing intro (Steve Vai?) but mostly because that’s how I first found the song.

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DavidM

Remember last year’s Ukranian Eurovision entry? That haunting neofolk band? They just had a short gig uploaded to one of my favourite live music YouTube channels

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DavidM, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

I’m partial to the version in Bill and Ted, partly because of that amazing intro (Steve Vai?)

Really, Steve Vai? I didn’t know that. [quick google] Well, that’s interesting :)

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Remember last year’s Ukranian Eurovision entry

No

As a general rule, by the following morning I don’t remember any Eurovision entry.

Hmm… was it the first song they play in that video? Because that is vaguely familiar.

DavidM wrote:

Hmm… was it the first song they play in that video? Because that is vaguely familiar.

It was, yes.

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DavidM

This months blog post.

We got post metal mixed with synthwave (post wave? Synthmetal?), Shadowrun inspired techno, more post metal, dance bangers, and some goth shoegaze. Who says you can’t have it all!

June Music Round Up 2022

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Bruce

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njerry

i’ve seen the name around but I don’t know anything about Olivia Rodrigo. I guess it was nice of her to invite Lily Allen to sing Lilly’s song with her

Appetite For Destruction is 35 🔥 What's your favorite track off the album?https://t.co/8EgO4BsDoN pic.twitter.com/IIdrXUoFSY

— Guns N' Roses (@gunsnroses) July 21, 2022

I used to own Appetite for Destruction. It’s probably the only late-80s metal album I ever bought, and it was a refreshing change away from the super-processed blandness that most pop-metal bands fell into in the 80s.

I still think it’s a good album. I don’t think there’s a bad song on it. My favourite is probably Sweet Child o’ Mine, but Paradise City is awesome for its drum patterns. (Yeah, I know, my favourites are the hit singles. I’ll turn in my serious music fan credentials now.)

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Sean Robinson, Todd, Bruce, njerry, Dave

DavidM wrote:

I still think it’s a good album. I don’t think there’s a bad song on it. My favourite is probably Sweet Child o’ Mine, but Paradise City is awesome for its drum patterns. (Yeah, I know, my favourites are the hit singles. I’ll turn in my serious music fan credentials now.)

Yeah, I think in truth almost every song is good enough that it could have been a single. It’s a very consistently great album overall and one of my all-time favourites.

I don’t think I could pick out a best track but Welcome To The Jungle is a pretty fantastic opener and then they somehow manage to keep up that energy throughout.

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Sean Robinson, Bruce

DavidM wrote:

Nope, it’s marketing. Get Simon Cowell behind you and your version will be a hit.

It’s a large part of it but the music business can be quite variable. I doubt Chaka Khan, The Bangles or Sinead O’Connor had better marketing resources and media attention than Prince did but hit number 1 with his songs before he got top spot himself.

Songs can also be a hit with next to no marketing at all. The story of Nena’s 99 Luftballons is they didn’t even intend to release it in the US but a DJ picked it up and went a bit ‘viral’ (as they didn’t say in those days). White Town’s ‘Your Woman’ was a cassette sent into Mark and Lard on Radio 1 from a guy who recorded it in his bedroom and it went to number 1. A large amount of dance music is largely anonymous and marketing free, it spreads through sales to DJs first and then to the public because they like it when its played out.

However Robson and Jerome getting a number 1 with Unchained Melody (a Cowell production) is pretty much 100% marketing.

Re Appetite For Destruction I really like the album closer Rocket Queen. The icky “sex noises” section in the middle of the song make it a bit ikky to listen to with others. Outside of that and the big three singles I’m also a fan of Night Train and Think About You. The whole album is consistently strong though and well overdue a re-listen. GNR never came close to topping it.

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Dave

Bruce wrote:

The icky “sex noises” section in the middle of the song make it a bit ikky to listen to with others.

I agree, better to sub in My World or Get In The Ring at that point.

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Bruce

Rock music? [puke emoji]

Here’s some hardfolk chiptrance psyschlager for ya

DavidM wrote:

I still think it’s a good album.

Honeslty, Apetite, Lies and both Use your Illusion albums are still pretty fuckin’ amazing. The Spaghetti Incident was always kinda shit… anyways, the point being, GNR still holds up rather well to this day.

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Dave

I love the juxtaposition in this video of an Australian ‘pub choir’. To be blunt they aren’t good singers, the setup is a strange mix of very professional and amateur but they are having loads of fun and smiling throughout which is really infectious, I’d like to have been there.

I find this interesting. Joni Mitchell had a brain aneurism in 2015, they set up a very comfortable scenario for her in 2022 to sing at the Newport RI folk festival. She is 79 and not on top form, she can’t reach all the notes she used to, the pianist adjusts his pace to her now slower one. However it is that voice.

However skilled any musician is, the voice really is the most important and unique aspect in any band. Peter Hook is an incredible bass player, Bernard Sumner is a bog average singer. The truth is though it is easier to emulate Hook’s playing than Sumner’s voice. You can put Mariah Carey’s 8 octave range singing New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ and it won’t work.

You see it with stuff like Queen with Adam Lambert, Lambert is an exceptional vocalist, he’s not Freddie and it’s never going to really be Queen whoever they use. You could though swap out the entire band with session mimics and the original singer and it would work.

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Rocket, Todd, DavidM, Dave

I’ve always adored Joni Mitchell. She has one of those voices that genuinely feels like it transports you somewhere else. Truly magical stuff.

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Rocket, garjones

Dave wrote:

She has one of those voices that genuinely feels like it transports you somewhere else.

So does Yoko Ono, with the stark difference that the place Joni Mitchells voice transports me to is a place where I want to be.

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Todd, Sean Robinson, njerry, garjones

I ended up watching a video of the 100 most played songs on Spotify. Perhaps not surprisingly given the demographics for streaming music and how their playlists might work it was overwhelmingly newer music, most from the last 5 years, almost all from the past 10. Lots of Ed Sheeran, Post Malone, Drake, Maroon 5, Dua Lipa, Adele etc.

In fact all apart from one song. Right in the middle is Bohemian Rhapsody. A classic song of course but it’s hard to figure out how it, as a 47 year old song, appears as the only ‘classic’ there. Did ‘the kids’ pick up on it somewhere in a similar fashion to how they are now doing with ‘Running Up That Hill’ or are the old folks on Spotify playing it on repeat?

I suspect it will remain a mystery.

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Al-x

I posted in the Random thread about Beyonce and the producer Pharrel sampling from Kelis’ song years ago.
Kelis was upset that neither one came to her about it, but technically Pharrel new Kelis did not have
co-writing rights to her songs.

This opens up a whole new thing about co writing credit. Nowadays, a lot more artists are into getting their
rights/name to everything as much as they can. Madonna did not have that many rights to past hits, but now she is
into getting co writing credit.

The industry was always messed up. With the contracts, the money upfront to record that the artist has
to pay back, the crazy touring. If you are fortunate, you can use your fame to get into other projects
and have the remote chance to become a billionaire like Rihanna.

Hey, you never know if you come up with something and 30+ years from now, it is used on either a hit show or a
viral culture trend…. Got to get it all trademarked.

Al-x wrote:

This opens up a whole new thing about co writing credit. Nowadays, a lot more artists are into getting their rights/name to everything as much as they can.

To be honest though this is nothing new.

In the 1980s reams were written about Michael Jackson buying the publishing rights for Beatles material and how that is more valuable than performance payments. U2 have always split co-writing 4 ways whoever actually comes up with the tune which they ascribe partly to why they are probably the longest running big group that have never split up or fallen out.

It’s to me a bit similar to comics now. Guys like Kirby or whoever had legitimate arguments they were being ripped off with contracts on the back of cheques etc. Now I know if I get hired by Marvel comics and I write the best comic of all time I own jack shit and will get paid nothing for creating it beyond royalties for the issues I worked on. It’s hard to justify griping if Wolverpants gets a series of $1bn movies and I don’t get paid any of that, I know going in I won’t.

People now really are just victims of their own excitement to get signed and seen, if Kelis did write sections of those songs she should have got her name down but I suspect she was too excited and/or distracted at being on MTV or selling out a gig. This is not trying to be harsh as I think I would also be similarly distracted and would accept the page rate if Marvel liked my Wolverpants pitch.

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njerry, Al-x

It’s a new month so a new blog post.

We have some metal, post hardcore, IDM, 90’s dance, indie / shoegaze, post rock and a few other bits and pecies.

It’s been a good month.

 

Music round up July 2022

 

 

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garjones

[Al-x]

garjones wrote:

It’s to me a bit similar to comics now. Guys like Kirby or whoever had legitimate arguments they were being ripped off with contracts on the back of cheques etc. Now I know if I get hired by Marvel comics and I write the best comic of all time I own jack shit and will get paid nothing for creating it beyond royalties for the issues I worked on. It’s hard to justify griping if Wolverpants gets a series of $1bn movies and I don’t get paid any of that, I know going in I won’t.

Yes… We covered the example of the writer who came up with the Winter Soldier. How upset he is now to see his characters in
these billion dollar movies and he only got $5k to show for it. (Damn. That hurts thinking about it.)

https://www.indiewire.com/2021/08/comic-book-writers-mcu-underpaid-premiere-invite-1234656800/

I know that “A deal is a deal” and you should know full well what you are getting into but…

Let’s be honest…. No one can tell how things will be down the road. If Brubaker or even Marvel Comics even envisioned at the time, billions being made on MCU characters today… Imagine if Schuster/Siegel knew that Superman would be so big over the decades… he wouldn’t have sold it for $100.

I know… A bad contract to begin with. But now, creators all across the board, be it music, comics, books, etc., are looking more intently at
all their options to legally secure as many rights they can get to their intellectual property/creations. I don’t blame them.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Al-x.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Al-x.

Al-x wrote:

Yes… We covered the example of the writer who came up with the Winter Soldier. How upset he is now to see his characters in
these billion dollar movies and he only got $5k to show for it. (Damn. That hurts thinking about it.)

In one interview I read, writer Ed Brubaker said that he has earned more money in SAG residuals for his cameo appearance in CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER (where his one line of dialogue got cut from the theatrical release) than from creating the character.

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Todd

Sure but Ed Brubaker knew the minute he wrote his first page of Captain America that he owned nothing in residual rights.

I don’t agree with that but I know it, you know it and he knew it when he accepted his page rate.

It’s not the 1960s any more where people were taking advantage of new media in an explosion of music and arts. As unpopular as he is now Millar was always very cognisant of that and with Kirkman jumped ship to where that wasn’t the case. In music it isn’t a new phenomenon a writing credit brings you more money down the line. Everyone knows that. The only reason anyone goes along with it it short term gain and exposure.

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lorcan_nagle, Al-x, Todd

garjones wrote:

Sure but Ed Brubaker knew the minute he wrote his first page of Captain America that he owned nothing in residual rights. I don’t agree with that but I know it, you know it and he knew it when he accepted his page rate.

This is true up to a point but to be fair to Brubaker the scale of things changed a huge amount even over the course of his career with Marvel.

He started his Cap run in 2004, four years before the first Iron Man came out, before the MCU was even an idea and long before the Disney buyout that put these characters in a different place altogether in terms of adaptation/merchandising potential.

Having said all that, the principle is the same and yes you have to assume that he went in with eyes open.

But I feel like you can acknowledge that while also being sympathetic to someone who sees a big corporation making such a huge amount of money out of their work.

Hindsight is a great thing, no doubt, and I’m sure Brubaker would have done things differently if he had known what was to come later. But you could say the same about (say) Moore and Watchmen too, another case in which the creator signed a bad deal and the corporation no doubt has the legal right to do what they did, but you still feel sympathetic on a moral level to the guy who put all the creative work in and made the work what it is.

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Al-x, lorcan_nagle, Todd

[DavidM]

BBC headline:

Commonwealth Games: Ozzy Osbourne surprise appearance headlines Birmingham 2022 closing ceremony

Actual story:

The Aston-born musician, 73, performed on stage with his band Black Sabbath, including guitarist Tony Iommi …

What the headline should have said:

Black Sabbath headline Birmingham 2022 closing ceremony

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by DavidM.

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Uncle Retrospective, njerry, Dave

For better or worse, there’s at least two generations who know the Osbournes from their various television shows but who don’t know who the hell Black Sabbath is. They might look at your headline and assume that Satanists have invaded England (again).

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Todd

njerry wrote:

there’s at least two generations who know the Osbournes from their various television shows but who don’t know who the hell Black Sabbath is

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Sean Robinson, Bruce, njerry, Todd

Hey, did you know Dave Grohl was in a band before THE FOO FIGHTERS?!

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Todd

njerry wrote:

Hey, did you know Dave Grohl was in a band before THE FOO FIGHTERS?!

It was probably Green Day.

njerry wrote:

Hey, did you know Dave Grohl was in a band before THE FOO FIGHTERS?!

Yeah, they were called Scream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scream_(band)

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Today I did something I haven’t done in 25 years and made an old-school mixtape.

My son was inspired to get a walkman and cassettes after watching GotG 1 & 2, and was keen to make his own compilation, so I showed him how.

I’d forgotten how satisfying the home-made practical aspect of it feels. He really enjoyed the process.

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DavidM, Uncle Retrospective, Al-x

[Al-x]

You showed him how.

@davewallace… Very nice.

————————-

All that discussion about owning the right to your work.

I found this link on masters and why artists like Taylor Swift,
Prince decided to re record earlier albums when they had the legal chance
to do it:

What Does It Mean To Own Your Masters?

With regards to that Kate Bush and that “Deal with God” song. A LOT of old songs
are getting new life because they are added to streaming show soundtracks, social
media video snippets…

Like the Ting Tings : https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60509221

Kate Bush back in the day made sure of things, so she got control of over 80% of
her material. She got serious revenue over that song.
Very smart and one who is ahead of her time in so many ways.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by Al-x.

Dave wrote:

But I feel like you can acknowledge that while also being sympathetic to someone who sees a big corporation making such a huge amount of money out of their work.

I think it is fundamentally unfair, don’t get me wrong, but even back then the Spider-Man and X-Men films had been massive hits. As early as the 1970s creators are being told not to create new characters in WFH because they’ll get no long term benefit. Roy Thomas says it as the second Marvel EIC after Stan.

The moral and the practical are two different things. I was 13 years old when I read a long article by Alan Moore, somewhat bizarrely published in a Marvel UK comic, explain in detail how they’d ripped off Jack Kirby. So he still got stung but never worked for Marvel US outside 3 pages of a charity fundraiser.

Back to music – by 1978 when she started out Kate Bush knew all the stories that predated her being successful. She gets all the writing credits because she wrote it all. By her 4th album, the one before Hounds of Love, she also produced it all.

Prince actually knew that too, he wrote and performed and produced almost all his material from day one, he and now his estate are missing not a dollar from that. His bitch with Warners was he was so prolific they wouldn’t support him releasing several albums a year, which ironically was normal back in the 1960s but didn’t fit their marketing model 20-30 years later.

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Dave wrote:

Today I did something I haven’t done in 25 years and made an old-school mixtape.

I’m guessing Side A opens with Baby Shark, followed by 42 minutes of Despacito remixes.

But seriously; What’s on it? And what kind of media did you use as the source, CDs? Or did you magic up your computer to a tape recorder?

garjones wrote:

His bitch with Warners was he was so prolific they wouldn’t support him releasing several albums a year, which ironically was normal back in the 1960s but didn’t fit their marketing model 20-30 years later.

Bizarrely, the record companies figured that too many releases the same artist would dilute sales since the general public bought a limited number of albums/singles per year, completely disregarding the reality that a fan of Prince’s music will buy EVERYTHING HE RELEASES!!!

Stephen King had a similar experience with his publisher during his early days of success; they told him if he published more than one book per year his overall sales would suffer. Meanwhile, I was trying to read everything he wrote, including buying an issue of Playboy magazine just for his short story therein (yes, I did take notice of the naked ladies, but I really did “buy it for the articles”). King finally called bullshit on them, releasing IT, The Eyes of the Dragon, The Drawing of the Three, and Misery in a 10-month period between September 1986 and June 1987, all of which landed on the NY Times Best Sellers lists.

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garjones, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Dave wrote:

Today I did something I haven’t done in 25 years and made an old-school mixtape.

I’m guessing Side A opens with Baby Shark, followed by 42 minutes of Despacito remixes.

But seriously; What’s on it? And what kind of media did you use as the source, CDs? Or did you magic up your computer to a tape recorder?

All his choice, and like lots of kids of his age and generation he likes a mix of classic and newer stuff. So he’s chosen a bit of Queen and GnR and They Might Be Giants but also some more recent stuff like Gym Class Heroes, Bruno Mars and Dua Lipa.

I’m sure at least one GotG soundtrack song will end up on there too. Probably Mr Blue Sky or Hooked On A Feeling.

So far we’ve been putting it together with CDs as the old stereo I have with a tape deck has a CD player. But it also has an in-line socket that I reckon we can connect his phone up to, so I’m getting a lead today that should allow us to do that.

So he can record straight from Spotify onto cassette tape – eras colliding!

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DavidM

Sounds cool! Not sure about that stuff with spotify and the tape recorder, but I’m also kind of sure you’re warded against any foul curses that may arise from using that kind of black magic.

May I humbly recommend you record Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up over the last track on either side without telling your young one?

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DavidM, Sean Robinson, Uncle Retrospective, Todd

njerry wrote:

Bizarrely, the record companies figured that too many releases the same artist would dilute sales since the general public bought a limited number of albums/singles per year, completely disregarding the reality that a fan of Prince’s music will buy EVERYTHING HE RELEASES!!!

It’s interesting, even as a Prince fan I think by that era Warners weren’t 100% wrong. Music needs marketing and promotion behind it and in truth Prince never had a hit again to the level he did ‘pre-slave’. After he extricated himself from that deal he experimented with putting everything on the internet and then hating it and taking it all offline and free CDs via newspapers.

Prince fans would always be there and he was never in danger of not being listened to or making money but I think his profile did drop as a recording artist (as a live artist he broke all sorts of records in London with his concerts).

There is a ‘what if’ element because I think his album a year period from Purple Rain to Lovesexy is his best but a few of his later songs are just as good but never got mainstream traction. ‘Baltimore’ is both a very catchy tune and politically edgy but not played on radio. ‘Guitar’ has as good a hook as any song he wrote, if Foo Fighters did it they’d be praised to the rafters but most don’t know it.

If I’m honest I think with the machine he had with Warners in the 1980s those would be big hits.

njerry wrote:

Hey, did you know Dave Grohl was in a band before THE FOO FIGHTERS?!

But he was clearly too talented for them. It’s a good thing he left really.

 

[lorcan_nagle]

@garjones and anyone else who’s into Wet Leg, they just had a live show streamed on the ARTE Concert YouTube Channel

EDIT, they took the live video down and uploaded a new version

• This reply was modified 2 years, 4 months ago by lorcan_nagle.

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garjones, Bruce, Todd

For Al-X we’ve had a discussion in the past verging on nature v nurture in various spheres. I find the evidence at the very very high end of sport leads to nature. I think at that hundredth of a second difference it is impossible for a white man to ever win the 100m sprint again or a black man to win the swim. (It’s even more specific than that, Caribbeans excel at sprints and Kenyans/Ethiopians at middle and long distance)

This example though in music is nurture.

It’s a great singing performance by a group of Welsh speaking performers, which is 20% of a very small country of 3m. Statistically anyone could do that but culturally they trained and encouraged to sing at a very young age. Choir was compulsory for all in my school. At age 8 I was taught about the difference between head and diaphragm singing.

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njerry, DavidM

2 users thanked author for this post.

lorcan_nagle

garjones wrote:

For Al-X we’ve had a discussion in the past verging on nature v nurture in various spheres. I find the evidence at the very very high end of sport leads to nature. I think at that hundredth of a second difference it is impossible for a white man to ever win the 100m sprint again or a black man to win the swim. (It’s even more specific than that, Caribbeans excel at sprints and Kenyans/Ethiopians at middle and long

Yes… I remember this well. My concern is that citing slight body differences that give some “race” an advantage can be a dangerous slippery slope. Skin Melanin, hair texture, and facial features are one thing, but the danger to extrapolate to other things…aside from tanning at a sunny beach.

—————

@gareth … fellow… I also remember you being somewhat adamant about those who signed on the dotted line once and as things have it, find out decades later they wound up losing millions. Young comic artists, Ed Brubaker over Winter Soldier, Kirby, and on and on.

We then got to Kelis who signed something at 19 or 20 and now years later Pharrel and Beyonce used some sound snippet she got upset about. True, she did sign. She was too young though and just didn’t know or have foresight.

Now… with this student loan situation that years ago had 18-19 year olds taking huge loans for college that are crippling them now, how do you feel about that? They did sign on the dotted line. I mean targeting teens to all this legal paperwork to sign their lives away to long term loans. Any mercy for them? And why doesn’t that apply to artists starting out like Kelis did?

I just have to say that the music industry contract situation should be restructured as does the comic work for hire situation.
Both seem to exploit the talented young.