>sounds the same to me. No personality or musical expression at
>all. Just relentless, mindless grooves. [...]
>I think that there will be a blow out when computers make it
>possible for EVERYONE to crank out mindless synthesized dribble.
I wonder if a bit of a backlash isn't underway already. . .
A while back, a friend gave me a ticket to a Medeski, Martin & Wood
show. Beforehand, I did not know a thing about them, other than that
Medeski had played some Hammond with Marc Ribot. I had the impression
they were brainy NYC jazzbos or something.
I was a bit startled to arrive at the theater and discover a wild
neo-deadhead pagan scene underway--where I was a good 20 years older
than the average. The show started, and the entire crowd stood up in
their seats and began dreamily nodding to the music, and stayed that
way for the whole two hours. In terms of musicianship, M,M,W are very
tight and unafraid to take things in quirky directions--but
stylistically. . . Eep! It sounded like an early-70s flashback to me:
Long R&B-ish jamming, meandering solos, etc. (Cool vintage keyboard
sounds, though.)
I was starting to freak out, thinking that I REALLY did not belong at
this show--until the insight slapped me upside the head, that all the
twentysomethings around me had grown up heard nothing but grunge, rap
and techno. For them, a long meandering live solo was something novel
and exciting. I immediately chilled out--and ended up rather enjoying
the show, at least in the sense of being grateful to experience the
whole scene.
So there's one "anti-mechanical" group who has found a following. . .
cheers,
--Ross
|| Ross "Mambo Frenzy" Orr <mambofrenzy@earthlink.net>
|| Ann Arbor, Michigan USA
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 10:19:36 -0500
From: wlt4@mindspring.com
Subject: Re: Re: (exotica) Eno vs Billie Holiday
>The older generations clearly win hands down on skill.
Your points were true enough but I'm not sure this one completely is. Sure the cool thing about 50s/60s "easy listening" music was that much of it was made by skilled big band vets who kept it from pure schlock (at least sometimes). But classical music critics have been complaining for years that the general level of musical skill has increased to previously unimagined levels though at the expense of personality and imagination. There's enough recorded evidence to back them up (though there are some great descriptions of professional 19th century Italian orchestras so inept that they sound like the Portsmouth Sinfonia). Lately jazz critics and older musicians have made the same argument, saying that the numerous young musicians are technical demons but don't have much individuality.
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 16:21:37 +0100
From: Moritz R <moritz@derplan.com>
Subject: Re: (exotica) Re: A Brighter View of Our Dark Age of Music
"m.ace" schrieb:
> You complain about Magnus dismissing machine music, but
> then you dismiss live music as impractical and old fashioned.
did I?
> "Live music" on the other hand, always has an element of
> danger, and even a ritual aspect.
I can sign this statement...
what's the point i this discussion? I'm certainly not arguing about personal taste. I think it's a pity if some dismisses anything new, just because computers were used to create it. To me this has nothing to do with the quality of the music, nor with craftmanship of the producers. Even old handplayed music can sound dull and soulless. the entire thread started with the explicit statements "music was better then than now" and someone had to disagree...
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 11:09:53 -0500 (EST)
From: delicado@cheerful.com
Subject: (exotica) Re: Vinnie Bell, DL Miller
D.L. Miller productions-
I have a couple of interesting UK issue LPs by 'the super guitar of lightnin red' which are DL Miller productions. They are from the early 70s, and are self-conciously funky and twangy. They can get a bit much, but there are some great cuts ('caravan', 'america'). Some have a very vinnie-bell type sound, but I don't think the playing is good enough to be him.
Regarding Vinnie Bell, I found the 'airport love theme' record recently and love it.
I have his 1964 (?) LP'whistle stop' on Verve. It is an odd LP. Produced by Claus Ogerman, but to me sounds very rock'n'roll, 50s- influenced, as opposed to the great string sound I love in later albums Ogerman produced. Not really recommended.
But I would like to recommend an extremely obscure Vinnie Bell recording, which I have harped on about intermittently for years. Credited as 'the exotic guitars' (but NOT the same 'exotic guitars' which later released several albums on Ranwood), Vinnie Bell contributes 4 self-written instrumental tracks to an early 60s budget label Platters LP on Guest Star records.
Two of them are quite amazingly brilliant - one is a hawaiian-exotic cut and the other is a catchy uptempo latin-sounding number.
This LP is by the Platters, and is called 'Only you'; it pops up on ebay now and then, and can generally be had for $2 or so.
"Usselman, Lawrence J" <ljusselm@tycoelectronics.com> wrote:
If done correctly, these packages can be just as safe as custom LP mailer
cartons, if not more so. You cannot just jam an album into an assembled box
and expect it to arrive without damage.
===============
Yeah, one would think, but...
I arrived home yesterday to find a USPO Priority box containing my first eBay LP (CK, it's the Arpia vol.4). The box looked like it had been stepped on and came completely wrapped in plastic. When I removed the plastic I realized this was because the box was soaking wet. Yep, they managed to drop it in water and then seal the water in!
Fortunately the record itself was wrapped in plastic bubble wrap and the box filled with shredded paper. Miraculously, the LP arrived intact and with no evidence of the adventure the box had gone through.
Amazing though, huh?!
lousmith@pipeline.com
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 15:56:47 -0500
From: George Hall <GeorgeH@rounder.com>
Subject: (exotica) RE: Musical Luddite
bigshot@spumco.com wrote:
>I think that there will be a blow out when computers make
it
>possible for EVERYONE to crank out mindless synthesized
dribble.
>Then the musicians who make this stuff will see that they
don't
>have an corner on the market for E-Z to create synth-drones
and
>beat in a box rhythms. This will be force them to return to
>*being able to play instruments well*.
>
>The sessions guys who made the percussion records of the
fifties
>were 100 times the musicians of the people making similar
sounding
>stuff today. And these guys were just *average* for their
time!
>Kenny G gets a world record for the longest sustained
note... Who
>cares? Louis Armstrong could chop or squeeze a note an make
it
>sing. Expressiveness and craftsmanship aren't dead. They
are just
>sleeping it off.
>
>I'm with you on this one, Magnus...
>See ya
>Steve
>
I'm kinda with you, but as far as musicians being forced to "play
instruments well," at a certain point you get into... the "Steve Vai
Problem" (or Sanborn, Toto, etc...).
There are TONS of remarkable & worthy musicians around and about these days,
still-active greats like Mose Allison, Paul Motian, Jimmy Smith, Plas
Johnson, Max Roach; Caetano Veloso is doing some of his best work, & I'm
enjoying Dave Douglas, Bill Frisell, Beck, Laika & the Cosmonauts, Latin
Playboys, Junior Brown, a slew of Japanese stuff that I haven't the $$ to
keep track of... You're just not as likely to hear it on the radio.
What you are likely to hear are, on the one hand, a lot of one-hit wonders
that are essentially Cute Young Things dropped into production-house tracks
& digitally harmonized into acceptable pitch-accuracy, & tired hard-guy rock
boys with drop-tuned guitars & a couple sampled gestures towards
modernity... there's more, but you know what I'm saying.
I guess I ultimately find no inherent problem with drum machines & such, tho
the ubiquity of the "perfect" beat aesthetic (sequencing, quantizing etc)
gets annoying like everything does when I hear it too much. Still, fake
strings & various machines can certainly help to get a decent sound for
cheap when you have an idea in your head & no other means. And the same
attempts at faking a sound have in the past given us the mellotron, analog
synthesis, & even the kind of homegrown phony "world" music that drew many
of us to this list. Often despised in their time, a lot of these sounds take
on an "otherness" when removed from it & the things they attempted to
replicate. I also think there are at least as many great percussionists
around today as back then, mostly in the latin world as I can see. & God
love Harry Breuer, but he also got more money, play, etc than Patato Valdes,
Chaino Pozo, etc.
The stuff that makes me crazy is the tendancy towards Extremely Huge Sounds
that play on an acoustic "realism" that does not exist in nature; that sense
of implied grandeur, profundity & lack of human scale that to my ears unites
the Peter Gabriels (who I quite liked in the day) & John Teshes of the world
tend to leave me (& their own content) behind.
Given the fact that just about every situation you can name is equipped with
some sort of soundtrack (from tv shows, shopping malls, subways,
advertisements, etc) it makes sense that the manner in which music is used
has evolved in all kinds of ways, many of them at the very least
non-aesthetic (read as "sucky"). & this reflects on how & why music is
created. Still, I think creative music will always find a way. I saw
trumpeter Dave Douglas for the first time with John Zorn's Masada some years
years ago, & he was doing all kinds of extraordinary & unexpected things,
all with a amazing sense of history that would make Wynton... uh, probably
turn to Stanley & mumble something about gumbo.
I realize that this is turning into one of those unwieldy & unfocused
screeds that does not resolve to a point, but... in addition to Shutting Up
now... I'd also say, re the "baggage" issue, that while I seldom have time
to contribute to the more thoughtful threads, the posts which frame opinions
in passionate, possibly windy & likely quixotic terms are one of the things
I most look forward to here.
gh
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 13:30:35 -0800
From: bigshot <bigshot@spumco.com>
Subject: (exotica) Fabricated Music
exotica-digest wrote:
>Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 09:51:49 -0500
>From: "m.ace" <mace@ookworld.com>
>Subject: Re: (exotica) Re: A Brighter View of Our Dark Age of Music
>
>"Fabricated" pieces of
>music are inert objects, like paintings or sculptures. This is not a point
>for dismissal...
Any good artist will tell you that the act of creation is NOT fabrication,
but *performance*. It's a spontaneous expression made possible by years
of concentrated study of technique. Paintings and sculptures are no
different from Dizzy Gillespie standing on stage at Birdland improvising.
The medium may be different, but the creative process is the same.
Removing spontaneous expression and mastry of technique from either music
or art reduces it to a cheap manufacturing process, not a creative one.
"Fabricated" music is about as valuable as those production line "sofa
sized oil paintings" you see lined up against the wall at the gas
station. I find no problem at all with dismissing it out of hand.
See ya
Steve
Stephen Worth
bigshot@spumco.com
The Web: http://www.spumco.com
Usenet: alt.animation.spumco
Palace: cartoonsforum.com:9994
Spumco International
1021 Grandview, 2nd Floor
Glendale, CA 91201
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 13:30:33 -0800
From: bigshot <bigshot@spumco.com>
Subject: (exotica) Songwriting
exotica-digest wrote:
>I'd say that another lamentable loss is the disappearance of
>the songwriter. No more are the Cole Porters, Irving Berlins, Jerome Kerns,
>etc. Everybody's got to be their own songwriter, and frankly, VERY few of
>them even approach genuine skill in that category.
Strangely enough, the Beatles are to blame for this. They were
*great* songwriters, and absolute geniuses when it came to
musicality. They had a firm basis in early rock n' roll. But as
musicians, they were just passable. No great shakes.
All the bands that followed the Beatles saw was that "passable
musicians" could become a worldwide success on an unprecidented
level without ever really having to play live. These medicore
amateur musicians wanted to become Beatles too, but they only
had a tiny iota of the musicality and songwriting ability that
the Beatles had. They didn't let that didn't stop them.
These lame-ass wannabe Beatles wrote their own lame-ass songs,
goofed around with overdubbing and sound effects to appeal to
the drug crowd, hired trippy illustrators to do their album
covers and named themselves Pink Floyd, Yes and ELO. The Beatles
were great, but they were a *terrible* example for others to
follow.
"Art Rock" is neither art nor rock.
See ya
Steve
Stephen Worth
bigshot@spumco.com
The Web: http://www.spumco.com
Usenet: alt.animation.spumco
Palace: cartoonsforum.com:9994
Spumco International
1021 Grandview, 2nd Floor
Glendale, CA 91201
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------------------------------
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 22:27:30 +0100 (CET)
From: "Magnus Sandberg" <m.sandberg@telia.com>
Subject: Re: (exotica) RE: Musical Luddite
citerar George Hall <GeorgeH@rounder.com>:
I'd also say, re the "baggage" issue, that while I seldom have time
> to contribute to the more thoughtful threads, the posts which frame
> opinions
> in passionate, possibly windy & likely quixotic terms are one of the
things
> I most look forward to here.
> gh
You got a place in my heart George!
A very thoughtful post, I actually tend to forget that many of the
heroes of the past is still alive today and makes just as good music.
I can see my enemy of today: Producers! Money! Digital dehumanization!
Wrong kind of drugs! Cute teenagers!
Its a holy mission! Why are the elderly so silent! It is their right to
hear decent music on the radio.
Magnus
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