was_tansu_now_badhedgehog (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
was_tansu_now_badhedgehog) wrote2009-10-14 12:09 pm
was_tansu_now_badhedgehog) wrote2009-10-14 12:09 pm
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ETA something to make the opening sentence make any sense at all...
This leads on from what I put on facebook... "listening to some old Cure B sides."
The Upstairs Room is such a brilliant track, right at the top of the alley that I'm given to understand today's fashionable electronic pop acts try to explore. I feel all "aharr, take that (and partay), yer today's fashionable electronic pop acts" but to be honest that just situates me as the kind of thirtysomething/fortysomething narrow visioned snob who nobody likes (but most of us end up as*). Anyhow. Upstairs Room. Top tune. Worth a listen or five. Leave the negotiation of sociocultural identity to another time, let's, hmm?
Did I say all this before, a few weeks or months ago? Or did I just say the same things to someone IRL?
I've got another music beef, actually. In short, when they do country-inflected wistful songs these days, right, bands and that, especially tunes they use for ads, right? TOO BLOODY SLOW. TOO. SLOW. Making a song slower and stripping down the arrangement to standard SAD SONG settings doesn't automatically make it more sad and emotional and wistful. There's good slow music, good sad slow, atmospheric music, but taking music that works one way and making it slower and "sadder" doesn't make it better and can actually take away the immediacy and honest emotion that the song had in the first place. Compare the Plant/Krauss cover of Through The Morning Through The Night to the original. The cover has a slightly slower tempo and a sparser SAD SONG arrangement, but the original sounds much more sincere - sad enough to make you cry (honestly, listen it, it an absolute sobfest). Also I was listening to Simon Mayo on Radio 2 the other evening; he had Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh on, and they did a cover of Hickory Wind by the Byrds off Sweetheart of the Rodeo. FAR TOO SODDING SLOW. Took the talk out of the song, took the story out, and reduced the whole thing to the tempo.(Best ever version of Hickory Wind, by the way, is on a live bootleg of the Byrds in Italy in 1968 when Doug Dillard had joined them for a European tour.) I guess the originals in these cases are helped by the fact (YES I SAID FACT) that Gene Clark had one of the most honest and heartfelt voices in music.
And don't get me started on the twee "folk" bollocks that gets used for 40% or adverts these days. I will melt down all glockenspiels.
And another thing, don't ask me if I've ever taken an independent liking to any form of music without A MAN being involved. OR I WILL CUT YOU, for realz. HE HAD SOME GENE CLARK RECORDS ALRIGHT? AND I LISTENED TO THEM.
* I was reading Charlie Brooker's column just a bit ago, the one about him finding out that George Osborne is a tiny bit younger than him. He says something about feeling old and past it at a ridiculously young age, which reminded me that I was only 23 or 24 when I bought a keyring with "Old Has-been" on it. I feel younger now than then, in a way (though less in touch with the hip and the happening. I live hundreds of miles from London, you see). I think it's because at some point in the last 10 years, the last 5 really, I finally learned to dress myself without looking like a scarecrow (that old thing of wearing the clothes instead of the clothes wearing you). Social conditioning led me to associate "badly dressed, unfashionable, out of touch, daggy" with "old-fashioned" and from there with "old". No rational sense to it at all.
Things do make you feel older, though; make you note the passage of time. Policemen: younger. All the footballers are younger than me these days, except the ones who are Coming To An End Of Their Careers (I'm the same age as David Beckham). People who are too young for me to date win grands prix.
This leads on from what I put on facebook... "listening to some old Cure B sides."
The Upstairs Room is such a brilliant track, right at the top of the alley that I'm given to understand today's fashionable electronic pop acts try to explore. I feel all "aharr, take that (and partay), yer today's fashionable electronic pop acts" but to be honest that just situates me as the kind of thirtysomething/fortysomething narrow visioned snob who nobody likes (but most of us end up as*). Anyhow. Upstairs Room. Top tune. Worth a listen or five. Leave the negotiation of sociocultural identity to another time, let's, hmm?
Did I say all this before, a few weeks or months ago? Or did I just say the same things to someone IRL?
I've got another music beef, actually. In short, when they do country-inflected wistful songs these days, right, bands and that, especially tunes they use for ads, right? TOO BLOODY SLOW. TOO. SLOW. Making a song slower and stripping down the arrangement to standard SAD SONG settings doesn't automatically make it more sad and emotional and wistful. There's good slow music, good sad slow, atmospheric music, but taking music that works one way and making it slower and "sadder" doesn't make it better and can actually take away the immediacy and honest emotion that the song had in the first place. Compare the Plant/Krauss cover of Through The Morning Through The Night to the original. The cover has a slightly slower tempo and a sparser SAD SONG arrangement, but the original sounds much more sincere - sad enough to make you cry (honestly, listen it, it an absolute sobfest). Also I was listening to Simon Mayo on Radio 2 the other evening; he had Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh on, and they did a cover of Hickory Wind by the Byrds off Sweetheart of the Rodeo. FAR TOO SODDING SLOW. Took the talk out of the song, took the story out, and reduced the whole thing to the tempo.(Best ever version of Hickory Wind, by the way, is on a live bootleg of the Byrds in Italy in 1968 when Doug Dillard had joined them for a European tour.) I guess the originals in these cases are helped by the fact (YES I SAID FACT) that Gene Clark had one of the most honest and heartfelt voices in music.
And don't get me started on the twee "folk" bollocks that gets used for 40% or adverts these days. I will melt down all glockenspiels.
And another thing, don't ask me if I've ever taken an independent liking to any form of music without A MAN being involved. OR I WILL CUT YOU, for realz. HE HAD SOME GENE CLARK RECORDS ALRIGHT? AND I LISTENED TO THEM.
* I was reading Charlie Brooker's column just a bit ago, the one about him finding out that George Osborne is a tiny bit younger than him. He says something about feeling old and past it at a ridiculously young age, which reminded me that I was only 23 or 24 when I bought a keyring with "Old Has-been" on it. I feel younger now than then, in a way (though less in touch with the hip and the happening. I live hundreds of miles from London, you see). I think it's because at some point in the last 10 years, the last 5 really, I finally learned to dress myself without looking like a scarecrow (that old thing of wearing the clothes instead of the clothes wearing you). Social conditioning led me to associate "badly dressed, unfashionable, out of touch, daggy" with "old-fashioned" and from there with "old". No rational sense to it at all.
Things do make you feel older, though; make you note the passage of time. Policemen: younger. All the footballers are younger than me these days, except the ones who are Coming To An End Of Their Careers (I'm the same age as David Beckham). People who are too young for me to date win grands prix.