Rock's appearance vs Jazz's appearance

[JSngry]

It'll be in here a few times: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20me30

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Well, it's not just that Road Runner only means records by Bo Diddley and Jr Walker to me, but I didn't get the WHOLE of what you wrote.

MG

[sidewinder]

9 hours ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

 to miss stuff if it wasn't on 'Family favourites' Sunday lunchtimes.

Heck, I remember that show - with requests for service personnel in Akrotiri, Malta, British Forces On The Rhine etc. I can almost smell the brussel sprouts cooking right now ! 

Edited November 4, 2018 by sidewinder

[JSngry]

6 hours ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

Well, it's not just that Road Runner only means records by Bo Diddley and Jr Walker to me, but I didn't get the WHOLE of what you wrote.

MG

It's a Road Runner thing where the coyote runs off the cliff and keeps going until he realizes that there's nothing underneath him, and even ther, he's ok until he looks down.

That Presley group with no drummer was sloppy beyond belief. No pocket, not even a concept of what a pocket might be, Adding a drummer - especially one who could actually play - to that mess would have likely had the effect of everybody "looking down" and realizing they had nothing going on other than collective obliviousness.

Listen to the drummer on "Hound Dog" and listen to the flailing about going on around him. It's pathetic. Finally, somebody looked down and they started tightening that shit up somewhat, but lord, what a mess. What a mess.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

It's a Road Runner thing where the coyote runs off the cliff and keeps going until he realizes that there's nothing underneath him, and even ther, he's ok until he looks down.

That Presley group with no drummer was sloppy beyond belief. No pocket, not even a concept of what a pocket might be, Adding a drummer - especially one who could actually play - to that mess would have likely had the effect of everybody "looking down" and realizing they had nothing going on other than collective obliviousness.

Listen to the drummer on "Hound Dog" and listen to the flailing about going on around him. It's pathetic. Finally, somebody looked down and they started tightening that shit up somewhat, but lord, what a mess. What a mess.

Funny, but that's the only Presley stuff I've got. I quite like it. OK, I mainly like it because it was the start which seems in retrospect insane. But I always liked the Sun tracks that appeared on some early Presley LPs.

MG

I suppose the real difference between the early history of R&R as opposed to jazz may be that one lot knew what to do with their instruments and the other lot seems not to have.

[JSngry]

Yeah, there's an entire industry/empire built on that stuff. I get why, but I doubt it's why they think why.

[Big Beat Steve]

5 hours ago, JSngry said:

It's a Road Runner thing where the coyote runs off the cliff and keeps going until he realizes that there's nothing underneath him, and even ther, he's ok until he looks down.

That Presley group with no drummer was sloppy beyond belief. No pocket, not even a concept of what a pocket might be, Adding a drummer - especially one who could actually play - to that mess would have likely had the effect of everybody "looking down" and realizing they had nothing going on other than collective obliviousness.

Listen to the drummer on "Hound Dog" and listen to the flailing about going on around him. It's pathetic. Finally, somebody looked down and they started tightening that shit up somewhat, but lord, what a mess. What a mess.

 

"Technically" speaking, you no doubt are right. But they seemed to have had that IMMEDIACY that grabbed the kids who went out to buy their records (and that immediacy got lost - at least in the tastes of many rcord buyers - when technically overproficient studio musicians who "tightened up" other R'n'R records from that period got into the act and produced something that just fell by the wayside (by comparison) with the target audience.

Besides, talking about "sloppy", I wonder what "objective" criteria (provided there were any) could actually have been applied to that music to do it justice - or to others? If it was just about being "sloppy" in how you play, how utterly sloppy would you have to consider John Lee Hooker (and quite a few others from that low-down "country" blues corner of the popular music scene) and his odd meters, missed beats, etc. that made him the laughingstock of many among the more accomplished Detroit R&B musicians who insisted "he couldn't play shit" (see "Before Motown"). Certainly it cannot have been be a matter of "the cruder you are, the more authentic you are, and the more authentic you are in a crude way the sloppier you are allowed to play"  (though I have no doubt quite a few of the white folksy rediscovery/revival audience thought like that)? So there must have been other criteria at work (beyond pure romanticism by the white folk/academic audience belatedly discovering the old country blues "heroes" and sometimes even making umpteenth-rate guitar dabblers into a hero or making the rediscoverd acts of past times crudify their craft - cf. Big Bill Broonzy) . At any rate - as far as the audience was concerned, what worked for the older African-American blues men and their "rediscovery audience" worked for a good deal of the younger white Southern rock'n'rollers and rockabillies too for THEIR audience. So - again - technical professionalism cannot always have been THE #1 quality criterion. "Authenticity" and "immediacy" in their appeal, maybe?

 

[JSngry]

Yeah, I know, immediacy and authenticity. Immediate and authentic what, though...I'm not impressed. I hear everything that was happening and/or about to happen around that time, and see who was "chosen", and I am not impressed, then, now, and probably never. People were in too big a hurry to break out/away and they took the first tingly thing that they could bring home (at least to the door) that was offered them.

As far as Hooker goes, different universe. He might have been "eccentric" in his choices, to put it mildly, but he knew exactly where he was. The Presley/Sun group, at best they knew where they thought they wanted to be. And apparently a lot of other people thought they wanted to think they were there too. But in this case, money talked and bullshit didn't walk, it ran, ran all the way to the bank. We! We! We! all the way (back) home.

Anyway...I've had the "Elvis debate" on here more than once, and have no real energy to delve back into it. I'll just say that then as now, "white Southerners" keep getting played because "they" are as big a group of suckers as people think they are.

[Brad]

A review by Jon Pareles in The New York Times of the 50th anniversary release of The White Album:

Deep Inside the Beatles’ White Album, 50 Years Later

[Simon Weil]

45 minutes ago, Brad said:

A review by Jon Pareles in The New York Times of the 50th anniversary release of The White Album:

Deep Inside the Beatles’ White Album, 50 Years Later

That's an interesting review - especially the thing about them having to work to sound spontaneous. 6CDs???!!!...I've just started to go back to this period and it's amazing the number of super-duper, "deluxe" versions of various albums out there. I just confess to finding this over the top.

[Brad]

It’s not a set I need or want. 

[Scott Dolan]

The Sgt. Pepper remix was so astonishing that I may end up springing for this one as well. Even though it is one of my least favorite Beatles albums. 

[Brad]

1 hour ago, Scott Dolan said:

The Sgt. Pepper remix was so astonishing that I may end up springing for this one as well. Even though it is one of my least favorite Beatles albums. 

Can you elaborate. I might be persuaded to buy it if it’s really great. 

[Scott Dolan]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

Can you elaborate. I might be persuaded to buy it if it’s really great. 

The mix is finally put into true stereo. Just listen to the opening track and you’ll hear all you need to know. Paul’s vocals are in the center channel instead or hardpanned to the right channels. Instruments are correctly placed across the channels. Chorus is in stereo, so on and so forth. 

It is actually “right” now. And because of the masterful mix, you’ll now pick out small things that you either could barely hear, or not hear at all, in the previous mix. 

The horns on Good Morning, Good Morning are simply sublime in true stereo. I’ll never go back to the old mix. This one is nothing short of a revelation. Seriously. 

[felser]

On 11/1/2018 at 6:41 PM, T.D. said:

I got the impression it was well into the '70s. Exile on Main Street was my personal line in the sand.

Mine too.  More of a cliff they dropped off.

[Scott Dolan]

5 minutes ago, felser said:

Mine too.  More of a cliff they dropped off.

It’s Only Rock & Roll was one of their best songs, but on a pretty blah album. 

You didn’t like Some Girls and Tattoo You? 

[JSngry]

I bought Tattoo You for Sonny Rollins. It's the only Stones record I've ever bought. Everything else I could hear on the radio often enough.

Scratch that being the only record, it's the only LP. I did buy a 45 of "Miss You" when it was a hit. It had a picture sleeve and I figured hell, collectability.

They're a seminal band and I like a lot of their stuff a whole lot, but things like that, I usually don't buy records on.

oh, I do have a holographic cover of their Satanic Majesty's that I found - seriously and literally - on a NYC street one night in 1980. The vinyl itself sounded like it came off a NYC street, but hey - holographic cover!

[felser]

50 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

It’s Only Rock & Roll was one of their best songs, but on a pretty blah album. 

You didn’t like Some Girls and Tattoo You? 

Not nearly on the level of, say, Sticky Fingers.  I don't even own them.

[Brad]

Here's another review of The White Album, from the New Yorker, The Accidental Perfection of the Beatles’ White Album

On 11/9/2018 at 10:49 PM, Brad said:

It’s not a set I need or want. 

Famous last words 

Edited November 10, 2018 by Brad

[felser]

Regardless of what you think of the music, the work of Giles Martin in his remixes of this and Sgt. Pepper's is breathtaking.

[AllenLowe]

On 11/4/2018 at 0:40 PM, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

 

I won't restart the Elvis thing, but suffice to say they had a nice pocket, it just went toward Hillbilly Way. Nothing fake about that band, they had it together from the first broadcasts on the Louisiana Hayride to the Vegas stuff when Elvis wasn't too stoned. But I am partial to the Sun recordings and those mid-'50s broadcasts. That shit swings; check out Blue Moon of Kentucky. And Blue Moon (based on the Rodgers/Hart) is a work of genius. But to understand Elvis you gotta hear Harmonica Frank, who I consider one of the major figures of 20th century American music. Really.

and btw, reading that NY'er review, McCartney in the notes is completely lying about the Beatles' state of minds as being only mildly troubled at the time - the band was coming apart for financial reasons, compounded by extreme personal conflicts, getting ready for battles and lawsuits. Doesn't matter in terms of the album, which is brilliant, but it is likely not unrelated to the aggressive musicality of the White Album. 

Edited November 11, 2018 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

You can accept all that. You don't have to live with it as anything except records and history (which of course, it is).

Trust me when I tell you that it's not the same thing. It's a totally different reality (and yes, I do believe in multiple realities).

Look at the new Netflix thing about Johnny Cash playing for Nixon, and then look at Elvis playing Secret Agent with Nixon. Johnny Cash was for real. Elvis was a fantasy, even to himself. Always was, always will be.

50,000,000 Elvis fans can be wrong.

I'm taking this one to the grave, whenever that comes, so let it be noted by future generations that I testified for the real when I had the chance.

This is not Elvis:

 

[Simon Weil]

12 hours ago, AllenLowe said:

McCartney in the notes is completely lying about the Beatles' state of minds as being only mildly troubled at the time - the band was coming apart for financial reasons, compounded by extreme personal conflicts, getting ready for battles and lawsuits.

This brings up how Rock is seen in terms of "the band" - the Beatles and the Stones in this thread - as against Jazz being seen in terms of individuals - Armstrong, Ellington, Parker etc.. The concept of the Rock band has always seemed akin to that of a nuclear family to me (hence perhaps the addictiveness of Rock Family Trees by Pete Frame), to bring us back to the idea of "home".

[Scott Dolan]

14 hours ago, felser said:

Regardless of what you think of the music, the work of Giles Martin in his remixes of this and Sgt. Pepper's is breathtaking.

Absolutely, 100%, this. 

I remember when I first heard about it, I thought how in the hell can they improve on the 2009 remaster. I was quickly blown away as soon as the opening track started playing. 

[AllenLowe]

12 hours ago, JSngry said:

You can accept all that. You don't have to live with it as anything except records and history (which of course, it is).

Trust me when I tell you that it's not the same thing. It's a totally different reality (and yes, I do believe in multiple realities).

Look at the new Netflix thing about Johnny Cash playing for Nixon, and then look at Elvis playing Secret Agent with Nixon. Johnny Cash was for real. Elvis was a fantasy, even to himself. Always was, always will be.

50,000,000 Elvis fans can be wrong.

I'm taking this one to the grave, whenever that comes, so let it be noted by future generations that I testified for the real when I had the chance.

This is not Elvis:

 

well, real isn't always what it's cracked up to be. And Sam Phillips' sense of Elvis is illuminating, especially in terms of his ambivalence about race and musical miscegnation down there. Though I know this is something we will NEVER agree on, nearly every great artist that I have known or known of  was a mix of gut-reality and detached socio-fantasy. 

can't go wrong with this: