JSngry

Does Iverson--or his bandmates, since that "no irony" post was a collaborative effort--dis other people for recording some of the shit they do? Well, I thnk you gotta look at the rip on "Surrey...." as being a somewhat implicit "the only reason to record this anymore is to mock it" or something like that stance. Which is kinda goofy, because there's no reason to record any of that stuff any more. :g Ok, I support him for taking the "we record what we like because we like it" thing, but he's still overthinking the shit waaaaay too much, and as edc seems to be implying, what he's doing wouldn't even raise an eyebrow if the "jazz world" - including that part of it which TBP is a part - was even remotely mentally healthy.

Does the club draw high $ hookers? That's kind of a fun scene to watch.

I doubt it, I hope not, but thanks for the sentiment.

My Mum liked Perry Como, but this is going a bit too far, Jim. I know you're only trying to keep at the front of the posts list... MG No man, I like those songs/records. Really, and it is just that simple. I heard them as a kid, liked them then, and have found no good reason, compelling or otherwise, to stop liking them. Yeah, I know - Perry Como, whitebread sweaterboy, middle class pablum, etc etc etc, but oh well about all that. That's sociology, not music. The records and the songs still please me, not profoundly or deeply or anything Artistically Valid, but oh well about all that too. If I had a choice between being in a room full of people who underthink shit vs a room full of those who overthink shit, I honestly don't know which room I would take. Probably the underthinkers, if only for the uncomplicated sex. But either way... damn.

Yeah, and he's definitely on the receiving end of the "this ain't brain surgery, folks" directive, especially since he totally misses the reality that the same reason the he records some of the shit he does is the same reason that some other people record some of the the shit they do. It really ain't brain surgery. Really, it ain't. Cat talks about "do the math", well ok, let's start here - 1 + 1 = 2. I kinda all proceeeds from there, if you know what I mean.

Well yeah, sure. I just "don't understand" (menaing that I do, but...) why it's so hard for anybody to accept that somebody might play any song simply because they like it. No tricks, no gimmicks, no irony, no nothing other than that hey, I like this song, it'll be fun to play. I mean, I could make an album of Perry Como songs that I like and I'm sure that there would be a lot of people who thought I was being some kind of smartass or something, but hey - I like "Magic Moments". I like "Wanted", I like "Catch A Falling Star". Etc. etc. etc. It ain't brain surgery folks. Sorry.

Look for Gloria Gaynor to get in eventually. "I Will Survive" has survived, and the RRHOF is gonna have to get to that sooner or later. But if you wanna go deep into the real of Disco (i.e. - real dance music, not just pop in a Disco style), you're gonna run up against some names - lots of some names - that no consumers of Rock and Roll The Brand Name even know about becaue they were too black/latin/gay/female/otherwise independent of the White Rock and Roll The Brand Name Mythology Rules Of Play, which are simply this - if we find out about you and bring you to our party, you're one of us. If we don't, hey too bad! It's musical colonialism, even when it's from the "guilty conscience" POV. Ever wonder why so many "Serious Rock Artists" are always being associated with these "lists", things you "should" listen to/know about, etc. and why Rock and Roll The Brand Name is constantly creating lists of the 500 Best Whatthefuckevers? It's because they're dealing from economic strength and moral weakness. They need to let you know that they know that there is stuff out there that is more hip, more real, more...whatever than what they're all about, and they need to let you know that in spite of that, they've got 100, 500, or how many whatever items that it's ok to lik even after you kinda begin to peep that it ain't really all about what you think it is.

I don't know if he's in and out at the Hall of Fame, but he's a unique and influential slide guitar player. I would say "so I've heard", but "so I've been told" would be the truth, since all I hear is a damn fine player, not An Archetype or anything, except for other Southern White Guys, which is certainly ok, and maybe even necessary, but isn't that at least as much sociology as it is music? And again, that's more than ok with me, but not when the argument shifts to that a "Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame" should nor reflect the sociology of the music if it means letting in Pop Culture Icons. Becuase believe me, Duane Allman, fine musician that he was, is at least as much Subset Pop Culture Icon as he is Excellent Guitarist. Come down South if you don't believe it.

Truthfully, I don't hink that music being able to "stand on its own" is that big a deal as often as we make it out to be, not after a certain point anyway. That's a slippery slope to go down, to be sure, but I do think that "music for the sake of music" without some at least semi-rooted sociological context runs down at least an equally slippery slope. Besides, "it's only rock and roll" ain't too far off the mark. I don't understand the "need" to take something essentially communal and try to make it something else. "This music can stand on its own!" Well, why should it be able to? Why should it want to? Why should it need to? 50,000,000 Elvis fans may have indeed been wrong, but is it really going to matter one way or the other when there's 50,000,000 of them? 50,000,000 of damn near anything is gonna be it's own "right" whether it really is or not. Besides, "Rock and Roll" without significant input from other musics is just so much White Folk's Preening For Themselves. Even with significant input from other musics, that's (too) often what it ends up being, even when it's good. Now, if you want real White Folk's Preening For Themselves, there's always Nashville. That's the real deal, yeah buddy. But you know how a lot of white folk are, they wanna be "cool" and shit, so they ain't into all that, especially since the "God" thing implicit in Nashville sets up a dynamic of subservience that our noble "rebels" don't want to confront. So they go out and "borrow" from all kinds of shit, some of it tings that they understand at some level, some of shit that they just like becaue it represents some vague notion of "freedom" to them and that's enough, and some of it stuff that they do just because it's "different", and hey, being different, that's where it's all at, right? So HOOBOY, we got some Rock and Roll now, and uh,,, now it's not enough that we've made ourselves "different" by buying into a false mythology of "difference" instead of copping to collective mass-cupboard raiding, now we gotta make ourselves feel even more better about it by "justifying" it as "art". I don't see the point. Hell, put me smack dab into the R&B camp if it's the "popular music with serious musical skills" thing you want. That's a form that histroically hasn't had to "borrow" anything to be hip, it just had to go next door to the uncle's crib and hang out. Donna Summer might not be Jerry Garcia, but Jerry Garcia ain't Marvin Gaye either, and if I'm picking 2-out-of-3 with the goal of creating the most harmonious and fruitful co-existence, Jerry gets left behind. A no-brainer for me, that one is. Rock and Roll - the brand name - has almost always almost forever been about giving White Folk an out, a way that they can feel "hip" w/o having to go to the source(s). It is what it is, and a lot of times it's fun and even nourishing, but it is very, very seldom music that can "stand on its own simply because it's whole purpose it to disguise - to everybody involved - from whence it came and/or where it's going to end up (is not a "Rock Star" simply a bloated, self-indulgent capitalist pig of the rankest variety?). That's not independence, that's a con game. Hey - I've got y fair share of the stuff that I dig, and I make no excuses for it. But c'mon, how much music is in most of it relative to how much attitude. It's the exceptions that proove the rule, and the exceptions are mighty mighty few.

(SMACK)

Look bitch (SMACK), if it ain't in a 12( SMACK) inch by (SMACK) 12 inch gate( SMACK)fold(SMACK) cover(SMACK), ain't no (SMACK) motherfucking (SMACK) way it's gonna (SMACK) replicate (SMACK) the "Original" (SMACK) look (SMACK) and (SMACK) feel (SMACK) of those albums (SMACK)(SMACK)(SMACK)(SMACK)(SMACK)(SMACK)(SMACK)(SMACK)

Big recs for the Black Saint sides.

"rockets red glare...the bombs bursting in air...gave proof...." The modulation he does on "proof" is....too damn good.

Even if these "musical contributions" existed purely/wholly apart from their sociological impact (and personally, I think that the number of people for whom that could be said could be numbered on no more than two hands...), I'm thinking that a nice-sized living room could do the trick almost as well as a full-blown hall.... But ok, I'll play - what is the musical contribution of Chuck Berry? Explain that to me w/o talking about his lyrics and w/o talking about how his groove (which although powerful, was hardly unigue) captured the spirit of the times. Not that there's anything wrong with Rock and Roll being seen as a sociological phenomenon that manifested itself through music. Nothin at all wrong with that, and if anything, all the more better. I'm jsut saying that if anybody starts getting all...serious about this stuff in a way that believes that the music itself is what made the stuff "important", well, hey - without crossing over into R&B, you got Hendrix, Lennon/McCartney, Brian Wilson (not The Beach Boys), Steely Dan, and...that's about it, unless you're into that Prog-Rock stuff, which to me reminds me of plugged-in versions of all the composition majors I knew in college who still thought it was 1975 and shit and in which I have less than zero interest. And maybe Elvis Costello. Sure, why not. Other than that......the sociology matters at least as much as the music. Ain't a damn thing at all wrong with that, either, but let's call it what it is. (and no, not Duane Allman. Fine player indeed, but musically "important" divorced from the whole southern-hippie scene? Hardly. He was a good blues player, but so are/were a lot of people. He was better than most "of his type", but it's the "of his type" thing that is why he matters, and that is where the sociology comes in, and that is what, time after mutherfkking time, is involved in Rock and Roll).

That song dates to 1934.

Are we going to pretend that "Rock and Roll" is this..."pure art form" that's about music first and sociology second (if at all)? C'mon.... It seems that you're saying that Frankie Avalon, to give one example, should be in the R&R HoF. Given what the R&R HoF is, I agree entirely. In the sense that you can't have a true picture of Rock and Roll without acknowledging that type thing - and especially acknowledging that it was the first, but far from final, example of successful "corporate rock", yeah, I think you gotta put the guy in there in some form. What's lost in all this though is that some of Georgio Moroder's productions for Summer w3re pivotal moments in not just "dance music" (and wow, who ever thought that the day that "Rock and Roll" and "dance music" would be viewed in antagonistic terms, yeah, let's just sit and listen to it, ok, talk about overinvesting....is Rock and Roll turning into the new jazz? Being no longer at all relevant to anything but itself, it's well on the way...) but general pop culture, including Rock and Roll. If we wanted to be honest about it, we'd make it Donna Summer/Georgio Moroder, but this whole "Rock and Roll" thing in general has nothing to do with honesty, and hasn't for a looong time. Summer I'll defend on "cultural significance", but Chic I'll go to the mat for on musical grounds, the whole "what is rock anyway?" thing having but one answer as I can see it - "rock" i$ - and haS been - any popular mu$ic that enough white people li$ten to, but no matter, As noted previously, the trio of Nile Rogers, Bernard Edwards, and Tony Thompson were some bad mutherfokkers and not a little bit innovative. No problem with Chic for me, none whatsumever.

Are we going to pretend that "Rock and Roll" is this..."pure art form" that's about music first and sociology second (if at all)? C'mon....

Left out of this equation is how Wal-Mart demands/squeezes/extorts/whatever lower wholesale prices from its suppliers on a relentlessly & ruthlessly ongoing basis. Most suppliers simply cannot afford/do not want to not be available in Wal-Mart, so they cut them corners any way they can to give Wal-Mart what they demand. Wal-Mart as it now exists & functions is pure, 100% evil. Believe it.

This is a life that apparently has yet to reach bottom...

Had to vote for Bop-Be, just for Dewey's contributions, especially on "Gotta Get Some Sleep". Entirely personal choice, btw.

Not sure that it matters, but it's "she", not "he".

Yeah, it's really just an expanded-from blues. I started playing it a few years ago. It's good to blow on.

Donna Summer w/o Georgio Moroder gets you nowhere fast, but that's not how it happened, so there you are. Still remember the first time I heard "I Feel Love". Froze me in my tracks. Yeahyeahyeah Krautrock yeahyeahyeah, but this was sexual. This is pop we're talking about after all, so let's keep it real - sex matters. One could say that she was the original "Disco Diva", and for whatever that is or isn't worth, hey. This is pop we're talking about after all, so let's keep it real - archetypes matter. If the awards is for "Donna Summer" instead of Donna Summer, then it's deserved.

Doesn't that fool realize that I recorded that song because I like it? -Cecil Taylor, on reading LeRoi Jones' enthusiastic/ecstatic commentary on the supposed subversiveness/radicalness/etc of Taylor's version of "This Nearly Was Mine"

They could all read fly shit, play changes competently yet boringly, and never make a rehearsal unless it was in-town.