PRINCE

[Joe G]

I just watch the online clip of Prince on SNL and from a non-musician's point of view, he rocked. The tune was good, the set design was great...I really liked the waving flames...and the dancing back-up singers are a Prince signature. My favorite is at the end when he licks his finger and wipes his bangs back in his delicate way as if it was no big deal at all. I have been a closet Prince fan since the early 80's. It is great to see him on the scene again.

I'm glad you liked the set design, flames, dancing back-up singers...and when he licked his finger and wiped his bangs. That all adds up to great music.

Good set design doesn't add up to great music, but it can enhance the presentation of already great music. This goes back hundreds of years in opera, for instance.

BTW Mike, that was Jim's wife you just smacked down.

[Guest]

Thanks, Joe.

[7/4]

SLASH??!!??!

Just goes to show...all you need is a nice Les Paul, a stack of Marshalls and you're 99% of the way there.

[Soul Stream]

I just watch the online clip of Prince on SNL and from a non-musician's point of view, he rocked. The tune was good, the set design was great...I really liked the waving flames...and the dancing back-up singers are a Prince signature. My favorite is at the end when he licks his finger and wipes his bangs back in his delicate way as if it was no big deal at all. I have been a closet Prince fan since the early 80's. It is great to see him on the scene again.

I'm glad you liked the set design, flames, dancing back-up singers...and when he licked his finger and wiped his bangs. That all adds up to great music.

Good set design doesn't add up to great music, but it can enhance the presentation of already great music. This goes back hundreds of years in opera, for instance.

BTW Mike, that was Jim's wife you just smacked down.

Oh shit, sorry....

[cannonball-addict]

People need to stop hi-jacking threads to heap praise on Kurt Cobain. Let's talk about Prince, eh?

Both these videos should be reminders that pop music can still be good in the hands of individuals with musical knowledge and the ability to solo outside of the box. Did you hear him playing non-consonant tones towards the end with the help of distortion/whammy bar. That is fuckin' dope. You go boy!

[JSngry]

If you "act" like background, you're gonna be treated like background. And why shouldn't you be? "Presentation" isn't selling out, it's just plain common sense. It's got nothing to do with the music, but it's got everything to do with differentiating yourself from canned music.

Hell, Quartet Out will often discuss, at times at length, the arrangement of a song after we've played it, right there in front of an audience, and it's at those times that I want to kill my brothers dead. The bloodier the better, actually. Maybe the attention that would draw would make my point about involving the audience at at least some level.

But then we'd not get to play the next song, or the one after that. That would be an even bigger drag.

Maybe...

Nevertheless, these cats who just want to stand in a corner and play and expect perfect strangers to stop/drop everything they're doing just to listen to them are fucking morons when it comes to anything vaguely resembling reality as it pertains to human nature and interaction.

[Joe G]

Hell, Quartet Out will often discuss, at times at length, the arrangement of a song after we've played it, right there in front of an audience, and it's at those times that I want to kill my brothers dead. The bloodier the better, actually. Maybe the attention that would draw would make my point about involving the audience at at least some level.

Your first paragraph made the point perfectly, but this one cracked me up.

[johnagrandy]

People need to stop hi-jacking threads to heap praise on Kurt Cobain. Let's talk about Prince, eh?

Hijack? Who me? I ain't on that list.

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana---Rape-Me...h=%22nirvana%22

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana---Aneurys...h=%22nirvana%22

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana---Lithium...h=%22nirvana%22

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana-Heart-Sha...h=%22nirvana%22

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana---Radio-F...it%20shifter%22

[catesta]

Thanks for that.

[Soul Stream]

If you "act" like background, you're gonna be treated like background. And why shouldn't you be? "Presentation" isn't selling out, it's just plain common sense. It's got nothing to do with the music, but it's got everything to do with differentiating yourself from canned music.

Hell, Quartet Out will often discuss, at times at length, the arrangement of a song after we've played it, right there in front of an audience, and it's at those times that I want to kill my brothers dead. The bloodier the better, actually. Maybe the attention that would draw would make my point about involving the audience at at least some level.

But then we'd not get to play the next song, or the one after that. That would be an even bigger drag.

Maybe...

Nevertheless, these cats who just want to stand in a corner and play and expect perfect strangers to stop/drop everything they're doing just to listen to them are fucking morons when it comes to anything vaguely resembling reality as it pertains to human nature and interaction.

I think ya'll are missing my point. We are in SHOW-bizness. I'm plenty aware of that. Most musicians missed that point long ago when street clothes, non-bathing, and ignoring any 'entertainer' vibe became the fad 40 years ago and it's still the thing. But, take away the glam and show-biz and that Prince song was pretty pedestrian with some Jimi-inspired lyrics. Prince ain't had a hit since Kiss and Purple Rain for a reason....bad songs.

And Jim, Quartet Out sounds like a great rock band...maybe you should plug in and become famous.

[JSngry]

I've tried plugging in. But every time I put my finger in the socket, I get knocked right back out.

[Rooster_Ties]

Prince ain't had a hit since Kiss and Purple Rain for a reason....bad songs.

Clapton ain't had a hit (a real hit) for, what?, like 10 or 12 years (my guess is Layla off the Unplugged album was his last - and that was an OLD song!!). The only way Sting gets hits these days is by putting his songs in advertising (the one in the Jaguar ad was his last real hit, if I remember). Tom Petty?? He ain't had a real AOR-radio "hit" (or anything close) for going on 10 years (unless I'm forgetting something - wasn't "Free Falling" his last?). Springsteen struggles (a bit, maybe quite a bit?) to get anyone to even notice when he releases something new (resorting to going on Charlie Rose (PBS) and/or Nightline with an interview by Ted Koppel - if I remember right). And fewer and fewer people jump when Madanna releases a new single (by an order of magnitude or more, if I'm not mistaken).

Any more, half the time the only reason I even realize some of these old farts (that's a term of endearment ) --> I even realize these old farts have a new record out - is when I see some direct advertising about it by chance - either on VH1 (where their songs aren't played anymore, but where their theoretical fan base still is), or print ads in the free weekly papers, or else TV advertising tie-ins. It's not like Classic Rock radio plays much if any new stuff by the same artists that are their absolute bread and butter, in terms of oldies.

So, you can write off Prince's "lack of hits" since Purple Rain and Kiss because of "bad songs" - but there's a LOT more going on here (in terms of what songs get made into hits) than just "good songs" vs. "bad songs".

Prince, like everybody else I just mentioned, is pretty much "old news" -- at least from the perspective of the marketing wizards and bean counters in the corporate music biz. That is, UNTIL he gets old enough to be really some sort of "elder statesman" status. (And even then...)

(I ain't sayin' all this a bad thing, or a good thing -- but it is something, that's for damn sure.)

Edited February 7, 2006 by Rooster_Ties

[Soul Stream]

O.K...I just realized Kelly Clarkson doesn't have very good songs either...so...uh....I don't know, maybe Prince should rap, get shot, lift weights, wear baggy pants with his boxers sticking out the top w/no shirt...then maybe we can market him.

[Big Al]

Kurt Cobain a genius? I disagree. He opened the floodgates for teenage angst by filtering it through pre-Tommy Who and struck a nerve with kids tired of the dance-pop filler of the early 90's. That's not genius: that's just being in the right place at the right time. Today, he'd be just another nu-metal band angry at their dads because their not as successful as Creed.

Think what you like, but Cobain was the real deal...

Real deal? I'll go along with that any day of the week. That's what puts him on a higher level than everything that came after him (and probably a big part of what killed him, too). But genius? Ehh, I still don't think so, although I know I'll get a spirited argument out of my daughter over that one!

That and the fact that Nirvana was just a great BAND! That was the definition of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts (and how I wish Dave Grohl would go back to the drums).

And speaking of great bands (to try and bring this thread back around), Prince oughta just put the Revolution back together again. Now THAT was a funktastic band!

[Rooster_Ties]

Since this has turned into sort of a Cobain thread too (don't blame me - I didn't start it!!)...

I think Kurt wrote quite a number of really fantastic tunes. I think everything I've ever heard by him on the radio was grade-A stuff (and listening to commercial alternative rock radio a lot, my statement includes at least half of the entire Nirvana catalog of tunes -- a LOT more than just what gets played on AOR or Jack-FM type stations).

BUT, over the last couple years - I recently broke down and bought most of the full Nirvana CD's (for the first time, if you can imagine). And I was struck at how almost everything of theirs that wasn't ever played on the radio -- was really B-grade or even C-grade material. It's all diamonds, or coal -- and nothin' in between.

Cobain was certainly capable of genius, that's for sure --- but that's a long way from being a genius.

[JSngry]

I think Kurt wrote quite a number of really fantastic tunes. I think everything I've ever heard by him on the radio was grade-A stuff

Butch Vig's got chops.

[johnagrandy]

If Kurt wasn't a musical genius then who is ?

And it didn't have anything to do with "teenage angst" (whatever that is ... maybe Geffen invented it and marketed it as an ubiquitous and perfectly-acceptable youthful affliction with a musical cure). Kurt hated being an icon for teenage angst -- said it made him rich, old, and bored.

Cobain felt life far more intensely than most, and took the most tortured painful remorseful self-loathing self-hating aspects of the human condition, specifically in respect to confronting the relative ugliness of the soulless parasitical usury aspects of the hierarchical relationships prevalent in the adult world (and the worthless boredom of it all) and dealt with it in unadulterated form via unique musical expression (perhaps the only other alternative for a severe bipolar such as Kurt would have been insanity).

You could argue that early Nirvana is for teenagers and early twenty-somethings ....

.... but getting into Incesticide, Nevermind, MTV Unplugged, and In Utero, this is music for adults that deals with the very serious problem you got when all the happy people all around you don't make you happy, and, worse, evil twisted tortured shit gets into your mind and you ain't got no way to get it out. And that's reality for a lot of people on this planet, especially this country.

In his final years, Kurt was collaborating with Burroughs on various lyrics and bits and pieces or stories and art.

Unfortunately for KC (who did find joy inside of him despite his deteriorating condition), the neurons kept on firing all wrong and self-expression via music started making it worse not better and so the only solution for genius was junk and then suicide.

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana---Rape-Me...h=%22nirvana%22

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana---Aneurys...h=%22nirvana%22

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana---Lithium...h=%22nirvana%22

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana-Heart-Sha...h=%22nirvana%22

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana--Come-As-...h=%22nirvana%22

http://www.youtube.com/w/Nirvana---Radio-F...it%20shifter%22

"What is wrong with me?" "What is wrong with me?" "What is wrong with me?" "What is wrong with me?"

Edited February 7, 2006 by johnagrandy

[7/4]

If Kurt wasn't a musical genius then who is ?

Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Mingus, Dolphy, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Smith, Wayne Shorter, Elvin Jones and so on....all the usual gang. Who is this Kurt Cobain guy?

[Soul Stream]

We all have our own heros. I like Kurt Cobain's music and thought it was vastly different and revolutionary at the time. Is he a rock icon? Certainly. Probably the last true one we've seen in a long time. However, I find the post-mortem "genius" tag taking on gigantic proportions. His untimely death, suicide, tragic life are just that...tragic. But going on and on and on about it....rent "Last Days" and if you haven't had your fill of tragic early 90's Seattle, druggie, downer death trip by the end of it you're a better man than I.

Genius is a word we overuse imho these days. Cobain was was/is a legend. A genius? I don't know. Maybe, but let's think on it a bit before the proclaimation for once.

[johnagrandy]

BUT, over the last couple years - I recently broke down and bought most of the full Nirvana CD's (for the first time, if you can imagine). And I was struck at how almost everything of theirs that wasn't ever played on the radio -- was really B-grade or even C-grade material. It's all diamonds, or coal -- and nothin' in between.

If you bought Bleach, Incesticide, Nevermind, In Utero, From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah, and MTV Unplugged and that's your opinion, I'm guess I'm amazed.

Except for the covers, almost every track is either great, brilliant, or genius.

Edited February 7, 2006 by johnagrandy

[ep1str0phy]

We all have our own heros. I like Kurt Cobain's music and thought it was vastly different and revolutionary at the time. Is he a rock icon? Certainly. Probably the last true one we've seen in a long time. However, I find the post-mortem "genius" tag taking on gigantic proportions. His untimely death, suicide, tragic life are just that...tragic. But going on and on and on about it....rent "Last Days" and if you haven't had your fill of tragic early 90's Seattle, druggie, downer death trip by the end of it you're a better man than I.

Genius is a word we overuse imho these days. Cobain was was/is a legend. A genius? I don't know. Maybe, but let's think on it a bit before the proclaimation for once.

I was sort of waiting for this (above)--the rational response to obviously inflammatory statements (that "who is musical genius" thing is thermite--thanks for getting it out of the way, 7/4 ). Cobain's genius is certainly contentious. I don't think that's the only issue involved in the fatuous (really not pointing fingers), confusing overuse of the "genius" nomenclature. It's just that the rationale for labeling is seldom explicit. Cobain's struggles with mental incapacitation, the bullshit millieu of showbiz, and especially his desire to create in spite of circumstances go some way toward explaining why he was an icon among a generation of troubled youth, courageous, fascinating, etc. But none of this--none of it--contributes to a fuller understanding of the man's genius (if it even exists). I'm bothered by the fact that this sort of information is regularly invoked toward validating the "genius" of our musical iconology when--in all seriousness--we often deny (or, more precisely, "gloss over") more concrete (specifically aesthetic) qualities. In other words: biography does not = genius. And--I know this is a tangent--but take it back to the Miles Davis discussion from a week or so ago--there is legitimate virtue in questioning the relevance of sociological/biographical factors to the whole "genius" labeling process. Let's temper the thoughts a bit, folks.

[Guest]

Excuse me i really have to comment that i dont like that "EVEN candy dulfer" comment- candy chooses to make more poppy records-- more rhythmically funky than swing (and shes makin a killing for 2 decades); However when she goes home to Amsterdam, she isn't playing the single from her latest cd in the clubs-- THATS for the Americans-- when she goes home she can play w/ the best of 'em. she also was a good friend of dex in the 80s- no joke. when she gets older she is going to start releasing more far reaching material but she has a certain niche in America she has kind of gotten into over the years.

[johnagrandy]

I was sort of waiting for this (above)--the rational response to obviously inflammatory statements (that "who is musical genius" thing is thermite--thanks for getting it out of the way, 7/4 ). Cobain's genius is certainly contentious. I don't think that's the only issue involved in the fatuous (really not pointing fingers), confusing overuse of the "genius" nomenclature. It's just that the rationale for labeling is seldom explicit. Cobain's struggles with mental incapacitation, the bullshit millieu of showbiz, and especially his desire to create in spite of circumstances go some way toward explaining why he was an icon among a generation of troubled youth, courageous, fascinating, etc. But none of this--none of it--contributes to a fuller understanding of the man's genius (if it even exists). I'm bothered by the fact that this sort of information is regularly invoked toward validating the "genius" of our musical iconology when--in all seriousness--we often deny (or, more precisely, "gloss over") more concrete (specifically aesthetic) qualities. In other words: biography does not = genius. And--I know this is a tangent--but take it back to the Miles Davis discussion from a week or so ago--there is legitimate virtue in questioning the relevance of sociological/biographical factors to the whole "genius" labeling process. Let's temper the thoughts a bit, folks.

I'm not sayin' Kurt was a genius like a jazz great was. That would be stupid because those two camps are comin' at the world from totally different angles. Jazz is life-affirming, life-prolonging, life-enhancing, life-appreciating.

But rock like Nirvana is speaking of the reality under the surface of courageous positive thinking. Positive thinking is the only way if you're going to make it long term, but positive thinking as presented by the media is also one of the biggest lies in our society. Negative thinking is also an serious lie manipulated for profit by untold legions.

Kurt told the truth in a way that sliced right through it all and probably de-confused hundreds of thousands who otherwise would have never got out of their own world of negativity. He almost singlehandedly destroyed two popular music genres (hair metal and pre-HIV party music). To date, 50 million legit recordings have been sold. Probably more musicians from every diverse genre, style, age, location, whatever, recognize Nirvana as having laid down some of the most real music in history. Mass emphathetic communication directly to the scariest part of the human soul is definitely one kind of musical genius.

Edited February 7, 2006 by johnagrandy

[Guest]

i am sorry but no matter what you believe the power of nirvana could never kill "everybody Wang Chung tonight"

[ep1str0phy]

I'm not sayin' Kurt was a genius like a jazz great was. That would be stupid because those two camps are comin' at the world from totally different angles. Jazz is life-affirming, life-prolonging, life-enhancing, life-appreciating.

But rock like Nirvana is speaking of the reality under the surface of courageous positive thinking. Positive thinking is the only way if you're going to make it long term, but positive thinking as presented by the media is also one of the biggest lies in our society. Negative thinking is also an serious lie manipulated for profit by untold legions.

Kurt told the truth in a way that sliced right through it all and probably de-confused hundreds of thousands who otherwise would have never got out of their own world of negativity. He almost singlehandedly destroyed two popular music genres (hair metal and pre-HIV party music). To date, 50 million legit recordings have been sold. Probably more musicians from every diverse genre, style, age, location, whatever, recognize Nirvana as having laid down some of the most real music in history. Mass emphathetic communication directly to the scariest part of the human soul is definitely one kind of musical genius.

Not arguing with you here--in fact, I agree with you. Again, it's easy to acknowledge Kurt's iconic status, influence, personal virtues, etc. And I'm glad that you're making the distinction between the sort of "genius" invoked to described jazz greats and that specific to Nirvana. My bone of contention is only that the term "genius" is utilized so haphazardly that it's difficult to keep track of intentions--and, moreover, ridiculously easy to misinterpret (hence all the furor over the Cobain as genius thing). So am I correct in thinking that the "realness" of Kurt's message--or, more specifically, his (emphatic) "communicative ability"--is what makes him a genius? What sort of definition are we using here (again, no vitriol here--I'm just trying to understand this)?