Noj Posted February 13, 2012 Report Share Posted February 13, 2012 Out here it's "tough titties." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 13, 2012 Report Share Posted February 13, 2012 (edited) "Tough darts" is the only one I've not heard of. Thinking of Whitney, I've long thought of her as A Voice In Search Of A Song, and for me, "Exhale" was that song, and like John L, pretty much always was. Nothing before or after came close...however, in retrospect, "How Will I Know" is one of those Great Songs Of Innocence that's sung without a touch of innocence, or knowingness...just no sense of empathy for the lyrics, but still sung the hell out of vocally, which...maybe that's where Things Started Going Wrong in R&B Singing...style trumping substance, gesture w/o meaning becoming meaning, hell, I don't know. I just don't know. It was music in general too, not just R&B...everything just too damn literal, everything know, nothing unknown, Know it all, have it all, nothing left to know or to have. Or so you want to think... But "Exhale....DAMN, that was some deep, DEEP stuff on that one, and for me, just to know that she did have it in her, that whatever it was that took her to get there that she could and did get there, and was not just A Voice In Search Of A Song, that's good enough for me. Found this on YouTube, the isolated vocal tracks from "How Will I Know"...great song, great voice, just...not at the same time. But it was what it was, it is what is is, and here we are. Edited February 13, 2012 by JSngry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
7/4 Posted February 13, 2012 Report Share Posted February 13, 2012 Tough darts - may be regional, I've heard it before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Ptah Posted February 13, 2012 Report Share Posted February 13, 2012 I heard "tough darts" often as a little kid growing up in Wisconsin. I agree with fasstrack on the sensitivity point. I have always found it curious how some members of the Organissimo community, which is made up of genuinely decent people, seem compelled to make very negative comments about a musician who has just died. I have noticed that this is usually done when the musician in question was popular, or had achieved commercial fame or mainstream success. No one ever jumps in and says that some of the albums by a recently deceased avant garde saxophonist were unfocused or had overbusy arrangements. It is always someone with millions of fans who gets the nasty treatment immediately upon their death. I agree with fasstrack that we could wait a short time before launching a no holds barred discussion of the shortcomings of the recently departed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Beat Steve Posted February 13, 2012 Report Share Posted February 13, 2012 Oh come on, Hot Ptah et al., it is not a matter of "shortcomings" or actual deficiencies at all. Nobody intended to rip that particular artist to shreds at all. The only thing that was mentioned was that the way ONE mega hit was arranged and performed just appeared to be overdone in the opinions of some. Not all tastes are alike - regardless of whether this applies to the living or the dead. Not to mention the fact that maybe this overdone, overbearing way of performing did this particular artist a disservice in her LIFETIME with more people and in more ways than one would imagine. And after all it may not even have been her fault in the first place but rather that of her porducers. So PLEASE - considering the way many, many other discussions evolve here, please dont' give me that "De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bene" bit. THIS is easily overdone too and can then pretty fast become all phony. So please be reasonable. Nobody out here tried to denigrate her lock stock and barrel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fasstrack Posted February 13, 2012 Report Share Posted February 13, 2012 (edited) I heard "tough darts" often as a little kid growing up in Wisconsin. I agree with fasstrack on the sensitivity point. I have always found it curious how some members of the Organissimo community, which is made up of genuinely decent people, seem compelled to make very negative comments about a musician who has just died. Not to mention the truly bizarre practice of 'outing' dead musicians. I couldn't believe that one when I read it. Like, get a f'ing life, dude. Then there's that old favorite: bitch slapping successful musicians. The mind boggles at the true motivation for that..... I agree with the genuinely decent part, for the record. The same people would be wonderful to meet or know in the flesh. But people get awful brave on the Internet....... Edited February 13, 2012 by fasstrack Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 13, 2012 Report Share Posted February 13, 2012 Whitney Houston was secretly a successfully gay avant-garde saxophonist? Is that what I'm hearing here? Guess that session with Archie Shepp had a lasting effect after all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fasstrack Posted February 13, 2012 Report Share Posted February 13, 2012 Whitney Houston was secretly a successfully gay avant-garde saxophonist? Is that what I'm hearing here? Guess that session with Archie Shepp had a lasting effect after all! Plus she 'sampled' at Whole Foods. The bitch... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 13, 2012 Report Share Posted February 13, 2012 Are the darts any less tough at Whole Foods that at regular grocery stores? If so, that would explain it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.:.impossible Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 Or bitch slapping successful jazz club proprietors and the successful jazz musicians who play there. Just tossin' tough darts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedwork Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 Found this on YouTube, the isolated vocal tracks from "How Will I Know"...great song, great voice, just...not at the same time. But it was what it was, it is what is is, and here we are. damn. that's a fuckin' beautiful thing right there. thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ZgyLhHfnY&feature=related Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVeKnYitGVA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 dude i mounred more than any of you today, i told everybody that whatever theyre doin today, today their doin it for whitney. how many of you did that? i agree with u on that chris, its too overblown. the 90s is too late a period for a torch song What I told Chris and the other guy. With all due respect, can't you wait a little? A singer has died and it's a tragedy. Time to mourn and be sad, not play armchair critic. It's not what you said, it's the timing. A mother is in mourning. You guys are too much sometimes. Sensitivity. It's in the dictionary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVeKnYitGVA whoa.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BruceH Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 I think she had a great voice that was horribly mangled by the popular music scene of the 80s and 90s. It was used as a special effect, not a musical instrument, and this has become the template for a lot of vocalists that have followed. The "American Idol" approach to vocals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 14, 2012 Report Share Posted February 14, 2012 I think she had a great voice that was horribly mangled by the popular music scene of the 80s and 90s. It was used as a special effect, not a musical instrument, and this has become the template for a lot of vocalists that have followed. The "American Idol" approach to vocals. I'll blame Mariah Carey for that, not Whitney. It was Carey who used the vocabulary without displaying any sense of their meaning. I think Whitney didn't understand the context in which she was working, how to modify it to meet the lighter demands of the material and intents. Seems to me that she was just running with the "star trip" and not paying any attention to the music as anything other than a vehicle for stardom. But I strongly believe that in church, she could hit it the way it was meant to be hit. Not so, Carey. The net effect might be the same in terms of impact, but when I hear Whitney's "excesses", I understand them, even if I don't like them. With Carey, I neither understand nor like them. OTOH, I hear Soledad O'Brein make a comment yesterday morning regarding Whitney's performance of the national anthem, something to the effect that what moved her the most about that performance was the shher joy she felt in it of a singer in prime voice just sailing through the song, knowing that she was nailing it ina way that very few people could. I might call that intoxication with one's own talents and caution that it's a short cut to a long road of trouble, but...I can understand how and why people who can't sing (well or at all) and who don't delve too deeply into the nuances of performance can be thrilled by it, inspired by it, even. I'm listening to that acapella (isolated vocal track, really) of "Your Love Is My Love", and it's getting to me pretty hard. I'm hearing a singer and a person who, for whatever reasons, was forced to look down, not up, and....they found something meaningful, and they held on to it. You don't get that on American Idol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soulstation1 Posted February 15, 2012 Report Share Posted February 15, 2012 Guess I can't blame the Houston family for not wanting Bobby around but the man deserves to see his grown daughter Crazy that the hotel is renting Whitney's hotel room now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Gould Posted February 15, 2012 Report Share Posted February 15, 2012 I think she had a great voice that was horribly mangled by the popular music scene of the 80s and 90s. It was used as a special effect, not a musical instrument, and this has become the template for a lot of vocalists that have followed. The "American Idol" approach to vocals. I'll blame Mariah Carey for that, not Whitney. It was Carey who used the vocabulary without displaying any sense of their meaning. I think Whitney didn't understand the context in which she was working, how to modify it to meet the lighter demands of the material and intents. Seems to me that she was just running with the "star trip" and not paying any attention to the music as anything other than a vehicle for stardom. But I strongly believe that in church, she could hit it the way it was meant to be hit. Not so, Carey. The net effect might be the same in terms of impact, but when I hear Whitney's "excesses", I understand them, even if I don't like them. With Carey, I neither understand nor like them. This really nails it for me. An honest accounting of Whitney's career has to acknowledge that aspects of her style influenced, for the worse, so many singers and would-be singers. But I see Whitney as the last of a long line of great singers (there may be others since her but I don't pay enough attention to know about them). Then you get Mariah's take on Whitney's style and then it gets even worse with Christina Aguilera. From those two you get a universe of appalling American Idol 'singers'. I don't think you can get around the fact that Whitney started it, but I still blame Mariah and Christina for where they took it after her. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.:.impossible Posted February 15, 2012 Report Share Posted February 15, 2012 I haven't listened to the acapella clips yet, but Jim and Dan have just explained something that I have never really cared enough to take the time to think about so clearly. Thanks for laying it out like this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 15, 2012 Report Share Posted February 15, 2012 I see Whitney as the last of a long line of great singers (there may be others since her but I don't pay enough attention to know about them). I know you don't follow house music, but it appears to the last non-gospel refuge of great gospel-based female singers...which is not to say that house music is overflowing with them (it's not), just that if you want to look for them, that's probably going to be your best starting point...if you can get into it at all, and if not, hey, I understand. In hindsight, you gotta wonder how this whole thing would have turned out if Whitney had not been so drop-dead gorgeous (the back cover of her first LP is about as stunningly sexy as anything ever put on a mainstream pop album cover, hadn't had the modelling career, hadn't been dropped on the scene as a Full-Fledged Pop Goddess, and had just started out singing R&B, cultivating that audience. and then had the cross-over success. Musicall and personally, we might be having an entirely different Whitney Houston Conversation right now. Or not. Who knows? But remember the whole "Whitney's not Black enough, she's turned White on us!!" brouhaha of days gone by? That was some weird, deep, dark shit (and for all I know, some "Only In America" stuff as well), and I'll never be convinced that it didn't leave scars on her psyche. Was the marriage to Bobby Brown an attempt to "prove" something? Was it a declaration of "true identity"? Was it just some crazyass pop madness? All of the above? None? All I can say is that if "Exhale" didn't/doesn't "settle the issue" of who the "real" Whitney Houston was, then nothing does. And please, listen again to that acapella track of "Your Love Is My Love". Removed of all the pop production trappings of the original, there is so much being communicated through that voice. So much. God bless the real Whitney Houston, and may she rest forevermore in peace. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alexander Hawkins Posted February 15, 2012 Report Share Posted February 15, 2012 Well, not sure it adds anything terribly profound to the debate, but quite surreal to see a story about vocal melisma in the BBC's top stories of the day..! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.:.impossible Posted February 15, 2012 Report Share Posted February 15, 2012 I'm learning much more in this thread than I ever would have imagined. Melisma. Thanks Akexander. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted February 15, 2012 Report Share Posted February 15, 2012 (edited) That the BBC article focuses on the technique itself and its impact on pop music while all but ignoring its usages and meanings in African-American Gospel music says pretty much all there is to say abut why this stuff has gone so horribly WRONG. It also underscores how Whitney Houston was fundamentally misunderstood by the pop audience, and perhaps even how she herself didn't understand what it was that she was getting herself into, musically or culturally. Whitney's style of melisma is not just a "technique". it's a freaking language, and too many, waaaaay too many people have been speaking it phonetically, to the point where I've no doubt that they all understand each other, but they're in no way speaking the language as it once existed. It would be like if me and a buch of my buddies moved to Japan, couldn't comprehend the Japanese language, and just started using the characters to mean whatever we wanted them to mean becuase we liked the way they looked and sounded. Sure, we'd all understand it, and as our community grew, more people would understand it as "Japanese", but...if we started getting a few hostile "fuck you"s from the native population, well, that could be understood, no? On the other hand, languages do evolve, and clueless barbarians unknowingly wreck havoc without malice. So be it. Maybe I'm just an old fart elitist. But Mariah Carey is not Shirley Caesar. Hell, she's not even Whitney Houston. Edited February 15, 2012 by JSngry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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