What are you listening to?

[Prokofy Neva]

I have to say I haven't even heard of many of these tapes you are citing except of course Mozart and Fat Boy Slim.

So let me explain to you young children what rock music is. It's hardly ever played any more, and the day of the long improvisation called "the jam" (in jazz and rock) is virtually extinct. I can't think of a single modern star or popular song of any sort that has anything even faintly resembling a jam these days. Yet this was something we expected and took for granted in our day.  When could you ever get into the long line to the bathroom at a Grateful Dead concert if it wasn't during "drums and space"? I find many people don't even know what "drums and space" means anymore.

And how can you fathom long jams when attention spans are very short, when everything is so severely mastered and mixed and overdubbed and autotuned almost to death! It's almost impossible to hear a human voice and an unadulterated musical instrument unless you go down to your RL corner pub, and even there, the local musician or band will be so influenced by the Internetization of music that they will play only short songs, or will turn on various machines that play backbeats etc.

But not Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters in Play. That is, sure, this is a work that is the epitome of 50 years of electronics in every way. But the point is that it's deployed in order to create what we would have known as the "side B jam" on a 33 1/3 LP record.

What I'd like you to notice here (start the tape at 8:12 if you just want to hear his long tune of nearly 24 minutes or watch the children first taking music lessons if you like) is that when you see all the Dave Grohls playing all the musical instruments he can play spliced together, when you look at the drum part, *he is not wearing any headphones*. Musicians wear headphones to hear their song and be able to play to it, as otherwise they couldn't hear themselves play, even, with all the amplification.

He is playing from memory an entire piece of music of 15 plus minutes - without notations --remember he does not read music. He's doing that because he has to play the entire piece on the drums *first*, so as to later cut it up and put it back together (as he explains in interviews such as on Colbert). If you think it is easy to play a song from memory for 15 minutes, even one you may have played numerous times, trust me, it is not. And it's not even attempted now. Although bands such as in the famous "Stormy Weather" dance routine below would have gone through an evening of many such sets. And note here *they have no sheet music in front of them*. And even when the Nicholas Brothers dance right on the table in front of them, they don't miss a beat.

There is an argument about whether Grohl is wearing tiny ear buds to hear a click track -- some don't think he is and I don't think he is. If you watch rock experts on Youtube like Rick Beato, they explain how in the old days, a track could be heard to shift and go off beat even in a recorded and mastered production because that's how real life is, real life is not a mechanical, computerized machine beat. Some people say you can set your metronome or your watch by this or that classical drum player from the old days but actually why would you want to? The organic authenticity of a shifting beat is part of what makes a song real and effective. It becomes homogenized when it has a driving click track -- in fact nowadays some groups even just play the click track as part of their performance which seems odd to oldsters. Take a look at the man many believe is the best drummer in the world (I personally would put Ginger Baker first, but ok).

 

Look at Cab Calloway directing the band that the Nicholas Brothers are dancing to - as a reader commented, there is no way you can make a biopic about a dance like this which these brothers invented and danced themselves - somewhere there's some clips of Fred Astaire meeting the Nicholas Bros and even he seems in awe. And correct me if I'm wrong but this sequence is done in one take.

 

 

Edited November 20, 2020 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

18 hours ago, roseelvira said:

 

If, like me, you first heard this song on the radio in 1975, working the 4-11 shift at the 7/11 -- and you couldn't listen to it again until it was played again on the radio, and it would be some time before you saved up enough to go downtown and buy the record -- back in the days when music was more precious because you couldn't instantly "have it again" and for free -- seeing something like this acoustic version on YouTube with the old geezer *45 years later* -- a lifetime -- feels like a sacrilege. It's like at funerals where the funeral director advises you to have a closed coffin and tells you to "just remember him the way he was". I mean to hear a weakened, smoked out voice...well I find it just atrocious. I turn it off instantly. I feel that about Jack Bruce as well. And of course Joni Mitchell. 

[Rowan Amore]

4 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

If, like me, you first heard this song on the radio in 1975, working the 4-11 shift at the 7/11 -- and you couldn't listen to it again until it was played again on the radio, and it would be some time before you saved up enough to go downtown and buy the record -- back in the days when music was more precious because you couldn't instantly "have it again" and for free -- seeing something like this acoustic version on YouTube with the old geezer *45 years later* -- a lifetime -- feels like a sacrilege. It's like at funerals where the funeral director advises you to have a closed coffin and tells you to "just remember him the way he was". I mean to hear a weakened, smoked out voice...well I find it just atrocious. I turn it off instantly. I feel that about Jack Bruce as well. And of course Joni Mitchell. 

I don't know.  I kind of like it.  Frampton Comes Alive was one of the first albums I ever bought.  He looks and sounds pretty good for his age.  What would have been sad is if he still had the long flowing hair and was trying to rock the same outfits.  

[Chroma Starlight]

Check out the opener, "Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos - Aurora in Pekin".

Edited November 20, 2020 by Chroma Starlight

[Claireschen Hesten]

 

[Rat Luv]

I don't know much about soul, and never normally listen to it...but this came up in my recommendations and I can't stop playing it...just utterly STUNNING!

 

[Evah Baxton]

 

[Evah Baxton]

 

[Evah Baxton]

 

[Evah Baxton]

 

[Evah Baxton]

 

[Evah Baxton]

Yeah! Let's get back to sleep!

 

Edited November 21, 2020 by Evah Baxton

[lovesickgirls]

I simply cannot get this mix out of my head.

 

[Chroma Starlight]

 

[Dafadilia Wayfarer]

 

[Dafadilia Wayfarer]

 

[Garnet Psaltery]

I have posted other performances of this piece but this has just come out, and it's a favourite of mine.  Very gentle and beautiful. 

 

[Chroma Starlight]

n__n

[WinTrain]

Ambient music. Lots and lots of ambient music, check out the album from stars of the lid called stars of the lid and their refinement of the decline. It is amazing. I also love Dive by Tycho.   I been listening to new but older rap music and have began writing lyrics myself. I am slowly feeling the creative juices and might make more tracks and instrumentals for my SoundCloud with the help of looperman.com

[Garnet Psaltery]

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by Garnet Psaltery

[Gage Wirefly]

 

[Gage Wirefly]

 

[Chroma Starlight]

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by Chroma Starlight
sunday morning edit

[Lara Aulder]

 

[Nick0678]