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[Sub_Topical]

Wow.

Take a child's interest in music out behind the woodshed and pull an ol' yeller type wow.

BANG

ALSO: It ain't the size of the instrument, it's the skill of the player.

Wait, What?

[theinevitable]

anot-pat: A can, for putting "emo" in quotes, and naming a bunch of bands I like. Also, for playing funk.

people, I suck at the guitar. Just so you know. But I am totally starting a band, and that will hopefully make me better. I am getting to the point where I can at least kind of write songs I like. So.

[jough]

Bobby, that avatar is in the worst taste ever.

Frankly, I feel actual disappointment in you.

Seriously, I am embarrassed for you.

[dejavroom]

I mean, you can argue that the Beatles are overrated, but they put serious time into every single song.  They were always tasteful, while huge chunks of Zep's work sounds like it was filler written the day before the recording session, if not the same day.

Oh my God I'm so choking you right now. You have to read those interviews when John Lennon goes on checkmarking song after song as "rubbish" or "throwaway" (I might be being mean, but most of those remarks that I remember come from a Playboy interview in 1970, and mostly concerns "The White Album"). If there's one band that wrote one song too many, that's The Beatles.

Yeah, he's alright, and all the musicians in Zep were... good.

Actually I think they are one of the rare types of bands that manage to have a fairly considerable creative output while also being known (and booked) as very proficient, shit-hot studio musicians. Alright, we know in the back of our minds that if a musician gets *too* proficient at his instrument he'll end up playing fusion; li'l paunch, sports a black goatee indulges in jewelry etc (as a sloppy rhythm guitar player myself, I couldn't care less about that type of thing). And I don't even like them so much, anyway, as you said, they have awful, unnecessary stuff. No one needs a rock concert that goes on for three hours you incredible assholes.

A recent, unbelievably good drummer: that dude from the liars (on their first album).

[robot_god]

Well, dissatisfaction with previous material is a hallmark of any musician with a desire to improve themself, so I don't think that necessarily means that he feels they phoned songs in.  But I dunno, I've never read the article.

Ok, I'm reading the interview now.  Yeah, this sounds exactly like what I mentioned, it's just the attitude of any true musician:

LENNON: Why should the Beatles give more? Didn't they give everything on God's earth for ten years? Didn't they give themselves?

later:

...you play me those tracks today and I want to remake every damn one of them. There's not a single one. . . . I heard "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" on the radio last night. It's abysmal, you know. The track is just terrible. I mean, it's great, but it wasn't made right, know what I mean? But that's the artistic trip, isn't it? That's why you keep going.

[dejavroom]

...While the remarks I have in mind are more like:

GLASS ONION
(Lennon/McCartney)

JOHN 1980: "That's me, just doing a throwaway song, a la 'Walrus' a la everything I've ever written. I threw in the line 'The walrus was Paul' just to confuse everybody a bit more. It could've been the fox terrier is Paul, you know.

Or:

JOHN 1980: "'Birthday' was written in the studio. Just made up on the spot. I think Paul wanted to write a song like 'Happy Birthday Baby,' the old fifties hit. But it was sort of made up in the studio. It was a piece of garbage."

PAUL circa-1994: "We thought, 'Why not make something up?' So we got a riff going and arranged it around this riff. So that is 50-50 John and me, made up on the spot and recorded all in the same evening."


Heh. This is so typical. Remember that their record label had issued a memo prohibiting any - any - material recorded by The Beatles to ever be erased, which bespeaks for the mindset of the times: They were indeed more popular than Jesus on a graham cracker, and I can only imagine how tempting it must have been when they just didn't give as much as a fuck as they used to do in the past, having a humongous batch of unfinished, substandard material that they knew people still would guzzle down like manah from the heavens.

And:

CRY BABY CRY
(Lennon/McCartney)

JOHN 1980: "A piece of rubbish."

I really don't think he means the recording process here. And etc.

[AugustWest]

Wow.  Those crap songs are some of my favorites. 

Too bad the Beatles weren't really trying.  I bet they could have been something if they were.

[vivouk]

I'm always sceptical about bands reviewing their past work. Writing music- and particularly songs- is such an intense and innately personal experience (even with co-writers) that your feelings about them can change wildly depending on what mood you're in, what you're currently writing and how people react to them. Even John Lennon wasn't capable of viewing his work objectively.

In fact, it's almost impossible to view ANY art objectively, but that's another debate.

Also, some hideously overworked/overproduced songs sound like dogshit to me, while a few off-the-cuff numbers (or so they appear- again, the barrier between artist and audience complicates things) are immediate magic.

[dejavroom]

Okay, I *never* said that all of their material was crap, c'mon. That's really not what we're talking about. I like them with some "buts", the same way I like Zeppelin (with  even more "buts").

[vivouk]

All I'm saying is that the artist's personal opinion and account of how they wrote certain songs is not a reliable indicator of its value or influence.

[dejavroom]

Sorry, I meant that as a reply to AugustWest, not you. Should have quoted.

[Bobby Isosceles]

Bobby, that avatar is in the worst taste ever.

Frankly, I feel actual disappointment in you.

Seriously, I am embarrassed for you.

Having won the nonexistent 2006 touambies, i am securing my hold on the 2007 with this early entry.

[linnea]

Having won the nonexistent 2006 touambies, i am securing my hold on the 2007 with this early entry.

My guess is that he's probably wearing this shirt as he posts on the board about his Saddampoline avatar. Or maybe this one.

[jough]

I don't think we've held the 2006 TOUAMBies yet, have we?

Anyone want to organize the thing?  It dragged on too long last year, I think, and lost some momentum.

[Bobby Isosceles]

I don't think we've held the 2006 TOUAMBies yet, have we?

Anyone want to organize the thing?  It dragged on too long last year, I think, and lost some momentum.

I think it's better if we all just imagined it happening, silently.
Really, most of this board would be better that way.