Amazing skills but ... appalling taste

[sufi]

Musicians who would be greater if they weren't aiming in the wrong direction
I think every musician must have a vision (a sonic vision?) or what they are trying to create, and for some that vision is about psytrance or hair metal, sadly.

 

[Slothrop]

A thing that's kind of interesting is when this sort of musician gets corralled by someone with better taste and produces something genuinely special. Eg Jaco Pastorius almost archetypally fits the bill for me:




Obviously technically phenomenal, but not really doing it for me musically. But when he gets pressed into backing up Joni Mitchell on Coyote it's absolutely magic:

 

[shakahislop]

autechre could have made some amazing big beat if they'd made better life decisions, and they were around at the right time

 

[thirdform]

autechre could have made some amazing big beat if they'd made better life decisions, and they were around at the right time

Oh, thank God they didn't.

Oh.

 

[catalog]

Autechre are the best British band of last 25 years end of

 

[Murphy]

All the shred metal lot, Ywngwooie Malmsteen, Steve Vai. Easy targets

They can play, if that’s what you want to call it but the hair, the finger dexterity etc all amounts to unintentional jfc. Even as a yoof it was a spectacle of god awful. MTV didn’t help. I think this is where and why some people turn away from Zappa. The emphasis on velocity dexterity plus SV being involved

All that practice, all the scales repeated, over and over. The time taken. Evolution of shredding is like Wrestle Mania with spider hands and plectrums. If you ever see these records/cd’s in someone’s house you’re honour bound to leave. I’ve got a pile of ridiculous releases from the mid 80’s, none of this ott bs

 

[luka]

eminem. kendrick lamar.

 

[Murphy]

 

[woops]

im going in with black russians. meen beaning to do this for a while @martin

 

[shakahislop]

eminem. kendrick lamar.

as close as eminem is to my heart, which he truly is, i think i've heard precisely one tune where i've heard him do anything that sounds technically impressive to my ear. and i used to download the pre-slim shady lp tunes from napster at 2kbps and then record them off my computer speakers onto a nearby tape player that could record room sound onto cassettes. the idea that he's anything special flow-wise is an opinion which i totally do not get. maybe its obvious if you rap yourself or if you're deep into all of that.

real significance of eminem obviously isn't any kind of technical expertise, it's the expressiveness of what he does, the negativity and cruelty of it, the ugliness of it. a ball trump took and ran with in many ways.

 

[luka]

the writing is very impressive technically and my guess is that its realtively difficult to recite too although i didnt get on the eminem thing at the time. i found it weird and confusing when westwood was playing that my name is thing. never got my head around it.

 

[shakahislop]

the writing is very impressive technically and my guess is that its realtively difficult to recite too although i didnt get on the eminem thing at the time. i found it weird and confusing when westwood was playing that my name is thing. never got my head around it.

what's impressive about the writing? i trust you to know about that kind of thing

 

[shakahislop]

the writing is very impressive technically and my guess is that its realtively difficult to recite too although i didnt get on the eminem thing at the time. i found it weird and confusing when westwood was playing that my name is thing. never got my head around it.

do you mean things like the rhyme schemes and those kinds of things that i learned about doing GCSE poetry?

 

[luka]

yes, just for all the little internals and slant rhymes and assonance and etc. hes not the only one to do it obviously but it does take a particualrly advanced form with him and he mostly makes it makes sense, just about.

 

[shakahislop]

i have a working theory that the reason people talk about eminem being 'technically good' is because they don't want to admit what it is that appeals about him to them. and you've ruined it. i'm never coming back here again.

 

[luka]

sorry

 

[luka]

its also cos he goes really fast sometimes and people find that impressive

 

[luka]

this thing.

 

[shakahislop]

this thing.

i mean its too obvious to even be worth saying isn't it, but this kind of thing is exactly the same as shredding, so much work and practice just to comprehensively miss the point

 

[Corpsey]

When Eminem got big, although him being good at rapping was one of the selling points, people didn't really talk about his technique (which he'd buried since "Infinite"), it was more about his cartoon sicko persona, his humour and outrageousness.

His technique in that SSLP and MMLP era was better, though, as far as I was concerned because it was semi disguised (first becoming really audible again on "The Way I Am", which in many ways set the template for his subsequent career).

This isn't a great example at all but I remember the line "I strangle you to death and I'll choke you again, and break your fuckin legs so the bones poke through your skin" - where "choke you again" doesn't rhyme exactly with "poke through your skin", but still rhymes (and the assonant "bones" helps emphasise it). It feels casual, insouciant, like his don't give a fuck persona at the time. It felt loose, which is the exact opposite of what his flow became subsequently.

And yes, he has terrible taste. An interesting example, though, of the freedom which tastelessness can confer.