Metal Machine Music

Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
STN said:
Does zhao have to have heard ALL his records to criticize him? I'm afraid I'm not going to read every novel John Grisham has ever written before coming back to you, aged 35, and saying 'yep, they're all shit'.
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Yeah fair enough, but I think the point is that Zhao was claiming Waits was unoriginal, whereas if he were aware of the albums from the early 80s onwards he would no doubt realise that, whilst the overall vibe undoubtedly does owe something to Beefheart at times, those records are very inventive and innovative sonically and in terms of instrumentation.
 
D

droid

Guest
does zhao have to have heard ALL his records to criticize him? I'm afraid I'm not going to read every novel John Grisham has ever written before coming back to you, aged 35, and saying 'yep, they're all shit'.
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Of course not, but you cant damn an artist who has produced about 20 albums and who radically changed his style mid-career purely on the basis of one or two half heard records. It would be like dismissing every Beatles record because of 'Please please me'.

Wait's had his jazz/blues/bar singer/drunk at the piano period in the 70s were he released 4 or 5 LPs in that style, and then he went somewhere totally different in the 80s and onwards. All of Zhao's criticisms seem to be more about his ill-informed and subjective perception of Waits' rather than any actual knowledge about the man or his music.

Not that Waits' cant be criticised of course, but if you going to dismiss him so definitively - surely you should know what you're talking about?
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
zhao said:
Captain Beefheart was a fearless perverted scary beautiful monster of genius proportions who blasted his way through the music establishment's bourgeois bullshit, fighting the law to the end (but of course the law won), leaving a glorious bloody trail behind for following generations to stare at in wide eyed disbelief.

(if the world was not SO COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT classic rock stations would have "all Beefheart Sundays" or whatever programming gimmicks they do these days. but we all know in reality not a single of his magnificent tunes hardly ever made it onto the radio.)

while Tom Waits, sonic inventivenes in his later work or not, is over all just a puppet who plays a fantasy role for those that the Captain fought.
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Well, Captain Beefheart is ok, I guess.
 
B

BareBones

wheezy
couldn't personally give a toss if he's original or not. I'd struggle to describe 5% of the music i listen to as totally original. I think we can all agree that john grisham is indeed shit though.

as much as i love tom waits, i admit i am a little so-so about his films...
 
Tentative Andy

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
Yeah the Mirror Man stuff is pretty decent, Strictly Personal too, most of his stuff really I guess. Though I've not investigated much into his mid-70s attempted pop-crossover material yet - quite intriqued by it though.
 
S

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
zhao said:
i said in the beginning i don't know ALL his records (only a few).

what is funny here is fans getting worked up about me saying that he's a mediocre poseur :) really, so you realize that it's a cheap schtick, but you are still so emotionally invested in this schtick to the point you'll get all huffy defending it? :rolleyes:
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Nah, not huffy.
Mostly just sick of your shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy of determining what is and isn't "authentic".
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
Sick Boy said:
Nah, not huffy.
Mostly just sick of your shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy of determining what is and isn't "authentic".
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alright. without retracting any of my aversion and statements regarding the tacky posturing of his earlier work -- the droid has kindly sent me a later recording by this dood -- and i am, if anything, open minded, so will check out and follow up with a report.

after i listen to MMM again (which i'm dreading but in the spirit of fairness and good sport...)
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
nochexxx said:
zhao did you listen to that table top joe link i sent?
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no? i missed that one? did i slag him off too? who is he? was it upthread or did you PM me? sorry but don't remember why i should check it out? (oh boy a third obligatory listening project! :D :( )
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Mr. Tea said:
Points b) and d) are especially well made. You'd almost think there must have been legions of Bowie fans who were totally outraged to discover their idol was not, in actual fact, a spider from Mars.
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I have no idea what Octopus is talking about.

I was talking about how it's strange that some people think it's ok for musicians to dress a certain way but would make fun of anyone else who did as a pathetic hipster.

That was what I was talking about up there...
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
scottdisco said:
yes IIRC k-punk - at least at one stage although i've not searched his archives - has had some particular views on rap.

can i thank padraig (u.s.) for correcting Nomad re the term "rudeboy"?

thanks.

also, Nomad, this of yours makes me a little uneasy:
i may be inferring incorrectly here, in which case i apologise, but it's almost like you're minimising here (for reasons which i understand, but still).
as for British people, don't tar many people with whoever you know.
and thank you for the reminders of structural injustices in the US etc.

i can't remember which music journo it was, i think Reynolds actually, running with something from Frere-Jones, but something whatever said interested me



Reynolds, IIRC, wanted to get into a deep discussion of 'flow' and really unpick the term. (he's quite the parser.)

something about 'flow' being mentioned and that being the end of it in some discussions. (i'm not having a pop whatever, as you go on to get quite technical anyway, and i have not the knowledge to join in on any serious rap discussion as it is, that's Luka's bag for e.g. just your post made me half-remember that.)

oh, Droid too!

hi Droid :D
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Nobody in the U.S. calls people "rudeboys." Many people in the UK use it, I see it online all the damn time. The etymology of the term is irrelevant here.

No, I'm not minimizing violence, I'd NEVER do that.

I think it's a disgusting "minimizing" of very real and tangible social problems in the U.S. when British people, or anyone (since I've heard racist Americans make these claims as well, mostly old oens), try to act as if the problems brought to the fore by hip-hop artists are "fake" or "exaggerated"...

As anyone who has ever lived in an urban center in the U.S. can tell you, they are neither.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
padraig (u.s.) said:
generally, yes, especially once they've been caught. Rockefeller Laws (& everything of that ilk), plus all the social factors, etc. my point was that a lot of the crimes (those STUPID things that STUPID white people do) are also caused/exacerbated by the same economic factors that affect people of color. it's just more complex than you were making it out to be



wait, what? I'm not sure where I said they didn't witness any of the things they talked about. the difference is between reporting facts & embellishing them to make art, which is what rappers do.



can you point to any examples? I'm just having a hard time understanding your hosility. who are these people criticizing hip hop, besides scaremongering politicians or C. Dolores Tucker types? hip hop won, it's been winning for a long time, its complacency in victory is a big reason why so much of it sucks now.
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Totally agree about the economic factors. I happen to know exactly how complicated it is, but I was talking about certain urban situations explicitly, as I thought was obvious. Meth is not a huge issue in most large East Coast cities, it's very expensive and popular mostly on the gay club circuit.

Embellishing facts? Like what? That people kill each other all the time over dumb dumb stupid shit (that's what it looks like from the outside, but when you have no access to a decent education and wouldn't be hired even if you did unless the "quota" wasn't full, shitty things happen) when poverty is involved? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

If a poor white person from rural Alabama wrote an album about how his parents were both in jail because they had a meth lab in the bathtub, he grew up on diet of wonderbread and margarine sandwiches, and he was scarred for life by the abuse he suffered while being bounced from trailer to trailer as a foster kid.

Would that necessarily be some sort of exaggeration? Would that be "fake" and inauthentic? Would this person's anger about his own situation be cooked up to make him "look hard"?

I mean come on...
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
I think it's a disgusting "minimizing" of very real and tangible social problems in the U.S. when British people, or anyone (since I've heard racist Americans make these claims as well, mostly old oens), try to act as if the problems brought to the fore by hip-hop artists are "fake" or "exaggerated"...
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But just because the figure of Renton in Trainspotting is played by a wealthy actor, say, it doesn't mean that the issues Trainspotting focuses on (drugs, etc) aren't real.
 
nomadthethird

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
vimothy said:
But just because the figure of Renton in Trainspotting is played by a wealthy actor, say, it doesn't mean that the issues Trainspotting focuses on (drugs, etc) aren't real.
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Sure it doesn't. I've heard a lot about Scotland having problems with hard drugs and poverty, though I don't know much about it so I can't really add anything to a discussion of Scotland's problems. I imagine it's similar to what happens in the U.S. though.

I don't hear anybody making a big noise about how "condescending" and "fake" Trainspotting's socio-economic issues were, do you? It was obviously a fictional yarn, so there are those elements, but the basic socio-economic problems are dealt with as a subtext rather well. I mean, maybe there were people who called this movie "fake", I don't remember any though...
 
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