TheBig3

ha, thanks pal!

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TheBig3

What the **** is up with Christmas Music?

One of the biggest abhorences in the last 50 years of music was the late 80's/early 90's because for one reason or another the managed to achieve without calling it that, post-soul.Post-punk was all the lack of talent with the absence of energy. Post-soul, is all the movements without the actual soul. This frankenstein of a movement was perpetuated by the likes of Vanessa Williams, Luther Vandross, and Babyface.This is is always overproduced and marked by two distinct features; some synthetic version of strings or a choir, and a bass guitar that likely doesn't have notation to read, its some improv jazz guy who needed a paycheck and they had him come in to "freestyle."Its a disguesting show of form over feel, but we know that. What I want to know is - who listens to this ****?

It reminds me of this book Practicing I once read and put down halfway through where they were discussing the authors experience in a class on Microtonal Elements. Where in young asipiring composers are asked to write something like a conversation. In the book he chastises them to some effect such as...

"I told you to write like conversaitons! Conversations do not go da-de da-de da-de da-de."

Supposedly students dropped out because they lost their ear for music, they been upable to keep perfect pitch and learn keys by ear. I don't think I need to tell you folks this, but music does go da-de da-de da-de. What I read in that book, and what I heard in my youth from thesesoul-killing, one-foot-int-the-Disney-payroll abominations is the same without being the same. Kids out there, like the author himself, get a good running start, they start to spread their wings and they take off to some far and distant satelite with no relation to other people, just an eyes closed headlong charge once more into the breach. If I'm feeling my arrogant oats, I'm inclined to say its the same mentiality that leads people to believe their smarter than people they hate. Those who were never cool hide in the dark recesses of scholarly research. And while Music can mimic Math in many ways, we should pay close attention to the Nasa scientists who, with all their astronomical knowledge can't figure out how to hitch a boat to a trailor. Both employe discoveries in Math, but one is so far removed from a practicality that all their hard earned knowledge is wasted.

But Vanessa Williams will likely never be accused of being too well versed in either Math or Music theory. What she is, is an artistic vaccum. Theres no one holding the reigns on the a record like heres, theres just someone at the Record Company gates denying the world an album until they feel its worth the investment. At no point will she challenge their rejection.

What we have with these albums is a series of interested parties. Invested people who backe it financially, producers who want it to conincide with a film, and for whatever reason an endless abundane of ****ing Christmas Music which cannot be murdered to death quite a bit. For all the attack the Christians in America claim to be under you'd think they'd ask for these renditions to cease. If theres one thing thats likely going to stop east coast lefties from potentially joining the under nation under god, its a Carrie Underwood remake of a Vanessa Williams's "I"m Dreaming of a White Christmas" with some extra twang thrown in to grab some hillbillies.

But the problem with this system of creation is that it assumes people are going to fight for their piece of the pie. Everyone in this scenario likely should, except for the studio musicians who as I've surmised earlier, are likely cowering under their scales and stacato notations telling each other how their all morons. And this is where the worold suffers.

If your assertion is that the bass meandering about under the slicked up glaze of synths is irrelvent because its so low on the spectrum no one will even notice, then the jokes on the unfortunate saps, like us, who are forced to listen to this swill at the office or the mall.

Christmas music has a lot of different meaning to a lot of different people. I for one think the modern songs are best, only rivaled by older songs that were unapologetically relvelent for their time. "Holly Jolly Christmas" for example sounds like Wally Cleaver wrote it, and it should remain there forever. But this genocide towards old standards only happens here. Rare is the cover of a Cole Porter song because its good. In fact he's most often covered by the snarky fringe to show how educated they are, and of course because vintage/retro is "in."

Like so many of my posts in this second incarnation of a journal I don't really have a point to make here. I'm just rambling with the intent of debate and a goal to get people writing. I heard some ****cake of a song on the radio and was irritated enough to write like an eye tearing at the presentation of a foreign body. I'm always reaction, no solution. But I hope you found something in here to feed on. If this journal was to have one sub-line maybe its just that; If my entries are ****, the may I be read by the flies.

Merry Christmas,
Big3

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TheBig3

Its not terribly counter-culture to say you like Norman Rockwell. I don't know where that leaves me but I think he's as close to a novelist as any painter can get. And though he speaks for the rural folk, I feel as if he captures humanity (at least American humanity) in its raw and unaffected state. The paintings are the skeletal frame of how society is made. Some of the scenes are less fancy than some of us are used to, but we can only build upon the scenes he saw between the 30's and 50's. The photo above is some of the essence of what makes music, for me, brilliant.

Music today, at least what I'm hearing coming out is contrived. Not totally but its thought about, as any profession will get you, enough that image matters. And while I agree with Tom Waits in believing all artists are bad imitations of their idols, when your idols are too contrived, their philosophy and yours moves more toward a synthetic concoction.

But what I love about this painting is that its just a bunch of old guys, sitting around in the backroom, cramped and in dining room chairs of someones business, late into the night for no other reason that to jam. Maybe they wouldn't use that term, but that's what they are doing. What I like about the roots music that's depicted here is its coming from the soul of labor. These guys aren't paid to make music, their paid to cut hair, and sweep floors. They make rent by laying brick, and growing crops.

Today many sounds we hear are either from two schools, techinical tampering or imitating these guys, who played with what they had and if that was out of tune, they worked with what they had. This is the same reason I hate American Idol. Mistakes are taken out of anything the contestants do if they ever make an album, guys in a back room roll with it. In fact the world owes more to bad instruments than anyone else for our drive toward new sounds, and how we manipulate them.



Part of my love has one foot in paranoia. I've always said of life, I'd rather sleep in the mud than in the Penthouse because when you sleep in the mud they can't take anything from you. With guys holding instruments in a room, they never can't play music, theres no amps, theres no microphones, instruments get new roles so they aren't buried. It might be why I stopped playing piano, but this year my girlfriends mother gave us her deceased fathers accordion because of the sound I heard coming from Johnny Cash's Wayfaring Stranger.

When I leave any place, in this case MB, I should hope that I've inspired at least one person to get out there and get their hands dirty, to play until their clothes are soaked in some dingy room where you play because its the best you've ever felt. And if nothing else, that those demands are put on other people. God Bless the Dirt Farmers.

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TheBig3

good music just rumbles below the cool molten crag of the surface, moving red hot and undiscovered. Its music though, it isn't this kinks, lets-slash-the-amps **** that puts quality in bad music like ripped jeans at Urban Outfitters.

I can't stand the bad=quality **** that stinks up the emo/hardcore/punk/nuwave forums here. Music is still music, I don't care how much your father was an *******, play your ****ing instrument.

This is an offshoot of my overarching philosphy that the 60's was a giant nuke that hit culture and killed anything that was ever good. Now I have to look at religious statues covered in excrement and call it art. Or bad political poetry someone scrawls on a napkin and debate its insight.

There was a thread started by swim I think in the Folk forum, and it talked about what your favorite folk standard was. I loved it and it was gravely unfortunate no one else did, but to me thats the sort of thing that defines a guy. Take this old battled standard, likely sung before people played golf on St. Andrews, and make it new, and fresh, and breath taking.

If Neko Case's "Wayfaring Stranger" doesn't slay people, if Tracy Chapman's "house of the rising son" doesn't make you flip out, or if Springsteen's "Eyes on the Prize" doesn't take your unborn children outback behind the wood shed and teach them what manners are then you're listening to music for the wrong reasons, and frankly, on behalf of all the dead musicians, my ancestry, and my pet goat Victor - go **** yourself.

Sometimes a good song can make me feel like I'm praying, and sometimes a good song can make me feel one with the entire universe - all its suffering and all its glory - and if when you listen to music you've got an agenda, well, as they say in WoW, "you're doing it wrong." its not all old men on their front porch with an acoustic singing broken-hearted dirges 6 shots in on a bottle of Wild Turkey.

I'll never forget how I felt the first time I heard the solo in Joe Natho's moms car when i was 12 for Enter Sandman. Or sitting 40 rows back at the Aggains Arena two summers ago when the White Stripes took everyone to the Church of old fuzz and made pissy 16 year olds feel a part of something for the first time in their lives. The deep and personal is equal to the brutal passions and fire or wild men on electric axes who can burn stadiums to the ground with well placed arrangements.

[Ending, To Be Ended]

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jackhammer

You don't have to have a degree in English to write a book so you shouldn't have to be a great musician to make music and that's the reason why music does work. It's something we all feel that we can aspire to and if it wasn't for half of these guys then music would still be stagnating in ****ty jukeboxes boring the world to death.

I like melody, structure and order in music if it appeals. I also like disharmony, chaos and energy in my music. All music forms are valid to the listener and if someone can get an emotional link to as many different genres then you are all the more richer for it. But then I could have completely misread your posts because of your unique writing style.

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Engine

I don't think you misread anything - what you quoted is 100% self-righteous bull****. And presumptuous. My childhood has nothing to do with why I like music that Big3 has deemed bad. I would never have the gall to say that Big3 only likes easily digestible music because he had a nice daddy (I really have no idea why he likes what he likes). Yeah, music is music - but only if Big3 approves of the instrumentation? Bull****

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Flower Child

Really enjoy reading your journal! But I love what you wrote here ^ most. Very well put, and I completely agree with you. I don't know if this will interest you, but a country singer named Johnny Lee said something similar in one of his songs called Cherokee Fiddle. Heres a bit of the lyrics that relate to what you said:

Quote:

And when he'd smell the smoke and the cinders He'd slick back his hair, and open up his case He'd play the Cherokee Fiddle, he'd play it for the whiskey Cause good whiskey never let him lose his place He was always there, playing for the miners The Devil's Dream was a song they understood And then he'd go out to Oklahoma But he'd wait till the trains were running and the weather was good Now the Indians are dressing up like cowboys And the cowboys are putting leather and turquoise on And the music is sold by lawyers And the fools who fiddled in the middle of the stations are gone Some folks say they'll never miss him That old fiddle squealed like the engines brakes The Cherokee Fiddle is gone forever Like the music of the whistle that the old locomotives made

Gavin B.

There's a lot of good old school soul singers around and they're all not over the age of 60. Bettye LaVette is one of the older singers was ignored during golden age of soul and she's making some of the best music of her life right now. Sharon Jones' music sounds like it's straight out of the old Stax studio in South Memphis. Sharon Jones and and a collective of old school soul singers record on the Daptone label, an artist owned label based in Brooklyn NY. This most exciting soul singer I've heard in the past couple of years is a 32 year old Canadian soul singer name Jully Black. Jully has yet to find a big audience in the USA or Europe but this 2007 version of Seven Day Fool is sublime. Check out the Jully video below for evidence that real soul music is alive and well.



I'm at a loss to explain the Vanderossation of soul music in the 80s. Some things are beyond all rational explanation. I used to wonder how Billy Joel sold millions and millions of albums yet I've never met a single solitary person who had a Billy Joel record in their music collection. Who are these people? Are they also the invisible cabal responsible for the success of Lady Gaga, John Mayer and Michael Bublé? Maybe they've put something in the drinking water that lulls people into purchasing hideously banal music. I'm baffled.

I'm a big fan of your style of writting. Only the brave or the foolish express themselves the kind of unflinching honesty you've shown in your journal so far. Those who champion integrity are usually rewarded with a crown of thorns and a big wooden cross to lug to their own crucifixion.

TheBig3

Generally stated; I don't know that I've ever been taken so incorrectly, as is displayed with the three different responses seen below.

Yeah I think so. My intent isn't to sound overproduced and slicked up, it was just a general call to pull away from the marketing sensibilities that come with convention, so what I'm avoiding or saying people ought to avoid is the general iPod music that is often times knockoffs of new and popular music.

I actually love garage music, and the guys in the south on front porches trading music lessons for vegetables and what not, what I'm saying here actually matches up with what you're saying fairly closely. I didn't call out Luther Vandross because I love the music he makes.

While the "my will is law" post is coming and appropriate, thats not what I'm saying. I once went to see a show where the Whirlwind Heat played. They were either manufactured or stupid and heres why:

Lead singer couldn't play a guitar despite having one, and this was "edgy" because he used it to make noises. What that was supposed to symbolize I have no idea. What I can tell you is that it didn't have a god damn thing to do with music. this is a nut shell is my point. Once one gets into the rebellion rut, they continue down that track in every aspect. What I'm saying is, I don't give a **** how much you hate your father, all authority isn't your father, "rules" aren't your father, shut the **** up and play something. Stop ****ting on stage with your mouth duct taped shut and call it art.

At first I think you took me wrong but I think you're picking up what i'm putting down here at the end. And while I wouldn't put those 4 artists in the same category, I get your point.

Thanks for the kind words. I think they only hang the ones they know they can get away with.


@ Flower Child in regards to the previous post. Thanks for reading. I like this quote you've left me. I'll dig a little deeper on that vein.

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Engine

Well, I don't know Whirlwind Heat so I won't defend them. I do see your point - I just probably won't agree with you 100% on which music is stupid.

You already made the exact same statement. Since I already know I won't agree with you about which music is stupid and, in fact, which music "doesn't have anything to do with music" - I will probably also disagree with you on the reasons why something is or isn't stupid, etc. And what's with the repeated references to 'edgy' performance art? ****ting on stage certainly has much less to do with music than Whirlwind Heat, no?

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