Posts by 3410
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"Oh, Christ! I already told Jack Johnson he could do 'Imagine'!"
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There is a bootleg somewhere on a shelf of mine in Auckland with the vocals in the left channel and the (mono) instrumental in the right, so you can do that trick of rotating the vox out of the mix with the balance knob....
Spooky.
About 5 years ago I made a such a mix of 'Kite' by 'inverting' or 'flipping' one channel and then mixing the two channels together, leaving a mono mix containing only the wide left and wide right but no centre (where the vox originally were); in this case mostly just Paul's excellent bass and the drums, with a wee bit of organ if memory serves, except for the bridge which was somewhat fuller (tape effects and organ). I dropped it at parties a couple of times and jaws dropped - not that it was a masterpiece mix as such, but just really an unusual perspective on such a well known piece. The only other one like that that I did at the time was a similar fake inst. mix of 'Only A Northern Song', though later made a fake instrumental Rubber Soul using various sources and techniques.
And we know Brian Wilson's reaction to Pepper.
Yeah, maybe that's part of the reason I've got problems with it;
They killed SMiLE ;) -
Brian Wilson - in a league of his own. Yeah, gotta agree with H-D-H, though.
Chaos and Creation? 2001's Driving Rain was really something; beautiful, sometimes naff (natch), sprawling and believe it or not, edgy.
...a very very average career (with the odd highlight) since, umm, his second solo one.
All the true genii of the golden age - Wilson, Davies, Young, Reed, Dylan, Lennon etc. - had tons of godawful songs (& godawful shows), because they're madmen; stands to reason.
('A Day In The Life' wasn't taking the piss, but what else? Lucy, Kite, and Good Morning? You'd think Johnny would've realised that Macca brought enough Music Hall without adding to it.)
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I've been told, though don't remember, that as a very young lad I crawled off the top of a ponga retaining wall at my uncle's place. Apparently mum and aunty spent some time removing "hundreds" of ponga spines from my chest, arms, and face.
On another occasion my friend Matthew and I were play-fighting in his room, as seven-year-olds do. Upon pausing for breath we both began to wonder why the walls, bed, and floor were splattered with blood. The search for the cause culminated in the discovery of a 3/4" wide x 1" deep stab wound precisely in the crease between my right leg and buttock. Further investigation revealed an un-retracted craft knife that had previously been abandoned on the bed.
Matthew's mother took my pants off, laid me face down on the dining table, and cleaned and dressed the wound. Incidentally, I later began to consider this procedure my first sexual experience.
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Well, first let me apologise slightly for having helped to steer this conversation away from Web 2.0, though some blame must surely go to Peter for introducing that inflamatory phrase, "the Dylan problem". (One day someone will study, and perhaps even map, the trends in changes of direction of comments threads. C'est la vie.)
I'm not sure if I'd describe Hip Hop, punk and elecronica as minor revolutions....and Dylan...all he wanted to be was Woody Guthrie fronting The Beatles, but I take your point.
Sgt Pepper...contrary to accepted wisdom, I think that's when it also started to go right.
In my usual clumsy style, I attempted to differentiate the "minor revolutions" of pop culture from "proper" socio-political revolutions. In retrospect it does look confusing.
I did once accidentally step in some "accepted wisdom" regarding the issue of Led Zeppelin singles, but in this case it's a considered opinion. To my ears that album mostly just sounds silly. I do love "She's Leaving Home", the bridge of "Mr. Kite", the reprise of the title tune, and Macca's harmonies throughout, but Beatle John just sounded like he was taking the piss, and quite a few of Paul's songs are just naff. The mono LP fares better, since it doesn't draw such attention to the 'craaazy' arrangements and mixing.
I feel that all the expectations got to them; the cover art, eponymous title, and stripped-down arrangements of the follow-up double virtually admit the mistake, but by then it was too late; almost everyone else had caught the bug.
Before Pepper there was the Kinks, the Stones, the Who, the Zombies, the Yardbirds (didn't they wipe out creatively in '67) and a few others. Rock was uncompromising in its sound, and with a fun attitude, too. Peter's point about Tutti Futti holds true as well. Broadly speaking, up until circa '66 (British) rock was for dancing. When stereo-mixed LPs hit, it suddenly became about listening, and pretentiousness wasn't far behind.
America, you ask? Well, for that era it's all about the Beach Boys and Dylan for me, so I'm not sure I can draw any cohesive lesson. Dylan = Woody Guthrie & the Beatles? That's cold, man. Sure, 'Subterranean / Bringing It All Back Home' through 'Blonde' was the meat, but many earlier works are just staggeringly affecting, to the point where *everyone* else just look like children. I recommend The Gaslight Tapes (from '62; the boot, not the Starbucks one) & disc one of The Bootleg Sessions vol. 1.
I like my musical poetry to be a part of the aural texture.
PS. Never could get why you guys love the Clash because they're... y'know... political..., when their aural texture is often awful, but don't like Bob who has the same attributes.
Keen / Web 2.0, anyone?
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I can never really listen to Aha anymore without wincing a little.
Who can?
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I remember a school outing when a kid chopped off the end of his finger by sticking it in a machine at MOTAT.
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It's time than Nat. & Lab. got some marriage counselling. We're still living wth the ideological total war that occurred in '05. Both sides have delivered such low blows against each other that any level of respect between them has been shattered. Maybe the GG could be useful for once; a brief, informal "truth & reconciliation" arbitration wouldn't go amiss.
As I see it, the biggest problem facing the country is the rise of the corporatocracy. I can't find the reference right now, but I believe overseas ownership now accounts for 47% of GDP, compared with 17% in 1990. This is the elephant in the living room. Unless parliament starts addressing that, the sail we raise will be Cullen and Key holding one end each of a tea towel. No amount of tinkering with tax policy will help NZ if the pie keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Regarding the cancerous housing bubble, how come no-one ever fingers the banks? It's totally in their interests to keep lending more and more and more, pitting citzen against citizen, and sending $2b back to Australia every year. They are vampires to this country, but the consensus is always that the market must be "free".
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We also tend to discount the leap in literacy that has accompanied the mainstreaming of the internet.
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This is too wierd. I'm out too.