Posts by Simon Grigg
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Scott Chris,
I think Punk possibly had the most impact on mid-teens with no prior convictions... of the musical sort at least. ;)
I'm gonna argue with that. By the time punk arrived (late 1976) I was twenty one or so and schooled in years of all sorts of musics - from rock'n'roll, lots of jazz, soul, ska - through to the then contemporary prog which was pretty much the soundtrack of the times.
The day I bought the first Ramones album, I also bought Phil Manzanera's perfectly constructed proggy 801 Live. The latter had a few cursory plays, the first completely changed my life.
I was ringing people and asking them around to hear it. It gobsmacked.
Each to their own, but I instantly heard more that I could relate to in the opening 1-2-3-4 of Blitzkrieg Bop than I'd found in all the Yes or ELP albums I owned.
And I don't think I was alone - there was a global sense of 'thank fucking god' when those early records arrived - you only need to look at the music press of the time. Quickly, music became exciting again and people started to push the boundaries. Punk opened the door to electronica, to post-punk experimentalism, dub, interesting pop, independent recording and so much more. No longer did you need to be a self-important pseudo-virtuoso, instead you simply could.
And very many did.
In New Zealand there was a time pre-punk, when for years virtually nothing was happening, to a time when there were literally hundreds of inspired performers -- some older like Phil Judd - and many younger, making music in a way we'd not seen since the 60s.
It completely changed the way we made, wrote, recorded, consumed and released music.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to 3410,
Wait... I always thought that was a joke.
Not at all. It was negotiated by Ed Bicknell, the DS manager in 1984, and it was DDD digitally recorded specifically for that purpose when the CD was heavily mass-marketed for the first time in 1985.
He then got all grumpy and sued Phonogram a few years later for putting a 75% royalty deduction in place for 'New Technologies' i.e. CD, on the deal that he'd put together - and continuing to deduct it for years after the CD was the dominant format.
Thus the artists were obliged to pay for the technology they were promoting.
Those wacky record companies....
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Jackie Clark,
See, I love hymns and I'm a nonbeliever.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to James Butler,
Showing off your HiFi to your Oxbridge classmates maybe.
The reason of course we were plagued with Dire Straits. PolyGram did a deal with Philips and Sony to give away a free Brothers In Arms CD with every player bought for the first couple of years.
And the deal was they bought them retail - thus they charted.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to James Butler,
I guess my problem with much prog is it never seems to. Those 3 minute singles just nailed Yes.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Will de Cleene,
Worst McCartney song:
See, I like that song. It's light and a bit fluffy but doesn't offend (and the album it was lifted from is rather fine and, after a bit of a critical lashing at the time is now seen as rather groundbreaking in its own experimental way).
There are, IMO, far, far worse in the catalogue:
The Lennon=good/McCartney=bad backlash was partially a critical thing after the end of the band that kinda changed everything. He (and Yoko) were cast as villains by the music press and then, of course, he added fuel with a steady stream of pretty drecky singles.
And then John got shot and canonised.
Hell, large parts of Double Fantasy are more drecky than much of McCartney's post Beatles work.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Scott Chris,
Sorry, most of the anti-prog sentiment basically boils down to jealousy imo.
Of what? Not knowing when to stop? Why say in 20 minutes what can be said perfectly in 3 or 4?
And I say this as a person who owns and loves the boxed set of Coltrane Live at The Village Vanguard.
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Danielle,
It's not as though all prog is being dismissed out of hand as worthless, for no reason.
No, quite. And even the stuff that doesn't work for me can - Atlantic in the US did several jukebox friendly edits of Yes tracks, taking things like Close to the Edge and And You And I down from their extended album versions to around 2.59 by excising the bloat. They became killer pop tunes.
Blue Note did a similar thing with a bunch of Jazz tracks (there is a killer compilation of these) except in their case the originals were mostly happily unbloated.
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to James George,
Pat Lang is typical of the breed
This is Pat Lang's essay on the invasion of Iraq. I'm not sure it tallies with your assessment of him. You can also find it on various anti-war sites - Democratic Underground for example.
It's a fascinating and devastating attack on the US intel system and the administration from someone who, as you say, is an insider.
What we have on our hands now is a highly corrupted system of intelligence and policymaking, one twisted to serve specific group goals, ends, and beliefs held to the point of religious faith. Is this different than the situation would have been in previous administrations? Yes. The intelligence community, and by this I mean the information collection and analysis functions, not the “James Bond” covert action activities, which should properly be in other parts of the government. The intelligence community has as its assigned task the business of describing reality as best it understands it. The policy staffs and politicals in the government have the task of creating a new reality, more to their taste.
Nevertheless, it is “understood” by the government “pros” as opposed to the zealots that a certain restraint must be observed by the policy “crowd” in dealing with the intelligence folk because without objective truth, decisions are based on subjective drivel. Wars result from such “drivel.” We are in the midst of one at present
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This article, the Iraq part of which refers pretty heavily to and draws from the 2004 Flood Report, is pretty damning on the 21st Century performance of the Australian Intel community.
On Iraq:
The report found systemic weaknesses contributed to “a failure of intelligence” by ONA – which had assessed that Iraq “must have WMD” – and, to a lesser extent, DIO. These weaknesses included “a failure to rigorously challenge preconceptions” and the absence of a “consistent and rigorous culture of challenge to and engagement with intelligence reports”. Flood pointed to a lack of dialogue between agencies and said “broader analysis … was largely absent”. The inquiry found “inconsistency in assessments, unclear presentation [and] lack of precision” and concluded: “the pool of analytical skills backed by technical and scientific knowledge is shallow.”