From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V7 #550 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Wednesday, November 26 2008 Volume 07 : Number 550 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] Re: Chemical Chords ["Brian Block" ] [loud-fans] Pay some mind to the Fogeys [info@richardgagnon.com] Re: [loud-fans] Pay some mind to the Fogeys ["glenn mcdonald" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:37:46 -0800 From: "Brian Block" Subject: [loud-fans] Re: Chemical Chords > Any other bands that have been around for decades > and are now being > taken for granted I should start paying attention > to again? :) I'm glad I'm not the only endorser here of Joe Jackson's RAIN, which I think is his best set of songs ever and should finally finish redeeming him for throwing the 1919 World Series. In a very different vein, the Residents' THE BUNNY BOY is at once the hookiest album I've ever heard from them -- a minor claim, since they've mostly spent the last three decades being purposefully annoying, but it's hooky -- and as creatively strange as anything in their repertoire. To quote from Mark Prindle's review: "The musical elements include King Crimsony noise-distorted guitar, drums, synths, keyboards, vibes, violins and pianos -- and it's not always easy to tell which is which. Compounding this delightful problem is the overabundance of synthesizer tones, washes and runs, ranging from gamelan repetition/interplay to corny mid-'80s r'n'b tone to Pete Townshendy futuristic fuzz-bleeping. The song arrangements are surprisingly dynamic, with each track changing and building quite the sizable bit in its limited time on Earth. The lyrics (and often the music) are creepy, odd, crazy, off and insane -- quick little bits of madness sung (not simply narrated, for a change) by our favorite Southern-drawled vocalist. "What makes it so good? Honestly, everything. The melodies, arrangements and lyrics work together towards an intelligent and compellingly macabre end. Musically, they tear through an entire lifetime's worth of sounds and styles -- Tom Waits tribal shuffling, cheerful pop jaunts, music boxes, gamelans, industrial clanking, electronic dance beats, heavy metal, classical violin orchestration, corny jazz-pop, random guitar racket and noise, warm relaxed piano melody, cold gothy minimalism, Phillip Glass glissandos, morbid carnival music, church bells, harmony singing and much, many mores. If a song starts happily, it will end disturbingly. If it starts pretty, it will turn ugly. If it starts quietly, it will undergo a 20-fold increase in intensity. If it starts predictably, it will change style and instrumention 5-10 times before it ends. In short, The Bunny Boy may be musically dark, lyrically obtuse and at times unlistenably ugly, but one thing it's not is half-assed. The Residents and their musical guests clearly put a lot of thought and effort into making these songs as replayable as possible. "Notably disturbing subject matter includes: - - "Boxes full of Armageddon, boxes full of death" - - A five-year-old girl that only draws pictures of "fear, terror, panic and doom" - - A delirious fever dream about a ping-pong ball - - A young man who proudly sing-songs, "I'd like to be a butcher...Why doesn't everybody want to be a butcher?" - - The rabbit motif deteriorating from a cheerful "I love the rabbits and I know the rabbits love me!" to a discomforting "I told him I like bunnies, then he went away" and finally to a cold, emotionless "There's blood on the bunny." - - A great way to murder one's brother (duct taping a vacuum hose to his mouth and turning it on) - - The ultimate conclusion that "The black is behind everything."

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http://www.Care2.com Green Living, Human Rights and more - 8 million members! ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:46:14 -0500 (EST) From: info@richardgagnon.com Subject: [loud-fans] Pay some mind to the Fogeys Dave asked: > Any other bands that have been around for decades and are now being > taken for granted I should start paying attention to again? :) JR teasingly chimed in: > ABC might've even been considered if it wasn't for one > particularly painful lyric. Which song? I need to know! I quite like the new ABC. It occured to me yesterday that "16 seconds to choose" sounds like it could have been written by Justin Currie. That's a compliment. Glenn wrote: > One word for you: Rick Springfield. Yikes. If you're referring to Venus in Overdrive, I'm baffled. After four consecutive worthwhile albums, Rick gave us his horrid covers album The Day After Yesterday. I thought he'd touched bottom, but no, Venus in Overdrive is even worse. I guess I have to listen it again to really make a fair assessment, but man, the production repels me to a level that stuns me. People are who they are, sure. Springfield will never be an innovator, I accept that. But does he have to be such a cowardly follower? VIO seems to pattern itself over the worst faceless "modern rock" crap, and it's a couple years behind the times at that. After two listens, the only song I can stomach is Saint Sahara, and that may be partly because it's the last track on the album, spelling the relief of deliverance from its turgidity. Rick needs to dump Matt Bissonnette and get Tim Pierce back, pronto. First-rate right hand men are hard to find. My old-timers make good votes go to Was (not Was) and, with some reservations, to Todd Rundgren for his Arena album, which I still haven't fully digested, but I've enjoyed so far. Oh, and Sparks, but they're so alive and vital these days, I have a hard time thinking of them as old-timers. Rick ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:21:46 -0500 From: "glenn mcdonald" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Pay some mind to the Fogeys > Yikes. If you're referring to Venus in Overdrive, I'm baffled. After four > consecutive worthwhile albums, Rick gave us his horrid covers album The > Day After Yesterday. I thought he'd touched bottom, but no, Venus in > Overdrive is even worse. Well, at least I agree that the covers album was appalling. And I agree that _Venus in Overdrive_ is different in style than the string of albums before that, and I agree that those other albums were really good. So we agree on almost everything! Except I'm still enjoying ViO a lot, *including* the different production, which to me sounds mostly simpler, not imitative. So be it. glenn ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:44:27 EST From: JRT456@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Pay some mind to the Fogeys In a message dated 11/25/08 2:49:22 PM, info@richardgagnon.com writes: > Which song? I need to know! > The ABC lyric in question can be found in the song where Martin Fry sings, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink..." and you think he must be setting up something clever, but he isn't. That's all Fry has to say. The guy was never as glib as Costello, but that clunker seems particularly lame on a record that otherwise sounds like the follow-up to BEAUTY STAB. Todd Rundgren has been doing pretty well for an old-timer, too. I like the new Sparks, but it sounds like the well-timed end of a trilogy. Now I want to hear the album of good ol' Sparks songs that they ditched in favor of LIL' BEETHOVEN. ************** One site has it all. Your email accounts, your social networks, and the things you love. Try the new AOL.com today!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212962939x1200825291/aol?redir=http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp %26icid=aolcom40vanity%26ncid=emlcntaolcom00000001) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:35:10 -1000 From: "R. Kevin Doyle" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Can On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 9:15 AM, Dan Sallitt wrote: > If I can get back to Gram Parsons' importance for a moment, after listening >> to a ton of his work - which is actually very enjoyable - I realized that >> I >> wasn't getting any particular "this is different" or "this is especially >> radical" vibe out of it. I remember feeling the same way when I first >> listened to Big Star. My impressions is that both Parsons and Big Star >> were, indeed, exceptional and innovative in their time, but their >> imitators >> had made such an enormous impression on me by the time I came around to >> them >> that their work was naturally going to suffer in comparison. >> > > I wouldn't say that these people were major innovators. Parsons was > unusually willing to use undiluted country stylings in a rock context, but > it seems to me he worked well within a tradition, as did Big Star. (And > Shakespeare, and Mozart - there's no shame in working within a tradition.) - > Dan > Sorry to reply so late... This genuinely interests me. My understanding had always been that what set Gram Parsons and Big Star apart from their contemporaries was that, somehow, they did something innovative that influenced a bunch of artists. If, in fact, they weren't especially innovative, what is it about them (and, I suppose, Can) which causes folks to cite them as influences? ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V7 #550 *******************************