From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V10 #38 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 Tuesday, April 12 2011 Volume 10 : Number 038 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] Scott gets 4 stars in ROLLING STONE! ["Joseph M. Mallon" ] Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran [Miles Goosens ] Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran ["J.R. Taylor" Subject: [loud-fans] Scott gets 4 stars in ROLLING STONE! Scott's first book, MUSIC: WHAT HAPPENED?, got a 4-star review from Rob Sheffield, author of LOVE IS A MIXTAPE and TALKING TO GIRLS ABOUT DURAN DURAN in the current issue of Rolling Stone! It's the one with Rihanna on the cover. We're very excited! You can keep up with the book's progress here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Music-What-Happened/109052012493443 You can still get a signed, personalized copy or a Kindle copy here: http://www.loudfamily.com Thanks to everyone for your support! - -- Joe Mallon jmmallon@joescafe.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:32:32 -0700 (PDT) From: robert toren Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran > any particular REM > songs, or particular albums that they'd fit onto? no - it was just a gut reaction on first absorbing TQiD - Smiths = working-class, REM = middle-class, but something about how the mid-tempo Smiths songs are constructed/arranged, the focus on musicianship, the pained earnestness of the vocalist - I heard early REM - Can't explain better - maybe after a few more weeks of absorbing the Smiths - Question: After The Queen is Dead, what should one get next - more Smiths, or solo Morrisey? BTW - Neil Young's Arc is quite fun if you're in the mood for pure sonic explosion... And yeah - Duran Duran is hard to resist - damn good band! R ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 22:14:31 +0100 (BST) From: Richard Blatherwick Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM What he said! I agree with pretty much everything that Bradley said before. Having said that, I also agree with the vast majority of what Robert pointed out as well. When I mentioned before about not being able to hear Michael Stipe sing those songs it wasn't due to technique, range, or any other physical matter, it was entirely to do with how I saw/see him as a performer. I can't imagine him indulging such Music Hall or pantomime imagery in order to make a connection through laughter. It's interesting that Robert mentions both bands having guitarists who focused more on rhythm. One of the things I loved about both Marr and Buck was that on their early recordings there are jangly riffs aplenty and the rhythm focus came later to my mind, in The Smiths case influenced by the spaces in their live sound. One benchmark for them for me has always been the beautiful little coda to Pretty Girls Make Graves on their debut. It's the kind of simple and gorgeous little pattern that some bands would build an entire career around, whereas they reckon its good for about 15 seconds! Murmur & Reckoning had a number of similarly fabulous songs and I still love the structure and fluidity of Buck's part on Talk About the Passion. In answer to Robert's question to where next with The Smiths; as you've described There is a Light That Never Goes Out as your way in then it would be appropriate to sample Meat Is Murder as it contains their other major iconic song, How Soon Is Now? There are a lot of other highlights on that album too. Their catalogue has the beauty of all being high quality to my ears, OK I'm biased, but that includes all of the compilations of b-sides and radio sessions like Hatful of Hollow. Enjoy! Richard - --- On Mon, 11/4/11, treesprite@earthlink.net wrote: From: treesprite@earthlink.net Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM To: loud-fans@smoe.org Date: Monday, 11 April, 2011, 5:30 The point about the different communities of fans is interesting because it really illuminates how _culturally_ different the bands were. They were probably the two biggest bands of my formative musical years, but I knew very few people (if any) who would have considered themselves fans of both! I think the biggest difference, without getting into technical musical detail, is with Stipe and Morrissey. Completely different lyrical styles, vocal styles and public personas. I think it's Morrissey that makes it difficult to really draw comparisons between The Smiths and other bands becuase no one does anything remotely like that (without copying.) There are some similarities in that they're both non-musicians who were also fully in charge of the artistic presentation of the band (album art, videos, iconography, etc.), but their influences in that regard are completely different. Also, REM really captured something fundamentally American. The folk-rock influences, the folk-art -- and here you could get into the musical details of REM's harmonic palette. It sounds like the South, but a version no had really heard before. The Smiths couldn't be any more British and, again, a version of Northern England that was completely unrepresented in the way that they went about it. And their musical influences were very British, too, to the point where they would draw from an artist who might be considered a rip-off of an American artist, but that second-hand shift is something Morrissey and Marr would be attuned to. Again, these are the differences I've been drawn to when thinking of the two bands together, but now it's interesting to think of their similarities and to think of them as working towards similar ends. I've been listening to them for 20 years and my opinions are pretty fully formed, I guess, but I'm digging turning that around to see it from a new perspective. It may sound odd, too, but I really don't consider REM after Pageant or Document in thinking about this stuff much. I really like some of what they did after that, but that's around the time when they stopped sounding completely unique -- Chronic Town through Fables features a singular musical vocabulary that was really all their own, and Pageant through Green is the shift of that sound towards more conventional sounds (again, not a judgement call on artistic quality.) The Smiths just weren't around long enough to undergo that same kind of shift (although Strangeways suggests it and Morrissey's solo career seem, to me, to demonstrate his abillity to function at the same high level in more conventional musical contexts.) Jeez, I guess I do a lot of thinking about these two bands! B - -----Original Message----- >From: "R. Kevin Doyle" >Sent: Apr 10, 2011 12:19 PM >To: loud-fans@smoe.org >Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM > >I can only speak to our college radio community, but back in the 80's, >R.E.M. appealed to a different subset of fans than The Smiths. > >When parsing through the playlists of different DJ's at my college >station during that period, R.E.M. was more likely to appear with >bands like The Lucy Show, Guadalcanal Diary, Let's Active, U2, and the >various iterations of The Chameleons (U.K.), while The Smiths were >more likely to be lumped with The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, >Echo and The Bunnymen, Book of Love, etc. > >This could be purely based on lyrical content, since "Girlfriend in a >Coma" tends to be a little gloomier than, say, "Stand." > >I'm just thinking about the two bands during the period that they were >both active. From 1984 to 1987, The Smiths' released their entire >discography, while R.E.M. released "Reckoning" through "Document." >During this period, I always hear a little more of The Byrds and Pylon >when I listened to R.E.M. and a little more of The Kinks and >Television in The Smiths. Maybe a little of Wire in both, though >that's an argument for an entirely different discussion. > >That said, you've piqued my interest and you make a compelling rhythm >section case, so I shall be listening to both bands today. :D > > >On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 7:50 AM, robert toren wrote: >>>> The Smiths - do they sound a hell >>>> of a lot like REM, or am I imagining things? >> >>> From: treesprite@earthlink.net >>> I don't hear very many musical similarities at >>> all aside from the jangly guitar aspects (which are very >>> different to my ears.) >> >> Hard to describe - they seem as different as they do alike, within certain parameters - punchy power-pop, with a smooth but emotionally confrontational vocalist and "message" lyrics, and esp - to my ears - the rhythm section - non-stop bass filling in the gaps, and no-nonsense (non-showy) but impressively inventive, catchy drumming - guitar focused on rhythm rather than lead - >> not the production for sure - Morrisey is way up front - >> I can easily imagine Stipe and Morrisey trading places - and imagine if you like one band, you'd like the other - >> Being brand-new to The Smiths, was just wondering if this was conventional wisdom, or just my ears >> BTW - digging God Save The Queen a lot! There is a Light That Never Goes Out is what grabbed me and, I see on wikipedia, that I am not alone - >> >> robert ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:30:52 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: treesprite@earthlink.net Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran > Question: After The Queen is Dead, what should one get next - more Smiths, or solo Morrissey? The Smiths were very much a singles band, so I think that the Louder Than Bombs compilation is the way to go next -- a bunch of their classic songs in the best versions, and a good overall picture of all the different things they could do. It's a pretty perfect record. The Smiths have a small catalog and there are very few less-than-great moments, so you can't go wrong, but I would skip the self-titled debut until you're really sure you're a fan. It's a good album, but it's very dry and monochromatic by comparison. I don't think too many other people share my degree of enthusiasm for the Morrissey solo catalog, so you might want to hold off on that. Unless you run across a cheap copy of Vauxhall & I, which is a stone classic! > BTW - Neil Young's Arc is quite fun if you're in the mood for pure sonic explosion... I love it! That tour was just unbelievable. The live album that Arc is culled from, Weld, is one of my favorites and, I think, post-Danny Whitten Crazy Horse at their best! xo B www.byebyeblackbirds.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:58:27 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 11:30 PM, wrote: > The point about the different communities of fans is interesting because it really illuminates how _culturally_ different the bands were. They were probably the two biggest bands of my formative musical years, but I knew very few people (if any) who would have considered themselves fans of both! That sounds wrong to me, but then again, I didn't know that you couldn't like both punk and new wave until I saw VALLEY GIRL. All of the Above, Please, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:09:42 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 4:30 PM, wrote: >> Question: After The Queen is Dead, what should one get next - more Smiths, or solo Morrissey? > > The Smiths were very much a singles band, so I think that the Louder Than Bombs compilation is the way to go next -- a bunch of their classic songs in the best versions, and a good overall picture of all the different things they could do. It's a pretty perfect record. The Smiths have a small catalog and there are very few less-than-great moments, so you can't go wrong, but I would skip the self-titled debut until you're really sure you're a fan. It's a good album, but it's very dry and monochromatic by comparison. > > I don't think too many other people share my degree of enthusiasm for the Morrissey solo catalog, so you might want to hold off on that. Unless you run across a cheap copy of Vauxhall & I, which is a stone classic! This is one of the many areas where Bradley and I can agree on the generalities, but not the specifics - to me, the finest Morrissey products, including the Smiths, are VIVA HATE (the first solo album) and BONA DRAG (a LOUDER THAN BOMBS-like compilation of the singles that followed VIVA HATE). I think VAUXHALL is an unmemorable snoozefest. But Bradley and I can definitely agree on LOUDER THAN BOMBS! later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:21:53 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: treesprite@earthlink.net Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran > But Bradley and I can definitely agree on LOUDER THAN >BOMBS! When Miles and I agree on something, it is a momentous occasion that requires action -- you must now purchase Louder Than Bombs!! xo, B www.byebyeblackbirds.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 18:43:07 -0700 (PDT) From: Gil Ray Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran Cool. Kinda like the old days. I've enjoyed this discussion! Gil - --- On Mon, 4/11/11, treesprite@earthlink.net wrote: > From: treesprite@earthlink.net > Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran > To: loud-fans@smoe.org, loud-fans@smoe.org > Date: Monday, April 11, 2011, 6:21 PM > > But Bradley and I can definitely > agree on LOUDER THAN > >BOMBS! > > When Miles and I agree on something, it is a momentous > occasion that requires action -- you must now purchase > Louder Than Bombs!! > > xo, > B > > www.byebyeblackbirds.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 02:11:40 +0000 From: sholtebeck@gmail.com Subject: Re: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran On Apr 11, 2011 6:21pm, treesprite@earthlink.net wrote: > > But Bradley and I can definitely agree on LOUDER THAN BOMBS! > When Miles and I agree on something, it is a momentous occasion that > requires action -- you must now purchase Louder Than Bombs!! Hasn't that been supplanted by SOUND OF THE SMITHS? That's remastered, and sounds better than the 20 year old LTB.. - -Steve ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:35:14 -1000 From: "R. Kevin Doyle" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 2:58 PM, Miles Goosens wrote: > On Sun, Apr 10, 2011 at 11:30 PM, wrote: >> The point about the different communities of fans is interesting because it really illuminates how _culturally_ different the bands were. They were probably the two biggest bands of my formative musical years, but I knew very few people (if any) who would have considered themselves fans of both! > > That sounds wrong to me, but then again, I didn't know that you > couldn't like both punk and new wave until I saw VALLEY GIRL. I wouldn't say, in my experience, that people at my station didn't like both R.E.M. and The Smiths (not like the Celtic Frost fans and pretty much anyone else), just that they didn't necessarily always choose to play them on the same radio shows. I will admit, for myself, that while I enjoyed almost everything else in [set of all things mopey and English], I didn't "get" The Smiths until much later, and when I did it was through Johnny Marr's work with other artists. I then experienced a brief window of time where I loved Morrisey and then discovered his views about the Chinese. On the other hand, I loved R.E.M. from Murmer on and had just started my inevitable (and insufferable) descent into rejecting them because I didn't want to be accused of liking popular bands - right around the time The Smiths' broke up. Heh, so while I don't think there was a "R.E.M. v The Smiths" vibe in my world, and though I just accused the Celtic Frost fans of snobbery, I guess I should just admit that I thought I was the coolest guy in the world because I was the only one with a copy of Lolita Nation on vinyl, cassette and CD. In fact, I was the only one I knew who regularly played it on the radio. In retrospect, I should be less proud of that fact and more disappointed that I didn't make more converts. Though, I suppose, at that age if Game Theory had broke huge, I would have rejected them, too. Man, I am the worst fan ever. From R.E.M. and The Smiths to self-loathing in under 400 words. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:42:02 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: treesprite@earthlink.net Subject: Re: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran The Sound of the Smiths is a phenomenal compilation and sounds marvelous, but LTB is a true classic -- I think it's the defining release in the catalog. SOTS has album tracks and some alternates -- it's a great best-of, but doesn't serve quite the same function. B - -----Original Message----- >From: sholtebeck@gmail.com >Sent: Apr 11, 2011 7:11 PM >To: loud-fans@smoe.org >Subject: Re: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran > >On Apr 11, 2011 6:21pm, treesprite@earthlink.net wrote: >> > But Bradley and I can definitely agree on LOUDER THAN BOMBS! > >> When Miles and I agree on something, it is a momentous occasion that >> requires action -- you must now purchase Louder Than Bombs!! > > >Hasn't that been supplanted by SOUND OF THE SMITHS? That's remastered, and >sounds better than the 20 year old LTB.. > >-Steve ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:26:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Gil Ray Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM - --- On Mon, 4/11/11, R. Kevin Doyle wrote: > I guess I should just admit that I thought I was the > coolest guy in > the world because I was the only one with a copy of Lolita > Nation on > vinyl, cassette and CD. In fact, I was the only one I > knew who > regularly played it on the radio. In retrospect, I > should be less > proud of that fact and more disappointed that I didn't make > more > converts. > > Though, I suppose, at that age if Game Theory had broke > huge, I would > have rejected them, too. > > Man, I am the worst fan ever. > > From R.E.M. and The Smiths to self-loathing in under 400 > words. Awesome. Gil ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:29:56 -0400 (EDT) From: "J.R. Taylor" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran The Smiths have one of those Singles Reproductions Collections, and it's the only one of those that I've ever bought. It looks great, only costs about twice as much as the two-disc SOUNDS OF THE SMITHS, and has only about ten less tracks. Actually, that might not have been well thought out as an impulse purchase. Still, I always considered The Smiths to be a singles band, and there are some surprisingly strong rarities in the collection. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:12:27 -0600 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] The Smiths & REM & Duran Duran I will add myself to the LOUDER THAN BOMBS chorus. Though I love THE QUEEN IS DEAD (and I don't much get into the first two albums), it was LTB that really pushed me over to their side. But I also have great affection for STRANGEWAYS, HERE WE COME, even though, as some have noted, it sounds more like a Morrissey solo album. Latre. --Rog ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V10 #38 *******************************