Legendary Bands Lacking Particularly Influential Musicians

 Posted by
Nov 022012
 

WANTED: Bassist with good hair. No poseurs!

Some nerdboy with a thing for Pete Quaife‘s hairdo is bound to disagree, but driving into work this morning it occurred to me that The Kinks achieved a legendary body of work without having any particularly influential musician. Any musician with an ounce of taste will rave about songwriting and the songs, but beside Dave Davies‘ freakout solos on a couple of early singles, who ever thinks of any member of that band in a “Musicians’ Musician” type of way? Who’s ever posted an add seeking a musician with a description of the musical style of a member of The Kinks?

Sure,  a case can be made for the influence of Ray Davies‘ fey vocal delivery, but has Ray ever made a “Top 100 Vocalists in Rock” list? Highly doubtful.

In no way do I mean to imply that there’s anything wrong with this thought, mind you, but I was wondering if any other legendary bands were composed of musicians who didn’t particularly influence future generations of musicians, you know, real musicians who practice, buy special gear, and shit like that.

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MLB Walk-Up Songs or Hunter Pence Hearts Someone!

 Posted by
Nov 022012
 

Baseball season is over and that sux. For me anyhoo…  Ran across this today related to MLB walk-up tunes and thought maybe I could keep the mojo going for another day. We’ve discussed walk-up tunes before. Here are just a few examples:

Inappropriate Walk-up Music?

NLDS Walk-up Music: Rockies Try to Stave Off Last Dance of 2009

Talkin’ Baseball Walk-Up Music

This one seems worthy of note. So check out what The SF Giants‘ resident-oddball (and I mean that in a mostly good way) is into: 

CLICK ME. DARE YA.

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I Can Name That Tune in…

 Posted by
Nov 022012
 

Mr. Royale is painting again. He usually listens to music in his studio, which is through the garage and around a corner. I can often hear tidbits of songs coming from his man cave; the music is often “Dashiki Jazz” or big atmospheric instrumental music. Tonight, all I could hear was a little electronic noise that kept repeating. That one repeated sound (which was actually two electronic bleeps) made the song pretty easy to identify, even at distance.

You could call this the “Concert Sound System Phenomenon”: You know, when you are waiting for show to begin and even through the ambient noise, you are able to make out a few notes of the song being played over the venue’s PA.

Remember that old standard, “I Can Name That Song in ____ Notes”? Are there other songs that you can identify just by the repetition of one or two notes?

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So Much Is Right About This Old Photo of David Byrne I Feel Compelled to Share it With You

 Posted by
Nov 022012
 

How many positive things can you cite in this photograph? (Click photo for original source of photograph.)

Sometimes I stumble across a photograph of a musician that somehow suggests many things “right” about the state of the featured musician or musicians. This is one such photo. How often do we get to see David Byrne with his guard down? How often to we get to see his studious side, as he carefully tunes his cool 12-string Gibson guitar, rather than the outcome of his studies? The world needs more photos of David Byrne like this—and for the love of god, not another one of his solo albums!

Reports on either of his books are welcome. Has anyone read them yet?

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Stupid Things That Bug Me, Part 433: The Introduction of Previously Unheard Incidental Vocal Sounds in Remastered, Reissued Recordings

 Posted by
Nov 012012
 

Beware of previously unheard incidental vocal sounds!

I believe my intense sense of moral outrage over the Velvet Underground box set reinsertion of the “heavenly wine and roses” middle eight of “Sweet Jane” and, even worse, the insertion of 4 measures of out-of-context room mic-recorded rhythm guitar preceding kick-ass guitar lick that sets up the coda of “Rock ‘n Roll” is on the record.

[Deep breath.]

Sorry, I’m getting myself worked up just thinking about this again.

Today, I want to complain about related instances of archivists introducing previously unheard incidental vocal sounds in remastered, reissued recordings. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. About 12 to 15 years ago I jumped on an import CD of James Blood Ulmer‘s Are You Glad to Be in America album. This was at a time when it seemed right to buy some of my favorite vinyl albums on the still-somewhat newfangled CD format. I’m sorry I bought it.

It was bad enough that they scrapped the excellent painting from the original album cover and that the album was sequenced differently than my version; in rare cases I’m a big enough man to realize that cover art and sequencing can vary from one country to another. Surely the Japanese had good reason for their sequencing. What really bugged me, though, was hearing some additional guttural sounds from Ulmer during a solo section. Those sounds did not appear on the vinyl release. Someone had the good sense to mix them out. Who’s the asshole who thought they added something to this Japanese CD version? Restoration projects can attempt to improve the original luster to a work, but they shouldn’t uncover purposely discarded bits. Continue reading »

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