Goodnessgraciousme! THIS put a swagger in my step:
…or are you a hater?
Apr 022014
Apr 012014
Seriously, is there anything at all wrong with this video? Or is it utterly perfect? For my money, it’s flawless — from the drummer’s flaming sticks to the careful attention to costuming detail. (Notice that the only Gap member band without horizontal tinsel bands on his silver cowboy leggings is the ever-so-slightly portly keyboard player, who’s been fitted with vertical tinsel piping for a slimming effect. These things matter!)
Come on, admit it: this video can’t be beaten. It’s truly excellent.
HVB
Apr 012014
Is it just me, or would you approve of legislation limiting the height of lead singers to no taller than 6′ 3″? As much of a heightist (in the pro-tall sense) as I tend to be when it comes to sports and many other walks of life, really tall singers never look cool to me. They actually make me uncomfortable and distract me from digging their music. Trust me, it’s not a matter of them having an unfair advantage, you know, with the spotlight and the glory that already comes with being a lead singer.
Surely I’m missing some super-cool 6′ 5″ singer, but the first guys who come to mind are Arcade Fire’s Win Butler (6′ 4½”?); Midnight Oil’s stark-raving mad, bald Peace Warrior Peter Garrett (6′ 4″); and Queens of the Stone Age’s stoner-jock lead man Josh Homme (6′ 4″). I’ll take these big men on my basketball team. I’ll take my chances with them banging away on drums (lord knows I love long, lanky drummers), but I don’t want to see them hunched over a mic stand, not even a cool, old-school straight stand.
Apr 012014
(NOTE TO JIMMY PAGE: Don’t think we put the Mickey Mouse ears on Aleister Crowley!)
It’s not often we get a message through The Back Office from someone who may not even be registered as a Rock Town Hall participant suggesting a thread idea, but recently we received such a suggestion from such a lurker! I won’t give this person’s name, but I encourage him to register and claim credit for this cool story. Dig:
Mar 312014
The All-Star Jam is the place to do your thing! Tell us what’s on your mind this week?
Mar 312014
[MODERATOR’S NOTE: Rather than simply add a link to the originally published piece and make a few comments directing readers of Rock Town Hall to the content that follows and possible discussion that may flow from an examination of the original piece, I believe the legendary “Original Links Linkerson” has merely copied and pasted somebody else’s work into “his” own thread. This is not really cool in copyright terms {hence my prelude}, but neither is the “author” of this post..cool, that is. That’s cool with us. That said, I’m glad this founding RTH member is finally making his presence felt here and contributing to discussions. Read the following piece that has been published elsewhere by some other author and see if we don’t rally around some key points for discussion!]
A dangerous or ingenious musical precedent?
The Wu-Tang Clan are releasing just one copy of their latest “secret” album in the hope of sparking a shift in the way music is funded and distributed.
The general premise is that the art of music has been devalued by cheap modern distribution techniques and it makes sense to revive the…
“400 year old Renaissance-style approach to music, offering it as a commissioned commodity and allowing it to take a similar trajectory from creation to exhibition to sale, as any other contemporary art piece, we hope to inspire and intensify urgent debates about the future of music…”
The Wu Tang Clan appear to be miffed, basically, that music isn’t being treated the same way high value art is.
Felix Salmon has, however, argued compellingly against that point.
In Salmon’s mind the difference between music and art is actually pretty marginal. Both industries “have skewed themselves towards a winner-takes-all model where a very small number of people are making gobsmacking amounts of money, while everybody else struggles.”
He also argues that music by nature is an inherently social experience, and that creating something for the consumption of just one person defeats the whole point of music.
To be fair to the Wu-Tang Clan, it doesn’t seem that consumption by just one person is really what they are aiming for. What they seem to be aiming for is a) marketing buzz and b) the creation of a rentable asset that allows them to presell their album, and receive its value up front rather than over the course of years in copyright revenue.
Mar 312014
Last week Townsman patrock passed along the following piece on 10 Total Tyrants from the History of Rock ‘n Roll. The #1 tyrant is a good leftfield choice. Check it out! You’ll also see a photo of a tyrant that would be deemed too scary to show in even the grossest slasher film.
What Total Rock Tyrant do you feel is missing from this list? What’s your favorite (or least favorite) tale of rock tyranny? Have you ever performed or been victim of an act of rock tyranny?
Aesthetically speaking, what’s your stance on the value of tyranny in rock? This probably won’t shock longtime readers, but I think it has its place.
