{"id":710,"date":"2007-07-12T21:00:09","date_gmt":"2007-07-13T01:00:09","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-10T09:54:59","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T09:54:59","slug":"more-with-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/more-with-less\/","title":{"rendered":"More With Less"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/re2RFdDbdEU?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI was listening to some of my favorite rockin&#8217; <strong>Mott the Hoople<\/strong> songs today &#8211; early period stuff like &#8220;Death May Be Your Santa Claus&#8221;, &#8220;Walkin&#8217; With a Mountain&#8221;, and &#8220;Rock &#8216;n Roll Queen&#8221;, and I got to thinking about artists who do much more than could be expected with the little bit they&#8217;ve got. No offense to <strong>Ian Hunter<\/strong> and his fine, rockin&#8217; mates, but with the exception of the Bowie-penned &#8220;All the Young Dudes&#8221;, &#8220;Roll Away the Stone&#8221;, and maybe one or two other songs, Mott the Hoople made their career on exactly two types of songs:<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n1) The bashing guitar rocker that goes, more or less, from an A chord to a D chord<br \/>\n2) The late-night, cry-in-your beer piano ballad that goes, more or less, from an A chord to a D chord<\/p>\n<p>Hunter yelps out essentially the same tune for both types of songs, and his raucous lyrics are humorous but often hard to follow. They round it out with some shit-hot Chuck Berry-based guitar, fat bass, the organ from &#8220;Like a Rolling Stone&#8221;, piano, occasional horns, and chugging drums. At the heart of almost every Mott the Hoople song are Hunter&#8217;s one melody, his boisterous approach to singing, and two chords. <em>Does any other artist do more &#8211; and I mean <strong>MORE<\/strong> (no &#8220;less is more&#8221; types allowed in this thread, like Jonathan Richman) with less?<\/em> <strong>The Replacements<\/strong> are along the same lines, but I don&#8217;t get as much &#8220;more&#8221; out of their music. I&#8217;m looking for artists with a very narrow range who managed to squeeze more out of their limited talents than most more widely talented musicians have been able to do. <em>Ah, here&#8217;s another good one:<\/em> <strong>AC\/DC<\/strong>. That&#8217;s right, the elusive simplicity of rock &#8216;n roll!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to some of my favorite rockin&#8217; Mott the Hoople songs today &#8211; early period stuff like &#8220;Death May Be Your Santa Claus&#8221;, &#8220;Walkin&#8217; With a Mountain&#8221;, and &#8220;Rock &#8216;n Roll Queen&#8221;, and I got to thinking about artists who do much more than could be expected with the little bit they&#8217;ve got. <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/more-with-less\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}