All, Im going to share a phrase with you. This is one of the most brilliant ones Ive heard in a very long time. And this one was said by Kat Gonzalez during a discussion about music. I think I was explaining my annoyance with Radiohead. Yes, I admit it. I realize that they are the second coming to millions of fans out there, Im not one of them. Trust me, I wish I was. At least I can say I know why. Mind you, this is just opinion. I am not saying they suck at all, not by a long shot. Disclaimer - None of this applies to pop music. Different sort of monster. Id been talking about a little video performance Id seen some time ago. I think it was called the king of limbs, or something like that. Some in the studio thing. Musically, it was really amazing. The synergy between those guys was stunning. Everyone was doing their part to make the song work, rather than making song all about them and their neat toys. If your part was hitting an open note every so often run through a stack of echo boxes and loopstations, thats what you did. I can understand why they are considered the Pink Floyd for an entire generation. The problem, at least for these ears, is Thom Yorkes incessant need to blah blah blah through an entire 8 minute song. Doesnt give much of an opportunity for the music to do its work. Id said in the conversation that this is (again, opinion) part of what happened to Pink Floyd post-Dark Side Of The Moon. Given, Roger is an outstanding lyricist. When there was a good balance between the instrumental passages and the spoken words, we got brilliance. This was common for this band, and you can credit Syd Barrett for that. In their very earliest days (1965-1966) a typical Floyd set was usually rock and blues covers. So this band would come out and launch into, say, Louie Louie. Youd think okay, not bad. The band would go through the first two verses and then go .............................................somewhere else. For about 15 minutes. Usually improvised with everyone playing off of each other. And then, at some given point theyd come right back to the ending of the song they started with and there you go. Syd was good at guiding passages, Rogers talent was Okay, lads, time to come back home. He would be able to feel when it was time to bring the song to its conclusion, or at least remind everyone where they were in the song. Brilliant. Kind of like when Simon Gallup of the Cure leans way over underneath Bobs mass of hair during the long instrumental intro to The Kiss as if to say verse coming up........Okay.......NOW! Taking a song like Echoes that clocks in at over 20 minutes. The thing only has three verses in it. It does its thing and then goes someplace else. It goes to quite a few someplace-elses. Its considered a big turning point in their career as that laid the foundation for Dark Side Of The Moon. By the time you get to albums like The Final Cut you couldnt get Roger to shut up if you tried. Wordy, wordy, wordy. Given, the guy has some truly brilliant things to say. Just too many of them. Once that balance was gone, there goes the dynamic. I hate it when the music of a song seems to be little more than a podium on which the singer gets to stand up and blah-blah-blah relentlessly. (rap is excluded from this). With Radiohead, Id be more drawn to them if Yorke would shut up every so often and let the music do its thing. Leave a hole, as it were. If your song is 10 minutes long, thats a lot of room for leaving a space. Why was The Cures Disintegration such an amazing collection? Bob left a lot of room in many of the songs for the music to do its thing. I mean Closedown has like one verse and it runs, what, six minutes? Lycias Dome has a single frakkin line in almost six minutes, perfect. And thats when she said the line: So youre saying, they should let the music breathe. .... Let the music breathe. WOW. And this entire dissertation could have quite easily been replaced by those four words.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 21:12:59 +0000
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