Home
By:
Filters

The Music Thread

Speaking of gorgeousness. Ofra Haza's voice. Backing on Temple of Love (1992) by Sisters of Mercy. FFS. Just one of the best backing vocal pieces ever. That woman's voice just stops me in my tracks whenever I hear it. I never tire of that voice. I'd heard the original but the genius of adding an Ofra Haza backed track in 1992 and re-releasing cannot be denied... properly operatic

 
What I love about my distinctive and customised way of learning the guitar is the Tibetan Himalayan way revelations come along. I started again during lockdown and practice pretty much every day while watching Scandi Noir detective series with the sound turned off and just reading the subtitles.

This is officially and undoubtedly the worst possible way to learn to play guitar in the world, ever. I have one piece of advice for anyone contemplating the same. Go and get at least half a dozen lessons from a guitar teacher comprising how to hold your guitar, how to address plectrum or fingers to the strings, how to replace the strings. Simple strumming patterns. Simple fingerpicking patterns. You'll save between two and three years of wasted effort and fucking around getting frustrated.

Don't do what I am doing which is to hold the guitar awkwardly, take two years to learn to address the strings softly, string the fucking thing nine different ways from Sunday, have five different tuners and blame them for the thing being out of tune for at least a year, watch lots of youtube videos with guitar lessons on particular songs.

Don't get me wrong. I'm only doing things this way because I enjoy it. Not because I want to play for anyone only myself. The latest is wondering why the capo placement produces a buzz or thump where there should be a note. After a year or so I realised I was not placing the capo properly snug to the neck.

The revelations are lovely because I usually have to do something wrong for a year first. So sorting something as simple as the capo problem lends enormous satisfaction when you realise what is wrong. It is like learning to climb a tree by getting dropped off by helicopter at the top and then dropping yourself so that you hit every branch on the way down. You still might not have climbed the tree but you'll know that tree.
 
Lumpy Von Talbot said:
Heh. I bet the guitar on that made the Edge nervous :)
Click to expand...

Me too. The engineering was done by Chris O'Brien, a renowned professional of many years standing on the Irish scene. They used a studio down in Ringsend village (not The Factory, or the one in the nearby bus depot) but it was the same studio I did few records with Irish artists and I also dug the fact that Placebo did their first record in there. That was around the time I met this enigmatic little English bloke, Brian. He was in The Globe with his entourage after midnight most week nights (they flew back to London/Amsterdam on the weekends) and Stefan often showed up too. Took me a while to get around to Placebo, but when I did I was smitten. Everything they did was made of gold. I now know their entire back catalogue like the back of my hand, right up until the last album which the attached song (in the next comment) is taken from.

Still can't remember the name of the studio but the outboard was from heaven. First time I heard auto-pan vibrato used to massive effect was on a song from Hinterland's 'Kissing The Roof Of Heaven' called Desert Boots. The first single, upbeat, quirky, banjo riffs, a two-step country feel but the single chord AP/vibrato was seriously cool for adding subtle layers into the tracks. You can hear it here on the post-chorus bridge sections on two-step where it breaks down to a simple four on the floor kick drum. Wayne Sheehy on drums - ex Cactus World News and then on to Ronnie Wood, Bo Diddly, and heaps more.

Here, try it out:



Pity Sheehy had to try to Copeland/Katche the groove up, it's kind of pretentious even now.

But then again he's always been an arrogant obnoxious bastard.
 
A great track by a massively overlooked and forgotten Irish band: Horslips. This one's the title track from their album of the same name from 1978, right in the middle of the burgeoning punk rock movement. Their over the top costumes and use of pipes and traditional instruments kind of left them sitting at the top of the pile of glam rockers which the punks set out to destroy. I admire both factions for their efforts as I loved both of them.

Great lyrics too; they may seem rather lofty in the manner that the lyrics could be referring to the number of Irish descended Presidents America has had rather than the words of some drunk in some dive bar in Queen's or the Bronx who worked on the skyscrapers. My interpretation is very much with the drunks.

'Ah jaze, howrya? Wharraya doin' in New York? Would you ever stand us a beer?'

'Who are you, then?'

'Me? I'm the man who built America..'

 
The ominous bass on Dearg Doom. Gorgeous. They did seem a band slightly out of time to my mind but irresistible riffage... :) One of those bands if you hear them on the radio you have to wait until their song is finished before turning off the radio or getting out of the car or whatever. Curious forerunner of Moving Hearts as well with the mix of Uileann pipes in there.
 
The use of costumes along with Irish mystic history were powerful images to the average Irish punter of the day. This is the Old Grey Whistle Test version where the track is recorded live earlier in the day but the broadcast version has live vocals. So there was a challenge in the performance aspect that was a bit grittier than the Top Of The Pops appearances where everything is backing track and everyone has to mime.

I love how Stewart Copeland reacted to the miming aspect. Of all the drummers out there he'd be the toughest to mime. His playing is so spontaneous and his attention to minuscule detail on the hi-hats that mimicking it would be impossible, stupid, and bad for your credibility. So he turned his drum-set upside down and hit everything on it as off and as ridiculously as he could. A wise move. Compare that with say the antics of Charles O'Connor of Horslips? He's the guy singing the main vocal, he looks short in this video but only because he's standing next to Barry Devlin, who stands taller than I do. Johnny Fean HATED having to mime, so at one point he simply quits when the camera gets too close to him. He simply didn't give a fuck what the stage directions were, he just wasn't going to look like some clown of the Foster and Allen type with their bunches of thyme.

But still, O'Connor has that IRA looking beard over the leather bomber jacket (a what-now jacket?) and all the facial expressions are menacing and warrior like. That's just so fucking cool in its naffness. He was playing a role, you can see it in his moves all through the track, but the killer is definitely the final line of the last verse:

'I'm a boy who was born blind to pain
And, like a hawk, I'll swoop and swoop again.
I am the flash of Hawkeye in the sun.
When you see me coming you had better
Run, run, run
From Dearg Doom...'

The way he looks off camera as though he's speaking directly to someone and pointing his silver-painted hand and finger at them is pure fucking genius.

The Irish warrior, the drunken storyteller, the poitin salesman and local mystic. The poet with the bloody sword in hand. A king amongst many kings at a time when the children were angels and the mothers Mary Magdalenes. The kind of Ireland that RTE and the RCC tried to mould into remaining in the dark ages.



They definitely lit the fire that gave us Moving Hearts.

Their story is an amazing one, only an Irish band could have done what they did. A happy accident, they never intended to actually form a band and make records. Things happened around them that kind of forced their hand/relied on chance to inform their decisions. When the great book of Irish rock and roll history is written, they'll be chapter one. And the final chapter too.

Like many great bands, their legacy truly is a unique one.
 
Well done, Jambo: you read a name and found a video.

Yazz, not Yaz - or Yazin.

But still close.

Tell us, do you listen to a lot of her music?

I heard she was still big in the gay bars, so you playing it on the jukebox over on Arsefield's Gay Bar and Grill is hardly surprising.

Coal Bucket LIKED it too: do you two hold hands when dancing to 80's gay bar music often?

Yazz.

Eeeesh...

So what's the deal with Ireland and this years best music?

If this chap doesn't take the Number One spot with this gem of a track, then yizzer still living in the past listening to 'The Men Behind The Wire'...

Mik Pyro: 'Accounting' (2023-Dublin)

 
Lumpy Von Talbot said:
Feckin' hell you'd want to be sure of your confident self using a stratocaster like that :) Sounds brilliant.
Click to expand...

The trick is relatively simple: bass and drums are in 4/4 for the entire track, though the feel of deviation with the angular guitar parts shifts a little towards the end as you get used to the two cycles meeting on the first beat of the bar every twenty-odd bars. The reason for this is that Fripp's guitar part is played in 7/8, so the resolution takes a while and sounds really jarring and intense until they all land on the one together.

These complexities exist only because Fripp has this ability to sub-divide tonal parts into block like building Lego or Meccano while playing very much 'in the moment'. How he can separate the parts (given their intensity and pace) has never failed to dumbfound me, and anyone else I share it with. But I have learned a lot about Fripp's after studying him for decades. He's a very unusual character. Always in suit and tie, always deadpan serious. No obvious sense of humour about anything, not even Adrian Belew's stage antics - which fly in the face of Fripps' calm and collected reserve. Instead he's this very intense data processing 'mobile intelligence unit' as he referred to himself back in his session musician days offering riffs aplenty (take Bowie's 'Heroes' and consider that song without Fripp's hook-line?) served up in strict fashion with no pussyfooting allowed. Excuse the pun - true Fripp fans and followers get the joke.

But even Fripp wouldn't sound as accessible as he does without Belew's searing guitar work. He handles his Strat like an elongated limb of his own. He can conjur up screaming and sizzling guitar parts by treating the guitar as a living thing. No holds barred, no limits as to how to make a 'sound' other than how well it suits the part. Bearing in mind the guitar work Fripp's doing in a completely different time signature and likely some strange open-tuning methods that make the two guitars together sound like some bizarre alien music.

Being able to carry parts as complex as these is one thing - playing it in the moment and improvising on it at the same time depending on what the other players are doing is a completely different thing altogether. That kind of discipline takes decades of intense study and practice.

But on a lighter note, Fripp married Toyah Wilcox, the effervescent and multi-coloured pop queen from the 1980s. I watch their channel on youtube and every Sunday (when Robert's at home) they do a Sunday Brunch live show from their kitchen in the depths of the English countryside. Manicured gardens and rare flowers and trees Fripp collected from all over the planet. She's as bubbly as she ever was, and while Fripp is invariably intensely serious, she knows how to distract him and bring out his more human side. They're a gas together, they really are.

Her first big chart success from 1980:



Drums on that tune were by Simon Philips, a great English session drummer who's spanned several decades as a music professor.
 
Simon Philips also played on this little cracker from Pete Townsend.

Apparently, Townsend was recording new material in some studio (Abbey Road?) and was stuck in a rut for ideas. He met Simon Philips in the canteen who introduced Townsend to bassist Pino Palladino, who was recording with Paul Young - the English pop singer who covered 'Where I Lay My Hat' and had a massive hit with it. Palladino's bass-line sealed the deal. He has a very distinctive tone, style, and uses his fretless beautifully. David Gilmour also joined the impromptu line up. Enough said about the master. His work speaks for itself.

So Townsend asked them all to drop in and have a listen to his stuff. One thing led to another and shortly after, Philips hopped onto the drums and Palladino plugged in his bass. They started jamming and Gilmour pulled a riff out of nowhere that sounded pretty good. So they ran it a few times with your basic 'la-la'la' singing/lilting to fill in the blanks of the harmonies, and someone suggested the lyric 'Give Blood' - based on the TV ad campaign of the day looking to boost blood donations to the national health.

So they hammered at it a few more times and then Townsend scribbled out the lyrics on the back of his hand.

They asked the comical drunk studio doorman to come and join them, he was an old Irish bloke who drank on the job but everyone loved him and nobody ever complained. So they put him into a vocal booth after plying him with the whiskey, and off he went on a drunk Irishman's rant. His words are rather sinister. His delivery even more so.

All in all, the track is a sum of its parts, ramshackle, lucky, and constructed in the moment with zero premeditated foundation.

About two hours work, so said Townsend.

It's his biggest solo track ever - and you can hear why.

 
Seriously though: sometimes a gang of musicians can waste days and weeks trying to get things done. Other times that 'magic' just happens when it's the right people at the right time all thinking and acting as one. That's the goal, that's the pinnacle of creativity in music - when everyone feels it and is at one with it. That's the hope at the beginning of every recording session. Some hit, most miss.

But when a hitter hits and you try to repeat it, then this too is another level altogether:



EDIT: I just spotted Roddy Lorimer on trumpet - he's the guy Mike Scott had in on 'The Whole Of The Moon' for the Waterboys. Great musical arranger.
 
I see Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream/J&MC) brought his boys Lux and Wolf along to do a H&M advert for the Christmas Holiday Collection this year.

I first thought 'what a sell-out' but actually the look of sheer disdain/couldn't give a bollocks shined brighter than gold.

Nice little earner for the family - the mad looking yokes that they are:



Link: https://www.ispot.tv/ad/5z9A/h-and-m-holiday-action
 
Did some shopping yesterday and bought this unique item from an ex-player who knows I use Roto-Toms and thought I might like this one to expand the range of tones. At the moment I have the high-end set of three original Roto-Toms from the late 70s/early 80s built by in America the original company Remo (there are lots of replicas - and they're all shite) in sizes 6'',8'', and 10''. That set on a rail and stand I could sell today for €500 cash and have a customer as soon as the ad goes up. But I'm more interested in getting the 14'' and 16'' Roto-Toms to have the full orchestral range.

This one's by another company who produced a series of frame drums called 'RIMS'.

This one's a rare 20'' kick-drum. The head is mounted inside the inner frame which gives you eight tuning points (with a drum key) and the two outer frames hold the whole thing together as well as offering me a few points on the legs to attach other items.



The complete kit of RIMS looks like this:



That's the complete set, when assembled they look like so:



Pretty fucking ugly really, but also totally eccentric in taking 'a small rig' too far as a notion for performance.

I've always thought that if the player is more concerned about the weight of gear he has to carry, maybe they should be in another business.

But that's the market for you, there's always a sucker looking to outdo the next guy.

RIMS drums are very hard to find, and I have only the bass drum and the frame of a first tom-tom. Which is fine because I want to put together a rig using both RIMS and Roto-Toms. It'll be a bit weird but I like the fact that I'll have to approach playing it in a different kind of way. The mix of the two designs would be interesting to say the least.



Roto-Toms are also rather unique. You'd know them best from the drum breaks in Van Halen's 'Jump' which is a tricky little bugger to play. The frame of the drum comes in three separate pieces, and some players actually use just the frame sections only as special effect type gongs and/or bells. They're seriously loud: I was asked to create a piece for a wedding on an island up further north belonging to herself's family. When I played it, it could be heard across the lake for miles in every direction, the summer breeze carrying it long distances. The idea with a standard Roto is that it's tunes by turning it clockwise or anti-clockwise, depending on the note you're looking for: clockwise pitches up, anti-pitches down, very quickly. Like so.

A hybrid version utilizing both types of frame drums with added triggers and an outboard module of samples would open it up even further again. That's primarily what I'm trying to do, but it's no easy feat. I need to design some parts to be able to set up and position the various components in a way I can play both standing and sitting. I have a mate who runs metal workshop who can weld the parts when they're done, I need a method of mounting the triggers securely and tightly so they don't have any cross-signal or double-clicking. Not an easy feat either, the drums are designed NOT to have any body, whether metal, wood, fibreglass, or otherwise. There's nothing to attach the trigger to unfortunately, but I'm working on a solution.

Roto-Toms were originally designed from a spec by a Hollywood foley artist. They scribbled out the theory and tried a few versions before settling on the one that took the then market by storm. They're becoming very fashionable nowadays as Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters-RIP) used them on his rig and everybody wants a piece of that action now. The point of the tuning system being so fast is to give the performing artist as much range and impact as possible. You'll remember too Pink Floyd's use of octobans and roto-toms on the album 'Dark Side Of The Moon'. A very distinctive sound. Used again in a completely different fashion by Stewart Copeland of The Police:



He's using four low-pitched octobans (long tubular drums tuned to a fixed note) with a small Roto-Tom offering a fifth note that can be changed in pitch even while playing it with one hand and turning it with the other. Great fun. Hopefully early next year will see this rig completed and taken out for a dance at the same venue we played last week. Excellent room, lots of wood and brick (nice natural reverb) and glass behind the stage (great reflective surface) to really bring out the tones.

I can only really guess what the finished product will look/sound/record like, but it won't be anything dull or familiar, that's for sure.
 
Always been fascinated by the Surfaris record 'Wipeout', which is a lovely piece of work where the drums and surfer guitar alternate the lead instrument on the record. It was a 'B' side to the 'A' side of a recording of 'Surfer Joe' and just keeps resurfacing every decade in some film soundtrack or other. Apparently it was only recorded in 1963 when the Surfaris had finished the 'A' side and the recording studio asked them what was going to be the 'B' side for the single release.

The opening sound is a surf board being broken and it is the band's manager that is recorded as saying 'Wipe out' at the start. The drums are kind of fascinating because they wouldn't have had a wide array of drum arrangements available to them. Apparently the drummer Ron Wilson just used breaks from a Scottish marching band style that he liked.

Four different drummers' take on it ...



The original...



The Ventures covered it and used two drum kits which doesn't really work for me as the style is changed and I don't think the arrangement works. Also the guitar isn't as piercing but that could be the difference between a Les Paul guitar and a Fender or some other guitar in the 70s I reckon...

www.youtube.com

The Ventures - Wipe Out

Wipe Out Guest / Max Weinberg
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
It's hard to knock Max Weinberg. Deadly. I mean, holding down the drum-seat for Bruce for how many decades? He's the Boss, but Max is the battery under the chassis holding it all up. His chops are outstanding, his presentation is immaculate, and his back-beat as distinctive as Charlie Watts was/is. Having the Max Weinberg Orchestra heading up the theme of the Conan O'Brien Show as well as the incidentals and backing for any guests was the perfect perch for Max to sit on while Bruce was off the circuit re-imagining the dream. And when Bruce was ready, Max was straight back into the fold.

Every drummer in The States dreams of that chair. It's the highest perch there is for any player, nailing down the Boss's tracks for the masses.

But Bruce can be a bit of a slave-driver, as you can hear in the intro of this one.

If that were me, I'd have fucked a well-aimed stick at the back of his head:



Great track, I love the album version the most but this is kind of cool in that Bruce was facing an audience for the first time after a few years off the circuits. As you can see, he blew the tempo and had to try to settle into a slightly slower version as a result of ignoring Max's click-intro.
 
Springsteen is such a fascinating character and writer. The stadium rocker stuff is just American muscle-car translated to music and the drumming and bass is just straight out of a Detroit V8 engine... I still think that Nebraska is such a weird album and the other side of the American coin, the long lonely roads and stripped back ballad style songs, a paen to the mid-west emptiness. It is as far away from the Detroit and busy city V8 overpower of the work either side of it.

The drums and bass are just like those massively thumping pistons on the stadium stuff though. Still think I prefer the Nebraska strip-back though, just marginally... overall the music has the schizophrenic extroverted thump of an adrenaline V8 and then there is the quiet of the horizon to horizon emptiness in Nebraska that keeps coming to mind with Bruce. I think he nails both sides.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom