Members Stackabones Posted May 22, 2009 Members Share Posted May 22, 2009 What has influenced you in the past ... or since the last FIT? * Wall of Voodoo's Mexican Radio is such a bizarre pop tune. To me, it encapsulates the oddness of the 80s New Wave scene with its take on border radio stations filtered through Gen X sensibilities (to see another generation's take on that check out ZZ Top's Heard It On The X). I won't list the instrumentation, but it is an interesting assortment. The snippets of broadcasts from Mexican radio stations is like, oh my god, musique concr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Etienne Rambert Posted May 22, 2009 Members Share Posted May 22, 2009 One of 333Maxwell's songs made me think of this one. This is one Hell of a piece of songwriting. Lyrics, orchestration, all of it. I remember the first time I heard it, I thought, "I hope I write a song that good some day,". Never did. But I remember the night I first heard it very clearly. 6UTRMP1Uk1k A couple of Canadian journalists wrote this song while they were on assignment in Memphis. Wow! They were inspired. And I've seen that sun settin' like molasses in the sky too. Makes me homesick to think about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Okieslims Posted May 22, 2009 Members Share Posted May 22, 2009 [YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE] The way Maynard goes from calm and repressed to unleashed and raging has always been inspirational to me. I have tried to model a few songs after this band by toying with opposites.. calm then raging.. I actually was inspired to toy with those ideas by Henry Rollins before Tool, but Tool seems to not only display calmness but also has a taste of anger behind the calmness.. I love it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Sad Navigator Posted May 22, 2009 Members Share Posted May 22, 2009 I've been getting back in touch with my glam rock love. I re-watched Velvet Goldmine this week and have been gorging on Bowie and T. Rex and whatnot since. [YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted May 22, 2009 Moderators Share Posted May 22, 2009 The tightly wound, cleverly crafted late 70's pop/rock. Some hipper than others. But the best stuff shared a common trait... it was unapologetic in its celebration of the hook. This would set the stage for the New Wave to come... [YOUTUBE]kRVwcPTnug8[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]AI2k6aseNqg[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]JFwcmU6Ql0A[/YOUTUBE] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tspit74 Posted May 22, 2009 Members Share Posted May 22, 2009 Lee, Thanks for that Sniff'n the Tears vid. I never knew who did that song or what it was called. I think I'll pick up the vinyl of it tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 22, 2009 Members Share Posted May 22, 2009 Big Gram Parsons (and spiritual descendants) week for me. It kind of started with me driving out of Las Vegas (on family business, I was only there for a couple hours) last Friday night just before sunset... I'd popped in a Flying Burrito Brothers comp (Hot Burritos! 1969-1972 -- you got to watch out because that was, for most folks, their golden era and after Gram left, well, things were not the same. Big time.) One of the first tracks was "Ooh, Las Vegas," and not long after, "Sin City" -- and then a whole lot of other great songs maybe not as closely tied to that city. And the sun was going down behind the mountains to the west, the Yucca and Joshua trees ghostly in the twighlight, the sky's glow fading... and me driving into the gathering darkness thinking about Gram and his love for the Western desert (for a second I thought about making a detour to Joshua Tree National Monument where a couple of Gram's old pals had tried to ritually cremate his mortal remains near his favorite camping spot, which they'd stolen from the funeral home -- but I had my mom's newly adopted 12 year old kitty in a carrier in the back seat so I scotched that idea right away -- still, the kitty was a good travelling companion... she complained a little going across the mountains as we'd climb and drop thousands of feet every few minutes -- my own ears were popping like Jiffy Pop so I could imagine that she must have been pretty vexed by the, to her, unexplainable and unfamiliar phenom)... After that I put on Gram's solo stuff with Emmylou Harris. Great, great stuff. This live performance vid is super lo fi but... well, Gram ain't coming back for another pass at it... any time soon.6koAGZYyL_w And after that, I followed on with Gram's spiritual descendants, the Jayhawks. A fine, fine band with some of the most yearning, bittersweet vocal blends in alt country/roots/whatever... GUVVGQjWFg4 I just stumbled across this and thought it was worth adding: xAjOfDm-_mw Of course, that was back when people knew how to play on time and in tune without having to lip sync or run it through a box... 1995... it seems so long ago. An innocent time that will never come again... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 22, 2009 Members Share Posted May 22, 2009 WARNING: watch out for the incredibly overmodulated 'distorto-swoosh' sonic logo thing on the video in the quote below it is a near-full mod ear shredder... I think that Sniff 'n' the Tears drummer just might be 'lip-syncing' his drum part. I had to look up the word winsome earlier to make sure I was about to use it correctly (or rather correctly enough, I knew I was in the ballpark of unchallengeability -- but sometimes that's not enough). And I would have to say that Sniff 'n' the Tears are the poster boys for winsomeness... I thought for a second that they answered the much pondered but never asked aloud question, What ever became of Al Stewart? The way my ear identifies vocal timbres, the singer* is nearly a VDR for Stewart. (*Paul Roberts, I guess -- although there's this guy who looks like a refugee from the Mod Squad in a leather jacket dancing around, popping his fingers who seems oddly out of place, maybe this is a "guitar player song" that accidentally took off and Mr Mod Squad is Roberts?) I have to say as an aside that I have a real soft spot for the Year of the Cat album, which managed to sound winsome and world weary, all at once. Tricky stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 22, 2009 Members Share Posted May 22, 2009 Since I made what might have sounded like a casually dismissive comment about Al Stewart's career (before going on to talk about my Year of Cat soft spot), I thought it was only fair to quote this from All Music Guide: Glasgow-born Al Stewart has been an amazingly prolific and successful musician across 40 years and counting (as of 2009), working in a dizzying array of stylistic modes and musical genres -- in other words, he's had a real career, and has done it without concerning himself too much about trends and the public taste. I guess that told me. I feel... small... 5Y6hVQn-e5Y Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Etienne Rambert Posted May 23, 2009 Members Share Posted May 23, 2009 Nice to go back to those Country-Rock days B2B. Are Gram Parsons' remains still interred in that cemetary on Airline Highway in Metairie? Why? What a bizarre story. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted May 23, 2009 Members Share Posted May 23, 2009 A bizarre story, indeed. It's been a while since I read that account (I believe that's the same one, it looks very familiar) but it really filled in a lot of the fairly bizarre details which I had heard strictly through word of mouth back in the day. I must admit that I'm not one much to keep track of mortal remains, so I'm not sure where Gram's are. But it's certainly not hard at all driving across the southern Cali desert between LA and Nevada to imagine that some part of his essence is there... I was hoping I could contact him and get him to give Death Valley Scotty a message... ___________ I often get a little twinge when I hear Gram sing "God's Own Singer" -- I guess others must, too. Oh and -- big time -- when I hear him sing "Sing Me Back Home." And then there is "Hickory Wind" -- and that one kills me every time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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