Slightly O/T - Forbidden material

[Vito Corleone]

 

If this is the case, why did you pick music to be your vehicle? Why not be a dancer, actor, wrestler, or preacher?

 

 

Because I like playing music and like connecting to the audience through my performance of music. Which SONG I'm playing? It's important only to the degree it helps with the performance but it isn't THE performance itself. It isn't even usually the most important part of the performance. Certain songs used in certain contexts certainly help to deliver the performance, but it shouldn't DEFINE it.

 

A good actor is going to be a good actor almost regardless of the material. Sure, performing Shakespeare may make it easier for an actor to complete a particular connection to an audience because the play is what it is and the words are so well-written. But any actor who is defined as good because he refuses to do anything less than Shakespeare? That's not the definition of a good actor, IMO. In fact, I would probably use that to help define that particular actor's weaknesses.

[3shiftgtr]

 

"Communicating humanity"? I dunno that that is necessary component of a good performance.

 

 

Absolutely the most important part; It is THE THING that makes people react to the song, whether the musician feels it or not. The song communicates some degree of humanity that the listener reacts to and connects to. The more connected the musician is to that element of the music, the more powerful the performance.

[Vito Corleone]

 

Absolutely the most important part; It is THE THING that makes people react to the song, whether the musician feels it or not. The song communicates some degree of humanity that the listener reacts to and connects to. The more connected the musician is to that element of the music, the more powerful the performance.

 

 

Depends on the intent of the performance. Or the definition of "humanity" I suppose. Some great speed metal band kicks into a great riff and a room full of their fans start banging their heads---a great performance to be sure, but is it "humanity" that is being communicated?

 

Not the word I would choose, but YMMV.

[Electric Catfish]

 

it's all perspective and semantics - that's how me and my friends saw it, so by rule of the 80's, that was the reality of it. Everyone saw it different, but my point stands that nobody in the mid-80's dared to play disco or blondie, lol.

 

 

They did, somewhat ironically, throw disco beats into a couple of their songs, but they came out of the CBGB's punk scene. It's not that they "called themselves New Wave." They were one of the bands that defined New Wave, to start with. They definitely weren't a disco band, though. "Heart of Glass" didn't make them a disco group any more than "The Tide is High" made them a reggae band.

[3shiftgtr]

 

Depends on the intent of the performance. Or the definition of "humanity" I suppose. Not the word I would choose, but YMMV.

 

 

True....but i can't think of a better word. Using that word gets into some weird territory regarding the 'magical' aspects of music and the hows and whys of what makes people respond.

[tlbonehead]

They did, somewhat ironically, throw disco beats into a couple of their songs, but they came out of the CBGB's punk scene. It's not that they "called themselves New Wave." They were one of the bands that defined New Wave, to start with. They definitely weren't a disco band, though. "Heart of Glass" didn't make them a disco group any more than "The Tide is High" made them a reggae band.

kinda like some people telling us they liked that disco song we played. (referring to THANK YOU-Sly/Family Stone!)

[Kramerguy]

 

They did, somewhat ironically, throw disco beats into a couple of their songs, but they came out of the CBGB's punk scene. It's not that they "called themselves New Wave." They were one of the bands that defined New Wave, to start with. They definitely weren't a disco band, though. "Heart of Glass" didn't make them a disco group any more than "The Tide is High" made them a reggae band.

 

 

....and of course there are exceptions to every rule in the world. I don't see how the exceptions changed the general rule.

[tlbonehead]

. I think Beck and The Lips have had their moments, but I totally know what you're talking about- there was really a disheartening explosion of (popular) terrible music. (I won't even mention the "Nu Metal" era...) Don't get me going on POTUS, I'll give myself a stroke. But then I hate "Moves Like Jagger" with a passion. You know what, I hate everything. Get off my lawn.

there were a lot of killer albums that came out in the last half of the 90s.

[Perfessor]

Wanna see the dance floor fill up? Play "Play That Funky Music Whiteboy". They won't leave until you start another metal number.

[Consume]

 

while all of you were teasing your hair and pulling on the spandex in the 80's, bowing down at the feet of Coverdale/Dickinson/Blackie Lawless/Vince Neil/whomever, I was laughing at you/that music, listening to bands like The Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, Descendents, Replacements, Suicidal Tendencies (first album), etc.

 

 

So you preferred music performed by predominantly talentless hacks, to people who could actually play.

The only band in your preferred list that could actually play were Bad Brains, and they were Black Hebrews who became racists and turned on many of their former friends who were White.

 

Punk: It's a nice way to say Prison Bitch!

[kmart]

So you preferred music performed by predominantly talentless hacks, to people who could actually play. The only band in your preferred list that could actually play were Bad Brains, and they were Black Hebrews who became racists and turned on many of their former friends who were White. Punk: It's a nice way to say Prison Bitch!

 

 

Well that's ONE way to describe things...

 

ANOTHER way to describe it is that I preferred music with substance over music that was purely about style.

 

Yet another way to describe it is to say I preferred bands who were concerend with playing their instruments over bands that were concerned with what color eye shadow matched with their tights.

 

Still another way to describe it is to say that I preferred music that understood you didn't need a million notes to make a statement over music that hadn't clue one about what it was actually trying to communicate (Yep, Vai is a masterful guitar player. He really shows an advanced understanding of high art via the technique he employs in the intro of DLR's "Yankee Rose"...

(Of course, he DID show he had an intellectually artistic side on PIL's ALBUM/CASSETTE/CD).

 

There are a million other ways to describe it, but thanks for sharing your utterly uninformed myopic view on matters weeks after I posted.

 

Glad to see those on the side of spewing complete and total idiocy continuing their habits in the New Year!

 

Feel like a big man for telling me how it is?

Good.

[ToneGrail]

 

IF one is to make that distinction of Cobain...well then I'll be the first one to throw the party for it: while all of you were teasing your hair and pulling on the spandex in the 80's, bowing down at the feet of Coverdale/Dickinson/Blackie Lawless/Vince Neil/whomever, I was laughing at you/that music, listening to bands like The Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, Descendents, Replacements, Suicidal Tendencies (first album), etc. Time has allowed me to view some of that stuff you liked and that I used to think of as hair metal or hard rock garbage through a more open set of eyes, but I'd have no problem if most of it never existed in the first place... In my opinion, what Cobain did was nothing more than following in the footsteps of his predecessors, playing music as a means of expressing himself, not as a way to try and trump the next guy's gratuitous excesses. Of course, by the point Cobain nixed himself, what I listened to in the 80's was called 'alternative', and had become it's own sort of fashion. In this case, it was better the years before everybody glommed onto it.

 

 

+1. I couldn't have said it better.

[Nijyo]

I liked 80s pop metal because I found it more interesting to observe on both a visual and musical level than what came after with Nirvana than the alternative/Neo-Folk era performances. Of course, that later era built itself on having "no image" which, itself, became an affected image (not to mention the odd vocal affection that a lot of singers "adopted" from Eddie Vedder after Pearl Jam got big).

 

I actually like some of those early-90s transition bands, though. AiC, STP, etc. Early on my friends definitely considered them "metal" until "grunge" got popular as a word, but if you listen to them, the tendency of "grunge" to dumb down instrumentation really wasn't present.

 

Still love that 80s pop-metal / hair rock sound, though. Nothing gets me going more than that.

[Yer Blues]

Wan't Robert Trujillo in Suicidal Tendencies? I'm not really up on that stuff, but he's a pretty good bassists as far as what I have heard from his other work that I have heard. He can definitely play.

[kmart]

 

Wan't Robert Trujillo in Suicidal Tendencies?

 

 

Yes, but not the 'OG' lineup, which was more of a skate-punk band. IIRC, he joined in the very late 80's, by which point the band was some sort of speed-metal/thrash/funk/punk hybrid (IMO. I only listen(ed) to the first ST album back then anyway).

[Nijyo]

 

Yes, but not the 'OG' lineup, which was more of a skate-punk band. IIRC, he joined in the very late 80's, by which point the band was some sort of speed-metal/thrash/funk/punk hybrid (IMO. I only listen(ed) to the first ST album back then anyway).

 

 

Yeah but wasn't the late 80s / early 90s when the band really started to click with a larger audience?

 

It's sorta like Maiden. There's folks who really only like when Paul was singing, because they liked the less refined vocals, but it was when Bruce came into the picture that everything really clicked together for them in terms of a wider audience.

[kmart]

 

Yeah but wasn't the late 80s / early 90s when the band really started to click with a larger audience? It's sorta like Maiden. There's folks who really only like when Paul was singing, because they liked the less refined vocals, but it was when Bruce came into the picture that everything really clicked together for them in terms of a wider audience.

 

 

I don't know that Suicidal ever really clicked with what could be described as a 'larger' audience, unless we're talking about the relatively minor difference between playing 500-1500 cap gigs and 2000-3000 cap ones, but sure.

That 'rise in popularity' so to speak, also aligns with the desire of new members (coming into the band in the mid- 80's) had in pushing the band's sound into more thrash territory, as well as a rise in popularity of thrash in general, so it makes perfect sense timeline-wise. If you like thrash, that is.

 

I'll pass, and hold onto my fond memories of catching them Thanksgiving '85, the first time I ever went to a show at the world famous Cabaret Metro in Chicago, still touring the hell out of that first album.

[bish0p34]

sorry I am a huge maiden fan boy so I can't fathom anyone calling Maiden hair metal. or helloween or savatage... But I see where you are coming from and people just lump all of it together... hell, one of our former guitar players called Iron Maiden a watered down Judas priest... I did recently turn our bassist on to maiden and Saturday night he told me he watched one of their concerts on Vh1 Classic and was blown away by the musicianship that he never knew they had. UP THE IRONS!

 

+1000

[troyguitar]

Disco and New Wave were both certainly short-lived "fashion" genres, but while I guess maybe the metal-heads lumped both genres together, that only highlights the small-mindedness and musical immaturity of the metal-heads. IMO.

 

This is a pretty funny statement considering that everyone else seems to lump every "metal" genre together. If Queensryche is the same genre as Poison, then Disco and New Wave are certainly the same.

 

I'd argue that most anyone who only likes music that is/was on popular radio stations is small-minded or musically immature - i.e. the vast majority of people