Friday Influences Thread 10.16.09

What has influenced you in the past ... or since the last FIT?

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I was a teenage Yes freak. There was a time when I could play Mood For A Day note-for-note, and I used to take cassette copies of Heart of the Sunrise to my guitar teacher so that he could tab them out for me. I learned a lot about music listening to Yes, and I learned a lot about guitar trying to cop Steve Howe's licks.

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I love these threads. I usually check at work, and YouTube is blocked, so I'm not exposed to a lot of other people's influences, but I'm driven every week to find something to contribute, rather than listening to the same old stuff week after week. This week, I had no luck--I tried Taj Mahal and They Might Be Giants, both to no avail, but at least I'm listening to new music.

Yes!! It's Friday! So early in the week I came home from work tired and beat. No one was around and turned on Palladia Music Channel. They do mostly live concerts and there happens to be a lot of good live festivals in England recently... so I've been seeing Ilse of Wight and others.

Boy, do a lot of modern bands suck live. Gnarls Barley, I like them, they absolutely suck live. They can't play and surprisingly can't sing in tune live. Lot's of showmanship though. Katy Perry, who against common logic, I admire for her clever media manipulation through her songs, yadda yadda... she sucks. Can't pull it off. Sucks. Most do I'm finding.

Then this band, apparently popular in the UK, called The Feeling come out. OK... pretty poppy. Hey I love over-the-top pop. OK, but they're not going to be able to pull this off...

WOW. 2 guitars, a Wurly elec piano, everybody sings. They're loud and sound like 10cc, Supertramp and Queen blended in a classic pop/rock cocktail. The singer is absolutely hitting it... the harmonies are... WOW. Live?!??!!? They're funny and fun. And clever. And they're having fun. All in stride. All live.

If I'd heard their recordings first, I'd have assumed they were competent in the studio, just like everybody else. But these guys are great. GREAT! Now... when you hear a song below, you'll think you know where it's going. Hang in there... this is really good pop music. These songs have more hooks than you might expect at first. Note the nice key changes. Clever, cheeky bastards! These recordings are slick. Don't let it get in the way of your enjoyment of some good old fashioned UK rockish pop. I'm in.

(Embedding Disabled, y'all know to just click the link, right?)

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There are so many cool little themes in that one piece. I've always dug it. Nice live take...

Lee, I can't get to youtube at work, but from the description, you might like Dr. Dog out of Philadelphia.

Never heard of them but you've got me interested. I'll see if I can dig some up...

Here we go:

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This is a lot hipper than The Feeling. I like it. The Feeling are sort of the "let's do the opposite of what's hip right now" mentality. Dr. Dog sound great but I suspect these guys (Dr. Dog) will get a lot more indie cred than The Feeling ever will. Dr. Dog and their lo-fi aesthetic. The Feeling and their "can't be slick enough and how about another key change and chorus of la la las" mentality.

Dr. Dog.. Good stuff.

Thanks for turning me onto these guys...love pop!!

Funny you should mention her, Lee - I agree Katy Perry kind of sucks with her band, but I will say she is much better solo acoustic.

Here's a few clips of her playing here at my work (KISSFM in Austin). This was long before anyone knew who she was - I was one of about 8 people in the audience. She was very nice.

I was listening to her record while mowing the lawn the other day (enjoying it), and thinking it was nice to have someone succeeding in modern pop who actually gives a crap about songwriting.

I do wish she was better live with the band, though. Maybe she'd win more musicians over.

Brian V.

Yes! You're one of the few muso types that agree with me though. I love her album. Before all the You're So Gay, Kissed a Girl hoopla. I dug in to that album and saw exactly what you do. A good songwriter. Yeah, I'm aware of her solo acoustic stuff. She's so being pulled in the direction of pop starlet right now, it's apparently distracting her form actually performing the music well.

EXCELLENT point. I think she gets caught up in putting on the show and lets the vocals kind of suffer - I mean, she has chops, but a really sort of idiosyncratic singing style that ends up being kind of all over the place in "louder" circumstances.

I just really hope she continues to care about the songwriting and allows the pop-tart crap to kind of fall off to the side. I think she's got a good head on her shoulders, so I think she can do it. From reading and seeing interviews, it's pretty clear she's a long-term thinker in terms of what she wants to accomplish as an artist and performer.

And I will say from the moment they played "I Kissed A Girl" over the PA at the end of this acoustic performance, I knew it was going to be huge. The shocking part was how different it was from the performance she had just given.

That sort of "diversity" is always appealing to me, because I'm one of the weirdos who really likes when artists aren't afraid to do a lot of different things. I'm never as much a fan of artists/bands you can easily put in a box and say, "this is how they sound".

I remember she teased me after the show for smiling - she said I had a really nice smile and it was distracting her. I couldn't help myself, though, I was really enjoying her performance, and not just because she's pretty.

Brian V.

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This guy's been a constant influence on me. One of the most underrated musicians of our time, without a doubt. Great voice, great wit, great affinity for songwriting. He did a portion of the soundtrack for that Dewey Cox movie including the last song Dewey plays at the end of his career. Ridiculously talented.

Just started listening to these guys very recently and I can't stop. I have a huge respect for whoever produces their music. Every instrument seems to reside in its own open space and I'm a complete sucker for prominent drum tracks. Love their melodies.

Cyriak is mainly an animator. He's gained some notoriety and got some advertising work with his LSD-inspired, existential short films and looping GIFs. He did create the music that goes along with this video, though. It's mixed pretty horribly, but I can't get this song out of my head. The lo-fi sounds combined with the playful, reflective melodies bring up emotions that I'd really like to evoke in my music once I get rolling.

Mclusky's music is derivative of so many things that I can't put my finger on why they influence me as much as they do. Something about it just clicks with me. If I'm stuck on ideas lately, I'll throw on the Mcluskyism B sides and get excited about music again.

That's about it. There's some good stuff in there, hope some of it catches your interest.

Am I the only guy for whom YouTube is blocked? Who are you talking about?

I got the encoding wrong. They're up now.

No. I (and others, IIRC) are not able to see YouTube videos at work, as they are blocked by employer's firewalls.

Oh!

1. Dan Bern - Jerusalem.

2. Menomena - Evil Bee.

3. Cyriak - No more memory.

4. Mclusky - The London Whine Company.

That's the list.

Jerusalem is a wicked fun song to play!

the very first song i learned to play on the guitar was Dan Bern's New American Language, that cat's a wicked inspiration!

Wow, that Dan Bern is excellent. At first, I thought he sounded too much like Dylan -- but about a minute or so into it I didn't hear that anymore and just heard Bern.

Will pass on The Feeling and Dr Dog will get passes on to the she rhino. I liked both for well crafted pop but would rather the lo-fi feel of Dr Dog. I may have posted something by The Wood Brothers before, but they are who have had me wanting to play more all week.

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For some reason I've been really hung up on the song "She Moved Through the Fair" over the past 4 or 5 days. I think I've listened to some or all of about 25 or 30 versions. (Gotta love that Rhapsody subscription... though these song obsessions can get a little much. There was the quest for the 'best' version of "Summertime," and then the "Funny Valentine" thing... lno question there, Chet Baker, it's his], some others. I think I did quick tours of a couple Leonard Cohen songs. But as great as his songs are, there are a lot of really lame versions. In fact there are a couple of collections of really lame versions of his great songs. Anyhow... I'm digressing again.)

Here's a fairly iconic a capella version by English folkie, Annie Briggs. [slide show]

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No idea how I forgot about these guys.

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Get the album Firewater by Silkworm.

Get it now.

One of the most underrated bands of our time. Not sure this video does them justice but Silkworm videos on Youtube are few and far between.

Also:

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If you haven't heard Fugazi you need to exhaust their entire discography immediately. This is a post-punk band from the 80's-90's and they taught me more about songwriting than classic rock (Beatles included) ever could. Eternally, eternally grateful.

I got that album when it came out -- 13 songs wasn't it called? I can't remember. I don't even know where it is anymore. Darn fine album. I put it in the same league as Bad Religion's Generator.

Though today I've been thinking about Janine.

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Unfortunately I can't find the album version of this, but this a pretty good live version. In fact, there is very little Sough Coughing on youtube, except some Mike Doughty live stuff

Brings me back a decade when I was moving cities for work, and just two weeks before the move I met this wonderful woman named Janine. We had three dates. She came over and helped me pack, and as we were taping up a box, she said to me, "Damn you, your timing sucks." I fell in love, but a few days later I still got in my buddy's pickup truck, with all my belongs in the back under a tarp, never to see her again. (There's a song in there somewhere, but it's probably already been overdone.)

Another good track:

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Soul Coughing is one of my biggest influences. Whatever album has Janine on it is pretty much perfect to my ears.

The album is Ruby Vroom.

It also has True Dreams of Wichita (another personal favorite). Mr Bitterness, Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago.

Last post.

This has been, without a doubt, the most influential band to me in my entire life.

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Play it as loud as you can in high quality. It's mixed to actually legitimately play off of loud / quiet dynamics. If you like it but it sounds trite to you like it did when I first heard it go to youtube and sample whole album. If you like it, buy it. I've never heard an album in my life that touches me the way that Spiderland does. I love post-punk. These guys are the masters of math rock / post punk tension in my opinion. Take what you can from it.

Harmony Central Rule: Encouraging piracy is a banning offense. Please read the TERMS OF SERVICE you agreed to when you signed up. Piracy is stealing from your fellow musicians.

I understand that you're merely suggesting they try the music before they buy. And I, personally, understand this important distinction. But as moderator I do have to enforce the house rules.

At any rate, the artists or their representatives have undoubtedly made whatever they think is appropriate for free listening available on their website, their MySpace or Facebook page, or elsewhere.

And, at the very least, one can almost always hear parts of the songs on sites like Amazon, Rhapsody, etc. (Rhapsody even has a 25-song [full song] streams a month free membership, so if one hasn't used up his free allotment, one can do that. I use Rhapsody's subscription service and I consider it a great deal. YMMV, but it or Napster or other subscription services may be just the thing for folks with an enormous appetite for a variety of music that might normally only be satisfied by illegit means. They're both around the price of a single CD album a month.)

-- the moderator