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New Dream Theater...Same old disappointment. More throwaway crap from the Train of Thought vein. The Guy Pratt websiteCourtesy of the Sonic Frog, it's the very shiny Guy Pratt website! Outstanding bass player, great website. Musical stuff: Walking on Air and Unicron's ThemeWe will be away on vacation in Britain on the 7th through the 14th. Before leaving, let me draw the reader's attention to two new things posted on my music page, that came together over the Christmas break: Unicron's Theme is a fun little production I did of the Vince DiCola piece of that name, and Walking on Air is a new song by myself (I'm not going to talk about what inspired it until I've finished writing the words). More details at the link. Tribute for FreddieIt's been fifteen years today since Freddie Mercury left us. As a tribute, here's me taking a ham-fisted go at Bijou, from the Innuendo album. Cash, Floyd and HurtJody Rosen thoughtfully dissents from the deification of Johnny Cash, and the Rick Rubin-produced "American Recordings" set in particular. Rosen observes that Rubin's approach was to strip out the production - more accurately, the orchestration - to create "relentlessly monochrome musical settings." The problem, though, says Rosen, is that this is merely a different approach to a familiar game: the fastidiously unadorned and solemn music on the American Recordings series — bare-bones rock ensembles playing stately tempos, with bass piano notes tolling like church bells over minor chords — seems designed to clobber listeners with the idea that they are in the presence of a Great Man Singing the Truth. We usually associate kitsch in music with the big and blowzy, but the Cash-Rubin records use the opposite musical tactic for emotional manipulative effect. It's schlock austerity.(I love the emphasized turn of phrase - it is both picturesque and, listening to the records, vividly accurate). This is much the same criticism advanced of The Division Bell - that it sounds very weighty and portentous, but is in fact merely a cleverly-designed attempt to sound weighty and portentous. But just as I'm uncomfortable with that criticism of The Division Bell, I'm leery about this criticism of Cash (or more accurately, of Rubin). On an emotional level, music is not the property of the person who writes it. The moment you take a piece of music - particularly one with lyrics, but to some extent, also instrumentals - and place it in the public domain, you surrender the right to say "this is what this song means." Art's value, as we all know, is in the eye of the beholder, but so is its meaning. Is it really valid to criticize, on the basis of what Bono originally had in mind when he wrote the lyrics, those couples who play U2's One at their wedding (or for that matter, those (including, these days, U2 themselves) who use the song as a generic anthem for world peace, ending hunger and other such causes? I think that's an untenable position. Similarly, does it actually matter that Rubin set out to present Johnny Cash in austere grandeur? That seems to miss the point. Art can only emotionally manipulate to the extent the listener is willing to be manipulated, and isn't the real test the connections that the listener makes with the music? Does it matter if Cluster One was specifically designed to evoke that classic "the Floyd sound" (something which, IMO, never actually existed per se) if I form an emotional connection to it? If this is true - that the value and meaning of music is determined by the ears, experiences and emotions of the listener - then Rosen's point may or may not be accurate, but is certainly moot. I must also briefly make a note about Rosen's assertion that Nine Inch Nails' Hurt - covered by Cash on The Man Comes Around - "was an ambiguous ballad about masochism; Cash reportedly interpreted it as a drug-addict's confession." My understanding of that song was that it was written from a similar place to Floyd's Comfortably Numb, a realization that one has become isolated and alienated from one's surroundings. Waters' character had a mental breakdown, but Reznor tried to explain something I continue to find an enduring mystery, viz., the impulse of some - mainly young women, it seems - to self-injure. As Reznor tells it, it is not a desire to hurt, it is a desire to feel, by the only means available. (I never did the self injury thing, but I did very much go through times when I was younger of feeling similiarly disconnected and desensitized.) This is a far cry from masochism or from addiction - but, of course, by my own logic above, I must concede that neither Rosen or Cash's interpretations are any less valid than my own, although I think my interpretation makes more sense and is (unimportantly) likely closer to what Reznor had in mind. One way or another, and by design or otherwise, Cash's version is brilliant, profoundly moving, and in the end, that is all that counts;like The Funeral from the Firefly soundtrack, it builds to a level of emotion that is almost unbearable. It would be churlish to suggest that that isn't enough. Play it like Guy Pratt wouldSpeaking of Guy Pratt, his influence was very much in my mind when recording a version of Simple Minds' E55 recently - check out the music page. I'd wanted to record a version of this Simple Minds instrumental for quite some time (it's a song I listened to a lot when I visited Russia ten years ago, so it very much associates with that visit), and having done so, the bass groove in the coda is particularly Guy-ish, I think. President RootsThere is apparently an Australian also called Simon Dodd, who kindly e-mailed me a link to his band's myspace - it's great stuff, check it out here. Very nice vibe, and some great vocals. Love the guitar playing on Why Did You Come Around? David Gilmour AOL session Dave - with Rick Wright, Jon Carin and one of my bass heroes, Guy Pratt, in tow - plays an AOL session. Comfortably Numb is a bit of a train wreck, but the rest is pretty good stuff; of particular note, Dave throws out a marvellous classical guitar solo at the end of High Hopes (all my reservations about post-Waters Floyd are routinely suspended for purposes of that song), and Guy gets in some tasty licks during Take a Breath. Pink Floyd will play Live8 http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/12/pink.floyd.reut/index.html LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Four members of seminal British rock band Pink This is truly unbelievable, but if it was ever going to happen for anything, it would be for these purposes, Roger being the inveterate social conscience that he is. I honestly don't know how this will work out, though - will they have a four-piece, or will they include, say, Jon Carin (who played on both Roger and Floyd's last tour)? Who will sing what? Will any material from the post-Final Cut albums (Floyd's or Waters') appear? And, of course, who will throw the first punch? Defining prog rockThis is just to archive a post I frequently refer to on other forums in case it gets deleted, and concerns my view on what does (and does not) constitute prog rock. For general definitions and backgrounds, see this website. It has a family tree of prog rock, a few essays and an extensive definition of prog and its sub-genres. From that site: A Definition of Progressive RockYou will note that the definition of prog rock is NOT "changes styles from album to album". As I've posted before on JP's forum, "prog" is an adjective, not a verb. I.e., prog is a distinct style, not something you do; it's something you create, not a way of working. Some other suggested characteristics, from this website: Some common, though not universal, elements of progressive rock include: Lastly, a few more words on why I can't stand people using "prog" to mean "band that changes styles": Prog rock was coined to describe bands like Yes, Genesis and Gentle Giant, and refers to the use of song structures that were neither blues nor specifically folk based, as most Zeppelin, Beatles and other rock bands' songs were at that time (arguably, Zeppelin bordered on prog, as Toto do, with certain songs - e.g. Stairway to Heaven or Jake to the Bone respectively). "Progressive" speaks to that fact that there is an evolutionary structure in the songs a band writes - see, e.g., Dream Theater, Learning to Live. It does not mean that a band changes constantly, although the casting of a wide net of influences is generally considered a prog trait (Yes, for example, incorporated folk, blues, jazz, baroque, country, rock and vocal harmony pop), and it does not mean technical virtuosity (Genesis can be accused of many things, but excessive technical virtuosity is not one of them). Yes were a progressive rock band because that they wrote albums containing prog rock songs, not because they changed their style in the mid-80s. Fragile is a prog rock album; Images & Words is a prog rock album. Pink Floyd qualify as a prog rock band because of their preponderence for concept albums, their song structures and their orchestrations - not because The Final Cut sounds completely different to Dark Side of the Moon. Both are prog rock albums - a concept that doesn't exist under the definition of prog rock that says prog is a description of a band that changes styles from album to album. Under that definition - i.e. that Dream Theater are prog because they change styles from album to album - there can be no prog rock songs, no prog rock albums - only prog rock bands. That isn't why Dream Theater were a prog rock band - they were a prog rock band because they wrote prog rock albums like I&W and Awake. The term prog rock speaks of a musical style (or arguably, musical approach), not of a band that changes its style constantly, no matter what [Mike] Portnoy or [Jordan] Rudess may contend. My complaint with post-Rudess Dream TheaterI've used this - or something similar to it - several times when asked to explain why I've fallen out of love with the band Dream Theater since 1998. I reproduce it here for future reference. I will first describe the change, as I see it (§ I), and then discuss what I think's caused it (§ II). As I see it, there is certainly a stylistic progression between Awake and the FII material (throughout this post, read FII as "the FII material in toto, not just the material which made it onto the album"), which is natural and inevitable; there was a stylistic progression between WD&DU and I&W, and then between I&W and Awake. Cf. ACoS (demo) and ACoS ('94). This is to be expected; musicians develop over time, and the replacement of a principle writer with Derek will not only have changed the writing style by dint of a different personality, but also affected the band's internal politics. So we can say that one can compare Raise the Knife to Scarred and say that it is clearly the same band, but they have progressed slightly. A stylistic progression. By contrast, there is a clear stylistic break between FII and SFaM that is so pronounced that one could almost say that DT broke up in 1998 and its members were incorporated into a Levin-less LTE. It is the LTE blueprint that has dominatd DT ever since; DT's instrumental sections have largely become duelling guitar solos vs. keyboard solos, often more closely reliant on virtuosity than melody. Cf., e.g., Paradigm Shift; Universal Mind; Strange Deja-Vu; Beyond this Life; The Glass Prison; The Great Debate; etc. But while LTE frequently allowed beautiful melody to supercede virtuoso performance (see, e.g., Kindred Spirits; Whenthe Water Breaks), as "Golden Age" DT frequently did (see, e.g., Take the Time; Learning to Live) post-LTE DT have rarely make such allowances. While previously, DT glided between styles within a single song, allowing melody and virtuosity to mingle and flow freely with heavy sections (see, e.g., Erotomania; Scarred), now DT albums seem less capable of incorporating flow and progression into songs, which usually means that we have the odd burst of melody (see, e.g., guitar solo in Goodnight Kiss) or emotional resonance (see, e.g., Vacant), but it is very much ghettoized, and separated from other styles. I am not aware that anybody serious disputes this change. Some (I'll even allow most) fans say that the change is for the better, some argue that it is for the worse, and the merits of FII are still hotly debated, but I have not seen any serious dispute that the big stylistic "break" was between FII and SFaM rather than Awake and FII. Even those who contend FII was a commercial version of DT must surely recognize that it was "a more commerical take on DT's blueprint". So that's the what; my theory for why is as follows. Derek joined DT in order to meet tour requirements, and thus his first experience with DT was spending an extended time on tour playing KevMo's material. I think that would have given Derek a firm grounding in what role the keyboards had previously played in DT music. Becuase he was also a hired gun, he was more locked into the previous DT style (i.e. KevMo's), and I think felt less keen to deviate from that material than JR (Cf.. Voices, 5YiaL; Voices, LSfNY). Derek's first writing experience with the band was, in fact, ACoS, which was certainly developed, and certainly carries important differences fromt he demo, but it is clear that Derek was fitting his ideas into an existing template. When it came to write FII, then, Derek had an intimate understanding of what the keyboards had done in KevMo-era DT, and was substantially less willing to deviate too far from that. And thus, they all wrote some absolutely fantastic material for FII, some of which made it onto the actual album. Clearly, what Derek chose to input into DT is not the breadth of his taste or talent; q.v. Planet X and solo disks, but the records speak for themselves. By contrast, when Jordan joined DT, he was joining them very much as an equal, and his first project with the band was writing an entirely new album. He thus immediately had less experience of what keyboards had previously done in DT, and a project where it "mattered less"; he also had a project in which he had far more freedom to put his own stamp, and an intraband relationship in which he was far more able to do so than Derek. I think that there are other factors that have effected the change on DT, chiefly the seeming dominance of JP and MP personality-wise (see, e.g., MP's comments that JM "prefers to stay in the background", which is a de facto statement that JM "generally stays in the background"), the increasing dominance of the guitar (and guitar-type lines), the influx of new influences that I don't like (Muse and numetal, for crying out loud?!) the approach to writing (they had such a miserable time making FII, immediately followed by fun times making LTE, that they seem to have forever abandoned the more considered approach to making records which had served them so well up to and including FII; see also ante at § I ¶3), but that's my potted theory about why it changed. None of which, of course, matters as much as the fact that they have changed, and I don't like it, so this might all be sour grapes. ;) |
    
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