A journal like a twitter thread

[Lexi Darling]

I love your office album idea and also really like mundane style lyrics. As you point out, everyone's life isn't a rollercoaster of drama. Every romance or heartbreak isn't destined and written in the stars.

I feel you. Though for me, I like to romanticize the mundane. I see my own romance as being written in the stars, something I feel is a grand destiny. It's just that after all I've been through in my life, I get a sense of excitement and adventure just being able to have those nice chill weekends and do ordinary stuff with the one I love. That stuff means a lot to someone like me; speaking as someone who was always treated like an outcast and abnormal by nature, being the sorta-boring suburban homebody I am these days is a novel and exciting experience. 

 

[TheBig3]

Does anyone else feel like established bands get no real publicity? I don't know how better to ask that question, but here's what makes me ask.

I watch a lot of music-related videos on YouTube. Despite the fact that I haven't taken lessons in 20 years, can't really read music anymore, and don't know theory at all, I consume a good deal of music theory videos. Sometimes for instruments I have never played. Which brings me to Radiohead. I was watching Michael Palmisano who goes over how to play videos, and came across Radiohead's basement tapes or something like this: https://www.youtube.com/@Guitargate. I've never really been a Radiohead fan. They're fine, but I have to make the effort to listen to them. They aren't on my playlist, and while I did buy OK Computer and Hail to the Thief, I don't play my CDs anymore.

But these songs referred to, Jigsaw Falling Into Place, Weird Fishes / Arpeggi, Nude were actually really great, and I liked them in a way I didn't like older Radiohead songs. So why am I hearing about them late, and accidentally? Is it the nature of established bands that people assume the built in audience will carry them? Or that everyone has made up their minds? I don't know what it is, what we should call it, or what, in our psychology, gets us to this place, but we should come up with a way to point out when an old band makes different music. I'm sure it's rare, most of them try to go back to their 20 year old selves and recreate the magic (which is really sad).

How about you? Is there an album by an established band you think people should check out, especially if they didn't like that band before?

[Guybrush]

I feel like I should listen to more Radiohead because I quite like OK Computer, but it's the only album I really know from them.. although I did actually buy In Rainbows when they sold it for pay what you like on the internet. I just didn't listen to it more than probably once.

How about you? Is there an album by an established band you think people should check out, especially if they didn't like that band before?

When this forum first came up, I was gushing about it so people are probably tired of me bringing it up, but those who know a bit of RIO probably know Aksak Maboul as a band that released a couple of really weird albums around 1980. In 2014, over 30 years later, they released a new album (salvaging unfinished material from the 80s) with a completely different sound.

Picking some old favorites, they used to be like this:

On their 2014 release, Ex-Future, they sounded like this:

They've since kept that sound, refined it a bit more and sounded like this on their 2020 release Figures.

I was really fond of the old band and, while I didn't feel like their new sound was for me, I kinda had to give it a decent try and.. it grew on me real fast. I actually really love a lot of their newer material now, but I've wondered how many made the jump or were alienated - or even know about it. Like @larsvsnapster is a RIO guy. Does he know?

[DJChameleon]

I've been thinking about this last post for awhile. And I've come to the obvious conclusion that soul is easier to fake, and it's easier to sell records with. Not so mind-blowing, but it's weird how I now have a PTSD-like response to hearing a soulful voice than I do some wankery. Or anything else really.

Where can music go that the BS artists can't find them. They're technical, they're soulful, they're lo-fi, they're indie, their whimsical. Maybe we need a movement where bands start writing about office culture. Not in a supportive or hateful way, just what life is like while waiting for the k-cup to finish, and needing the copier when someone is doing a massive print job. I need a song title like "Lonesome on hold in the conference room" or "10,000 miles and 5,000 packages between me and by baby."

Heartbreak in 4 bars with vague, "everyone can identify" lyrics is just so played out. Did she mean the world to you? Did he make you feel like this was forever. Well it wasn't, and if you bothered listening to other records before making one, you'd have known that. Love is fickle and cruel. But rush hour...that's always there. It's ever-present and miserable and we need to sing about it with a saxophone behind it.

As soon as this kid is less dependent on me, I'm writing an album about life as sung from inside the monkey suit. 

This entire post is the definition of old man yelling at clouds. Bro you are just getting old. You've always been kind of crotchety but your age is enhancing it.

The reason there are so many love songs and greatest love or breakup songs besides as you say it yourself that it is universal. Wtf is wrong with talking about themes that everyone can relate to? Construction workers can't relate to your Office Space wanna be lyrics.

There is a reason why there are decades of music spanning generations about the general big themes that occur in life just with a slightly different sound to appeal to a younger generation.

I see no issues in it.

I would probably poo poo mundane lyrics so badly. Andre 3k is right no one wants to hear about old people going to get a colonoscopy or that you couldn't find your red stapler. Or about the time you were ready to clock out and your boss made you stay late to finish up TPS reports.

[TheBig3]

This entire post is the definition of old man yelling at clouds. Bro you are just getting old. You've always been kind of crotchety but your age is enhancing it.

The reason there are so many love songs and greatest love or breakup songs besides as you say it yourself that it is universal. Wtf is wrong with talking about themes that everyone can relate to? Construction workers can't relate to your Office Space wanna be lyrics.

There is a reason why there are decades of music spanning generations about the general big themes that occur in life just with a slightly different sound to appeal to a younger generation.

I see no issues in it.

I would probably poo poo mundane lyrics so badly. Andre 3k is right no one wants to hear about old people going to get a colonoscopy or that you couldn't find your red stapler. Or about the time you were ready to clock out and your boss made you stay late to finish up TPS reports.

Shut up

[Lexi Darling]

This entire post is the definition of old man yelling at clouds. Bro you are just getting old. You've always been kind of crotchety but your age is enhancing it.

The reason there are so many love songs and greatest love or breakup songs besides as you say it yourself that it is universal. Wtf is wrong with talking about themes that everyone can relate to? Construction workers can't relate to your Office Space wanna be lyrics.

There is a reason why there are decades of music spanning generations about the general big themes that occur in life just with a slightly different sound to appeal to a younger generation.

I see no issues in it.

I would probably poo poo mundane lyrics so badly. Andre 3k is right no one wants to hear about old people going to get a colonoscopy or that you couldn't find your red stapler. Or about the time you were ready to clock out and your boss made you stay late to finish up TPS reports.

I see your point, there certainly is a reason love and relationships are enduring themes in lyrical music. But I do feel Big3 on this as well; I think there is room for songs with more specific topics that maybe most people don't relate to. I'm not against love songs, but sometimes I just want to hear songs about things that are less universal, things I can relate to on a more uniquely personal level.

There's room for songs about broken hearts, and I think there's also room for songs about office work. Maybe Andre 3000 doesn't want to hear those songs. Which is fine, he doesn't have to listen to them. But some of us are sick of love songs.

[Guybrush]

I'd love to hear a song about doing expense reports by Friday or stealthily using the copier for private purposes. I haven't heard those songs before.

[TheBig3]

I'd love to hear a song about doing expense reports by Friday or stealthily using the copier for private purposes. I haven't heard those songs before.

And the possibilities with metaphor...the thought of it is erotic

[TheBig3]

This is a bullshit post but Pat Finnerty is the last real man in Europe and you need to watch this absolute nuke of Jason Aldean. It's an hour. Find some time, make a drink, and watch it.

[TheBig3]

I really love this series. I think I posted the Chad Smith/30 Seconds to Mars video before here (outside of the journal) which I think remains the most fun, but my god, hearing a Jazz drummer go in on a Nirvana track with jazz sensibilities is a lot of fun. I think there's an impulse to do the "lol omg he's like, not even close! lmao"

But that's stupid. What's great here is hearing how a completely different player brings out parts of the song that you hadn't heard before. Personally, I'm sick to death of the major Nirvana radio songs. But this drumming - especially the second go-round - made me really feel the Beatles influence on the songs composition. And his fills are so out of place they're almost worth rewinding the tape to hear again.

I don't know how you'll all take this (Or any of these) but I get so much out of cover songs in general, nevermind this sort of dissecting of a track by having a  an unfamiliar player come in, it's just so enlightening. Would love to hear other people's thoughts. Do you enjoy this sort of artificial review of a song?

[TheBig3]

Ilsey kind of strikes me as a modern day FleetwoodMac. But she has a sound that's just slightly askew from the familiar and she seems to make good use of space in the music, which is something I always enjoy. Musicians don't know the value of a rest anymore. Her voice sits somewhere between Stevie Nicks and Norah Jones.

Her first album came out in October. Thoughts?

[TheBig3]

Do you ever wonder what it feels like to be able to sing well? Like, "feel" feels. In your nervous system. How would it feel for air to pass through your larynx, and to have it sound good?

Some audioslave song came on the radio on my drive home. When I go in for work I always put on one of the handful of erudite college stations that I live amongst. But when I go home, I want the most bone head rock songs on the playlist. Give me Van Halen or give me death. So there I was, just me and Audioslave and the congested traffic of a stubborn suburb who wants desperately to be a smalltown. You know when a great time to parallel park is, even though you're not very good at it? Fucking rush hour.

I stopped actually singing and just sort of wished I knew how it felt to have breath leave my lungs and have people care. Would the focus point feel like it were higher in my throat? Would it feel richer? As of now, the note never sounds confident, like my voice is in a foreign country trying to order a coffee in a language it hasn't studied in years. But not Chris Cornell. "Bro, have you even heard Slaves & Bulldozers?"

My voicebox has not, apparently.

Sometimes I wish I could sing. But all old singers have lost their edge, like their looks and libido. Maybe that's just sour grapes - who cares about singing when it fades. Still, my Camry knows the truth. In that 5:30pm New England dark, when the lithium headlights blind me, and the music couldn't be any less mentally stimulating, I'll sing in notes foreign to the western canon, and wish that I could marry what is in my heart and what is on the radio.

[TheBig3]

Forget about clones like Kingdom Come and Whitesnake: as much as any band in existence, Jane's Addiction is the true heir to Led Zeppelin, creating music that's simultaneously forbidding and weighty, delicate and ethereal

I came across that quote forever ago, and it changed the way I thought about bands. I have never really thought about the concept of one band taking over for another, but the idea that Jane's Addiction was somehow related to Led Zeppelin was an interesting enough concept. But to this day I've never really given JA the time of day. I know a few songs, and I get Ritual a playthrough, but they really ended things in 1990 when I was...8 for most of the year. My puritan parents didn't let me buy albums with boobs on them then.

I'm writing this up because I have questions for the room.

1. Do you have strong opinions on Jane's Addiction?
2. Do you accept the statement above - they gave us a Led Zeppelin fix?
3. Are there bands today you think are filling the shoes of [insert group here]?

[Guybrush]

1. Do you have strong opinions on Jane's Addiction?
2. Do you accept the statement above - they gave us a Led Zeppelin fix?
3. Are there bands today you think are filling the shoes of [insert group here]?

I listened to them for a little while, actually around the time I joined up on MB. From my limited experience, I prefer them at their catchy and upbeat. Their well known songs like Just Because and Been Caught Stealing are absolute bangers.

I never thought of them as carrying on the led zep torch. I assume it's got something to do with Perry often singing in a higher pitch/range like Robert?

I think Led Zep were a lot more diverse and successful in their diversity and ambition. JA really have one sound that works for me (and its a great sound). But I might get an itch for guitar rock and then either JA or LZ could scratch it.

About other bands filling shoes, I think the thing I read the most was Radiohead as the new Pink Floyd, but that may have been something that came up around OK Computer. I think Radiohead have worked consistently at changing things up so probably shouldn't be boxed in like that.

One album I thought was very uncanny valley in a bad way was Marillion's Script for a Jester's Tear which sounded way too much like Peter Gabriel era Genesis. I got embarrassed listening to it.

[Lexi Darling]

1. Not really. But Mountain Song fucking bangs and always will, and they have a few other all-timers for me. Not particularly attached to them though.

2. No, I really don't get any Led Zep vibes from them aside from just being a generally loud hard rock band.

3. There are a few. One that comes to mind is Omerta, a pretty recent band that I think fill the shoes of early Slipknot, at least for me. But they're still fresh enough to be their own thing and stand apart from their influences. Cool band.