(Really. Click.)
DAMN.
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Making small thing grand and grand things small.
Erin O'Brien
All Things O'Brien
Say it on the Owner's Manual
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6 comments:
That's amazing. One of the best collaborative efforts ever.
And it's so much better than the studio version we hear on the radio.
What comes to my mind when hearing this is that pop/rock music has come a long way since this was recorded, and not in a good way. Today, it's possible to sample, have your voice auto-tuned (see the Black Eyed Peas - Will.i.am admitted he can't sing), use a pedal to get all the harmonies one wants, etc., etc. It's the only way one can explain Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Kesha or whatever her stupid names is, or for that matter, Justin Bieber.
It used to take actual talent and ability to be able to sing like this, but today it doesn't. Now, I'm not against technology, but like anything else it can be abused/misused. I long for the days when one actually had to learn how to play an instrument or use one's voice, as opposed to digital this, digital that, sampling, etc.
Case in point - in order to learn to play side one of Rush's Hemisphere's, I sat in the family room of my parents' home in North Olmsted, with a 33 1/3 turntable, and learned the entire thing by ear. There were no tablature books, no internet, nothing. Just me, my Rickenbacker 4001, a record and turntable/speakers. I learned it note for note, and can still play it to this day.
Today, folks can go on the internet and download the tablature for it. No reading music, no ear training, just look it up. To me it doesn't take a lot of effort to do that, unlike what you heard in Erin's original post. Doesn't take a lot of talent, either, hence the "artists" we see today.
Anyway, Erin, thanks for sharing that.
BTW, John Deacon was one of the tastiest bass players I've ever heard. His line here is evidence here. Want to hear more great John Deacon lines? Try the Millionaire Waltz. Or Somebody to love, especially where he does the augmented arpeggio in the middle of the bridge - brilliant.
Al
TRAG
Hiya Erin-remember the other day when I asked you to remind me about some cool Rundgren I found? This is a perfect reminder!
There's a Todd set out called "For Lack of Honest Work," and although I haven't been able to find much commentary for it (it's from 2003, probably why) but from the title and some of the art work it looks like he chose to reclaim some of his material that showed up as bootlegs over the years.
There's a killer a cappella version of 'Real Man,' an unplugged 'The Wheel,' and solo takes on 'Love of the Common Man' and 'A Dream Goes on Forever,' the latter from the Agora here in '82, and the worthy-of-inclusion-by-title-alone 'I Hate my Frickin' ISP.'
Cool stuff, all available thumbs up.
Do you know the origins of the 'Under Pressure' clip? The reason I ask is that usually with a cappella there are singers who take a drum line, bass line, harmonies, etc. This has nothing like that. I'm wondering if somebody got hold of some of the master tapes and played with it a little bit.
And since Al is here, I am wondering if anyone with more than a passing interest in food and/or cooking knows why milk makes so many other foods taste so much better? Dry cereal, cookies or cake, or my personal favorite, the frozen Butterfinger bar?
MR
MR,
Milk makes a lot of things taste better for any number of reasons. First off, remember, as humans our first (literally) food memories are milk, whether human or formula based. The other thing is that there is fat in milk, and fat is flavor - we are pre-wired as humans to like fat in our food. Also, think about the textures ... you can make a very crisp cookie softer, cake that much more smooth, and even the Butterfinger bar smoother with the addition of milk.
One of my favorite things to do with milk is vanilla wafers - love them with a cold glass of milk. It makes them somewhat soft, and the residual crunch that remains is an appealing textural dynamic that I really like.
It also takes me back to my childhood, where I'd literally get up on a chair, surreptitiously steal some sandwich cookies from the top of the refrigerator (where my Mom had stashed them, in a dashed hope that we wouldn't get to them), grab an ice cold glass of milk out of the fridge, and then sit on our sandstone topped porch on a summer night at 17107 Martha Road, along with my brother Jay, in our matching pajamas (we were so close in age, we always ended up getting matching this and that, much to my young chagrin) enjoying it. Someday, I will do the same here at my home, and toast my brother, many miles away.
Al
TRAG
@ Al-
Thanks...It's an art-form trying to match your stack of Oreos (or lately, their dollar-store-brand-equivalent) with just the right amount of milk so that one has exactly the right-size swallow to drown the last crunchy half-bite of the poly-wannacracker sorbomate-60 goodness.
Ah, the small remnants of the experiences of youth...
Speaking of youth, I have a 359-day little brother myself.
MR
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