Rush Vs. Led Zeppelin CHOPS ONLY Poll

Pork CHOPS

http://www.elvispresleymusic.com.au/pictures/img/elvis/70s/74/sept_9_74_karate.jpg

LAMB COPS

this was meant as a safe space for chops talk

There is no safe space for chops talk on ILM.

This is it! Check your chopsphobia and virtuoso-shaming at the door, ILX! No busting chops!

http://www.freenbean.com/images/comics/tumbleweeds/tw_3.jpg

challchops

http://images.politico.com/global/2012/06/120628_mitt_romney_pork_chop_605_ap_605.jpg

http://uploads7.wikiart.org/images/edward-hopper/chop-suey-1929.jpg

if you wanna talk chops then BRING IT or do u even HAVE chop talk chops??? safe space pppfffft chops make their own safe spaces

do you even chop bro

Page is a hella sloppy guitarist, but fuck Rush.

Also, Peart may not personally be responsible for music crimes, but the number of showy "chop"py drummers for which he's indirectly responsible is in the tens of thousands. Fuck Neil Peart.

either we can mathematically prove what the best music is or the ILM project has been in vain

HASSSAN CHOP

Chop Suey

Rush.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BGv2_NoCZw

IT IS FUNNY AND ALWAYS REFRESHING (AND NOT AT ALL WORTH DISCUSSING!) HOW NON-MUSICIANS DISPARAGE PEOPLE WHO CAN PLAY ROCK 'N' ROLL INSTRUMENTS! LOOK AT THAT GUITAR GUY, WHO CAN PLAY GUITAR! AND THAT DRUMMER, WHO CAN DRUM! HOW EMBARRASSED I FEEL FOR THEM! HA HA!!

so sad that there are still people out there whose personal hang ups stop them from basking in the glory that is the collected works of Rush. They've put out an overwhelming number of fantastic albums over the years and they are still cranking away at a very high quality of output.

Plus they got the chops!

HASSSAN CHOP

I was a huge Rush fan in my teens and early twenties, but I grew out of liking music that's complex and fussy just for the sake of being complex and fussy.

I don't think Rush's music is complex and fussy for the sake of being complex and fussy, though.

afaict it's fussy and complex for the sake of being unlistenable

The only Rush work that really endures for me (and I probably only listen to them one time a year, tops) is the less complex and meandering 80s stuff. And good on them for doing a song with Aimee Mann. But pretty much everything from the time Peart joined the group until Permanent Waves is really far up its own ass. "La Villa Strangiato" is the apex of Rush's pointlessness.

all music is pointless

Is it tho?

xpost dude there are like ten fucking albums of new wave rush, you can like rush and not like honeydew

http://movieclips.com/e5z7-close-encounters-of-the-third-kind-movie-communicating-with-the-mothership/

xp

Lol at the idea that "Fly by Night" or "Closer to the Heart" are fussy and complex for the sake of being fussy and complex.

I honestly didn't wake up this morning looking to bash on Rush all day, because I still grudgingly respect them even if I don't like them very much, but you realize those songs were expressly written as singles. I mean, you must realize that.

i like jazz, but only the singles

I feel like I've died and ended up at Guitar Center.

Welcome to the Hotel Challopfornia

Sorry, meant to post on other thread.

Or did I?

what's with all this classical stuff? why do these guys have to show off how good they are on violin? i can't dance to this

For the record, I can't dance to anything. I am awful.

Anyway, I've thought about this in greater detail and it's not really the complex signatures or Lifeson's noodling in the 70s or even the band's fanbase. It's Geddy Lee's voice. Fuck, that dude should've been discourage from singing the first time he opened his mouth.

But I still think people who champion music simply because of how technically accomplished it is are boring people who like boring music. I'd rather hear The B-52's do some totally basic shit like Quiche Lorraine because it's obvious that they are people who are having a good time.

I can accept not liking Rush until Pemanent Waves, good thing they've released 13 studio albums since then, most of which have been very solid both in terms of songwriting and chops.

Yeah, those humorless fucks in Rush, sucking all the fun out of music.

I get that there's this band called "Rush" in your mind that you hate, but the band you're describing has little or nothing to do with the band many of us here are familiar with. (NB: I speak as someone who was a "radio hits only" half-fan until I saw them live in 2011, at which point I acquired all their studio albums, and saw them again in 2013, which was one of the best live shows I've ever seen by anybody. But I really have only been a serious fan for about 3 years at this point; I'm not some baldytail-sporting diehard.)

I think Rush and Led Zeppelin are tasteful with their chops, though. Sure, they can play, but at the same time they're serving the compositions. As technically skilled as the musicians in Rush are, they actually seldom overplay and it's all composed and certainly not aimless. I've never once listened to, say, 'Red Barchetta' thinking "fuck, these guys need to rein it in a bit".

xpost yeah similar here. Rush were an enthusiasm that didn't take for me til my mid-thirties.

What kind of killjoy parent would crush their newborn babby's dreams of being a ROCK GOD immediately after it emitted its first lungful for chrissakes? xxxpost

BTW, I'm gonna be voting for Rush here because while Led Zeppelin's studio albums are disciplined as hell (except for the stupid jokes that start popping up on Houses and afterward), live bootlegs I've heard from the mid 70s are bloat-tastic monstrosities - half hour organ solos and shit. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that noise.

You guys seemed to missed the part where I said I was a rabid Rush enthusiast in my teens and early twenties. They were just like a pair of shoes I outgrew and now I look back on them and think "those shoes were kind of stupid looking anyway".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mzVD3Cqrlw

I just think the word "chops" sounds funny.

I think the precise moment I turned on Rush was when Test for Echo came out and I heard Geddy sing the lyrics:

Net boy, net girl
Send your signal 'round the world
Let your fingers walk and talk
And set you free

Net boy, net girl
Send your impulse 'round the world
Put your message in a modem
And throw it in the Cyber Sea

I'd rather hear The B-52's do some totally basic shit like Quiche Lorraine because it's obvious that they are people who are having a good time.

the b-52's, it's worth noting, have plenty of chops and technically weird guitar parts.

It's true, yet it never sounds academic.

Come on, man, credit where due: Peart wrote those lyrics. Show some respect.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/LampRV101509.jpg

I'd rather hear The B-52's do some totally basic shit like Quiche Lorraine because it's obvious that they are people who are having a good time.

^if you dont think Rush were having a good time doing YYZ, youre crazy. You're equating them with some sort of Emerson Lake and Palmer type band, and that's totally far afield of what they are. I definitely get the feeling Rush has a total blast making music. And La Villa Strangiato rules.

otm

"Strangiato" has RAYMOND SCOTT quotes for chrissakes! and it's subtitled "An Exercise in Self-Indulgence"

(live versh has Geddy chanting some kinda Yiddish baby-rhyme over 2-bar drum solo)

I'll say this for Rush: they are funny, when they want to be. The show I saw in 2010 had a guy in a giant hot dog suit randomly running around the stage; Geddy had his rotisseries behind him; and the short film before the second half made me think they could pull off their own sketch comedy show.

But man, they can also be horrendously and embarrassingly po-faced a lot of the time.

i need my rock music to be funny and i need my stand-up comedians to be good musicians, or forget it

If you really want to make that comparison, comedians who are too studied and mannered aren't terribly funny either.

like monty python?

Subdivisions improves upon All My Love

OHWAITTHATSNOTABOUTCHOP--*zzzheerrrraxxx*

I figure you got to give it to Rush on the whole chops thing, as they are studious enough to be able to pretty much play anything they ever recorded pretty much note for note. At some point Neal Peart even thought his drumming was robotic and went back to school with a jazz drummer.

It's no wonder guitar nurds have been saying Jimmy Page was sloppy live considering the guy was probably up for 2 days before the gig trying to reach Cthulu having sex with multiple teenage girls and doing black tar heroin left and right. None the mention Page wearin' his Les Paul down around his Dragon stitched on his pant legs, not exactly proper playing position (see Fripp for tips). Lifeson might get in a fighting drunk at a wedding but there is no way he is riding that kind of lightning before going out and playing 2112 front to back again. That said, Jimmy Page looked cool as hell, so which really matters?

John Paul Jones is probably the best musician in either band.

It's true, yet it never sounds academic.

Nothing academic about this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7zLCw5xy_w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWRyj5cHIQA

just on "which band do you like better" I'd vote Zep over the Beatles, the Stones, probably not Sabbath most days and not Steely Dan but otherwise in most contests it'd be Zep

not in this one though

pretending Zep has Rush-level chops is just posing, not that that'll help Rush in an I-vote-for-the-band-I-like environment

Really? I thought Rush would have this locked down. I kind of started this poll to see if chops talk could be divorced from the "which band is better" argument on ILM... to see if chops could be talked here outside the context of a debate on the value of chops.
But I have little to offer in terms of detailed chops talk myself - but to my untrained chops ears, Rush seems much more chops-y. To me chops would include things like: virtuosity, tightness as a unit, ability to play complex compositions, endurance & dependability, a confidence that allows for improvisation and experimentation, and the ability to show off skills in an entertaining way - to do some peacocking and showboating. Are these what true chopstalkers talk about when they talk about chops?

To me it seems like now what I described are skills more valued in jazz than rock n roll, maybe? Or that in the post-punk rock crit orthodoxy that chops are automatically suspect?

Also wondering about a chops continuum - like how would you rate Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Alex Lifeson, Keith Richards, and Jimmy Page in order of chopsiness? Not necessarily who is the "best" guitarist, but who embodies the concept of "good chops" as you understand chops?

Brio - how do we count musical general aptitude in terms of chops? Because in a sense I guess Rush is more technical than Zep....(but it's not that far off really, Bonzo obv was a monster in many way as were JPJ and Page)....but I'd argue that John Paul Jones is by far the most accomplished overall musician of any of the people in any of these bands...like he could go from keyboard to organ to lap steel to bass....he's capable of doing string arrangements and arranging entire bands in his studio days...page as well is a great arranger and producer

how do we count musical general aptitude in terms of chops?

yeah I guess this is the big over-arching question to me - like Hendrix to me seems like a phenomenally talented musician but not particularly chopsy in relation to the others

but am I mistaking discipline and "technical" ability for chops?

and am I underestimating Handrix as a disciplined player (eg it takes a lot of discipline to sound undisciplined?)

Rush are more technical and they are nowhere near as fcked up as Page and Bonzo would play live. Rush's music also liked fancy parts where each musician would flash their skills, than break into wild simple improvisational parts like Led Zep. I don't think Led Zep was a screwed on booze and drugs perhaps as much as The Who or the Dead, but like 'em all as it went on they had some shows where they were high and sloppy live. Rush has also kept going and have played probably thousands more shows than Led Zep ever did at this point.

Led Zep could sit back and watch the royalties come in, Rush pretty much worked the barn circuit most summers for over 20+ years. I think in the end Jimmy Page knew he couldn't cut it like he did and was way too rich to care, which is why he quit trying to put out records or do a band. He got into making money in other ways. He hurt a hand pretty bad at one point, which along with drugs kind of hampered his playing. For playing, probably the best he did on tape was that move back to known ground playing those Led Zep songs with the Black Crowes. Having three guitarists, they could actually play the studio orchestrations.

It's kinda too bad Rush never did a record with John Paul Jones as a producer. That would have been a really good idea, but they seemed to get a couple of producers and just stuck with them for long stretches. JP Jones recorded some pretty cool and weird records in the 90s. Musically speaking, he kind of stepped out really doing some different things.

Plant has improved as a singer even if he has lost some range. That mix of early drum machines and icy blue laid back Strat guitar was a cool sound.

That mix of early drum machines and icy blue laid back Strat guitar was a cool sound.

Yes! I loved this stuff long before I knew who Led Zeppelin were. In my youthful mind, Robert Plant was a brand new artist because he was showing up on MTV.

brio - i guess i don't really know the answer

JPJ is cut from the cloth of a studio musician more, which is an interesting type of ability...just in terms of oh hey show up today and sit in on a Lulu song tomorrow it's Donovan, etc etc

just that ability to read something, get it, and sit in with guys you've never played with before and fit into a pop or jazz or folk arrangement and "get it" instantly seems as impressive to me as say, a Peart drum solo, it's a form of musical chops IMO if not technical

and what about groove...Peart is by far a better "technical drummer" than Bonzo, but he also can't really groove like Bonzo....I mean....how many drum grooves have had the musical impact as the beginning to "When the Levee Breaks"? is that not skill?

(fwiw i'm a huge fan of both bands....also I dispute that Rush was overly fussy, they wrote great songs and it's not like they were on some Tales from Topographic Oceans jackoff shit. they are a great hard rock band at their core, and later a great sort of odd proggy geezer new wave band)

interesting - though Page was equally a session man (but maybe brought in to be Page-y more while JPJ was a total in service of the song guy?)

anyway i think you're outlining a more interesting def of chops than the "ability and willingness to solo" one that leads to chops-appreciation being reduced to yngwie straw-manning

is this a correct least>most chopsiness continuum?

Keith Richards>Jimi Hendrix>Jimmy Page>Eddie Van Halen>Alex Lifeson

maybe switch Jimi and Jummy?

Jimmy

Just want to note that the 5 or 6 times I have seen Rush live (which was all in the late 80s/early 90s mind you), Lifeson did not improvise much of anything in regards to guitar solos. They were pretty much note-for-note from the records. So, supreme chops but not a typical "I am gonna take a wild solo now" type of playing/improvising.

that's interesting - because in jazz context it seems like chops is most valued as a skill that allows for improvisation while in rock it seems like improvisation is considered less chopsy than the ability to recreate a solo flawlessly

Ehh, depends on the rock and the context of the music. Grateful Dead never plays anything the same way and folks love them, Alex Lifeson plays it pretty straight every time and people love him/Rush. If the solo is great (as most of Lifeson's are) I am into seeing it played live, as the feeling still changes with the energy of the performance, but generally I want to see a player take a chance/do something different from the record. Still, I have plenty of room for both approaches.

also is indie rock at a low-point for chops? feels like the 90's had a lot of chops-centric acts in the post-hardcore/mathrock world - Fugazi for example being a pretty hugely influential chops-based band - whereas that's totally absent now (nb: i have no idea what is going on in indie music now and am totally winging it here

Hendrix couldn't read music; I think this counts against him insofar as I feel like "chops" (at least from a jazz perspective) includes not only mastery of your instrument but knowing, or at least being able to convincingly/competently fake your way through, a million songs and understanding arrangements, structure, etc. I think Hendrix was really great at making Hendrix music, but aside from a few notable examples (performing a cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" less than a week after the album came out would be the big one, probably), he wasn't much for tackling material he didn't write, and relatively few of his songs are actually all that complex, compositionally speaking. It's all about his playing.

Reading the oral history of Led Zeppelin, it really comes through that Page and especially Jones really were expert, chameleonic studio musicians, on the same level as the dudes in West Coast studios of the 1960s playing on US pop sessions. They could do anything. Which means that playing the way Led Zeppelin played - loose, bluesy, embracing noise - was a conscious choice on everyone involved's part; had they wanted to, they could have made baroque Moody Blues-style pop records all day long.

Not really gonna touch that one (xpost) )beyond this: generally there are always bands with chops in every genre, and there are always bands who don't emphasize or have them (or actively subvert them for various reasons). Don't think that there is any reason to suggest that it is ever "totally absent" from any genre at any time.

yes kinda, though there's chops abundant in some of the most hated indie-ish stuff (fleet foxes, mumford) which to my mind makes those bands like the Eagles - who were among the unshowily chopsiest of 70s bands and inspired similar "how can people like this, why don't they hate this?" reactions over the years

there's a case to be made that chops are necessarily showy but I don't think so

xpost re: indie rock 'n' chops

but aside from a few notable examples (performing a cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" less than a week after the album came out would be the big one, probably)

umm well and "all along the watchtower," one of the most transformative and insightful covers of the rock era, which is so notable an example that it kinda suggests he could have done this kinda thing exclusively and still ruled

Just want to note that the 5 or 6 times I have seen Rush live (which was all in the late 80s/early 90s mind you), Lifeson did not improvise much of anything in regards to guitar solos. They were pretty much note-for-note from the records. So, supreme chops but not a typical "I am gonna take a wild solo now" type of playing/improvising.

― grandavis, Friday, June 13, 2014 11:18 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The note-for-note thing is totally Lifeson's bag. I read an interview where he talked about seeing Cream as a teenager and being deeply disappointed that the solos weren't the same as on the records. Which is kind of, I dunno, endearingly naive: isn't the (or at least a) point of seeing a band live to hear them do shit you haven't heard them do before?

Can't believe I forgot about "All Along the Watchtower." Massive oversight.

Guys in Wilco have some chops. Their drummer Glenn Kotchke warms up with Steve Reich's "Clapping Music."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tse1WPxhOGA

he wasn't much for tackling material he didn't write

He made his name as a session player by exclusively playing music he didn't write (aside from his solos, that is). Also, as aero noted, "Watchtower," but also "Come On (Let The Good Times Roll)," "Like A Rolling Stone," "Rock Me, Baby," "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window," "Tears of Rage"...

isn't the (or at least a) point of seeing a band live to hear them do shit you haven't heard them do before?

For me these days: 100%. When I saw Rush as a teenager though, the songs were a joy to see live and though I didn't get why Lifeson was playing them so straight, I liked the solos well enough to be into them. I mean, he obviously writes his solos and makes them "eventful", so they are as much part of the composition as everything else.

xxxxxposts yeah "totally absent" is silly of course - just wondering who the chops-based bands are now that say Pitchfork types would like

Didnt Hendrix play "Sgt Pepper's" live a week after the album dropped FOR THE BEATLES THEMSELVES? is there anyone else who's done that in the rock era?

Seems like there's a few ppl these days saying Hendrix has no chops, and it's just gasface gasface gasface to all of them

(Maybe not "no chops", but ded this is not the first time this year I've heard it implied that Jimi was not all that technically)

*def

Also I always thought indie rock was what punk necessarily had to become bcz the players had too much chops...?

Didnt Hendrix play "Sgt Pepper's" live a week after the album dropped FOR THE BEATLES THEMSELVES? is there anyone else who's done that in the rock era?

Wasn't even a week. The story McCartney tells is that the record came out on a Friday, and Jimi opened his Saville Theatre show with it that Sunday. Brian Epstein booked Sundays at the Saville, and Jimi probably figured the Beatles would be in the audience.

not from that same engagement, but hm, not a bad month to be a Saville regular:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/1967-Sept-SundaysSaville.jpg

Keith Richards>Jimi Hendrix>Jimmy Page>Eddie Van Halen>Alex Lifeson>STEVE HOWE

(at least pre-tech metal, i'd say)

chopsiest zeppelin = "achilles last stand"?

chopsiest rush = "2112"? "natural science"? "la villa strangiato"?

not much of a contest really

commentary here about Lifeson and his desire to recreate note-for-note what he recorded in the studio makes him sound like his musical values are more in tune with the classical sphere than the rock sphere

Like solo vs. cadenza

pretty much, or even more to the point how certain cadenzas become famous and chosen as "the correct" ones to perform

Interesting take on it; I hadn't thought of it like that before. I'm also reminded that the Duke Ellington Orchestra would often play the same solos night after night; Ben Webster played the same ("correct," and certainly iconic) solo to "Cottontail" at every performance.

Pre-release (and probably pre-recording) "Tom Sawyer" gives an indication of how Lifeson would solo if he wasn't trying to match to the record:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4E5bI650MY

(and holy cripes, the tempo is all over the goddamn place)

definitely some of Lifeson's solos have an iconic quality to them. For example, can you imagine YYZ without that cool modal hammer-on riff?

which is about as close to a rock guitar cadenza as anything I can think of offhand

John Paul Jones probably has the playing and improvising ability of a heavy jazz fusion or prog dude, and his preference for other musicians with more feel than chops is what has kept his career so interesting. So I voted Rush.

Deep Purple had more improv skills than Led Zeppelin. The rhythm section just was solid holding it down and Jon Lord and Richie Blackmore would just go batshit crazy all over the place at least in the early days of the Mk. II group. Go listen to those BBC Recordings and Live from Tokyo. Later on those guys got pretty complacent and fell right into 'arena rock' this is our set this is how it goes kinda touring. Blackmore to me in particular in Rainbow got to the point of "i'm really not gonna do much until the solo part comes".

That mix of early drum machines and icy blue laid back Strat guitar was a cool sound.

Yes! I loved this stuff long before I knew who Led Zeppelin were. In my youthful mind, Robert Plant was a brand new artist because he was showing up on MTV.

― nitro-burning funny car (Moodles), Friday, June 13, 2014 10:40 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What albums does this describe?

Also I always thought indie rock was what punk necessarily had to become bcz the players had too much chops...?

not sure if I'm 100% sure what you're saying here, but chops in some strains of punk rock were pretty important relatively early on with bands like Television and Bad Brains in the mix - and a lot of hardcore is really chops-heavy - or at least obsessed with playing tight + as a unit: precise, fast, tempo shifts on a dime. It's not necessarily the fluid jazz-type chops but definitely in line with a more Rush-style notion of chops. I'm sure a lot of hardcore players were huge Rush fans growing up.

ore maybe that was what you were saying? Indie took over as a reaction to chops, because punk rock had become very chops-heavy by the 90's?

indie is not necessarily an outgrowth of punk
they were strains evolving side by side and intermixing at points

As a total outsider, I get the impression that indie artists/performers tend to care more about songwriting than playing/arranging

What albums does this describe?

Plant had several solo albums in the early 80s featuring Robbie Blunt on guitar.

This track in particular is the one I had in mind from the MTV days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZQL22xOmUM

The note-for-note thing is totally Lifeson's bag. I read an interview where he talked about seeing Cream as a teenager and being deeply disappointed that the solos weren't the same as on the records. Which is kind of, I dunno, endearingly naive: isn't the (or at least a) point of seeing a band live to hear them do shit you haven't heard them do before?

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, June 13, 2014 3:40 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As much as I admire musicians that can improvise well (without crossing the line into complete aimlessness), a huge part of the appeal of Rush for me is that everything is honed and tightly composed. When I listen to a classic Rush track, I can't imagine them being performed any other way. Every guitar solo, every bass fill, every drum fill is very very specific, to the point where when cover/tribute bands play Rush tracks, they try and get everything as damn near to the recording as possible. For example, the little drum fill (you all know the one) that Peart plays in the second part of 'Natural Science', if one was to cover that song and replace just that drum fill alone with something else, then you really wouldn't be playing the song properly. It's for this reason, really, that I could never claim that Rush were just aimlessly wanking on their instruments for the sake of it. Yes, there's a level of "technical expertise" (for one of a better term) behind the parts, but ultimately those parts are serving the compositions.

The replication of songs thing is definitely something Rush uses to its advantage. Wouldn't necessarily work with other bands, but is an important key to Rush's performances. The only aspect of this that bothers me is that they've been getting more into the habit of piping in harmony vocals and extra guitars on certain songs, which I don't feel is really in the true spirit of Rush.

Also, their shows aren't totally devoid of improv. They throw in a few specific sections where they get to do some improvisation, but it's still pretty controlled. I saw Geddy do an insane improvised bass solo at the end of Leave That Thing Alone a couple years ago that I think even took him by surprise.

Sometimes there's things in Rush tracks which are so integral to the compositions that I often don't notice how difficult they are until I actually see footage of them being played. The drum part for 'The Weapon' being a case in point, it fits so perfectly for the track that it blends in with everything else. Then I saw footage of someone attempting to play it on Youtube and was like "okay, that's just nuts".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP-zcXtiXhA

As much as I admire musicians that can improvise well (without crossing the line into complete aimlessness), a huge part of the appeal of Rush for me is that everything is honed and tightly composed. When I listen to a classic Rush track, I can't imagine them being performed any other way. Every guitar solo, every bass fill, every drum fill is very very specific, to the point where when cover/tribute bands play Rush tracks, they try and get everything as damn near to the recording as possible. For example, the little drum fill (you all know the one) that Peart plays in the second part of 'Natural Science', if one was to cover that song and replace just that drum fill alone with something else, then you really wouldn't be playing the song properly. It's for this reason, really, that I could never claim that Rush were just aimlessly wanking on their instruments for the sake of it. Yes, there's a level of "technical expertise" (for one of a better term) behind the parts, but ultimately those parts are serving the compositions.

― ...and the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and SAW! (Turrican), Friday, June 13, 2014 5:44 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In a way, I agree. The importance of Rush's approach was definitively brought home to me when I saw them for the first time, in 2010. As I was air-drumming (along with many others) to "Subdivisions," for a split second I thought, "Wait, this is a concert -- Peart's not necessarily going to play the same fill he played on the record." But he did, and I realized that those fills are as central to the song's arrangement as the melody or the chords or the lyrics.

And that works for them, and that's fine -- nothing wrong with that. But I was thinking about this earlier, how certain Keith Moon fills, or Elvin Jones accents, are utterly central to the recordings for me. When John Coltrane does this on "My Favorite Things," Elvin Jones does that, and I can't imagine the music any other way...except on live recordings, where that Coltrane glissando might result in this Elvin Jones fill. Keith Moon might play a different figure/fill than he did on the studio recording, causing Townshend to react differently, and all of this may have been anticipated by Entwistle, who accompanies (or leads) accordingly.

What I'm trying to get at is that, yes, the asides and fills on recordings can seem central to the piece's composition. But when a variation on those asides takes place, so many other possibilities present themselves. Depending on how those possibilities are handled -- either by seeming mind-reading (cf. Miles Davis' mid-60s quintet), hyper-anticipation (Moon-era Who), or near-religious fervor (Coltrane's Quartet/Quintet) -- the excitement and tension can be overwhelming. That's not what Rush does, and that works for Rush. But I feel like they're shutting themselves off from whole areas of musical exploration by not allowing themselves certain freedoms.

Doesn't almost any musician shut themselves off from whole areas of musical exploration?

I'm kinda w/ Turrican on Rush. Rush is the type of band where every piece of the song, the drumming, the solos, the groove, it all kinda seeps into your brain, and hearing some kind of extended jamming or alterations would feel alien to me - like if the "Tom Sawyer" solo were any diff than I remembered it, it'd feel weird.

whereas other bands I listen to, I would definitely champion switching it up or extended jams on the tune. Rush is kinda WYSIWYG.

on the other end of the spectrum, we find Metallica. these assclowns apparently find playing the music they wrote 30 years ago as really boring, which ok, I can respect that, you've played the songs a billion times. but Kirk and James will tinker and add stupid fills in that ruin the song. not that Metallica is the type of Rush-band that needs to be by-the-numbers live, but there is one little stupid rhythm fill Kirk added into "One" live starting in the late 90s which involved him playing some silly scale riff over the last 4 bars prior to the 'machine gun fire'-sounding riff. it literally sounded like the criteria for playing it was "hey the notes are in key!", and a few times I saw live vids he actually played some out of key notes that were jarringly awful sounding.

also Kirk added some stupid octaved melody over the top of the main riff to "Motorbreath" which unnecessarily made the song sound like a Gorilla Biscuits tune.

Doesn't almost any musician shut themselves off from whole areas of musical exploration?

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Sunday, June 15, 2014 7:18 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Depends on the musician. In the case of Rush, it's interesting because Lifeson was a Cream fan, but wasn't a fan of what made them Cream.

Similarly, Peart was a huge Who fan but found Moon's drumming to be, in his words, "not logical" (in a Peart interview I can't find at the moment).

David Heetderks referred to Harold Bloom ( whom I haven't read firsthand) in the article "Hardcore Re-visioned: Reading and Misreading in Sonic Youth, 1987-8" (Music analysis, 32/iii (2013)):

‘Weak’ poets, in Bloom’s terminology, never escape the shadow of their
predecessors and succeed only in making art that is derivative and imitative.
‘Strong’ poets, by contrast, assert their autonomy in defiance of their predecessors.
They do so by unconsciously misreading their predecessors – an act he calls
‘misprision’ – which nullifies the predecessors’ influence and pushes them aside
to create space in the canon for the later poets.

I feel like "chops" (at least from a jazz perspective) includes not only mastery of your instrument but knowing, or at least being able to convincingly/competently fake your way through, a million songs and understanding arrangements, structure, etc.

I didn't vote in this poll, for a few reasons, but it did get me thinking (and maybe this relates to what Tarfumes is saying): most traditional definitions of mastery and musicianship would seem to involve deep familiarity and competence with some sort of standard repertoire, whether common practice, jazz, folk, etc. Zeppelin clearly had this. While Rush are dazzlingly skilled in their way, their 'chops' seem very non-traditional: they are great at composing and playing Rush songs, whether that requires playing in Locrian mode in 5/4 or playing bass synth pedals and keyboards and singing at the same time or finding all sorts of ways to process guitar sounds. There is not much, though, to suggest that they have a very strong grounding in any idiom, even compared to the way that bands like Yes or ELP could jump between pastiches of English folk, Baroque, jazz, etc. Not only do they not improvise very much but I am also not sure that they could play from notated scores very effectively. As such, their 'chops' might seem somewhat 'modernist' in a way?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"While Rush are dazzlingly skilled in their way, their 'chops' seem very non-traditional: they are great at composing and playing Rush songs..."

I think some of this perhaps be attributed to the compressed changes in rock music from say 69 to 74. Rock music was no where near as codified in the environment Led Zep's first record came out. Bands would do a bit of blues, a bit of folk, then have some heavy numbers or maybe have some song that has classical music themes. Rush is very much a second generation 'hard rock band' built upon those early Cream, Led Zep and Hendrix records. Rush definitely did change with the pop/rock whims of the day going from big LP side long prog epics to trying to keep up with the skinny tie new wave crowd albeit in their own slant.

I think Yes and ELP's eclecticism could be attributed to being that they really grew up as musicians before this codification happened. Some of those musicians were already trained and started on a path of being a classical pianist or percussionist or to play jazz guitar or drums. In comparison, the members of Rush started out wanting to BE Led Zeppelin or Cream. There is even snippets of this that came out in that Rush movie from a few years ago.

I'd probably say John Paul Jones might be the best musician out of the whole lot of both bands. The three members of Rush are obviously very skilled musicians and have kept at it. Plant has continued to make music going in eclectic directions. Jimmy Page from the success or personal issues lost his muse sometime in the mid 70s and never really was never able to recapture and move on. Led Zep is obviously the more popular group, but skills...I give the vote to the musicians in Rush that never quit and never really lost what they had. They can play Rush in 2014 pretty much as good as they could in 84 or 77.

That said chops doesn't mean good music as if chops was all you needed, Toto would have been the shit instead of kinda shit.

listened to Power Windows while doing my run today and damn if that isn't a great album.

Voting for the studio pro/groove chops of Zeppelin, especially JPJ, over the math-rock/prog-rock chops of Rush.

Let me take this occasion to recommend the jazzy/proggy chops of the undersung Patto, two of whom later went on to become members of The Rutles.

Rush seem to be able to play just as well, but in listening to Geddy sing some old songs he struggled on some high notes, or was that just him on a bad day?

Licking my chops for these results.

Geddy's voice definitely has been getting more shaky in recent years. He sounds terrible on the Time Machine tour recording. Mostly he holds it together though.

Would say Plant's vocal chops, now and in their prime, are the most uncontroversially superior chops up for debate here.

Find it hard to argue that, as much as I love Lee's PW/MP-era voice.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

These two examples plus the mention of Toto - is there a thread for bands where the best musician is the drummer

wow. pretty evenly matched chops.

John Paul Jones is probably the best musician in either band.

Hear, hear

Reminds me of a very weird mention a few weeks ago by Greil Marcus:

Playing for Change, “When the Levee Breaks,” with John Paul Jones looking 100 percent healthy and 200 percent sane

Sure, but... "he was twice as sane as he was healthy, I could tell by his bass playing"?!?