THis is a thread where you try and remember the soulless pap from the eighties

Actually, I really liked Tower of Strength, but in a Meatloaf/Jim Steinman kinda way.

You are now my enemy.

http://themissionuk.com/images/archive/8687/86mish.jpg

Red Box though, arrrgh

Deacon Blue!!!

Such a flagrant skewing of all semblance of logic boggles the mind.

Though I liked their song on Red Hot & Blue when I last heard it.

(b) Who is talking about haircuts? I'm talking about SONGS! Fuckin' "Lies," "Love on Your Side" and, yes, fuckin' "Hold Me Now" are LIGHT YEARS better than fuckin' "Shattered Dreams".

-- Kim Tortoise

I posted Deacon Blue a bit further up the thread and I think someone else mentined Hue & Cry. They were execrable, as is Peter Kane's music writing, which raises an interesting question: I have no musical talent whatever beyond being a reasonable DJ, yet have no problems seeing my opinions on music as being worth enough to be published. However when someone like Kane writes, I have trouble seeing his work as being worth anything, partly because I find him incredibly turgid to read, but largely due to the fact that he made abysmal music and this colours his opinions for me... is this wrong? By the way Johnny Hates Jazz were irretrievably crap and the Thompson Twins are categorically soulless! Dreadful bilge of the lowest order!

made me livid to hear that stuff dominating u.s. radio airwaves in the mid to late eighties.

robert palmer also made me want to kill, particularly "she used to look good to me, but now i find her...simply irresistable". AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i'm trying not to mention don henley "all she wants to do is dance"...like the way pious folk are terrified to even think of the names of demons

i used to loathe phil collins' eighties output like all other decent human beings, but now i have come to appreciate what i see as the weird sort of extreme repetition in a few of his songs...it's almost spiritualized-like or something... that "take, take, me home ('cos i don't remember)" song seems to repeat that bit for a really, really, really long time, and it's not just the fact that it's a crap song that makes it seem never-ending. weird production too, even by eighties too-many-lines-of-coke-laid out-on-the-mixing board standards. he's the jason pierce for your mom and dad?

I really like "Follow You Follow Me" by Genesis for all the same reasons Geir probably does.

phil collins' song persona is definitely freaky. remember the urban legend inspired by "in the air tonight"?

is it genesis or just phil who do that 'lonely man there on the corner' song? that song's kind of strange. especially the part where he starts shouting the lyrics. and the he goes to the quietly sung bridge...the lyrics are like a weird mish-mash of 'fool on the hill' and 'nowhere man', if you think about it.

i just remembered another unforgiveable one. that "future so bright, i gotta wear shades" thing by timbuk2 or whatever they were called.

An important misconception on your part Geir and total balderdash

On the other hand, when for instance Eminem or Beastie Boys makes typically "black" music, their music is not any better than what black acts have come up with within the same genres.

But critiques of it can and if this is the case then why does music have to be European in your view?

Hip-hop is more likely to piss off parents now that it has become dominant and threatening to more melodic forms.

Music is European.

This isn't as much about rejecting African cultural traditions as it is about defending European ones and keeping them alive forever.

Rock is actually a comination of African and European musical styles. Why, then, is it that all European elements should be taken away from music, which is the case with most hip-hop and R&B.

I mean, what is usually seen as "white" music is actually a mixture of European and African traditions, while funk, rap and hip-hop are African only with absolutely no European stylistic elements at all. Fine that, but not if it is going to replace the wonderful tradition of melodies and harmonics.

Whatever, we should all just give up, he won't be satisfied until we're all singing "Hongro, Hongro Uber Alles."

why is that pathetic? i'd say its healthy and nautral, even instinctive. the main reasons i loved the hip hop and dance, however unmusical (in geir's or the supposed official terminology) it was, is because it was new and exciting, politically charged, sonically innovative regardless of lack of melody/trad/conventional traits in music. maybe it isnt REAL music...so what? its still art, and great art at that. but i'll call it music because its closely related.

Non-melodic music will never replace melodic music.

they will co-exist just fine...if the former is outstripping the latter commercially then thats too bad but it makes sense

Oasis anyone?

It wasn't until the 70s that jazz started to be (at least partly) dominated by Europeans rather than (or at least in addition to) African Americans.

As for my attitude towards jazz: I dislike the improvisation and lack of emphasis on melodies, while I like the harmonic sophistication.

Eric Idle to thread, then!

even mere handclapping, finger-snapping, toe-tapping, or head-nodding could be deadly to the harmonic and melodic components. ideally, all rhythm, and hence all notion of reference points regarding constructs of time, should be obliterated from music. the best music is silence, since the vibration of the air that is involved in any aural phenomenon inherently partakes of the non-european disease of rhythm.

i was going to post a question to ile along the lines of "who is at the vanguard of comedy these days?...who is coming up with the most indisputably hilarious shit? absolutely essential yuks?" but i guess i've found my comedic saviour in geir's unrelentingly gut-busting deadpan shtick. he does it so well; never dropping character for a second, never skipping a beat...oops, didn't mean to upset him with that blatant reference to rhythm...

i wonder if he has initiated a campaign to rid the norwegian white supremacist black metal bands of any rhythm that exists in that sadly corrupted european artform. we all know that any overprominent rhythmic elements in the neo-nazi black metal stuff are the result of a sinister infiltration by non-europeans, or people trying to piss off their white supremacist parents, or some such conspiracy. heil hongro, etc.

Why does it matter where the tradition comes from anyway?

The point is that melody has proved superior to all other musical forms. And as such, it should be used universially. Never mind about ethic origin, because that isn't important. Music in itself is the only important thing here.

i've been forced to revise my take on the geir-as-comic-genius theory, after further viewing of these beyond-inanities that he keeps spitting out like clockwork. (oops, there i go again with the rhythm thing)

he is definitely a comic genius, but "he" is also in reality a computer program, as propounded above. the program is not fiendish, though, but is part of extremely successful AI research attempting to simulate absurd comedic personas. it's not unlike those computers that blow away the russian chess grandmasters. the geir program demonstrates a more consistent and speedier absurdist wit than any human would be capable of doing. the 'absolutist piffle' is not an earnest attempt to put forth a coherent argument but rather is meant to tickle the funny bone in a most sublime fashion.

This is really funny. I read quite a few websites and newsgroups which are full of extreme right-wingers - keeping an eye on the enemy, all that sort of thing. I can *easily* imagine these (mostly British) far-right apologists writing *exactly* those words as an explanation of why the Beatles are acceptable to them but hip-hop is not.

I wonder if Geir votes for the Norwegian far-right party (is it called the Popular Party? Populist Party? Peoples' Party? whatever ...)

I hate the three contemporary bands you mention (although I love the Beatles, precisely because they have more than one influence, more than one song, more than one emotional mood etc, whereas the other three are one-trick ponies). But I don't feel the need to rant against them on here. Suckers who relate to the plodding emotional nothingness of "Clocks", "In My Place", "Sing", "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" and the like can appreciate it if they like - I genuinely couldn't give a shit if they do. So why do you feel the need to rant against the music that *you* dislike?

Obviously, a lot of people think differently than you.

Pythagoras (dunno if that is the correct English spelling) was definitely among those who worked with this. He may not have been the first one, but he was the one that was closest to the harmony system still used in the West today.
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 21 April 2003 21:23 (eighteen years ago)

Actually Pythagoras' tuning system is closer to Arab/african arab and asian tunings. You see dear old chap, the problem is Europe itself in a way killed melody by inventing equal temperality. An absolute development of harmony means absolute melody as pure unmodulated expression is radically underdeveloped (this is why The Beatles had to crib tips from Indian classical.) Terry Riley only half understood this, tablas are also melodic instruments. cordal counterpoint is the original sin, which was absolutely not invented by 'them Africans.' Bach's music only makes sense on harpsichord and nothing else! everyone who adapted his music for piano is to blame here. You killed melody Geir, you really did, chief.