Bad II

I mean it's just laughable. The 'funky' records seem castrated in comparison to current dancefloor stuff, the supposedly 'smart' records just seem so dated (sometimes touchingly so, I admit), and the romantic, slushy numbers - well we've all seen through that, haven't we?. Even when I enjoy stuff I know I'm listening to it in a way that was never intended. I can only hear it in some kind of detached, post-modern way, unless I go through the motions of suspending disbelief for the sake of some kind of emotional hit. The past was funny (the way people thought they knew where it was at!) and the pop it produced leaves a cute historical trail, but we've moved on, y'know?

Well, thank God there's someone here for whom pop music is better than it was while he's living through it. But yep, "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" whups the ass of "Autobahn" just like "New Geocentric World" socks it to "In Praise Of Learning."

AND WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT - Stockhausen; surely he's the John Logie Baird of modern music, i.e. he invented a lot of things, but other people did them better (from Richard Maxfield right through to the Neptunes). Yes no no yes?

What a sadly neglected thread!

I think Dastoor's right, incidentally. Why is it that all old records, however fantastic and transcendent they had been, sound to me now *thin*, weak, unfulfilled? Dunno, but the unstoppable progression of pop seems a pretty good theory to me right now.

Main recent exception: The Associates' Sulk. Old records have to be *that* good for me to now to sound as *full* as Can't Get You Out Of My Head.

Don't know about 1 and 3 (funk, slush), esp. not 3 (something has to be 30 years old before it makes me all weepy - like George Jones' "The Grand Tour". That was really touching...until I started laughing hysterically. Uh-oh, bad example), but spot on about 2 ('smart' records being dated. This indirectly solves all those ILE debates about humor vis-a-vis intelligence - they are in direct proportion, as 'smart' comedy dates the same as 'smart' pop. Which means that in 30 years, Bill Hicks will seem as side-splittingly funny as Mort Sahl [not to mention Lenny Bruce] records are today. Anybody put one of those on the Victrola lately?) Extending this theory, that would make 'funk' second in order of smartness and 'pop' the dumbest, as it dates the least.)

I can relate to the feelings expressed about 'old pop' by Nick D (whether or not he's being entirely serious) because that's EXACTLY the way I feel about cinema. Any movie made before about 1963, I just wonder, "Why are all their voices like chipmunks? Why does every character speak exactly the same at 200 mph? Why is their such a fuss made about such trivial, sanitized situations?" 70s 'auteurist' American films just make me think, "Why does everybody drawl at 2 words a minute like they're stoned? Why are women constantly throwing themselves at these unwashed slobs with stringy hair, and shagging them within 30 seconds? Does anyone use a complete sentence? Why does the ending leave everything open, guess they were too stoned to finish the movie. Is this another 'stickin' it to the Man' film? Yawn."

Just last week I put on my horribly curttailed vinyl edit of Lenny Bruce at Carnegie Hall and it was fucking hilarious. In comedy as in pop there's a craft to things, a rhythm, a flow. When *that* sounds dated then you're in trouble. But it barely matters what the "lyrical content" is. Amphetamine-fueled art will always be au courant.

Why is it that all old records, however fantastic and transcendent they had been, sound to me now *thin*, weak, unfulfilled

Because the bass was mixed too low until about 1986-9. Dead serious.

Amphetamine-fueled art will always be au courant

Is that French for "irritating"?

Works both ways though, Tracer - bass mixed way up sounds great in funk or reggae, but in rock it just sounds ponderous. (Ever try and sit through Metallica's 'black' album? Like crawling through a sewer weighed down with body armour and trying to squeeze through a doughnut-sized manhole to escape.) Which is cool if it's stoner rock, I guess. I'm going to go and play Sabbath and Electric Wizard back to back and see which sounds better. Check to see that the milk bottles don't pile up too high.

modern compression + bass eq = No Bone Zone?

)try putting on Master of Reality back-to-back with "Masters of Reality")

Why is old pop music so bad (to you)? Because your musical tolerances are too narrow and provincial to appreciate it. I think we all have our musical blindspots. For example, I used to strongly dislike all drum machines, sequencers and canned, synthetic production in general. I've since learned better. There was also a time I couldn't imagine enjoying a mono recording. That's also changed. I guess that as we keep musically searching and exploring we broaden our musical boundaries. I think I can understand your feeling of older musical forms being "perfected." But the music world has had decades to perfect the shiny, attractive packages of todays pop; Stevie Wonder and the Beatles and George Clinton and _whoever_ were performing without a net. And crude as they may seem, there's a certain element they had, a certain spark. Now I'm not promoting the ever-present belief that pop music from 1961-79 was somehow "pure" and today's isn't. But if you take the absolute best pop from today and stack it up against the absolute best of that era, I think the older stuff is a bit better.

Here's a deficient but workable analogy: Comparing the pop of yesterday to the pop of today is like comparing the old movie with the crappy SFX and the fiery performances, and the modern version (exceptions aside) with tremendous effects and only adequate acting. Effects can be _great_, and if they're good enough they can carry the movie. But there's something to be said for the legendary performances of old, yknow?

'For example, I used to strongly dislike all drum machines, sequencers and canned, synthetic production in general. I've since learned better.'

No you haven't, you've just been indoctrinated. You've been locked in the Synthetic Production Room 101 and you love Big Brother. Under the spreading chestnut tree...

CD boom = increased availability of previously 'rare' recs = old or neglected styles (such as Krautrock) suddenly influencing modern music makers = collapse of 'useful' distinctions between 'old' and 'new' (eg. Can sound more 'modern' than Travis.)

And, if the funk got 'funkier' (or 'better produced') I don't think the same can be said for the singing on modern recs - the pernicious influence of Whitney and Mariah has produced a generation of singers for whom soul = flashy trilling technique. So, The Temptations not only had (for the time) 'start of the art' Norman Whitfield production but also singers who had developed individual voices through years of performing; now the 'soul voice' is just another element in the production process. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but the hyperperfected sheen and 'process' of modern r'n'b has lessened the chance for vocal uniqueness/innovation (even Motown, the original pop factory, had room for the unique voice of a Smokey Robinson or a Levi Stubbs...) When was the last time you heard a singer who didn't sound like ANYBODY else?

::coughcoughbjorkcoughcough::

(i'll leave you all to your circular, unresolvable arguments.

btw, i agree with dastoor here.)

Bjork - first Sugarcubes rec released 1988? Singing since she was a little girl? Not perhaps the best example, Jess...

yeah, but, c'mon...how many of us owned the record bjorkie made when she was 12? and seriously, if you're using levi stubbs or smokey robinson as examples, then 1988 is certainly more modern...

I reckon people are far too quick to say all R&B singers sound like Whitney these days. It's like saying all rock singers sound like Jeff Buckley these days - it's a useful rhetorical device but at the end of the day it's simply not true.

P.S. Andrew's point leads onto something interesting thing that Tom once said re: MP3. Namely, that with the democratisation of listening choice via mp3 and the context-free availability of anything and everything, old stuff/rare stuff/classic stuff loses its "aura". It's marvelous that someone might stumble across, say, Faust, without having first heard the background story, the breathless superlatives, the "legend of Faust".

Quick, give me a list of R&B singers who a)don't emote all the way through the song even when it doesn't match the words, and b)stick to one note (or two at most) per syllable.
See, I don't like singers who do those things, and neither do some other people, and it's a matter of aesthetics, not being 'closed minded'.

Okay:

Kelis, Aaliyah (mostly), Mya, TLC, Lina, Toya, Mary J Blige (mostly), Nivea.

And then there's someone like Blu Cantrell who, while often emoting, sounds so far away from Whitney *or* Mariah (who, anyway, sound quite different from eachother) that it's like saying that Prince and Jimmy Sommerville sound the same because they can sing high.

PS. "emote" can mean anything at all, and even the exact opposite of anything at all (I know because I misuse it a lot).

I was all on Dave Q's side with his questions, until I started thinking that the uselessly 'traditional' Macy Gray doesn't exactly belong to that 'emotive' post-Whitney/Mariah school (and yes, Tim, I agree there's great variety within that style, and that it isn't as monolithic as I was perhaps suggesting before. In fact, there's as much 'continuity' as there is 'rupture' between some 'old' and 'new' r'n'b - Whitney's voice, for example, is really just a modern variant on the pop-soul-gospel sound of mum Cissy Houston's Sweet Inspirations. )

a)Macy Gray is just useless, period.

b)Soul/gospel - right, so the same testifyin' fury now goes into things like "Thong Song" ("I don't think you KNO-O-O-O-OW..." what's he singing about, Angela Davis? Oh), and Usher ("At th-i-i-i-is point...") That's what I mean about the same emoting no matter what the lyric is, doesn't matter if its the Rapture or some 'freak' or Usher's bloody relationship-ship- shit. (Incidentally, isn't that tune the worst ever? R&B with no beat, no production, no tune, no anything. Some kind of milestone.) It also cracks me up when some singers apply that world-razing melisma to laundry-list lyrics ("I ca-a-a-lled you on your mo-o-o-bi- i-ile, you had it on call wa-i-i-i-ting..." ect)

Speaking of Macy, isn't track one of the new album stupid? The album's called 'Id', which would presume a knowledge of mental health terminology (Okay it's Freudian bullshit but you get it out of the same introductory textbook right?), yet the first song is "You're Relating to a Psychopath", but the lyrics talk about somebody PSYCHOTIC, not psychopathic. 'Psychotic' means batshit, 'psychopathic' just means a person with no conscience who is cold and manipulative, uses people as objects, no power of empathy, which is interesting but NOT WHAT THE SONG IS ABOUT! Why should I take all these deep feelings seriously if they won't even open a dictionary?

melisma used for everything >> use of melisma signifies less than variations w/i use of melisma >> if you don't like it and thus don't listen you will not be able to pick out these variants of meaning (or indeed competence)

beside it does mean something viz the corruption of faith by commerce, and learning to live w.that in a fallen and fucked world

ps i heart beyoncé cuz she = a robot (easily) passing the turing "soulfood" test, gary numan w.presentable corporate midriff

pps aretha franklin is afraid of flying

Emoting does not equal melisma, and vice versa. The artists who conflate the two (as anti-R&B people tend to) are usually the most irratating R&B vocalists. Personally I love tracks like Destiny's Child's "Bugaboo" where the singers use melisma while talking about their pagers, mobiles and e-mail accounts, precisely because it neutralises attempts by other vocalists to tug on the heart-strings just by wobbling their notes. I think we'd both agree that "soul" is a terribly problematic concept here, although perhaps for different reasons.

Meanwhile, since you haven't refuted the list you demanded I provide, I claim victory on that particular point :-)

OK, I'll admit I like 'Bugaboo' for the same reason, and I like Mary J cuz she's an alkie and a crackhead. TLC just sound HARD (i.e., grate!) OK, point conceded...(now's the time to use the emergency 'chiz chiz' card)

'Bugaboo', tho - are they doing that on purpose? I'm not making assumptions either way, I just think it's relevant. (Not that it would interfere with whether or not I liked the song, of course.)

See, only reason I'm asking - if using vocal mannerisms to neutralise themselves is so fantastic (and I'm not saying it isn't), then why not just go straight to the source - TV commercials? (There's a fantastic Budweiser ad in the UK, the 'Real American Heroes' one [I imagine they've pulled it by now tho for obvious reasons], which features a singer in the Seger/Springsteen 'heartland' mode busting a nut howling about 12-inch frankfurters. The ad works so perfectly because at first you're not sure if it's a parody - of commercials AND 'soulful' singing' - or a genuine imported advert.)

I meant 'busting a GUT'!!!

Have you seen Rock Star, dave? deep subject (flubbed in my opinion) = just this; the dialectics of busting a nut while metalsquealing — how much is "real" and how much is mere portability of technique at the hi-end of muso ability, and how does this blowback into music as a whole?

Do working musicians not worry abt this the WHOLE TIME, over every last detail (poss.exception: the punkily or indiely incompetent)

Metalsquealing/'soul' - but Aretha Franklin isn't automatically bestowed with that patina of silliness that, say, Ian Gillan is. (Gillan > band 'Rockstar' was based on - haven't seen it, plan to tho).

as for 'do musicians think about this all the time'? Not if they are confident that they're expressing/saying/representing something. Admittedly, this is a minority, and then there's the distinction between people who THINK they have something to say (back to R. Waters again?) and those who are deemed to be 'saying'/etc something by whomever.

(BTW, metal fans can tell what's 'technique for its own sake' - that's just part of the metal experience. Technique-as-ritual-prop, no different than nu-progsters bringing a creaky mellotron on stage even though the sounds are really being created by a calculator-sized sampler kept well away from sight.)

Besides, I thought 'soul' was supposed to imply 'universality', which would seem to be the opposite of technique. Unless THEIR voices are supposed to be expressing truths for all of us who sadly can't 'sing' as 'well' (i.e. never went to stage school), which would explain why I dislike it so.

ND's question is good. It's a provocation, a jeu d'esprit, and possibly an insult. He has a point, or a few. I can go some of the way with him.

The trouble is, IF I allow myself to concur with him about Old pop, then turn my attention to New pop, THEN I still think - my god, this is even worse, many times worse. So I don't think the provocation solves the problem - admirable though it is. All it leaves me feeling, if it succeeds, is: hey - Pop is Bad. Which thought, if taken too seriously, undermines a lot of my life.

more non-athletic R&B singers: D'Angelo, Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, Nate Dogg. This is a non-argument I think. And as for the Mariahs of this world, let's just say that "[R&B] fans can tell what's 'technique for its own sake' - that's just part of the [R&B] experience".

The Mariah Carey/metal analogy is flawed, due to the fact that alot of people who wouldn't know from R&B have Mariah Carey CDs that they think are really good, whereas you can't really say the same about W*A*S*P. I think a point often missed is that people don't really object to nu-pop existing, they object to the fact that it's 'popular', and they (I) believe it's popular only because certain interests keep telling us it is.

Funny ... I was just checking the OED for a deeper appreciation of the term "melisma," and came across this in the previous-usage file:

"The black man...appreciates the rhythm of his speech and retains it in his songs by avoiding the melisma (many notes to one syllable of a word), as most of the Negro spirituals illustrate."

alot of people who wouldn't know from R&B have Mariah Carey CDs that they think are really good, whereas you can't really say the same about W*A*S*P

But you could say it about Iron Maiden. Yes? Anyway my point is that I think people who DO know from R&B are very aware that "soul" singing has indeed gone (as Nitsuh notes) from unadorned naturality round back again to Total Vocal Mastery - partially to stake a claim in the "legit" music world I think - but also as a survival instinct or a way to stand out in the crowd (/church chorus). Anyone who's been to a talent show knows those acapella renditions where the lyrics might as well be one syllable, stretched out to a three-minute vocal cord decathalon, eliciting excited squeals from crowd. SRV to marvin gaye's jimi. too bad; it's one reason why even though the last 3 Mary J. Blige albums have kind of sucked I still love her whiskey rasp.

"certain interests" = ZOG and the trilateral commission?

Or d'you just mean the Man?

Uhhh...Channel 5?

Macy Gray will always have a place in my heart for sampling Pink Floyd's "Astronomy Domine" (the Ummagumma version), and in a song that rhymes "boning" with "moaning," no less.