what is les mccann and eddie harris's "compared to what" about?

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i'm probably being thick, but "try to make it real / compared to what?" -- what does this mean?

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:16 (twenty-one years ago)

what did "make it real" mean ca. late 60s/early 70s? nowadays it's obviously a kind of generic affirmation of authenticity loosely related to some half-remembered afrocentricism. but then, when afrocentricism hadn't even yet crested as a cultural movement, what significance did that phrase have and why to mccann and harris seem to be mocking it?

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:17 (twenty-one years ago)

"compared to what" is by eugene mcdaniels. the verses are about vietnam. it's an anti-war song. the chorus is a lament - "goddamit! i'm tryin' to make it real! / compared to what!!" it's not really a question, or it's a rhetorical question. mcdaniels is saying, here i am, black, marginalized, a drug user, victimized by society, i'm just trying to get along, i'm constantly told i'm on the wrong side, and the "compared to what" is asking "compared to nixon? compared to soldiers? compared to southern sheriffs? etc"

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah it's not "make it real". it's more like - in today's slang - "i'm trying to make it, for real i am".

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:27 (twenty-one years ago)

it seems like a strange, sort of uncomfortable twist of rhetoric

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I only just found out that that Mya/Common song from the Coke ad last year was based on this song. Hilarious.

― Chris Dahlen (Chris Dahlen), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Thanks to this thread I will now be listening to "Cold Duck Time" on repeat for the next three hours.

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Monday, 19 July 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

actually this is just how i've always heard the song. for all i know i'm wrong, i've never read anything where mcdaniels explained himself or anything.

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:34 (twenty-one years ago)

i only know the roberta flack version...

i guess ive always considered it to be like - we're all so fixated on "making it real", but whats really real is whats really going on, like poor dumb rednecks rollin logs, twisted children killin frogs, etc.

in that way, i guess i think it of as an expression of exasperation and frustration at not only the problems of society, but at the affectations and contradictions of some people who try to change it.

i gotta admit, ive never understood that song fully, either, but i think of it as a really really sophisticated song, as it points out all of these contradictions, but it knows that it just cant figure out what the real answer might be. thats why i love the flack album in general - there is some really complex emotional stuff in it.

― peter smith (plsmith), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

like theyre tired of trying to make it real, instead of making it better? ahh, who knows? normally, i would assume in this case that the song doesnt have a consisten point, but i really think this song might be smarter than me.

― peter smith (plsmith), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:37 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah i think my problem with that reading is that the song is so accusatory towards authority figures and straight society : "church on sunday sleep in nod / tryin to duck the wrath of god / preacher's fillin us with fright / they all trying to teach us what is right"

it's pretty easy i think to look back at countercultural music from the 60s and read some auto-critique into it that's not actually there. i was really disapppointed by danny ben-israel's "the hippies of today are the assholes of tomorrow" when i realized he wasn't actually critiquing the hippies at all!! he was just sarcastically calling his parents out for not being radicals or visionaries in their old age.

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:42 (twenty-one years ago)

in a way this song is a kind of antidote to the temptations' "ball of confusion," a song i've always disliked and felt was sort of the Black America version of "for what it's worth": i.e. a scorecard of culture change (though really, not any more coherent in that regard than that terrible billy joel song) that refuses to actually have anything to say about it.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:47 (twenty-one years ago)

maybe i should hear the original - i just think, on a nominally-r&b album with a leonard cohen cover, and songs like "angelitos negros" and "first time...", theres some real complexity to flacks version...

i mean, she obviously has SOME problem with straight society, but maybe she also has some problem with the radical reaction to straight society.

i mean, YOU ARE 100% CORRECT, vahid, about us superimposing ourselves and era and situations onto all this. but i dont usually feel as resonant with stuff as with first take.

― peter smith (plsmith), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:50 (twenty-one years ago)

i haven't heard flack's version yet :-(

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:53 (twenty-one years ago)

flack is really hit and miss on those early records (i haven't heard her later stuff). some of the big ballads are just bland, no impact, but she does a nice version of "will you love me tomorrow" (not as nice the shirelles' but then what is?)

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 19 July 2004 18:55 (twenty-one years ago)

ive listened to quiet fire and the second one, but neither is nearly as good as first take in my opinion. first take is all sort of torch songs. i highly recommend it.

― peter smith (plsmith), Monday, 19 July 2004 19:05 (twenty-one years ago)

its so understated (i, on the other hand, find understatement IMPOSSIBLE) - i think you should listen more - itll probably grow on you.

― peter smith (plsmith), Monday, 19 July 2004 19:07 (twenty-one years ago)

i know that one pretty well.

i don't find it so amazingly understated, her vocals can get kind of overembellished at times. she does have a tendency to blur chord changes and such so the melodies don't appear as strident as in the originals, that can be a plus and a minus. in the case of the goffin/king song i think it's both.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Monday, 19 July 2004 19:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I've heard Flack's version, and the one on "Bow Down To The Exit Sign" by David Holmes. I like the Holmes version, but kinda feel like there's a version out there somewhere which I should absolutely check out. So, where do I go???

― peepee (peepee), Monday, 19 July 2004 19:45 (twenty-one years ago)

live version on the album "swiss movement" by les mccann & eddie harris?

― vahid (vahid), Monday, 19 July 2004 19:49 (twenty-one years ago)

three years pass...

i like the brian auger version but the dude doesn't really have any anger or fire in his version. he's just going through the motions, but the song is so strong it somehow works.

― omar little, Saturday, 6 October 2007 01:58 (eighteen years ago)

it's about 8 2/3 minutes.

OH HO HO DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE

― Oilyrags, Saturday, 6 October 2007 02:45 (eighteen years ago)

: )

― omar little, Saturday, 6 October 2007 03:05 (eighteen years ago)

one year passes...

Yeah, I think it's basically "trying to make it real" ie trying to be taken seriously, trying to get somewhere, trying to live the right way etc, but compared to WHAT? Given all this upheaval as well as just good old-fashioned corruption and hypocrisy, what standard am I being judged against exactly? "God dammit!"

Granted I haven't listened to it too closely and don't know most of the words, but that's what I've always gotten out of the title line...

― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 25 January 2009 18:44 (seventeen years ago)

seven years pass...

http://www.blog.thehoya.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/tumblr_nbe7asiWnb1rt4qmeo1_400.jpg

"Sometimes people say that my head is too big for my body, and then I say, 'Compared to what?!'"

― Silence, followed by unintelligible stammering. (Doctor Casino), Saturday, 20 August 2016 15:53 (nine years ago)

four months pass...

Why did I never pay attention to "Invitation to Openness" before? It's outstanding!

― great Canadian prog-psych debut from 1969 (Sparkle Motion), Wednesday, 28 December 2016 22:43 (nine years ago)

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