What does music under the influence of cocaine really sound like?

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it's kinda easy to say something sounds like it was made under the influence (or for people under the influence) of drugs like marajuana, acid, even extacy, but i just don't get what coke music sounds like. maybe it's my limited exposure to the drug, maybe it's because i don't really hear it in the albums people talk about (Fleetwood Mac's 70s albums, Bowie, Steely dan, Gene Clark's "No Other", etc). i think i'd understand it if you're talking about a cold, detatched electroclash sound, but i just don't get it in reference to that 70s sound.

― JaXoN (jaxon), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:14 (twenty years ago)

Alvin and the Chipmunks

― gear (gear), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:15 (twenty years ago)

http://cover6.cduniverse.com/MuzeAudioArt/140/144399.jpg

― Bobby Peru (Bobby Peru), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:16 (twenty years ago)

sly - but why?

― JaXoN (jaxon), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:19 (twenty years ago)

I don't think much music is actually recorded by people at the time they are on cocaine or for the purposes of listening to something while on cocaine. Cocaine's has much more class baggage than it does functionional associatioons so when people say X is cocaine music they don't mean that it necessarily sounds like it was recorded on cocaine or for people on cocaine, but rather that it's recorded by people who have money to burn on a waste of time drug (esp. in the 70s when it was truly expensive.)

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:19 (twenty years ago)

i mean, is it because we know these musicians were all fucked up on it?

― JaXoN (jaxon), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:19 (twenty years ago)

xpost

― JaXoN (jaxon), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:20 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, it's sorta synonymous with glamour and/or excess.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:21 (twenty years ago)

xpost - so, with regards to these 70s albums, is it one's (like the Mac & Clark), where they were really produced and arranged, like they could just spend spend spend in the studio?

― JaXoN (jaxon), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:21 (twenty years ago)

I always associated the Dan's 'Gaucho' with coke as the production is soooo slick, soooo clean, that it seemed to me to be the product of drugs.

This thread needs to hear from: musicians, people who have done coke, and most preferably musicians who have done coke.

― Brakhage (brakhage), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:24 (twenty years ago)

Cocaine is associated with arrogance, of thinking you are the shit (when you might actually just be shit). Both the third Oasis album and the second Stone Roses album are said to suffer from Coked-up hubris: too many songs that go on twice as long as they need to, and attempts to cover-up iffy songwriting by burying songs in layer after layer after layer of rawk guitar.

― Teh HoBB (the pirate king), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:25 (twenty years ago)

Who on this thread hasn't done coke?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:26 (twenty years ago)

― Confounded (Confounded), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:26 (twenty years ago)

def. Bowie esp. ca. "Be My Wife".

but more on topic: you seem to have forgotten Disco, tsktsk.

― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:27 (twenty years ago)

I just wanted to see the wooden balls again. So-so-sorries!

― Confounded (Confounded), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:27 (twenty years ago)

From the Believer interview with ?uestlove (Ahmir Thompson):

AT: I know about maybe five people in the entertainment industry who did their peak work as a result of crack usage.

BLVR: Are you serious?

AT: Melle Mel will admit it. Melle Mel made "White Lines" high.

BLVR: He used coke while making the record?

AT: No, no, I'm talking about crack.

BLVR: He did crack while doing "White Lines"? Do you mean, during that period in his life, or that night in the studio?

AT: He said, "The most ironic thing about doin 'White Lines' is, I was doin this anti-drug message, but was snortin the shit as I was doin it. That was the most ironic thing about doin 'White Lines.'" He said he was makin the quintessential antidrug song while drowning in his own shit.

― jaymc (jaymc), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:29 (twenty years ago)

It is so f*cking HOTT.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:30 (twenty years ago)

gygax is right.

plus a lot of big political ballads, songs about television and Reagan and motel rooms, and Van Dyk/Tiesto style techno all sound like cocaine, even if they weren't recorded on them.

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:31 (twenty years ago)

I think ?ueslove's confusing the Duran Duran cover with the original.

― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:31 (twenty years ago)

http://static.flickr.com/6/7227013_878901192c_m.jpg

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:32 (twenty years ago)

My knee-jerk answer to this question was "the sound of your own voice."

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:32 (twenty years ago)

Most British music from the mid-90s, too.

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:32 (twenty years ago)

Also he's confused cuz I don't think anyone actually snorts "crack".

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:33 (twenty years ago)

A lot of music "allegedly" recorded by cokeheads is usually very, very bland.

Except disco and Bowie.

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:36 (twenty years ago)

2-Step UK Garage?

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:36 (twenty years ago)

I think that's more pills and Veuve Clicquot.

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:39 (twenty years ago)

"Life in the Fast Lane" -- a song made by people on cocaine, about people on cocaine, for people on cocaine, in order to sell records to buy more cocaine.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:41 (twenty years ago)

I actually took a Xanax a while ago, and I don't feel like making any music.

― 100% Nice (nordicskilla), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:42 (twenty years ago)

I think there's a lot of jazz from the 20s-40s that probably fits this bill.

the eagles mention upthread OTM. as is the band (et al) circa the last waltz.

― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:50 (twenty years ago)

I think that's more pills and Veuve Clicquot.

I distinctly remember the word "charlie" being bandied about in a lot of the primer articles!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:50 (twenty years ago)

DId Miles Davis have something to say on this topic in his autobiog?

― moley, Monday, 3 October 2005 19:55 (twenty years ago)

sofuckingfast!

― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Monday, 3 October 2005 19:56 (twenty years ago)

MES: "back in two minutes!"

― Old School (sexyDancer), Monday, 3 October 2005 20:02 (twenty years ago)

It's not the side effects of the cocaine...

― moley, Monday, 3 October 2005 20:09 (twenty years ago)

A certain brittle clarity, as on blue-sky winter morning when the air is very cold and the sun stabs off the snowbanks in blinding panes.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Monday, 3 October 2005 20:15 (twenty years ago)

A friend of mine said it was pretty clear to him that Remain in Light by Talking Heads was made on coke. He imagined David Byrne sweating and shaking his head and pointing in the sky saying "guitars, guitars here, guitars, okay drums, okay drums, guitars!"

― denied, Monday, 3 October 2005 20:37 (twenty years ago)

People are confusing the image with the effects. One of the effects would be to come up with certain very very ambitious ideas and then, if you continue using the drug, to actually follow through with them, as the drug makes you just a li'l bit manic and obsessive. If you're brilliant and talented enough for the ideas you have while high to be actually good, then this is possibly a good thing. But this is the case for very few people, especially musicians.

Also, people are forgetting metal. Coke is cheap now, folks.

xpost I think Byrne makes some comment on the Stop Making Sense DVD basically implying he was on coke whilst running around the entire stage, which I can certainly believe.

― Eppy (Eppy), Monday, 3 October 2005 20:40 (twenty years ago)

Scorsese had a good description somewhere of the effects of coke on the creative process. Something like, first you have one great idea, then you have five great ideas, then you're convinced you can do all five at once and you need to do them right now!, and you make some excited phone calls to people, and you're going to start it today, or possibly tomorrow, anyway soon, very soon, and isn't there any coke left?

And then you wake up in the morning and the cycle starts again.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, 3 October 2005 20:44 (twenty years ago)

Phil Collins-Easy Lover

Alan Braxe and Fred Falke-Rubicon

Various-Feed The World

― Ronan (Ronan), Monday, 3 October 2005 20:51 (twenty years ago)

People are forgetting metal. Coke is cheap now, folks.

Speed is cheaper. Lemmy rules.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Monday, 3 October 2005 20:55 (twenty years ago)

yeah, coke's QUITE cheap these days...unlike the greener side of things, which oddly, seem to jump when coke goes cheap...

as for 'coke music'- any disco, punk, anything that's uptempo could be considered coke music. music+coke=MORE DRINKING. or more coke...

oft heard phrases w/ coke 'nonono, you don't understand', 'you know what i think?', 'yeah, well...', and '*sniffle*'.