Ben Harper - classic or dud ?

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i kinda figure most people here are gonna hate ..but am curious

for me the first album is good...single "whipping boy" excellent
second album ' fight for your mind' is real good....the song ' god fearing man' is amazing - 11 mins of beautiful bottleneck work

the recent albums are veering more and more towards ho-hum folky flavours...getting closer and close to woe-some jack johnson .

― toe-foo (toe-foo), Sunday, 9 April 2006 07:46 (twenty years ago)

I'd guess you're right that there will be much hateration so I wanna jump in to second your praise for his guitar work, especially when he's playing the Weissenborn. I went to school with Ben most of my life, we weren't super-tight but his family was a beautiful force for good in our community (they ran the local musical-instruments store, Ben used to be behind the counter 5 days a week). His quieter slide work is wonderfully subtle & evocative.

That said, I did flinch when I saw that he'd called an album Fight For Your Mind .

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 9 April 2006 08:15 (twenty years ago)

not classic but soulful singer and player.

― shredding repis on the gnar gnar rad (chaki), Sunday, 9 April 2006 08:36 (twenty years ago)

not classic but some good songs here and there

much better than jack johnson and his ilk

― splates (splates), Sunday, 9 April 2006 09:29 (twenty years ago)

If he were half as good a songwriter as he is guitarist and singer, he'd be extremely classic -- as it is, he's no dud.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Sunday, 9 April 2006 09:51 (twenty years ago)

i agree that is albums keep getting boring-er and boring-er

― Chris Wright (DrFunktronic), Sunday, 9 April 2006 15:17 (twenty years ago)

I really like Will to Live, but am unable to decide whether that's because it's a good album or because I have so many good memories built around that album. Fight was OK (some of it quite good, some of it stoner dross), and everything since has been fairly crap (despite AMG's over-rating).

― js (honestengine), Sunday, 9 April 2006 15:51 (twenty years ago)

The Ausrtalian guy who temped in my office last year LOVED him beyond words. Him and Jeff Buckley. And Dave Matthews Band. He was really scornful of Jack Johnson though.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Sunday, 9 April 2006 15:57 (twenty years ago)

i agree that is albums keep getting boring-er and boring-er

owing to my present love of boring music that helps me relax, this reads like praise to me

― Thomas Tallis (Tommy), Sunday, 9 April 2006 17:47 (twenty years ago)

another lonely day is a beautiful song. other than that, dud.

― rockaction (rockaction), Sunday, 9 April 2006 19:39 (twenty years ago)

I really do suggest checking out the track ' god fearing man' ...it's probably very influenced by ry cooder's paris texas ost

― grapple (grapple), Sunday, 9 April 2006 21:27 (twenty years ago)

MOR. rubbish

― Savin All My Love 4 u (Savin 4ll my (heart) 4u), Sunday, 9 April 2006 23:21 (twenty years ago)

Ben Harper = spark a j, take a nap. I'm not saying that's a bad thing; I'm just telling it like it is.

― M. Biondi (M. Biondi), Sunday, 9 April 2006 23:34 (twenty years ago)

by each and every account he's a really nice guy, but his music holds no interest for me at all

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Sunday, 9 April 2006 23:42 (twenty years ago)

I used to hate on principle, b/c the hacky-sack hippies a few years younger than me seemed to dig him. They killed Bob Marley for me too.

A hell of a player, though, and there's some great stuff on Teh Will To Live. I like him best when he goes all Jimmy Page.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Monday, 10 April 2006 04:37 (twenty years ago)

ground on down is a bad ass song, but there are some major dud songs in his catalog. i agree w/ rockaction on another lonely day. had one seriously cathartic moment listening to "#3" off of the will to live. i would say no album is solid enough all the way through which makes him hard to return to for more than a track or 2.

― jdchurchill (jdchurchill), Monday, 10 April 2006 17:12 (twenty years ago)

five months pass...

fucken dud. smug, holier-than-thou, 'cooler'-than-thou, preachy bore. despise on principle.

i lump him in with michael franti and jack johnson

― Charlie Howard (the sphinx), Thursday, 5 October 2006 14:17 (nineteen years ago)

I think Harper's great. Sure there are some songs I'm not enthused with (can't think of any band that this is not the case), but over all he's classic in my books.

― shorty (shorty), Thursday, 5 October 2006 14:55 (nineteen years ago)

five months pass...

another lonely day is a very nice song. the rest of the entire catalog is for people who have 10 CDs and the other 10 are...

Bob Marley - Greatest Hits
Pink Floyd - The Wall
U2 - The Joshua Tree
Madonna - The Immaculate Collection

oh fuck i can't even finish that..

― 7seasjim, Saturday, 24 March 2007 16:35 (nineteen years ago)

three years pass...

My housemate was playing some of his stuff earlier so I thought I'd get the ILM opinion. The woefulness of this thread sums up the woefulness of the music quite nicely.

― sam500, Wednesday, 26 January 2011 12:54 (fifteen years ago)

one month passes...

Never been interested in his music, but a couple of days we listened in the store to the "Live from the Montreal..." album and I was amazed to hear some truly nasty, demented, out-of-control guitar heroics. Some of it even reminded me of White Heaven - definitely not what I was expecting from him.

― Marco Damiani, Wednesday, 16 March 2011 12:18 (fifteen years ago)

working in a mall cd store in the mid-90s we had his first 2 albums in our rotation of promo material. i think i remember the 2nd being kind of a big seller at the time(?), but i was partial to the first one iirc. they was some decent stuff on them - esp when you consider all the other dreck we had to listen to. can't speak for anything he's done since.

pretty sad when the highlight of your day is hearing a Ben Harper song among the Celine, Oasis, Wallflowers, Jewel

― the Hogg who would be Boss (will), Wednesday, 16 March 2011 13:56 (fifteen years ago)

four weeks pass...

the screaming frat boys kind of ruin 'live on mars' for me

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 14 April 2011 18:13 (fifteen years ago)

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