Failed Musical Experiments

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I've been listening to this 1974 Jack DeJohnette (jazz/fusion drum powerhouse for anyone who doesn't know) album called Sorcery recently, and most of it's pretty good, but there's this track called "The Right Time" that consists of the band members saying "The Time" and "The Right Time" and variations on that, or other things altogether, in pretty much any rhythm. There are only four or five band members, and it sounds embarassingly half-assed.

What are some other moments where artists managed to drive off a cliff in the name of "experimentation"? I don't want this to turn into "experimental music that sucks." I want moments where otherwise good artists tried things that just didn't work

― Hurting 2, Sunday, 29 April 2007 06:16 (eighteen years ago)

Shudder To Think always lost the plot when they tried to go all abstract, usually on the last song of every album.

― Matt #2, Sunday, 29 April 2007 08:04 (eighteen years ago)

Its probably not quite what you were asking for, as Stockhausen is an experimental type artist, but as I think of him as a composer who wrote what he wanted as the means to do it had become available by technology, which happened to be cast as experimental I'll say that I sometimes think of his "Gruppen" (at least on the version conducted by Abbado, Maderna and Boulez) as a failed experiment to revitalize orchestral music -- quite exciting as a noise at first, but even by the end its hard not to think of it as a bit of a mesh of stuff thrown together.

Apparently the new recording (Eotvos) is much better.

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 29 April 2007 08:20 (eighteen years ago)

opeth - damnation

certainly not an experiment in the sense that it was creative and groundbreaking. but an experiment as far as the band was concerned. and a mostly bland one

― Charlie Howard, Sunday, 29 April 2007 08:32 (eighteen years ago)

that cockney track at the end of disraeli gears is ridiculous

― ógy, Sunday, 29 April 2007 10:09 (eighteen years ago)

Miles Davis, pretty much anything from On the Corner onwards, in many different ways.

Flowers of Romance

Wire's Document and Eyewitness

The Dana Owens Album

Keith Jarrett's Restoration Ruin

(This is not to say that they're all 100% crap.)

― mark 0, Sunday, 29 April 2007 12:31 (eighteen years ago)

Miles Davis, pretty much anything from On the Corner onwards, in many different ways.

Provided you are talking pre-retirement, you are so wrong in many different ways.

― Bill in Chicago, Sunday, 29 April 2007 12:36 (eighteen years ago)

I love a lot of it (pre-retirement), but still think of it as sprawling and flabby. (Post-retirement, it's a lame experiment with pop and genre-fied fusion, and I could never defend it.)

― mark 0, Sunday, 29 April 2007 12:41 (eighteen years ago)

It's sprawling, but not flabby. Rated X is a muscular beast ready to destroy you.

Yeah, post-retirement is just failure, not experiment.

― Bill in Chicago, Sunday, 29 April 2007 21:33 (eighteen years ago)

Velvet Underground, "The Murder Mystery" ?

i kind of like it now, but when i was 16 i couldn't stand it....... i'm actually sitting here trying to remember how its sounds and can't. lots of counting, yes?

― poortheatre, Sunday, 29 April 2007 21:37 (eighteen years ago)

I like Murder Mystery. And did when I was 16 too! It's got the best Moe Tucker singing of all Velvets songs.

― sonderangerbot, Sunday, 29 April 2007 21:41 (eighteen years ago)

number 9....number 9...numb

― m coleman, Sunday, 29 April 2007 21:54 (eighteen years ago)

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