Can't Play Their Instruments

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Every punk band in the world always says, "In the beginning, none of us knew how to play a fookin instrument, so we just picked up some guitars and banged out our first record." blah blah blah...

My question is this: Have their ever been bands that REALLY couldn't play their instruments? Because every time I've learned a new instrument, the first few months sound more like the Thai Elephant Orchestra than early Beat Happening. Basically, I'm saying that these statements are a load of crap, that what all these bands are actually saying is, "We couldn't play our instruments very well" (big difference).

If I'm wrong, please correct me, but isn't every band that says they can't play basically lying? Who REALLY couldn't play and made a record anyway?

― Mark, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Truthful answers, please.

― Mark, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

David Fair (Half Japanese) - How To Play Guitar

― gygax! (i forgot my blog password), Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I remember reading that Arto Lindsay had never even held a guitar before starting his prototype 'no wave' band, DNA. He plays it more like a percussion intstrument on their recordings. That aesthetic is probably true for many of the 'no wave' bands. Lydia Lunch decried Punk Rock by saying it was basically just Chuck Berry riffs on speed, whereas her bands (Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Eight Eyed Spy, etc.) were *REALLY* eschewing the rules altogether by not even bothering to learn the convetional way of playing their instruments.

― Alex in NYC, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Four words: Philosophy. Of. The. World. If you listen to that album and think that The Shaggs have any clue how to play, you're the world's biggest optimist.

― Sean Carruthers, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If I'm wrong, please correct me, but isn't every band that says they can't play basically lying?

No, I think yer largely correct here mark. "we can't play" does = "we can't play very well", or sometimes "we can play as well as deep purple actually, but are deliberately playing in a ham-fisted manner, coz it's hip to, like"

Who REALLY couldn't play and made a record anyway?

The only thing I've ever heard that answers that description is "contact high with the godz" on esp-disc. (google it if yer kurious) It is bloody terrible, and guess who paid collector's prices for said rekkid 10 yrs ago. No I haven't got it any more

― Norman Phay, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Anyone who can play a chord - even if it's a wrongly fingered chord, can play - or at least has a notion of what a song "should" sound like. I've been trying to play a guitar for 10 years without knowing how to play - but I still make mostly traditional chord/note progressions...

I'd like to agree with Jad & David Fair, but they're still playing Bo Diddley/ Chuck Berry songs...

I think the Germs were pretty bad at their instruments. Worse than me, anyway.

― Dave225, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Sigue Sigue Sputnik! (minus Tony James)

― Brian MacDonald, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

what exactly is playing well anyway? Technically, Steve Vai plays the guitar really well -- but what he plays is wanky crap. On the other hand, Keith Richards doesn't play the guitar technically well, but at the top of his game could play Steve Vai into the floorboards.

as for "punk" bands (in some cases and in the 70's) -- I think the partial idea is to start over, rebuilding or creating a new music vocabulary in responses to the bloatedness of the mainstream.

also: David Fair's essay is one of the best thing ever written about playing the guitar.

― Jack Cole, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Four words: Philosophy. Of. The. World. If you listen to that album and think that The Shaggs have any clue how to play, you're the world's biggest optimist.

By what criteria do they not know how play? I hear songs -- I hear melodies -- and I hear rhythms. Seems like they have a "clue."

― Jack Cole, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I have some CDs by a group called eX-Girl, and when they started, they could only sing, and not play any instruments. However, it was decided by the marketing powers that be they should be a real rock band, and were given instruments to learn (guitar, bass, drums). So, out of nowhere they became a rock band. And as if you would expect any less of Japanese rock bands, THEY IMMEDIATELY SHOT OUT OF THE GATE PLAYING AVANT-PROG-PUNK.

The moral is, people who are inspired enough to form a rock band usually find ways of working out how to play their tunes.

― dleone, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ESG!

― stirmonster, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Last week I watched "The Punk Rock Movie" which contains a 1977 performance by the Slits. They couldn't play their instruments at all at that point. They just made as much noise as they could. They were great.

― Mark Dixon, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

continuing the No Wave theme: MARS were supposedly 4 art students who just picked up instruments & gave it a go. good job, too, either way...!

― Paul, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ESG?!? I defy anybody on this list to record anything with anything near the rhythmic excellence of their first couple of records. The things they played were _simple_, but they executed them perfectly.

I'd also note of the Shaggs that, although their tuning/timing/etc. was like nobody else's (and kind of ghastly), they could reliably play things exactly the same way twice.

In the dept. of actually not being to play their instruments: Skinned Teen's guitar player plays exactly the way one plays six or eight days after picking up a guitar for the first time.

I suppose you could also include most of the Portsmouth Sinfonia in that category, since that was pretty much the point of their records.

― Douglas, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

unsurprisingly, Eno connection is rearing its head here and there...

― Paul, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, if we've disqualified the Shaggs, what about Portsmouth Sinfonia?

― Sean Carruthers, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Semantic piddling: the logical conclusion of a "can't play" argument would mean that they couldn't generate any noise from the instrument at all.

― Sean Carruthers, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I always liked the answer given by [whoever] in the noise band Harry Pussy (who I've never heard), who said something like: "People say I can't play guitar. Can't? What's stopping me? I play it, I hit the strings, it makes sound, right?"

This is such a mindless argument about pop anyway. Our greatest musicians are total hacks. My violin teacher, when asked what she thought of Hendrix: "Oh, so what. A few crescendos, that's it." She, of course, doesn't "get it." And she's also right.

― misterhungry, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I suspect melody is probably less important than rhythm for punk. So, probably if you could just play open string guitar chords *in time* that was OK.

On the other hand, if you could hit the notes perfectly, but felt around for 30 seconds looking at the guitar to find the right frett to put your finger on, you couldn't even be in a punk band ... maybe you were Eno though! :-)

But I think the "can't play our instruments" philosophy is a crucial one to the development of most forms of electronic music. Non- musicians picked up pieces of equipment and basically experimented with the noise it made. They had no structure to impose on it, so they discover the structure inherrant in it.

So, for example, the classic TB303 sounds great when used by a post- punk synth-pop practitioner, or in acid house and other derivitive forms of techno where non-musicians simply leave it do what it does naturally. But these sounds were never discovered by real musicians trying to use this instrument "musicaly", to play it via Midi, or program it to behave like a bass player. Then the results are at best forgetable.

― phil, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

'non-musicians' = 'people who didn't know they were musicians until they found stuff that they liked playing with and luckily for them some of the stuff has just been invented' - that's how I think of it anyway (reading phil's post above). Also, I think that if 'musical ability' is composed of different things then 'willingness to perform music in front of others or substitute ears such as recording devices' is one of those things, and an important one.

I have listened very carefully and have concluded that Kleenex had no prior experience with the instruments they were using on recordings, at least at the stage of their career when they used that name.

― dave q, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Also, leaving aside any and all issues of technique, inspiration, experience, imagination, etc. etc., two words - ADAM CLAYTON

― dave q, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The luckiest man in pop, along with Alex Van Halen.

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

See, I've heard that said about Adam Clayton a lot, but his basslines seem to me more memorable than most. Are they really simple or something?

― Mark, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Rob 'n Fab.

― s woods, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Sure Adam's Clayton's basslines are fine, on record where he doesn't go near them. I mean, Edge is at least in the same postcode.

― dave q, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

...of the songs he's attempting to play, I mean

― dave q, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Sure there are bands that are really crappy as musicians - bands like Absurd, Vlad Tepes and Kohort. Yet strangely, somehow some of this music is absolutely great. Whether this is because of or despite their total lack of proficiency is hard to tell, but somehow the atmosphere they're trying to convey benefits from the sloppy/raw/primitive/chaotic racket. For a lot of these bands this *is* their aim. In the beginning, every punk bands starts out to make a horrible racket.

What is worse I think is the really ambitious bands who played well enough to pull off simpler music, but try to do complex and demanding things and fail because of their limited playing abilities.

― Siegbran Hetteson, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Me!

― Brian MacDonald, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

So the Edge plays bass on U2's records? I didn't know that.

― Mark, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Don't mention it again or Negativland will sue us

― dave q, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually, I was just making an assumption about Clayton, but I really like hearing stories about who in the band was the crappiest. Michael Clarke will forever be legendary for incompetence, but as the outtake on 'Notorious Byrd Brothers' shows, having to decipher instructions from BOTH sane, grounded individuals McGuinn and Crosby would drive anybody batshit. Also the Brian Jones stories are funny ("Dunno, what CAN you play?")

― dave q, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i always took 'we can't play' to mean that they had developed their own technique but that it wasn't very adaptable to other situations, thus they are not Great Musicians when held to some extraordinarily outdated classical music-derived standard.
for instance, steve vai (horrible as he is) could probably play chuck berry riffs in a technically perfect way. on the other hand, if you asked craig scanlon to do chuck berry riffs during the early years of the fall, he probably wouldn't be able to pull it off. of course, if you had steve vai sit in with the fall, it'd sound like utter shit. the important thing is that if you play 'badly', do you do it in an interesting way a la scanlon or the shaggs, or do you just sound like a fifth grader learning to play the clarinet?

― Dave M., Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think most musicians (up to a certain point of development anyway) having practiced and generally improved through playing music for a few years will look at their beginning stages as "wow I couldn't play at all." I know I say this every year, despite having made (not necessarily good) records and being in plenty of bands when I couldn't play. So it's all perspective, not meant to be taken literally I think.

― Jordan, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Vlad Tepes

hear hear! also abruptum; i remember back when sodom's "in the sign of evil" was described as mindless racket by people who couldn't play their instruments... havohej is another prime example, though i'm not sure that's lack of talent or bad production.

anyway, others: the prats. the shadow ring (brings up that 'can't they? or won't they?' thing again). sun ra's "strange strings" counts (they didn't know how to play those particular instruments). lydia lunch's guitar playing in teenage jesus and the jerks is so, so fucking beautiful - she's probably my favorite guitarist. world would've been a better place if she had stuck with the guitar.

― your null fame, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

abruptum
Although I highly doubt they were trying to make music in the first place...
i remember back when sodom's "in the sign of evil" was described as mindless racket by people who couldn't play their instruments...
Not to mention Hellhammer on their demos. And Kreators debut was also a classic case of a band playing faster than they actually could.

havohej is another prime example, though i'm not sure that's lack of talent or bad production.
Bad production, mostly I think...Ledney wasn't that sloppy on his other albums.

And another one: Countess!

― Siegbran Hetteson, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And Beherit Drawing Down The Moon! That album is sloppy as hell but so very much enjoyable...Spinoza Ray Prozak hit the nail on the head:
But Beherit is worthy of worship independent of all factors of this world. It is more than mysticism; it is meta-mysticism; it is more than transcendence, it is transcendence of transcendence.

― Siegbran Hetteson, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Half of the four-piece version of the Manic Street Preachers. If Nicky Wire genuinely has any idea what the hell he's doing, I'm a freaking monkey's uncle.

― electric sound of jim, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It seems everything in permissible in music these days except for playing like Steve Vai. Come on you insular amateurists, venture beyond the pale for once!

― dave q, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

He's not paid to think, just play,
A session man
A session man
A session man
Playing at a different studio every day.

He reads the dots and plays each line,
And always finishes on time.
No overtime nor favors done.
He is a session man,
A chord progression,
A top musician.

Ray Davies
"Session Man"

― Jack Cole, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I feel sorry for session men, they are probably really happy in what they do but they have to put up with getting hassled all the time. It's just like me, sometimes I dream of being an accountant but whenever I tell anyone they have to make some joke about driving a volvo or something. I hope that the session men's happiness can compensate for how hated they are.

(By the way, The Shaggs were taught music three hours a day for something like two or three years at home by their father. You should read their daily schedule, it was amazing.)

― maryann, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Out of curiosity how many people who are slagging Steve Vai have actually listened to his albums? I haven't but what I've heard from Flex-Able was a lot more creative and interesting than he's getting credit for.

Does Teenage Jesus and the Jerks sound amateurish?

― sundar subramanian, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Haven't heard 'Flex-able', but you must admit 'Fire Garden' is total dogshit, especially the vocals.

I agree, session players get a bad rap. Surprised more people don't find it admirable, wanting to contribute to a musical conception to the best of one's ability without splattering ego and 'expression' all over everything.

― dave q, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

maybe with the shaggs, they got so good that they turned into derek bailey-like geniuses and give off the illusion that they're just screwing around, but if you asked them they could play any number of steve vai licks.

― Dave M., Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

We needed something to move and fill up the space
we needed something this always is just the case
jefrey with one f jeffery took up his place
sat on a carpet and with tablas in hand took up the chase
- "Space (I Believe In)", Pixies

― o. nate, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

When I used to make records in the 80s and play live, I would make up chords... and not be able to remember them the next time I played them. I had no semblance of rhythm, either (as anyone who's seen me dance can attest).

Can the smart alec responses, anyone's who's ever heard a Legend! single... (I know. It explains plenty.)

But does that answer your question? I think I even managed to make my record company's money back on a couple of my records. (But certainly not all of them.) Er. I have a new album out if anyone's still there... I don't play guitar on this one, promise.

― Jerry, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The Pervy Hobbit Fanciers first single featuring myself on guitar and SAUCEPANGS = hooray I cannot play ANY CHORDS AT ALL! I mean to but it never quite works out - I blame this on it being Vic Godards guitar => it does not need yr normal crap pedestrian chordZoR.

This thread reminds me of that Half Man Half Biscuit song whose title I can't remember. SOUND MAN, SOUND MAN, WE'VE GOT OUR OWN SOUNDMAN! (they can't play their instruments etc etc). Mark, this is a very "local bands" question isn't it? Why don't you go on after Crispy Ambulance?

― Sarah, Thursday, 20 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ok, i totally love esg but you can hear them straining at the seams when you listen closely. i saw them a few weeks ago and the guitarist had all her parts written on paper on the floor of the stage. they were still great though - give me her over steve vai any day.

i guess the ultimate 'can't play' was the early slits.

― stirmonster, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Rappers do not play their instruments. They press buttons on synthesizers. I only learned this fairly recently. Anyway, does self-taught count as not being able to play? Ian Anderson's flute has such an awful tone I wonder if it counts as playing...

― Anna Rose, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Do synthesizers have buttons? I thought they were all knobs, sliders, and keys!

― phil, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Prog is all knobs too.

― Andrew L, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Rappers do not play their instruments. They press buttons on synthesizers. I only learned this fairly recently.

Who wants to point out how shit Jay-Z Unplugged was then?

― Dom Passantino, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Anna rappers don't do that!! r U crazy? they have a DJ who makes all the sounds, with turntables and synthesizers and samplers and stuff. The rapper just raps. Like a pitcher in baseball, it's a hard enough job so nobody really expects them to do other stuff at the same time. But there are rap groups—not many—that play ALL their own instruments. Stetsasonic was probably the first one. And The Roots do this.

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

haha 'singers do not play their drums'

― Josh, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Rappers do not play their instruments.

The unholy union of rappers and instruments is best viewed (from afar) as Geddy Lee drops mad, awful devistation on "Roll the Bones".

― dleone, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Wait a minute... she thinks rappers should play their own instruments, she's clueless about modern rap, she likes Pink Floyd... Anna Rose is Wycleff Jean. Fucking A...

― Dom Passantino, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Dom don't talk about Anna like she's not right here, it's rude!

― Tracer Hand, Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

news flash: ILM poster is rude. also, israelis and palestinians FITE! film at 11.

― Dave M., Friday, 21 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

five years pass...

The Troggs?

― Bob Six, Saturday, 29 March 2008 11:59 (eighteen years ago)

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