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Sorry, I'm just conditioned to doubt people after hearing so many times "I like everything!" only to be disappointed.
But I really do find it a bit suspect when people think that their own tastes are some objective indicator of what media (whether it's music, film, paintings, photography, sculpture, etc.) is good and what is bad.
Repeatedly hearing people say that the art you think is great is actually bad has likely influenced your feelings of suspicion about people who claim that there's an objective standard of artistic quality.
In any case, this is a long conversation that's clunky on a forum.
I love grindcore because it's a visceral artform. It means something. Like Wyclef. Grindcore absolutely has artistic merit, more than much of pop music.
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It was easier to find for lack of media
I love Al Dimeola and RTF. Yeah, Al can be a bit caustic, but he is so talented. Didn't seem them on the reunion tour, but caught Stanley Clarke the next year touring with Lenny White and some young Ukranian keyboardist. Sat in the 5th row for $25 bucks. What a show.
Rich, You're right about knowing "what to look for". Me, heck.. My word of mouth pipeline is pretty thin except for talk bass, my bandmates and when I go wandering on youtube and pandora. Radio back in the day ..( as in 30 to 40 years ago) was much more localized and more independent. We relied on the hip DJ or DJs to turn us on to new stuff. Or the other "dinosaur"...your local record store! I'm 57 years old and I'll overhear a band name now and then from a youngster and I go look them up. Quite a few times, I've discovered new bands I like. Case in point. The Brothers Comatose. Some kid on Craigslist mentioned them. I love them!
Looking at bands like GoGoPenguin, Neal Cowley Trio, you see the influence of acts like Aphex Twin and other electronica on jazz. Dave Douglas covered Mary J Blige. I think it's very likely that the influence of hip hop is finding its way into jazz, and that's how it's supposed to work. Its rhythms and timing must have found their way into the soloing of 25 year old jazz guitarists already.
It bothers me that of all rappers, Al picks Eminem, one of virtuoso's in the genre. One who picks a rhyme scheme and a rhythm, and manages to continue that scheme and rhythm all throughout a 6 minute song, without any filler words. Al could actually learn from him, how you can tell a story without all the unnecessary stuff.
It bothers me that of all rappers, Al picks Eminem, one of virtuoso's in the genre. One who picks a rhyme scheme and a rhythm, and manages to continue that scheme and rhythm all throughout a 6 minute song, without any filler words. Al could actually learn from him, how you can tell a story without all the unnecessary stuff.
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Has anyone mentioned the old story of Al bitching about a piano that he had at a show, only to find that he was the one who specifically requested it? It was along the lines of:
"Hey, dummy; who told you to use this piano?"
"You did, Al."
Al is only happy when stroking his own ego.
"Hey, dummy; who told you to use this piano?"
"You did, Al."
Al is only happy when stroking his own ego.
LOL, so many haters in this thread. "Al is just jealous and broke!". "I can't name any of his songs!" Seriously? The guy is not hurting for cash OR acclaim, he has plenty of both. He is merely commenting on the very real FACT that music has taken a huge dump in the last couple decades (which was fairly recent when he made these comments).
Yeah, artists like Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Neil Young, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Mike Oldfield, the Yardbirds, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Traffic, Janis Joplin, Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, James Taylor, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, well, you get the idea... THEY WERE THE EXCEPTION, NOT THE RULE! I mean, for every 30 of those, you had to put up with at least one CAPTAIN AND TENILLE! It was BROOTUHL, man, believe me!
Gambale is a mind bending guitarist in his own right, but creatively, he cannot hold a candle to Al. People repeat the same nonsense they heard someone else say that Al is a mindless shredder, which was NEVER remotely true at all. I mean, he learned composition at a very young age at the feet of an absolute master (Chick) and has been forging his own path for 45 years. I mean, if any of the haters/doubters actually listened to the Splendido Hotel clip that was posted (NOT his best album, by the way), you may be forgiven for having moments of wondering if you were still listening to the same album as a few minutes ago. 20 years later, Grande Passion was pretty much the pinnacle of his Pizolla inspired acoustic stuff. Cielo e Terra is excellent moody acoustic world music (mostly solo guitar with some percussion). Land of the Midnight Sun and Elegant Gypsy are blazing 70s fusion (featuring variously Jaco, Hammer, etc...). There's some pretty advanced and interesting and CATCHY stuff all over his 20+ albums.
LOL, of course the guy trying to argue that music is completely subjective and can't be compared would be a grindcore fan.
Anyway, what a lot of people are not getting about the radio aspect, is that radio used to play good music because that is what people wanted to hear, and record companies weren't trying to put out the 7 millionth britney spears clone (or whatever clone).
Now, what this means, is first of all, people got exposed to good music "passively". They didn't HAVE to figure out how to troll bandcamp for days to find a pretty good band. Back then, it was like the millions of dollars buried under the big W. EVERYONE was trying to find the good bands and SIGN them and put them out in the world. Now, labels just want something that sounds like something else that was already successful. But in the 70s, you could have a weird ass band like Yes who played intense 20 minute songs with abstract lyrics, blazing keyboard and guitar (and BASS!) solos,with wild cover artwork, oh, and they could have GOLD RECORDS doing that and sell out arenas and stadiums.
So because of that kind of success, you could have a band like Gentle Giant. And because of Gentle Giant, you could have a band like Gryphon. And because of bands like Gryphon, you could have some random prog bands in someone's garage that would be playing in your local bar every week. It creates a whole scene and pumps up the diversity and quality of the available music, because there are NO limitations on what you can do and still make a living. If it's good, you will probably do ok, and even if you don't the chances are good enough that you'll chance it anyway.
Now, maybe you don't care for prog and fusion, but those are just bellweather areas that show what's going on with everything else. If you have great prog and fusion that is commercially successful, it's unlikely that your overall music scene/culture won't be AMAZING. And that's exactly what you had in the 60s and 70s. You could become international superstars playing literally ANY kind of music, which naturally creates a ton of competition. And the best bands would usually get some form of support, whether it was a record deal, or even just regional notoriety and radio play.
THAT is what we don't remotely have now. Yes, for a few hundred bucks a band can record a decent selling album, and get it on the internet for free. Then what? Nothing. Unless you have 8m personal FB friends (to get a few hundred "likes" for your band), it probably goes nowhere. Gigs are hard to find, and the ones you do don't lead anywhere, because there's no infrastructure to build a scene and a fanbase like there used to be. And nobody cares anyway. They're perfectly happy with their taylor swift and gaga and beyonce and imagine dragons or whatever. Because that's what they "like" because that's all they're exposed to (so it's familiar and "comfortable). But at least in the 70s the people who listen to that stuff would have been listening to James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, etc... that actually had some damn musical ability. I mean, a beautiful song like In France They Kiss on Main Street would basically be unthinkable by a reasonably popular artist these days. But it was just an everyday occurrence back then in the 70s.
Now, you can have hip hop pop, or you can have pop hip hop, take your pick. The only difference between the rock station here (yes, there's literally one, and it sucks, and I live in a major metropolitan area) and the pop stations (half a dozen, which are basically indistinguishable), is the "rock" station some of the songs have a bit of guitar over the otherwise basically EDM backing. Sure you get the occasional bright spot like Kimbra, but she gets maybe a few hundred thousand youtube views, while taylor swift gets BILLIONS. Good music just simply cannot THRIVE if people don't actually want it. And when most "musicians" can't even play in the first place and just use technology to do the heavy lifting. It's one thing for Zappa to buy a Synclavier because it's an incredibly powerful tool that can unlock areas he couldn't previously go. It's another for some kid with no background to load up garbageband and copy and paste a bunch of royalty free loops (that everyone else with a mac also has), and call it a song. And there's certainly value in that as a musical learning excercise, but it doesn't need to make it to the public sphere. But it sure does. It sure does.
Yeah, artists like Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Neil Young, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, Mike Oldfield, the Yardbirds, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Traffic, Janis Joplin, Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, James Taylor, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, well, you get the idea... THEY WERE THE EXCEPTION, NOT THE RULE! I mean, for every 30 of those, you had to put up with at least one CAPTAIN AND TENILLE! It was BROOTUHL, man, believe me!
Gambale is a mind bending guitarist in his own right, but creatively, he cannot hold a candle to Al. People repeat the same nonsense they heard someone else say that Al is a mindless shredder, which was NEVER remotely true at all. I mean, he learned composition at a very young age at the feet of an absolute master (Chick) and has been forging his own path for 45 years. I mean, if any of the haters/doubters actually listened to the Splendido Hotel clip that was posted (NOT his best album, by the way), you may be forgiven for having moments of wondering if you were still listening to the same album as a few minutes ago. 20 years later, Grande Passion was pretty much the pinnacle of his Pizolla inspired acoustic stuff. Cielo e Terra is excellent moody acoustic world music (mostly solo guitar with some percussion). Land of the Midnight Sun and Elegant Gypsy are blazing 70s fusion (featuring variously Jaco, Hammer, etc...). There's some pretty advanced and interesting and CATCHY stuff all over his 20+ albums.
LOL, of course the guy trying to argue that music is completely subjective and can't be compared would be a grindcore fan.
Anyway, what a lot of people are not getting about the radio aspect, is that radio used to play good music because that is what people wanted to hear, and record companies weren't trying to put out the 7 millionth britney spears clone (or whatever clone).
Now, what this means, is first of all, people got exposed to good music "passively". They didn't HAVE to figure out how to troll bandcamp for days to find a pretty good band. Back then, it was like the millions of dollars buried under the big W. EVERYONE was trying to find the good bands and SIGN them and put them out in the world. Now, labels just want something that sounds like something else that was already successful. But in the 70s, you could have a weird ass band like Yes who played intense 20 minute songs with abstract lyrics, blazing keyboard and guitar (and BASS!) solos,with wild cover artwork, oh, and they could have GOLD RECORDS doing that and sell out arenas and stadiums.
So because of that kind of success, you could have a band like Gentle Giant. And because of Gentle Giant, you could have a band like Gryphon. And because of bands like Gryphon, you could have some random prog bands in someone's garage that would be playing in your local bar every week. It creates a whole scene and pumps up the diversity and quality of the available music, because there are NO limitations on what you can do and still make a living. If it's good, you will probably do ok, and even if you don't the chances are good enough that you'll chance it anyway.
Now, maybe you don't care for prog and fusion, but those are just bellweather areas that show what's going on with everything else. If you have great prog and fusion that is commercially successful, it's unlikely that your overall music scene/culture won't be AMAZING. And that's exactly what you had in the 60s and 70s. You could become international superstars playing literally ANY kind of music, which naturally creates a ton of competition. And the best bands would usually get some form of support, whether it was a record deal, or even just regional notoriety and radio play.
THAT is what we don't remotely have now. Yes, for a few hundred bucks a band can record a decent selling album, and get it on the internet for free. Then what? Nothing. Unless you have 8m personal FB friends (to get a few hundred "likes" for your band), it probably goes nowhere. Gigs are hard to find, and the ones you do don't lead anywhere, because there's no infrastructure to build a scene and a fanbase like there used to be. And nobody cares anyway. They're perfectly happy with their taylor swift and gaga and beyonce and imagine dragons or whatever. Because that's what they "like" because that's all they're exposed to (so it's familiar and "comfortable). But at least in the 70s the people who listen to that stuff would have been listening to James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, etc... that actually had some damn musical ability. I mean, a beautiful song like In France They Kiss on Main Street would basically be unthinkable by a reasonably popular artist these days. But it was just an everyday occurrence back then in the 70s.
Now, you can have hip hop pop, or you can have pop hip hop, take your pick. The only difference between the rock station here (yes, there's literally one, and it sucks, and I live in a major metropolitan area) and the pop stations (half a dozen, which are basically indistinguishable), is the "rock" station some of the songs have a bit of guitar over the otherwise basically EDM backing. Sure you get the occasional bright spot like Kimbra, but she gets maybe a few hundred thousand youtube views, while taylor swift gets BILLIONS. Good music just simply cannot THRIVE if people don't actually want it. And when most "musicians" can't even play in the first place and just use technology to do the heavy lifting. It's one thing for Zappa to buy a Synclavier because it's an incredibly powerful tool that can unlock areas he couldn't previously go. It's another for some kid with no background to load up garbageband and copy and paste a bunch of royalty free loops (that everyone else with a mac also has), and call it a song. And there's certainly value in that as a musical learning excercise, but it doesn't need to make it to the public sphere. But it sure does. It sure does.
Anyway, you do this at 21 and try not to be jaded by 50...
His music tends to bore me quite quickly, but this interview had it's moments.
I'm actually not a grindcore fan. It's a meme, to respond with that question when someone says that they like everything.
Never much cared for prog and fusion, either. Always seemed kinda self-indulgent and masturbatory to me.
Also I bet every part of your rant had its equivalent back when you were young, said by someone you dismissed as an old fart at the time.
"Damn kids, they have it all given away to them these days, they are no good, no talent, they are going to ruin us all!"
- First caveman.
- First caveman.
Exactly.
Gods, I hope I never lose so much self-awareness that I'm complaining about "kids these days."
Propper cheese fest, that! .
Funny, listening to it again...after quite a few years.
D
Deleted member 165050
Guest
The problem with this world is that things aren't how I want them to be which is basically how they were when I was younger, only better. And it's everyone else's fault.
I've never really liked his music as a matter of taste. All I could muster was a great deal of respect for his abilities on the guitar and as a composer.
In that interview he sounds like a grumpy old man that does not fit into the modern world any more - and blames the world for that fact.
Most of his opinions feel wrong on so many levels. Don't get me wrong, I'm also old enough to think that back then everything was better and this world is slowly falling to pieces, but this man sounds like he is angry at the fact that his style of music no longer creates a demand in the public - at least not on a level where you can live off it like a rockstar.
The fact that he raises the topic that most modern music is 'low quality' and then drops the name Eminem along with a few adjectives that are closely connected to what happens about eight hours after you eat gets me kind of angry. I'm not big on hip-hop - but as a musician, I have a lot of respect for what Eminem can do. You have to close your mind to a lot of factors to really hold the opinion that Eminem has zero talent. I know this interview is old, but he was proven dead wrong on that particular point - I just looked it up and Eminem has had an album in the US charts for 303 weeks - and he made songs that still get played on the radio after more than a decade (I don't know about US radio though - in non English speaking Euro countries, no one cares about a song's lyrics that much, not even the F-words get bleeped out).
And this whole conspiracy theory that the music industry, the radio stations and the people who send the invites to Letterman etc. want to silence him? Seriously?
In that interview he sounds like a grumpy old man that does not fit into the modern world any more - and blames the world for that fact.
Most of his opinions feel wrong on so many levels. Don't get me wrong, I'm also old enough to think that back then everything was better and this world is slowly falling to pieces, but this man sounds like he is angry at the fact that his style of music no longer creates a demand in the public - at least not on a level where you can live off it like a rockstar.
The fact that he raises the topic that most modern music is 'low quality' and then drops the name Eminem along with a few adjectives that are closely connected to what happens about eight hours after you eat gets me kind of angry. I'm not big on hip-hop - but as a musician, I have a lot of respect for what Eminem can do. You have to close your mind to a lot of factors to really hold the opinion that Eminem has zero talent. I know this interview is old, but he was proven dead wrong on that particular point - I just looked it up and Eminem has had an album in the US charts for 303 weeks - and he made songs that still get played on the radio after more than a decade (I don't know about US radio though - in non English speaking Euro countries, no one cares about a song's lyrics that much, not even the F-words get bleeped out).
And this whole conspiracy theory that the music industry, the radio stations and the people who send the invites to Letterman etc. want to silence him? Seriously?
