Well you shouldn't; that's just silly; the sentence starts with "to me." I don't know how much more clearly one could indicate they are presenting opinion, not fact.
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What Makes This Song Great (Toto Content)
- Thread starter Altitude
- Start date
Withou even looking at the video or Rick's take on it - its Jeff Porcaro's half time shuffle playing. Probably already been mentioned but Porcaro himself breaks down his playing on a YouTube vid.
And if you like the drumming on Rosanna, check out Jeff's playing on Boz Skagg's Lido Shuffle.
And if you like the drumming on Rosanna, check out Jeff's playing on Boz Skagg's Lido Shuffle.
Yep. I think I agree that popularity doesn't equate to "goodness", but I'm not as confident in the converse. If a thing is universally reviled, can it be said to be a "good" thing? Probably not.
Stickier yet in considering art, in which quality is subjective. If you can measure the quality of a thing by objective means, it's easy to dismiss its popularity as an indicator. Like 1990s quarterback Jeff George, who had a cannon of an arm but was a total jackass by all accounts. He was a good quarterback. On the other hand, I can't stand Bob Dylan's voice, but I can't confidently claim he isn't good. Just because Bob Dylan.
Then there are colloquialisms like "30 million Elvis fans can't be wrong."
I like Toto in general; I do think Rosanna was one of their best songs. I think it's incontrovertible that they were highly skilled musicians. All those are my opinion, but it turns out those opinions are very broadly held, which, I think, is about as good as we can do to establish that Toto, in a general sense, was good.
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You're welcome to it.I like that, "vocal horsepower". I'm using that from now on, check's in the mail.
Alice In Chains is another band with a lot of it.
I like Roseanna (with reservations) too. I thought the opening was brilliant up until the superfluous and jarring diddily-do-sh'bop! horn bit. Being a former progger I have a soft spot for sus4 and sus2 chords and surprise movement shifts like going down a step after the opening G chords instead of going up to the fourth or fifth as many songs do. But whatever. I think if they just kept it as a straight rock number without all the extra production it would have been a lot better rather than the MOR FM type bit of rock pop it became. But that's me.
As far as goodness and numbers goes, you start running into a situation similar to what's been called the Sorates (from the Greek word for "heap") Paradox.
The Sorates Paradox says:
Collect a large amount of sand into a heap.
Now remove a singe grain of sand.
Is it still a heap of sand?
If so, continue removing sand a grain at a time until one remains.
Now...is it still a heap of sand?
If not, then at which precise point did it become no longer "a heap" of sand?
Now remove a singe grain of sand.
Is it still a heap of sand?
If so, continue removing sand a grain at a time until one remains.
Now...is it still a heap of sand?
If not, then at which precise point did it become no longer "a heap" of sand?
How you answer that - and there are literally dozens of ways to approach it, ranging from a simple argument for "common sense" all the way up to some pretty heavy mathematical proofs - depends on where you stand on things like Life, the Universe, and Everything.
And lest that sound like academic wheel spinning, there was a famous case (Jacobellis v.Ohio) before the Supreme Court over the issue of obscenity and censorship. The court in this case decided that calling a movie obscene was not sufficient in itself to justify censorship by banning its showing.
What came out of that case was a classic example of the Sorates Paradox, when Justice Potter Stewart said in his concurring opinion that the Constitution protected all expression, including obscene expression except for what he called "hard-core pornography."
But even with that he ran into the Sorates Paradox. As he wrote in his opinion:
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."
So...who is to say what's good and what's less good or bad?
Bottom line? You are. Otherwise who else is going to make the call?
In matters of aesthetics there's no way to be objective in the scientific sense of the word. However, we can be deeply subjective if we choose to really look at things and spend some time thinking about them before rushing to judgement or making off the cuff half-assed assessments of them. That's where judgement and selection come into play. Which is much of what creating art is all about - selection and judgement.
But this is running long and off topic so I'll leave it with that.
Happy philosophizing!
It's pretty awesome. Before pro tools. Before auto tuning. Everybody worked out their part and learned it well. Some serious stuff there.
My wife recently showed me a video in which they isolate the raw vocal tracks on current pop songs, and those people can't even sing! No tone, no feel and poor intonation! They never could have gained an audience in the 70's or 80's. Even most of the punks could stay in tune back then!
My wife recently showed me a video in which they isolate the raw vocal tracks on current pop songs, and those people can't even sing! No tone, no feel and poor intonation! They never could have gained an audience in the 70's or 80's. Even most of the punks could stay in tune back then!
We all have different tastes and, in this context, good and bad are highly subjective. I know of people who revere The Shaggs (look 'em up if you're not familiar) and consider that the ultimate outsider music, whereas to me (and probably most of us) it's just a bunch of poor young girls being forced to perform music with zero musical aptitude. So, to each his own.
I have an appreciation for just about anything that's done well, though my tastes tend to run a little more toward things that have some rawness left in them, and yet the music I write isn't that edgy. Toto, to me, was a group of studio cats who decided they could get together and make hit records because they had two things: The connections and the expertise. They did, and they did. Nothing wrong with that. What they crafted was far superior on many levels to much of what was out there but it was slickly polished and clearly (to my ear) crafted with a goal. Nothing wrong with that either. They're consummate musicians. I'm glad for them that they had their day, even if I didn't really love these songs when they were constantly on the radio.
I have an appreciation for just about anything that's done well, though my tastes tend to run a little more toward things that have some rawness left in them, and yet the music I write isn't that edgy. Toto, to me, was a group of studio cats who decided they could get together and make hit records because they had two things: The connections and the expertise. They did, and they did. Nothing wrong with that. What they crafted was far superior on many levels to much of what was out there but it was slickly polished and clearly (to my ear) crafted with a goal. Nothing wrong with that either. They're consummate musicians. I'm glad for them that they had their day, even if I didn't really love these songs when they were constantly on the radio.
One of the huge disappointments in my music "career" came when a band I was in during the late 90s learned this. We NAILED the vocals. (I sang high backups.) We took the time to get it right. I think we spent half of a rehearsal on that one song.
When we finished playing it at the bar...… crickets. Grunge had murdered music by then. It was too late. Anything high-production was seen as "cheesy" by that time.
I was a hippie jam band guy at that time and I would have whooped and hollered and cheered if I heard a bar band play this song. Nonmusical people just drive me nuts.
Yep, it's sad the degree to which music has been dumbed down. There are a lot of factors at play but it mostly has to do with money and how little value is placed on ability. I have a lot of thoughts about this, having played in bands back in those days that worked constantly, and then throwing myself back into a music "scene" over the past few years that has become something almost unrecognizable as such. But I won't derail this thread; maybe I'll start a new one.
One of the huge disappointments in my music "career" came when a band I was in during the late 90s learned this. We NAILED the vocals. (I sang high backups.) We took the time to get it right. I think we spent half of a rehearsal on that one song.
When we finished playing it at the bar...… crickets. Grunge had murdered music by then. It was too late. Anything high-production was seen as "cheesy" by that time.
I totally expected to see Hungate taking over the rhythm guitar (and keys covering bass) on that double-neck when the solo started. Alas.
Luke's written only one book, so that's it. It's a good read, but the audiobook is the experience of choice because Luke reads the whole thing!
