Nick Drake: why???

nevertheless becuz i am perverse i feel peeved that my copy of five leaves left has disappeared: i guess it eloped with metal machine music!!

"uniform tone, uniform rhythm and vocal dynamics" -- these are specifically some of Drake's virtues! "What did he bring to the mix that hundreds of others hadn't already?" Who do you have in mind? None of the folk singers of the time sound much like him at all, with the possible exception of Richard Thompson.

anyhow that's what ND gets when he wants it and so my question to you sir is "Who influenced him in this regard"? ;)

sounds trif, esp given the inevitable tiny discrep between the twin top e's, but if a string snaps it'll take yr hand off!!

HA HA HA HA HA.

His playing is very 'clean': the playing is lovely. But a large part of his success has to do w/his early, tragic death (no one cared when he was alive) (''promise unfulfilled''). I think John Martyn's 'Solid Air' was FAR FAR better than anything Drake managed but Martyn got old and drinks too much, etc etc.

the production on those records is awful. a bunch of unrehearsed session musicians trying to accompany a man who obviously knows his own songs pretty well is never a recipe for success. think about all that hokey piano playing and drumming on bryter later. "jazzy"? i don't think so. it sounds like high school kids being a backing band for their music instructor. check out the crappy attempt at a piano track by john cale (no less) on "northern sky". he just screws around and makes mistakes -- you can actually hear him forget the form of the song and jump back into place (like someone shot him a disapproving glance from the recording booth).

the string section work is excellent however, and despite my complaints about poor quality instrumentation, "hazy jane" works really, really well.

even though recording technologies were very primitive at the time, many producers were making stunning records. people make so much about how "intimate" his recordings sound. i contend that's pretty much accidental -- maybe he just liked to sing closer to the microphone?

That said, I think Drake's work conjures a specific mood like few others. His guitar playing, as someone else mentioned, is significantly more accomplished than merely 'technically sound'. But, unfortunately, I also think that the cult that sprang up following his death accounts for much of his fame -- the world seems to love a tragic pop star, especially when flecked with hints of madness (hello, Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson). Couple that with a premature exit, and ::BANG::, you've got all the ingredients to rope in an audience with a morbid fascination and casual attitude towards revisionism.

but only this once mark s.

Rememeber that Nick Drake's parents wanted him to be a computer programmer, check out "Second Drake" and "Tanworth in Arden" (great bootleg CDs of hom recordings) - no one knows who the female singer is I believe and then move on to stuff like Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers, Vashti Bunyan and all things Boyd under the sun...

every note he records, even if it's unlistenable crap? And you have such a personal connection to this singer that skipping his latest release feels like missing a

family funeral (or wedding, as the case may be)? Then, you grit your teeth and bear it, hoping that your beloved folk singer gets his head off his pillow. Or you beg

him to call it quits and put you out of your misery.

Nick Drake, please call it quits.

As a poet, you've been around as long as I've been on this earth. You have summer houses in Lancashire. You opened for Paper Lace. You're on a rotting major label.

For a singer that has always relied so heavily on the currency of melancholy, these aren't very encouraging signs. I have become increasingly convinced that folk

singers, like cartons of milk, have expiration dates beyond which consumption is hazardous. Unfortunately, too many folkies keep playing while the mold grows on

their guitars. (OK, so there are exceptions. Those last Fairport Convention and Joni Mitchell records were pretty great. And there are plenty of young folkies who

go stale after one single or album, not to mention those folkies that shouldn't have recorded anything in the first place. So it really doesn't have to do with age.)

Nick Drake, I'd like to let you know that the spores have been festering since 1968, when you released your only good album, 'Five Leaves Left.' Admittedly, had

someone proposed this idea to me in 1968, I would have cried. That was the beginning of high school for me, and not coincidentally, the beginning of my obsession

with you. Having outgrown Donovan and Gordon Lightfoot, I was seduced by your sophistication, your lack of artiness, your appropriately quotable lyrics ("Well

there was a man who lived in a shed/Spent most of his days out of his head"; "In search of a master/In search of a slave") scrawled in the margins of my biology

notes, and, of course, your acoustic guitar whispers. I gobbled up as much of your virtually non-existent discography as I could, gleefully suffering through

unfulfilled collaborations and B-sides, and countless non- appearances. Your appearance on 'Top of the Pops' was, like, the highlight of my life. With a friend, I

created a fan magazine devoted to you. (Please don't ask to see it, it's really embarrassing.) I remained devoted throughout high school; on my senior-yearbook page,

I thanked my family, my friends, and Nick Drake. And why do you think I came to Rangoon to go to college?

But a curious thing happened the summer after my freshman year: You made an album I hated. Not some weird one-off, but a Big Heavily Promoted Album, 'Bryter

Layter.' Faux-beatnik mumbo-jumbo, aimless, tuneless meanderings, and general stagnation made it limp like a three-legged puppy. In your latest press release,

'Bryter Layter' is described as "langorous" (sic). When I look up "languor" in my Webster's, it has a few definitions. The second one may be "a dreamy, lazy mood

or quality," but the first one is "lack of physical or mental energy; listlessness." So maybe you know the record bores even chumps. "Black Eyed Dog," a one-off

single, wasn't so hot either, but it had its gripping moments, and anyway, I was still so caught in the throes of passion at the time, you could do no wrong.

But now you can. I'm afraid my disappointment continues with 'Pink Moon.' The new album isn't terrible, just dull. The quiet parts aren't quiet enough and the pretty

parts aren't pretty enough. Joe Boyd apparently isn't a full-time producer anymore, as he seems to have been too busy launching Maria Muldaur into the stratosphere

to get you off the ground. And all that talk about the influence of the Munich '72 Olympics on the record (quoth the press release: "'Pink Moon' is [ostensibly]

named after the location of Nick Drake's studio. . . . Pink Moon is also the name of the cat who was struck by one of the terrorists bullets...") sure didn't amount to

much beyond the album artwork. Well, the lyrics to "Parasite" might allude to it, but then again, they might not.

You're still a master of suspense, skillfully building and building and building tension. But the foreplay, which once heralded wistful sighs in "Fruit Tree" and

"Cello Song," now leads to nothing but flaccidity and frustration. Many tracks follow your trademark "River Man" verse/chorus/extended- acoustic-finger-pick

formula that may have seemed revolutionary back in 1968, but just sounds predictable 4 years later. And the lyrics? Not one quoteworthy tidbit in the lot, unless

"Counting the cattle as they go by the door/Keeping a carpet that's so thick on the floor" counts. The minor majesty last heard on 'Five Leaves Left"'s "Saturday

Sun" is still MIA. If 'Pink Moon' didn't have the name "Nick Drake" attached to it, nobody would give it a second listen. . . . Well, maybe for "Horn," in which

acoustic guitars simulate a red traffic light, you mutter like you have the measles, and it's all over in just under two minutes. Or for "Which Will," which, like most

of your better songs, possesses a mysterious quality that causes my knees to weaken and my heart to go pitter-patter. But those two songs are tiny ships in a sea of

okayness.

I wish it didn't have to be that way. The bargain bin is already overflowing with efforts by singer-songwriters who have overstayed their welcome. Why not reduce

future clutter? Your place in folk history is certainly secure, what with you basically reinventing the sound of the acoustic guitar and influencing, like, every

somber folkie in the last 4 years. Plus, the time and money that we would have spent on your no-show concerts and new releases could go to the younger, more

introspective vocalists you've always championed and mentored.

Please think about it, Nick Drake. Calling it quits would allow you to spend more time with your grandmother and your goldfish and your poetry collections. Or you could just sit around reflecting on how sad you are. You must be tired after all these years. You deserve a long vacation. But everything I've said here should come as no surprise. After all, aren't you the singer that said, "Day is Done"?

Tristan Lowther, 'Folk Weekly,' 1972

That's not a defense of Drake-as-artist, though: my defense of Drake- as-artist is that there is a definable sense to all of his material, this distinctive and pervasive quality that sort of comes down to this: he sounds sad. He sounds tired. Even his most sprightly songs and his most "harrowing" ones have the same affect, this great weary laying-down-to-die sigh that strikes really good balances between being read as comforting and being read as deadly. And this worked for him: he embodied it personally and it seemed artless, and on certain recordings it sounds as if everything is trying to counter it but there's just no way through his beaten-down torpor. I find this interesting; plus the songs are consistently good.

(Hahaha anyway who else sings about weasels and their teeth?)

I agree. It's the sad/pretty duality that gets me.

- Sameness, like it or not, is damning. The fact that the Ramones and Wedding Present have followings doesn't mean they aren't overrated (and I would definitely say that of the former).

- By "technically sound" I meant that Drake had a distinctive technique (practice makes perfect), but it seems to have been a one- trick filly. It doesn't develop on Bryter or Pink Moon, and it wasn't used in many different ways to begin with. Hence, a good number of tunes are interchangeable. I suppose there's a revelation waiting for me on the lost album??

- Melancholy as the songs may sound, were they capable of any other moods? Sadness only moves when it is set against something else. I think Drake's vocal range was so cramped and limited that he couldn't help but sound that way, except perhaps on "Fly".

- I'm not an expert on English folk and don't know how he sounded in that context; if I were, I needn't have asked the question. As far as other folk artists, the average Tim Buckley song is way, way outside Drake's capabilities.

What one poster said about "potential" points, I think, to Drake's principal appeal. He wasn't brilliant, but he sounded capable of becoming so if he ever got through his depression and developed a real vision.

You realize your "sameness is bad" argument can be used to dismiss virtually every single act in the history of music?

proof: [x] records a song + it is good + all [x]'s songs are the same = all their songs are good!!

how do you do that then?

''but no one owes you an "argument" as to why nick drake is worth listening to - either you like him or you don't, and there's no point in assuming there's some objective quality that a nick drake fan can make you understand''

there's no point discussing so...just what is the fucking point of a discussion board then?

For instance i liked the fact that someone earlier in the thread was hearing drones in Nick's playing. Though I didn't hear it, it made me look at him from a different angle.

And of course: i think yr dislike of Fushitsusha is faked to prove a point so there's no need for me to answer it.

The comment about unsatisfactory arguments stands. Saying Drake is beautiful, haunting or simply a genius tells me nothing about him in relation to other musicians, yet that is how nearly all defenses of him proceed. To be fair, the accusations (on ILM, at least) are often relatively vague themselves. I tried to change that here, and if it has improved the quality of the responses, I haven't wasted my time.

Re: sameness - yes, from a certain viewpoint, all artistic endeavors are the same. Provided you specify the universe of discourse, however, it is quite possible to call some bodies of work more uniform than others. My parameters in this case are popular rock and folk music from the 1960s onward. Yours?

*Which is intentionally hyperbolic instead of descriptive.

Advanced musicology isn't required to see the near-identity of "Northern Sky" and "From the Morning", "Chime of a City Clock" and "Parasite", the recurrence of melodic passages, the mumbled cadences that crop up in nearly every song, etc. I could go back and make a long list of examples, but your words don't encourage me:

you won't be able to persuade me to the contrary about nick drake, fushitsusha or any other artist using objective criteria

If uniformity, repetition, and relative complexity aren't things you can be persuaded to see, about which you find argument pointless, then I doubt I could convince you your face was symmetrical if you didn't already believe it.

people tend to relate to music emotionally so "haunting, beautiful or simply a genius" are all things you're more likely to hear than "well, his fingerpicking style is derived from x, his songwriting is comparable to y," or an evaluation against his contemporaries.

"Beautiful" and "haunting" are useless as objective bases, and rarely show up in aesthetics. Taste is another matter, but--again--I have never been talking about tastes. You recognize the difference between liking and admiring something, don't you? Between "relating to" Drake and thinking critically about his work? Not wanting to do the latter is fine, but this thread shouldn't concern you if that's the case.

I'm not a good (or patient) writer,but I'll try and make one point. Art of all kinds can be analysed and discussed with many different criteria. An artist's techniques can be picked apart endlessly; this is fine and good. But if the ultimate purpose of (some if not most) art is to arouse emotion, evoke feelings, then saying you like something is beautiful is reason enough. What separates Drake from the other singer-songwriters of his day may indeed be a quality that we can pin down. However when discussing art it sometimes happens that this quality cannot be pinned down. If all you're after is cold hard logic, this answer is obviously unsatisfactory. If you understand that an emotional response, however difficult to describe, is sometimes not only an adequate response to art, but often the best one, then this kind of answer is adequate, in fact may be the only one necessary.

The very name of this bulletin board suggests where I'm coming from. Yes we all like talking about music... to the extent that disinterested parties would think us nuts. But if we love music, at the end of the day it should be understood that after all the technical discussion has died down, love is a mysterious emotion that needs no explanation. I hope you understand this.

I grinned manically when i read that. And coupled w/the fact that you didn't have the guts to tell us who you are. From a coward like you, I take the above as a compliment.

I'd agree w/ that but also in the heat of a discussion is sometimes very difficult to find the words to put across to someone who is of a different opinion, of why you love a singer/band. But it's nice to think that we can have a go at doing such a thing.

No question. However, this rules out nuance and aesthetic evaluation, on which all productive exchanges depend. I don't care that people like (=have a certain emotional response to) Nick Drake. I care that people respect him and raise him above others who managed (by my evaluation, which can be debated) much greater complexity and variation.

Consider that I have frequently felt the darkness and sadness in Drake's work. But in a short time, I saw it was the languid vocals inciting this feeling, and the fact that he almost never sang differently made me suspect that they were simply an involuntary feature, like the tolling of a bell. On the guitar, he had the droning technique mentioned earlier, but it was never expanded on, never used to different ends.

I hate to say it, but you and "your null fame" should examine your own standards here. Do you believe that, because music makes you feel a certain way, it must have a given aesthetic quality? Do you think it's impossible to be touched by something and recognize its limitations? Is anyone who rejects Nick Drake's genius merely a "wet blanket"?

You've probably stopped reading if you find me as "objectivist" as the other poster did. My fault, then, for supposing either of you were interested in objective discussion.

I phrased that as though I knew the answer, which I don't. I was hoping people who know a lot about '60s folk could agree or disagree.

That said, I find he resembles contemporary pop singers (it's most obvious on Bryter) more than recognized, and that people on whom he is said to be an influence (B&S, perhaps) have more vocal styles and melodies in their bag. Also, as I imply elsewhere in the thread, Tim Buckley was infinitely more versatile even if he never attempted the exact picking style or sparse arrangements of Drake.

The argument that the people he influenced have surpassed him isn't the strongest, I admit. Although a musician wouldn't get too far today just by copying Drake's formulas. If you've been following this thread, you'll see that most of my criticisms are based on the patterns I perceive in Drake, rather than similarities to those of his peers.

Oh, and read my recent post. It sounds like you're letting your emotional attachments get in the way of addressing the various points made.

A musician wouldn't get too far today just by copying J Martyn's formulas either. This is another measure of absolute zero.

It so happens I'm not particularly attached to Drake at all (although the idea of Five Leaves/MMM REALLY eloping sounds pretty great to me). Still, I'm infinitely more convinced by the various eloquent attempts to answer your question above than by your continued refusal to even accept them as possibly legitimate. Re-read the thread yourself. The subjectivity on your end burns disastrously bright, I'm afraid. As well it should. Unless taking art into the vacuum-realm of perfect mathematics is really your idea of a good time.

(in which case at least three cases of logical acrobatics up-thread demand your attention immediately and urgently)

(p.s. vacuums are very incredibly lonely though. If you let yourself you might pick up a thing or two of interest here among the problematic sentient folk. I have.) xo,

(in which case at least three cases of logical acrobatics up-thread demand your attention immediately and urgently)

If you expect me to attend to those 3+ cases, kindly point them out. (I'll be gone for a bit, but I'll resolve them all in due course.)

Hint 1: Your response to me alone (infering "emotional attachments" from the statement "By this logic Bach is overrated because of Mendelssohn, etc.") = ad hominem, a fallacy of opposition, and jumping to conclusions. It gets worse from there up.

Hint 2: Plato, for a start. "Aesthetic evaluation" my sweet aunt Edna.

Hint 3: The answer to the thread-question = "Because".

I suspected that (note "it sounds like") because of the post that followed. But failing to turn off italics was probably the reason you wrote it.

Hint 2: Plato, for a start. "Aesthetic evaluation" my sweet aunt Edna.

This doesn't imply a universal aesthetic, but any at all. The point of criticism is to discover what aesthetics inform our standards, what our basic assumptions are, and what information we may be missing. It helps us to see why evaluations of a given artist can differ. Unless you either love or hate the music you hear (i.e., have a universally warm or cold response to it), I don't see what's wrong with this pursuit.

Hint 3: The answer to the thread-question = "Because".

Stop me if I've misunderstood this one, but I clarified the "why" several posts up, in case it was unclear (look for it in boldface). Many answers--fingering style, voice, early death, sense of wasted promise--have been valid, although they don't change my own estimation of Drake for reasons I have tried (maybe unsuccessfully) to explain.

I think in the end it all boils down to if you like or don't like an artist. The sameness argument concerning Nick Drake is completely relative and subjective.

I have to disagree. First, it's possible to like something and hold it in no great esteem (I gather several people have this relationship to the Strokes). One can also be impressed--I dare say bowled over-- by music one doesn't care to hear that often, if ever (my feelings toward Loveless, many others' toward "noise"-based music). The conflation of admiration and taste for something is common, but fallacious as a principle.

Second, as I said, once the parameters have been established, repetition is one of the few features that can be objectively agreed on. I'm confused by people's disagreement here: if a musical piece consists of a rhythmically-sounded tuning fork, is its uniformity "subjective"? My contention about Drake will be flat-out wrong if, in the songs and passages I find similar, Drake's playing varies in a good number of ways that I've failed to notice.

Drake's three studio albums are totally different. Pink Moon is bleak as bleak can be, Five Leaves Left is wistfully beautiful, Bryter Later a little overproduced and almost poppy. If you don't hear any differences in the songs, amal25 it just means that you didn't get into them, you were put off before. I think to hear the nuances in Drake's music you have to like it.

See above. This need never be true in music or any other art form. It's not encouraging that those who like, and have presumably lent attention to Drake's work, haven't pointed out the differences between the songs I compared earlier (aside from the production).

The limitations of the voice can not be used as an argument I think. Why should someone with a more versatile voice like Jeff Buckley be a more accomplished artist? All right Buckley would probably have been a better opera singer with all his mannerisms but that is totally irrelevant. Do you also use Ian Curtis and Lou Reed's limited voices as arguments against JD and VU?

I don't think Reed's vocal styles--or Curtis', from the little I know- -are so limited, at least compared to those of Drake. And I'm basing the claim of versatility on what I've heard these artists do, not on what they seem capable of.

I don't recall saying this, but my search for subtle differences within Drake's songs has turned up very little. Yes, it may be that I need to look harder.

but nuance is exactly what I find in his songs: "Parasite", "Northern Sky", "Chime Of A City Clock" may be very similar musically and even thematically but perhaps the value in them is in contemplating the small differences that there are (and the differences in mood in these songs strike me as not so small - now it may be that you dismiss 'mood' as an appropriate subject for critical consideration, but I don't agree).

The lyrical mood does differ (I assume you weren't implying differences in production). McDonald's article, which I read on one poster's recommendation, has made me respect Drake more as a lyricist, but hasn't dispelled the feeling that he wanted for musical ideas.

This misses the point again, amal25. What is being called into question is your continued insistence that repetition (or "uniform tone, uniform rhythm and vocal dynamics" for that matter) is "objectively" a fault.

My contention about Drake will be flat-out wrong if, in the songs and passages I find similar, Drake's playing varies in a good number of ways that I've failed to notice.

No. Your contention was flat-out wrong the second someone said they liked repetition.

(In the last three days, have concluded N Drake is the most terrific genius of all time ever, just to spite objectivity)

At no point have I "insisted" that it should be seen as a fault. I have presented this standard as my own and supposed that it will be shared to some degree by some of the people reading. And so it seems to be; many responses have offered evidence contrary to my claims of sameness or simply dismissed them, but two at most have attacked the values inherent in them. Alex was doing the former (as was Tom, despite his initial wavering), and so I fail to see how my response misses the point.

No. Your contention was flat-out wrong the second someone said they liked repetition.

Subjective approval doesn't counter subjective opposition. You have to ignore or shine on a lot of what I've written, including responses to your posts, to say that I have been forcing my standards on people who don't share them. Only the "sameness is damning" comment, which should have been introduced by "for me" (but which was appropriate in context), suggests this.

fwiw I love all of Five Leaves Left but onyl sporadic tracks from his other two LPs and the TONR set.

So forget this cruel world
Where I belong
I'll just sit and wait
And sing my song.
And if one day you should see me in the crowd
Lend a hand and lift me
To your place in the cloud.

beautiful song.

Drake is lovely and his production is so suprisingly clear, a friend of mine was quite suprised when I told him it was 60s music I was playing. I wish I had more of his stuff. Or hell, any.

quite a bit of hatred on this thread.

I like him. I liked him more about 5 years ago when I knew less about music.

Pink Moon is one of those albums that I can't stop listening to once I've started. Whenever I play a track it's like "if you give a mouse a cookie..."

I agree, Pink Moon is mind blowing.

I can't play Which Will without playing Horn, and I can't play Horn without playing Things Behind The Sun, and I can't play Things Behind The Sun without playing Know...

I've always had a lot of love for Things Behind The Sun.

Have you heard Sebadoh's cover of Pink Moon? It blows me away in a similar way that Dinosaur Jr doing "Just Like Heaven" does, its like "haha omg", they totally MURDER the "pink, pink, pink, pink" bit with screaming, somehow it kind of works.

Anyway, his lyrics are just awesome, I have to say that much. "Northern Sky" is beautiful.

Few singers can get away with doing that excessively tender and exposed thing all the time, but he's one of them. It's unfortunate that he's inspired so many others to attempt the same thing.

lol

I'd never really heard of him until a month or so ago, when I went to hear Joe Boyd read. Just today, I listened to Bryter Layter. Tomorrow, Pink Moon.

i'm jealous! have fun

I lurve Pink Moon.

sebadoh > nick drake

sebadoh is shit. anyway this thread is for nick drake lo-- oh right.

Few singers can get away with doing that excessively tender and exposed thing all the time, but he's one of them.

And so is Mark Kozelek.

A 'new' album up soon, right?

And I thought the Pistols were champions in the "horse, dead, flogging of" category.

They aint even in the southern prem league!

Hendrix, Marley, etc.

although..
http://i12.ebayimg.com/07/i/000/9d/99/9c57_1.JPG

Tupac, dudes (xp)

I stand by what I said upthread, in that I love FFL pretty much whole, but only find other songs beyond that really compelling. I like Drake, and loved him, possibly, for a while when I was about 17.

Consistency or un-variation I don't see as a problem at all; in fact an artist exploring their aesthetic over a number of years and records is often very compelling.

Possibly the crux of Drake for me, and the moment which proves he's not just an emotional one-trick pony, is the miraculous, soaring, joyous (to me, at any rate) acoustic guitar solo which sears through the centre of "Black Eyed Dog"; possibly it's Drake's saddest tune, his most defeated - he certainly sounds to me as if he's crying as he sings it - and then this solo tears the song in two, elevates the mood incredibly, exposes blue skies where there was really only black before.

Damn Nick you have to stop making me scramble to find songs you keep describing like this.

IT'S MY JOB, INNIT. Sort of.

In my view, the great thing about Nick Drake is that he wrote these beautiful melodic songs, with very pastoral arrangements, no rough edges and a musical style that would have been considered "twee" hadn't it been for the lyrics and his tragic life history. And yet, this "twee" music has received a lot of critical acclaim. Which is great, but other "twee" artists should have just as much love too :)

His lyrics are often pretty twee

"Fwuit Twee" for instance (sorry)

Unlike his sister in There's A Girl In My Soup...

Who would have thought Nick Drake's sister would end up as Kelly Monteith's wife?

wait, Gabrielle Drake is Nick Drake's sister? I didn't know that...

Same hairstyle:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/6/64/200px-UFOEllis.jpg

The chin is the giveaway!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/20/Nick_drake_way_to_blue.jpg/220px-Nick_drake_way_to_blue.jpg

^^ I want this outfit

You want to wear a rug?

short answer: yes

There should be more carpet sample inspired musicians out there.

Just walk into any curtains shop and you will find clothes like that.

there's a weak pun to be made here somewhere...

Pull yourself together, man

Yup, there was.

In my view, the great thing about Nick Drake is that he wrote these beautiful melodic songs, with very pastoral arrangements, no rough edges and a musical style that would have been considered "twee" hadn't it been for the lyrics and his tragic life history. And yet, this "twee" music has received a lot of critical acclaim. Which is great, but other "twee" artists should have just as much love too :)

-- Geir Hongro, Friday, 1 June 2007 11:34 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pink moon is far from twee. So you are half right.

That was precisely the same rug in which his sister concealed Ronnie Corbett in No Sex Please We're British.

Seriously, y'all have to hear Sebadoh murdering "Pink Moon", its kind of awesome in the gall it has.

I can wait another decade or six.

Pft, I suppose you dont like Dino's cover of "Just Like Heaven" either?

i certainly don't.. sorry. i haven't heard the sebadoh pink moon though

Well you'd hate it I reckon, in that case Jim :)

In fairness, it isnt particularly amazingly great, the verses are nice but the chorus is FUCKED UP.

Dean Martin did "Just Like Heaven"????? Why didn't Nick Tosches tell me this?

I think a Dean Martin album of Nick Drake covers would have saved several lives.

Can I mention Elton John now?

Who would have thought that Nick Drake's best mate at school would have had a worldwide number one in the eighties about his wife when he was actually having it off with the nanny?

Me for a kick-off!

Pink moon is far from twee. So you are half right.

That's the one Nick Drake album I don't like.

Bryter Later is entwined with perfect early summer evenings over looking the Calverley Grounds at Tunbridge Wells in 2003. Perfect mesh of music, time and place.

I've not listened to it in about 5 years, but I seem to remember Pink Moon being perfect if I was in good mood and just as perfect if I was sad about something.

So yeah, it's probably twee.

Why is his music "twee"? Is all folk music twee?

Please. Nick Drake is not twee.

is this a u.k - u.s divide? i know twee is strictly pejorative over there and isn't over here (as much), though I don't think it qualifies as twee either way personally a case could be made.

Wait, where do you think twee is strictly pejorative? I often think it's funny the way twee is sometimes used as a favorable or neutral descriptor and other times as a sneering insult, depending on who says it and how it's said.

the u.k., i thought. My impression is that it didn't have any connotation over here (u.s.), so when people called sarah stuff or whatever 'twee' we just picked it up and ran with it as a neutral quasi-genre descriptor.
heh I've read 'twee as fuck' more than once, i have no excuse to be so fuzzy about such things.

xpost

I think of "twee" as being specifically associated with Sarah records, bands like Heavenly, Talulah Gosh or I guess even Belle & Sebastian. I normally don't like that kind of music, so to me it is pejorative. I don't think it has much to do with nationality, really.

Now is the time to confess, though, that what I dread even more than the term "twee" applied to Nick Drake is "emo". I do believe there are special torture chambers in hell for people who would call him that.

I didn't read the older parts of this thread earlie, but this:

No one wants Drake to turn out to the crowd and trying different things: his entire appeal is the way he stands in the corner with his back to you, clutching his guitar and mumbling mournfully. The whole point of listening is to somehow squeeze yourself between him and the corner walls, where you can hear him.

Is amazing. Nabisco, that is awesome, and spot on.

Yeah, I confess I'm a Nabsico fan, too. Amen.

So leave your house come into my shed
Please stop my world from raining through my head

Sigh. So lovely. So sad. So right.

I think the first time I heard "Road" off of Pink Moon was my awakening to quite how beautiful and powerful music can be.

Pretty much responsible for everything I've loved about music ever since.

"Road" is oftentimes my favorite Nick Drake song and is also proof that Nick Drake has the most incredible fingerpicking technique of anyone ever.

I can't make my thumb move like that.

"Road" is definitely some super badass guitar playing.

As for twee, the origin of the term as a musical descriptor is definitely British, but I've heard it used in the US.

I lived in England for a bit but I'm not sure I ever actually heard anyone say it over there. I believe that it may have started as a strictly pejorative term, but then so did "baroque." I think it's all about context, really. Some people love twee and some people hate it. I just think it's funny the way both groups seem to use the term without explanation and expect their audience to know whether they mean it as a compliment or an insult.

Dave Grohl, Heath Ledger and Norah Jones: why?

A forthcoming album celebrating the cult singer-songwriter will include controversial footage of the late Heath Ledger simulating suicide to Drake's Black Eyed Dog. Nice!

I'm sure the Drake family will be delighted, they've never accepted his death was suicide - but who cares what they think anyway, eh?

that footage in question is pretty cool. very sombre.

NJones did "Day is done" as the b-side to Nick Drake's own "River Man" single.

David Schulhof, co-founder and co-CEO of EverGreen Copyrights, made the announcement at the MidemNet conference this week. His company controls the US rights for several deceased artists, including Drake and Roy Orbison.
(...)

"Fans are willing to pay for (this) kind of product," Schulhof said, speaking of the tribute.

Blimey, tell it like it is or wot?

Saw the thread revive, read the exchanges at inception, and thought of the solo in Black Eyed Dog and then realised I'd already posted about it, so, here it is again:

I stand by what I said upthread, in that I love FFL pretty much whole, but only find other songs beyond that really compelling. I like Drake, and loved him, possibly, for a while when I was about 17.

Consistency or un-variation I don't see as a problem at all; in fact an artist exploring their aesthetic over a number of years and records is often very compelling.

Possibly the crux of Drake for me, and the moment which proves he's not just an emotional one-trick pony, is the miraculous, soaring, joyous (to me, at any rate) acoustic guitar solo which sears through the centre of "Black Eyed Dog"; possibly it's Drake's saddest tune, his most defeated - he certainly sounds to me as if he's crying as he sings it - and then this solo tears the song in two, elevates the mood incredibly, exposes blue skies where there was really only black before.

― Scik Mouthy, Friday, June 1, 2007 10:15 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder

A forthcoming album celebrating the cult singer-songwriter will include controversial footage of the late Heath Ledger simulating suicide to Drake's Black Eyed Dog

WTF! that's the strangest thing to put on a tribute album ever.

Are there any other songs that Ledger was filmed simulating suicide to? Is this something he did often?

that footage in question is pretty cool. very sombre.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/content/images/2006/10/19/dmu_head_in_hands_315x420.jpg

What was "the Ledge" listening to when he died, eh? Eh?

Meet On The Ledge?

Fleetwood Mac, "The Ledge"

http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1673/tedroslz8.jpg

"Close to the Ledit"

"Hey, what'd you do last night?"

"We decided to stay home-- wound up watching footage of Heath Ledger simulating suicide to Nick Drake's 'Black Eyed Dog'."

"Cool, what a nice way to celebrate the memory of Nick"

I'm holding out for:

Heath Ledger Simulating Suicide to the Music of Nick Drake: The Criterion Collection

yeah i was WEIRDED out by the news (i wrote that gruniad article) but uh edited out all my joke-joke-jokes after reflection on the whole er suicide angle.

There isn't anything about this thing that doesn't make me want to puke.

words fail me, what a sick world.

that footage in question is pretty cool. very sombre.

I was expecting farcial slapstick.

a bunch of unrehearsed session musicians trying to accompany a man who obviously knows his own songs pretty well is never a recipe for success

http://www.cluas.com/indie-music/Portals/0/Blog/Files/14/151/Astral%20Weeks.jpg

http://squirrelthing.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/MD_AnnouncePage_wText.png

cool!

it is going to rock SO HARD.
actually i think there's some recordings of her singing in one of the drake documentaries, and it's pretty nice stuff, you can tell that she influenced nick quite a bit. sort of seems like releasing something by the dude's mom would be the ultimate in barrel scraping, but i am curious to hear it.

ian macdonald's essay on drake is classic.

oh here's a radio show about her: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/spinning/2012/apr/22/

There's a couple of tracks on "Family Tree" she sings on.

This is the missing link in the Nick Drake Story” (Joe Boyd)

We are pleased to announce the release of a privately-pressed CD plus a collection of poems by Molly Drake, Nick Drake’s mother.

Some of you will be aware of her songs having watched the film A Skin Too Few or having bought the compilation album Family Tree.

It is due the response from this exposure that we feel the time may be right to release some more material.

Molly Drake wrote and performed songs just for herself, her friends and her family. She did not seek publication for them or for her poems, which seem to have been deeply personal observations. Fortunately, for us, her husband made amateur recordings of her songs on tapes that have lain dormant for 60 years.

The sound quality of the recordings reflects their home-made nature as well as the age of the magnetic tape. Though they have been repaired and made listenable to, the recordings have not been over-restored, since we feel that the sound quality is an integral part of this first experience of Molly’s music. The entire recording was engineered by John Wood, Nick Drake’s friend, engineer and co-producer of Pink Moon.

The 19 songs include How Wild The Wind Blows, I Remember, Poor Mum and Do You Ever Remember?

The CD comes with a 70 page booklet containing 45 poems housed in a card portfolio.

This initial edition is only available here:

www.alimentation.cc/nick_drake/cds/molly-drake.html

http://www.alimentation.cc/nick_drake/cds/molly-drake.html

so much drake action - http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/06/nick-drake-book-unreleased-recordings
peel version of cello song is great, tho maybe it should be called flute song now?
and this! http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/03/nick-drake-rare-tapes-auction-beverley-martyn

and i wrote this thing too! http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/395-invisible-hits-the-unreleased-nick-drake/

Excellent, tylerw!

man that Peel "Three Hours" is so so nice. feel so bad that dude could not find a way through.

What's the sound quality like?

£35 for the normal version might well be pricey but fair

£150 for the 10" single and the fancy version?

Think I'll hang on for the illegal download or whatever

"Road" is oftentimes my favorite Nick Drake song and is also proof that Nick Drake has the most incredible fingerpicking technique of anyone ever.
― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, June 2, 2007 4:23 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is accurate. did he use three fingers in addition to his thumb? trying to wrap my mind around some of his patterns... pretty mindblowing stuff

i think i've read that nick used his right pinky at times

that would make sense. his thumb also sounds good at repeatedly striking the same string. would be hard if you're like me and used to octave-style string patterns.

so clean and droney. i love it. and this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IevsddOcJ7o

yeah he's just so metronomic, unflappable. makes it seem like no big deal, but it obviously is.

Nick Drake: how???

haha yes

Nick Drake: wtf???

"Road" is oftentimes my favorite Nick Drake song and is also proof that Nick Drake has the most incredible fingerpicking technique of anyone ever.
― Curt1s Stephens, Saturday, June 2, 2007 4:23 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is accurate. did he use three fingers in addition to his thumb? trying to wrap my mind around some of his patterns... pretty mindblowing stuff

― global tetrahedron, Monday, February 23, 2015 4:30 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know about "anyone ever" -- I mean, classical guitarists all use three fingers and thumb in pretty complex patterns (and non-patterns).

is there any known footage of him playing?

nope

& yeah, classically trained people do all kinds of wild technique things on guitar, might be the fact that drake was untrained that takes it into a different realm.

^ yeah, makes his style more sui generis/idiocyncratic. i'm sure there are 'schooled' players who are technically superior but his chops are just kinda mysterious

Where was it that I read that all those weird tunings he used is partly what made him such an awkward performer, and in turn heightened his depression? He'd play a song, then spend five minutes tuning, then song, tune ... etc. That supposedly is something the also forced Joni off the tour circuit. I know dudes like Richard Thompson generally try to stick or adapt to only a couple of tunings (standard and drop D, typically) with lots of capo use to get around the issue.

that sounds a bit mythologized imo, like tuning can be annoying but it doesn't have to take five minutes. don't doubt that he was awkward though

"schooled" just means someone showed you how to do something in person

it means you just get owned a lot

I mean I think Nick Drake is a great guitar player, I just don't buy into the "untrained" vs "trained" mythology. I have no idea whether he ever took a paid guitar lesson, whether he ever looked at a guitar book, or whether he ever sat down with other fingerpickers to learn picking patterns.

he probably did all of that -- i just meant that he wasn't someone who was a classically trained guitarist. he mainly learned from listening to records, afaik.

I dunno, I've seen people take five minutes to keep a guitar in standard. If he was using a whole bunch of weird open tunings and doing it by ear, shit adds up. I read that Joni would have needed something like 35 tunings for her ideal set, since so many of her songs are in a tuning. She apparently got one of those Parker guitars and a MIDI box to artificially alter everything for her.

http://www.guitarplayer.com/artists/1424/under-investigation-joni-mitchell-complete-so-far/50383

Says her songbook breaks down into 42 (!) tunings. Dunno how many Drake used.

surely joni could afford 42 guitars

She obviously could, but reportedly travelling with so many and keeping them in tune was just a constant pain.

Apparently Drake used 12 tunings: http://www.algonet.se/~iguana/DRAKE/tunings.html

just buy another guitar, hire a friend to tech, and prepare your 'nick drake still hasn't made it blog post' where you complain about paying your good friend and guitar tech.

Does anyone here have the Scott Appel (?)recordings? Been trying to hear these albums for years. Way out of print . I think there's just one or two tunes on YT?

<i>Where was it that I read that all those weird tunings he used is partly what made him such an awkward performer, and in turn heightened his depression?</i?

That was in the otherwise forgettable Joe Boyd book in fact.

Otherwise forgettable? Not the White Bicycles one then?

Yeah, White Bicycles, filled with insights like 'my generations white blues revival was better than yours' 'Nick was a genius' and other less than earth shattering insights.

huh, i thought that book was good
anyone read the new nick drake book?

I just don't buy into the "untrained" vs "trained" mythology.

Indeed. Who trained Bert Jansch? Or Davey Graham?

Wondering if he used fingerpicks -- his articulation was very strong

here he is -- looks like he had long fingernails
http://i2.cdnds.net/13/11/618x462/music-nick-drake.jpg

Awkward!

I played in a band with guys who used a bunch of different tunings, and it made for a lot of awkward pauses in the set. Sometimes we managed to put together a set list that optimized the tuning changes (especially if we also brought an extra guitar or two), but it didn't always work.

That's the point at which you need to have a chatty, relaxed rapport with the audience. I have a feeling that might have been a problem for Nick Drake.

"Hello, I'm Nick Drake. Please don't look at me."

I saw a Steve Earle/Shawn Colvin show last year, and as she was tuning she told a story about opening for Sting. She said something along the lines of every folk singer needs to know how to talk while tuning, to keep people engaged, and how she stuck to that even while playing arenas opening for Sting. She would stand there and talk and tune. Then one day she got off stage and there was Sting, who just sort of frowned at her at said "you know, you can just buy a better tuner and get it over with faster."

those are my least favorite folk singer moments. for example, the stuff neil young says tends to not be very funny. but everyone laughs, and it's just awkward!

... it's how Billy Connolly (and numerous other less stellar and talented folkie turned comedians) got started!

That's the point at which you need to have a chatty, relaxed rapport with the audience. I have a feeling that might have been a problem for Nick Drake.

Did you ever see Bert Jansch live? Chatty and relaxed he most certainly wasn't!

whereas john martyn had more rabbit on him than chas and dave's pet rescue

He (usually) had Danny Thompson with him also.

xposts: i saw jansch play an outdoor mini-folk festival type thing when he toured nz in the nineties, think his only comment was that the rain and surrounding terrain reminded him of scotland!

what a dumb thread concept

"drake fans have provided no satisfactory arguments" like wtf, it's pretty folk songs

yeah it's like he or she is reviewing a technical manuscript

feels like you rarely hear the "the boy was smoking mountains and mountains of weed" angle when people talk about why Nick Drake was so hopelessly withdrawn and depressed and anxious around people

i mean he must have brought at least 2 joints with him on each of his night drives across Great Britain right

are you suggesting he had been smoking too long?

The 'smoked too much weed' angle is central to Trevor Dann's biography 'Darker than the Deepest Sea' (which I haven't read). A review of it here mentions heroin use too:

Dann reveals that Drake was such a good customer that his Cockney heroin dealer bought him a car ("he's gotta 'av wheels"). Catastrophically, in terms of his mental health, he smoked "industrial quantities of cannabis", and Dann unpicks the details of Drake's disputed "suicide", pointing out that he could have taken only slightly more than double his customary dose of antidepressants; it's not hard to imagine someone in his state of mind doing that by accident.

Reminds me of the Billy Fury documentary where people kept saying he was sort of vague and not quite there a lot of the time, oh and that's right he'd been smoking shitloads of weed since the early 60s.

That Tristran Lowther "Folk Weekly" article above is brilliant, and obv bogus but hey.

played "WAy to Blue" for the first time in eons tonight and it broke me. especially:

"Look through time and find your rhyme
Tell us what you find
We will wait at your gate
Hoping like the blind"

I hadn't listened to Andy Bey's version of River Man in ages and it kind of snuck up on me this morning. Easily the best Drake cover I've heard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SlN_hP3kYc

Wow, that's a superb version

i'm honestly very fond of r. stevie moore's version of "river man"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIKkI9IcSms

I hadn't listened to Andy Bey's version of River Man in ages and it kind of snuck up on me this morning. Easily the best Drake cover I've heard.

I am a megafan of the guy who played guitar on that track btw.

http://www.paulmeyers.info/no_flash.php

Yup. Refraining from going full-on street team for now.

I brought up the Andy Bey version of "River Man" the other day when Paul Meyers posted a picture of him and Andy on social media. I listened to it and noticed that the arrangement was exactly the same as the original. Paul told me yes, he learned the guitar part off the original record and a really talented guy named Andy Stein transcribed the strings, overdubbing the violin and viola and giving the other parts to a cellist and bassist. Turned out to be Andy Stein of Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen (#OneThread), who has had a really interesting career over the years. So now I am kind of obsessed by how good it is because I think this kind of thing is amazing but hard to pull off, covering the original exactly as it was done but singing it convincingly enough that it is still its own thing and not just a copy.

Thanks for sharing.

"I think this kind of thing is amazing but hard to pull off, covering the original exactly as it was done but singing it convincingly enough that it is still its own thing and not just a copy."

- exactly. Not all cover versions have to be radically different in order to be credible.

I enjoyed that cover.

I'm intrigued by that Andy bey cover mentioned. I have one of his early 70s lps Experience and judgment so it initially sounds as unlikely as Millie's Drake cover . But maybe makes more sense since it comes from the late 90s. Assume Millie got given the song because she was on Island. Bey had 25+ years to come across the song, or was it who he was working with in the late 90s.

Just looked at the dates. Shades of Bey came out in 1998. The Pink Moon Volkswagen commercial was 1999. So while people were still talking about and listening to Nick Drake at the time, he was a still a bit underground.

Yes, and it's still a bit of an outlier in his work.

Millie must've been given Mayfair as a demo, I don't think Drake's recording was released until the 90s(?).

Various things on the interweb say the song was brought to his attention by "the producer Herb Jordan." I found this interesting article which confirms this, although it seems to ignore the existence of some prior Bey albums which is weird.

To compare: I usually like Natacha Atlas, but her cover of "RIver Man" is neither here nor there for me, at least upon first listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMlMNMmojhI

But maybe it's growing on me the second time.

Heh, you can buy a t-shirt or a hoodie with a picture of Andy Bey and Herb Jordan on it.

Seems to be more here, but I can't listen right now: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/24/773110485/andy-bey-at-80-a-love-letter-to-a-jazz-legend

Heh, you can buy a t-shirt or a hoodie with a picture of Andy Bey and Herb Jordan on it.

Bey's version of Sting's Fragile is a favourite of mine too. Ron Carter on bass, I think.