Nick Drake: why???

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.

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.