defend the indefensible: Hall and Oates

Really though, what sort of lyric is "She needs a place she can lounge and wear gowns in."

A genius one, that's for sure.

PFM posted Ben Gibbard's H&O piece. It's stupid.

That Miles quote cracks me up.

Yeah, the Gibbard thing veers close to genuine fannish excitement in places but he's at such pains to describe the band's output as absurd and ridiculous that you wonder why he bothered at all. Doesn't seem much of a step above the "name-checking for cred" thing that he dismisses at the start.

"Italian Girls"This is a rare appearance of John Oates on lead vocals. A quick perusing of the liner notes indicates that Oates penned this tune without the assistance of Daryl Hall or any of the other songwriters the duo had been known to collaborate with. And you can tell. The ethnically tinged lyrics (ex., "I see Sophia on the silver screen-a" ) hit a level of offensiveness rivaled only by Genesis' "Illegal Alien"

I guess "offensive" means something else in Gibbardsville.

jesus. so that's the nudnik who gets to put it in zooey d?

btw, John Oates had a lot more lead vocal bits in the 70s, so calling "Italian Girls" a rare occurrence just makes me think Gibbard is more of a doofus than I already did.

Yeah! The most persistent misconception is Oates' redundancy when he in fact wrote many songs alone, cowrote most of their hits, and played better guitar than Hall.

okay I don't need to read that article, the picture at the top pretty much says everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-zn-CuBD6U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GAqzcMevgg

this is weird, "I Can't Go For That" was just playing on my PC when i clicked on this thread

man, cee-lo is an embarassingly bad singer, bad choice to put him in a place where he'll be compared to daryl fuckin hall. Probably true of anybody that appears on this...podcast? What a weird idea for a series.

Really? I thought he sounded pretty good. Anyway, the series make sense to me, but I think the informal muso jam session works here in general (maybe because it's actually pretty structured). It's not just various people doing H&O covers with Daryl Hall. Anyway, I was impressed with the Company of Thieves episode.

Also, Daryl Hall still sounds good, but he still doesn't sound like the Daryl Hall of the 70s and 80s. It's not like putting peak era Hall next to other singers.

yeah this is a tight version, especially rhythimically

as sick as i am of Cee-Lo these days i don't really see how anyone can call him a "bad singer"

this is wonderful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5B6lJPa1Wc&feature=related

Ehhh, I guess maybe I overstated it, more "he annoys me" than "he is bad," but Hall is one of my favorite singers in the game so I'm sorta biased on that side too.

holy shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDFaUVCaUuI&feature=related

Mannnnnnnnnnnn, that guy can sing. I was a little disappointed it wasn't a Blink-182 or Bjork oover but that faded fast.

Last year's solo album was a genuine surprise, and, yeah, the bastard can still sing.

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes >>>>> Bjork-182

lmao @ 'bjork-182'

it's a collab that needs to happen

ol' Darryl shoulda got Beans to spit his verse from "This Can't Be Life" there, speaking of collabs that need to happen

http://dinerhotline.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/the-story-of-the-the-abandoned-luncheonette-aka-the-rosedale-diner/

^second part of this is a great read, but first part is worth reading for context

What a great story! Thanks Rev.

Fantastic find, Rev. Will be sharing that one out!

can anyone tell me who the first musicians to come out and namecheck hall and oates as favorites were, in terms of rehabilitating their image with the general public? i kind of feel like that will happen too with billy joel if it hasn't already, but he comes across as such a sad sack i am guessing it will take alot longer (and his music doesn't have any "urban" cred which H&O always did)

the general public never thought H&O needed rehabilitation. It was kids whose parents bought H&O records and later started writing music reviews and going dancing who realized that "I Can't Go For That" and "Out of Touch" and at least a half dozen other singles were marvelous. No rehab necessary.

and they have never left R&B and adult R&B stations.

yeah, that was imprecise of me, i guess i meant indie types who i am imagining ridiculed them as 80s dreck, and now they are "hip" "again"....put another way, did any big time indie musicians come out as fans starting, maybe, 10-15 years ago?

Too tired to write all the necessary qualifications but Fun Lovin Criminals come to mind

maybe an outgrowth of those yacht rock videos

I wonder if the H&O as punchline thing was entirely from the cheesy videos

re: billy joel, i was listening to him in the car a while ago and had a sacrilegious moment where i thought "maybe this guy ain't so bad, he writes catchy songs." and i've heard a quiet murmuring of joel reappraisal recently. maybe his moment of being appreciated by the People Who Really Matter (ie, not corny ass suburban lame-o's) is dawning.

but the corney-ass suburban lame-o's have for thirty years been responsible for H&O's royalties!

definitely, spectrum, joel's stock is on the rise

I like them, if only in an American Psycho / sterile yuppie kinda way. I mean, "Rich Girl" is a great song, no?
— Bob Marley

In Philadelphia Hall & Oates is in the tap water. (That's not what gives it that funny taste though.)

My sense is that a whole lot of people went "Gee that Billy Joel ain't half bad" after the Sandy benefit performance. This immediately made me want to run to the hills.

can anyone tell me who the first musicians to come out and namecheck hall and oates as favorites were, in terms of rehabilitating their image with the general public?

surely this is solely responsible:

http://pitchfork.com/features/guest-lists/5896-death-cab-for-cutie-my-favorite-ten-songs-by-the-rock-group-hall-oates/

Death Cab for Cutie: My Favorite Ten Songs by the Rock Group Hall & Oates
By Ben Gibbard, Death Cab for Cutie , February 10, 2003

oh did you have to

The disingenuous dbag clinging fast to that irony card

nah it's definitely not the gibbard article (or i hope not, at least). the overall rehab came later throughout the decade. i remember a SPIN (yeah) article called "HALL & OATES: THE '80S VELVET UNDERGROUND?" or something insane when I was in high school, so like '06-'07ish? it was in full swing about a year after that.

Like I said, I've been hearing "I Can Go For That" and a couple others in clubs with "Britpop" nights since 1999 or 2000 at least, so they never went away! Simply Red sampled the former in the early 2000s. Credit/blame twentysomethings writers coming of age and suddenly realizing that the songs their parents played were also getting action during DJ sets.

*I Can't

it was a combination of
stuff like Ariel Pink
the Yacht Rock series giving this vibe/era a name, thus bringing more attention to it as an aesthetic/entity
and
people getting more into balearic/dad rock/etc, all going into creating an atmosphere more friendly towards H&O

You overestimate the cultural influence of Ariel Pink.

nobody outside Pitchfork gives a tinker's damn about Ariel Pink, and certainly not their support, tacit or not, of the biggest duo in American rock history. They're like Billy Joel, Elton John, the Eagles, or whatever -- their songs have never gone away. And you can dance to quite a few of them. And despite the sax solos their eighties stuff is often as austere as Spoon.