see I don't find a thing wrong with "My Brave Face."
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 March 2017 19:34 (seven years ago) link
Hahah I think we've had this discussion several times. I like it fine with its bright poppy 80s sound - I just imagine a version of that track and this album that's much closer to a "roots rock" sound, and I like that version better.
― tales of a scorched-earth nothing (Doctor Casino), Sunday, 26 March 2017 20:00 (seven years ago) link
Ha, yeah. "Roots rock" is as much a collection of attitudes about recording music as it is a sound. Look at Froom's befuddlement about what constitutes '80s production -- he thinks it's "artificial" or something.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 March 2017 20:04 (seven years ago) link
I think 'My Brave Face' is actually perfect - like Alfred, I can't find a thing to fault with it.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Sunday, 26 March 2017 20:04 (seven years ago) link
"Rough Ride" is dreadful. It is beyond comprehension to me that Trevor Horn, Steve Lipson and Paul McCartney would think otherwise all these years later.
― Naive Teen Idol, Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:11 (seven years ago) link
Know all the '70s singles, love exactly two: "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Junior's Farm." Don't own any of his solo albums--I've got Band on the Run and, still, my high-school copy of Speed of Sound--and the window on buying them basically closed when I moved out of my teens. (By which I mean that, for me, the Beatles, the first Lennon album, and a handful of George/Ringo singles were all I needed.)
Long preface to explain how I managed to hear a Paul song from his first album for the first time ever last week. I've forgotten already how I stumbled over it, but I sure do love it. (Searched "something" on this thread and it seems to be absent.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHTCWY7Lvpk
― clemenza, Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:26 (seven years ago) link
Having just finished a rewatch of Mad Men, I really wish they would have ended a season-7 episode with that.
― clemenza, Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:29 (seven years ago) link
It's a good one!
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:30 (seven years ago) link
It's just such a (to coin a phrase) early 1970 song, pitched halfway between the White Album and the singer-songwriter moment. Think I've listened to it 20 times the past week.
― clemenza, Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:34 (seven years ago) link
I like how he showcases a different instrument he's playing, often with just a note.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:36 (seven years ago) link
It's a mere scrap of a song, IMO, and not really essential McCartney material for me.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:48 (seven years ago) link
Not surprisingly, I'd say that's no small part of what makes it so great--you start formally arranging that song, and adding on some of the goop McCartney was prone to, and I think you'd lose it's beauty. The White Album's filled with what are basically scraps and fragments.
― clemenza, Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:54 (seven years ago) link
i was going to say, thrown-off fragments is a very mcartney thing -- overcompletion is often his flaw
― mark s, Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:56 (seven years ago) link
clem, have you heard this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mt_HTeERRg
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:56 (seven years ago) link
Ah, 'Every Night' ... that's more like it!
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Sunday, 26 March 2017 21:59 (seven years ago) link
I think I auditioned that one last week after I found "That Would Be Something." Also nice, and I'm going to get hold of the first album. Obviously I was wrong to ignore it all this time.
― clemenza, Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:01 (seven years ago) link
The thing I love about 'Every Night', aside from that it's an excellent song and one of the highlights of McCartney (IMO) is that it's lyrically a real reflection of where McCartney's head was at when he wrote it, and his feeling low circa The Beatles splitting.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:02 (seven years ago) link
The fragments on that album represent some of his most realized work, I think, partly because ordinarily his attention span doesn't let him think songs through, therefore the arrangements are supposed to solve the problem. Your point about those Paul songs as midway between TWA and '70s singer-songwriter rock makes sense. He didn't fit in with Mitchell, Taylor, Young, et. al, or even with the Richard Thompson faction in England. His attraction to whimsy and affect is closer to Ferry-Bowie.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:04 (seven years ago) link
and closer to music hall too -- which means it still remains ideologically close to Ferry-Bowie.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:05 (seven years ago) link
Hmm. I vastly prefer McCartney in "big budget" mode, rather than the tossed-off goofing of McCartney, McCartney II, Wild Life and some of his tracks on the white album.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:12 (seven years ago) link
where McCartney's head was at when he wrote it, and his feeling low circa The Beatles splitting
I generally avoid trying to figure out what musicians are feeling, and just stick to what I'm feeling, but along with that--which makes sense--maybe he also suddenly felt great freedom: new decade, new wife, and all of a sudden he could do whatever he wanted musically. That's what I hear in "That Would Be Something," amazement and surprise and discovery.
― clemenza, Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:15 (seven years ago) link
Well, McCartney himself has gone on record as confirming that that is what 'Every Night' was about - feeling miserable and depressed about the end of The Beatles, but yes, also being obviously glad that Linda was there to support him and see him through it.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:25 (seven years ago) link
I see McCartney as both an exercise in just messing about and seeing what happens and an excuse to get rid of a couple of his Beatle-era compositions that the band didn't record a final version of, like 'Junk' and 'Teddy Boy'
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:28 (seven years ago) link
Grateful Dead did a cover of "That Would Be Something."
― timellison, Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:32 (seven years ago) link
"Roots rock" is as much a collection of attitudes about recording music as it is a sound.
Not sure I'm following you, Alfred - are you saying "My Brave Face" is roots rock?
― timellison, Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:40 (seven years ago) link
Talking about McCartney's more personal lyrics, it makes me chuckle every time I listen to New where he essentially gives Beatle fans a bollocking on 'Early Days' for giving Lennon credit for stuff he did.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:43 (seven years ago) link
(xposts) That makes total sense--there's a real Grateful Dead feel to it, and, without having thought about it, that's probably a big part of the song's appeal to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMHaE5AP8G8
― clemenza, Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:44 (seven years ago) link
(The Grateful Dead, as is their habit, de-fragment it...)
― clemenza, Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:51 (seven years ago) link
― timellison, Sunday, March 26, 2017
Not at all -- I'm responding to the idea that we should've stripped down those FITD productions.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 26 March 2017 22:56 (seven years ago) link
A track like 'We Got Married' would lose most of its appeal for me if it were done in, say, the style of McCartney or Wild Life.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Sunday, 26 March 2017 23:06 (seven years ago) link
Just listened to the demos on the Special Edition of Flowers in the Dirt – pretty sure that I enjoyed every demo on this set more than any song on the album proper. The interplay with Costello is legit and a number of the songs they didn't otherwise record are excellent.
Pretty clear to me based on the record itself and that interview (which was excellent – thx for sharing, Alfred) that McCartney had no idea what he wanted to do on this record. Five different outside producers (thankfully no interview with David Foster), a major collaborator for songwriting, tossed off jams mostly written by outsiders does not a masterpiece make. Of course the talent was still there—as evidenced by said demos which are required listening for Macca fans—but the feel for the market wasn't. Man, when that goes it goes quickly.
― Naive Teen Idol, Monday, 27 March 2017 00:08 (seven years ago) link
I see it as McCartney's attempt to record his own multi-producer project, so common in the '80s starting with Private Dancer, but had been in control too long to cede it.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 27 March 2017 00:24 (seven years ago) link
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, March 26, 2017 10:04 PM (yesterday)
i agree w/ this totally. for all its fragmented, half-finished nature, mccartney's first album has always been one of my favorites. the songs feel vibrant and alive the way a great artist's casual sketches sometimes do. i imagine a lot of paul's best songs began something like "that would be something" -- just a hint of a tune and a couple of lines he woke up singing to himself. i think what makes the album special -- and gives it a very different feel to anything he'd done with the beatles, or anything he'd do with wings -- is that there's no sense that paul's singing with an audience in mind. this feels like something he did entirely for himself. in a way it feels as personal as lennon's first solo album.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 27 March 2017 01:16 (seven years ago) link
""Rough Ride" is dreadful. It is beyond comprehension to me that Trevor Horn, Steve Lipson and Paul McCartney would think otherwise all these years later."
things like this make me really wonder...when a bunch of people I toherwise completely respect, whose taste seems to be pretty on the mark...wtf. that song sucks. so does soliel.
― akm, Monday, 27 March 2017 01:45 (seven years ago) link
I see it as McCartney's attempt to record his own multi-producer project, so common in the '80s starting with Private Dancer, but had been in control too long to cede it.― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 27, 2017 12:24 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 27, 2017 12:24 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Yup, this is the way that I see it too. This was a bit of a "comeback" record for him after Press To Play and was about to go on tour, so I guess he wanted to ensure that he had an album in the bag that was bang up to date sonically... and what better way of doing that than use the best producers available? Because he could, because he's Paul McCartney.
Also, this wouldn't be the last time he'd make a multi producer record. His last one had several, too.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Monday, 27 March 2017 01:50 (seven years ago) link
And just like that my Twitter feed turns up this lucky penny:
https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/never-like-this-paul-mccartneys-press/
― Naive Teen Idol, Monday, 27 March 2017 02:10 (seven years ago) link
ha! You inspired it all these years ago!
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 27 March 2017 02:28 (seven years ago) link
mccartney? poor man's emitt rhodes
― salthigh, Monday, 27 March 2017 02:36 (seven years ago) link
Greg Kurstin is producing the new album.
― timellison, Monday, 27 March 2017 03:12 (seven years ago) link
"Ha, yeah. "Roots rock" is as much a collection of attitudes about recording music as it is a sound. Look at Froom's befuddlement about what constitutes '80s production -- he thinks it's "artificial" or something"
nah, folks who have issues with 80s production are usually opponents of gated reverb on drums and chorus effects on guitars. that's it, really.
― Darin, Monday, 27 March 2017 06:43 (seven years ago) link
that's my point!
My review of the reissue.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 27 March 2017 16:19 (seven years ago) link
More interviews with Costello and McCartney about this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/after-john-paul-mccartney-found-another-partner-to-get-the-most-out-of-him-the-proof-is-finally-emerging/2017/03/16/ae2fe91c-09a7-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html?utm_term=.3c1c977a15a8
Costello did politely urge McCartney away from the instrument he was using, a modern bass with five strings. (“A perversion of nature,” says Costello.) He asked McCartney to pull out his old Hofner. The bass still had a Beatles set list taped to it.
Costello: I wasn’t being funny or being in any way sentimental. I honestly thought [the new bass] disguised his musical personality when he was playing. He actually played his Rickenbacker on a lot of the tracks. He played the Hofner on “Veronica,” that he played on my session [for Costello’s album “Spike”]. Because he knew I liked the sound of it. But he flew around on that Rickenbacker, and it was suddenly like, “My God, this is one of the great instrumentalists of the rock-and-roll era.” His voice comes through. It’s as if you gave Louis Armstrong a plastic horn to play.
― curmudgeon, Monday, 27 March 2017 17:13 (seven years ago) link
I really, really, really will never understand the fascination with that fucking Hofner bass.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Monday, 27 March 2017 17:31 (seven years ago) link
nah, folks who have issues with 80s production are usually opponents of gated reverb on drums and chorus effects on guitars. that's it, really.― Darin, Monday, March 27, 2017 6:43 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Darin, Monday, March 27, 2017 6:43 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
and synths, and early digital recording, and producers making heavy use of the Fairlight CMI and/or Synclavier, and the obsession with keeping everything as perfectly in time as possible, and the way producers liked to minimise "bleed" on tracks to keep everything as pristine sounding and easy to mix as possible, and reverb on everything, and saxophones and fretless bass.
Not that there's anything particularly wrong with any of these things.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Monday, 27 March 2017 17:37 (seven years ago) link
man this is like Orson Welles reciting a list of Jake Gyllenhaal's yummiest parts
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 27 March 2017 17:40 (seven years ago) link
xp
things were far more out of sync in the 70s
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Monday, 27 March 2017 17:40 (seven years ago) link
i typically like gated reverb etc but listening to flowers in the dirt this morning I was really bothered by the snare sounds, they just sound shitty throughout the record.
― akm, Monday, 27 March 2017 17:57 (seven years ago) link
Hmm, I disagree. The only time I ever think the snare sound gets a bit much is on 'Motor of Love', which is really heavily reverbed and sounds like a machine (although, I guess it suits the nature of the track) - otherwise, the drums in general sound fine to me. I'm less taken with the drum sound on Press to Play, tbh.
― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Monday, 27 March 2017 18:12 (seven years ago) link
yeah, I suppose some more extremists might extend their gripes this far, but usually, when I push someone to explain their distaste for this era of production, it comes down to chorus and gated reverb.
― Darin, Monday, 27 March 2017 19:36 (seven years ago) link
To me it's the alternately overstuffed mixes and too-clean recordings of individual tracks that merit another pass on this particular album. There's others where chorus and reverb are totally the boogeymen but the pushed snares only rankle in a few places. "Motor of Love" is like "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" slowed down and sucked dry of life. But, to be fair, I might like it a lot if you stripped Macca's lead vocals off, added some barely-intelligible recordings of household conversations and wordless vocal chants, and told me it was a new Memory Tapes cut. But to the extent that it's meant to be a song, it just feels like a not-very-good thirty-second nugget has been stretched out to six minutes with McCartney trusting the producers to add things to massage it all out.
"My Brave Face" is just a shade too trebley, too clean, lacking in mid-range or something... maybe I'm being too dogmatic about what I expect out of a pop-rock song. I don't necessarily want it to sound like "Young Boy" or "Hope of Deliverance" either. The thing is though with that one the songwriting and lyric are ace and so the 'period' elements are something I basically accept as part of the recording even if I can imagine it having more life and warmth at a different moment. It's like how I think the pre-Revolver Beatles albums are fucking great even if I will always wish they'd turned the drums way up.
― tales of a scorched-earth nothing (Doctor Casino), Monday, 27 March 2017 19:48 (seven years ago) link