Tusk Vs The White Album

bc the white album is a great record, it sometimes feels like listening to three albums at once, even when i don’t like a song on it i’m drawn in by the vibe and atmosphere which yes is v shambolic that’s why it’s good

Y'see, I don't agree that it feels like listening to three albums at once either, even if you can hear hints of their future solo work (particularly Paul's, not so much George's) ... it sounds like a Beatles record, although an at times substandard one.

I'll never be convinced that the band set out to make a shambolic record, I think it just turned out that way. I do believe that they were big headed enough to think that everything they were writing was great, so just threw it all in there, and to ensure they could get a double album out that year, rushed the recordings. I think it was as simple at that.

you're getting too imaginative

how many times have you expressed this same opinion

Perish the thought. (xp)

husky-voiced emollient

oh you think you can turn my head with yr bon mots

turrican doesn’t read this board, he just posts here

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Monday, October 30, 2017 9:07 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Brad, if you're going to fantasise, at least go to town. Pretend you're writing about Zayn Malik and geodes again.

but why does a critic's weakness for the mythos affect your enjoyment?

I just get annoyed when people bring it up, and it happens *a lot* w the Mac. Generally (like you) I don't find conflating biography w music helpful or interesting when it comes to appreciating something

oh you think you can turn my head with yr bon mots

― Οὖτις, Monday, October 30, 2017

What do I have to do to make you love me?

xp it happens a lot with the mac if you hang out with like jann werner or something, everybody else if just like "fuck yeah the mac!"

I was in a hotel room w some friends a couple months ago and a live Fleetwood Mac thing was on TV and I actually had to listen to one of them recount the soap opera to me so yes, it happens.

Jann Wenner was not present at this gathering.

Alfred and brimstead are OTM, it's quite possible to appreciate the Buckingham/Nicks era of Fleetwood Mac without dwelling on the soap opea element. The music transcends that sort of thing, I think.

The band (at times) have been guilty of pandering to some people's grim fascination with the backstory - they shouldn't.

It's like when the Beatles wrote songs in their solo career about the Beatles - they were just knowingly adding to the mythology while pandering to those that believed in the mythology. If there ever was a band that believed their own hype.

if there were more than only five total things you thought about

Record Player: "Yes we're going to a party party! Yes we're going to a party party!"

Random Beatles Fan: *puts their hands on their head* "Arrrgh! Impending doom!"

I worry about you

not as much as carpet kaiser but still

If there ever was a band that believed their own hype.

LOLz

If only Elvis hadn't started believing his own PR.

iirc Rakim's work started to suffer as soon as he began to believe he really was the greatest rapper of all time

can't blame rakim for "rappy raccoon," though. that was eric b's fault.

listening to music is a zero sum battle. although certain songs and albums like the white album can be naively enjoyed by those who do not know how to correctly listen and feel emotions, their pleasure is ultimately empty and inauthentic and wrong. it is one poster's quest to make sure that everyone knows exactly where the lines of taste are drawn and dose the water supply with red pills of musical truth

What has always bothered me about FM was the slick production. It distracts from the fact that the songs are often musically quite poor. The "sloppy" production of the White Album on the other hand is almost its trump, the Beatles do their own thing and don't care too much about the make-up. The white album has one of the most awful, annoying songs of the universe on it, I am talking of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and it also has Julia the greatest and most tender love song in pop music. And Helter Skelter, afaik the first hard-rock song. The scope of the white album is so amazingly huge, whereas Tusk just has some glossy quite similar boring mostly MOR songs on it. It hardly ever touches me. I would save one song from it, Sara which is sublime. I must admit that I only have listened once to Tusk but I don't need to listen again. I grew up in the 70s and I had my fair dose of over-produced FM. The white album

What has always bothered me about FM was the slick production. It distracts from the fact that the songs are often musically quite poor.

you aren't serious, are you?

and how are "Save Me a Place," "That's All For Everyone," "Not That Funny," "Think About Me," and "Sisters of the Moon" MOR? They sound like Kenny Rogers and Air Supply?

Helter Skelter, afaik the first hard-rock song

no

Hold fire on that till Turrican confirms whether it is or not.

I maintain that the sloppiness basically amounts to the handful of beginnings and endings I mentioned, the weird edits on "Helter Skelter" and "Yer Blues" and the two McCartney throwaways. Take any other songs/moments from the record and they are comparable to other '68-era Beatle recordings ("Lady Madonna," "The Inner Light," "Hey Bulldog," "Across the Universe," "Hey Jude") and could have been a part of an album where *intentional sloppiness* never came into the discussion.

Add "Revolution 9" to the mix as well, particularly the weird edits of HS and YB.

turrican has accomplished his mission, shakey played right into his hands, thread has become a complete free-fire zone and no shambolic half-finished boomer double-album is safe

also i know I've made multiple turrican-geir comparisons in the last year or so, but seriously it is starting to feel like some kind of megatron:galvatron or cypher:douglock thing, not the same personality by any means, and yet...

like man i'm interested in people who have other opinions on the beatles believe me, but just repeating the same things with this tone of objective truth being delivered, and being utterly dismissive at a playground-mockery level of people sincerely trying to articulate their love of something... like what is even the point?

Not in the same league as Geir. Not even remotely.

lmao great timing from alex in manhattan, comin in like an aftershock

I just wish there wasn't such a dearth of strident opinions in this thread, not enough people "telling it like it is" imo

https://s1.postimg.org/475v8d4v1b/turrican.jpg

would rather listen to Tusk at almost any conceivable moment, but white album is good i guess

While Joan Didion makes some good points, she's no match for the comedy-horror stylings of Kevin Smith.

re: enjoying Fleetwood Mac w/o knowing any of the mythology- I heard Rumours for the first time in late 2012. my parents hated FM and never exposed them to me or gave me their records (unlike the Beatles, Dylan, Stones, Joni, Prince, Nina, etc etc etc...). I fell in love with the songs. I thought "Go Your Own Way" was a song about 'being yourself'! And it ruled! Of course I had heard many of these songs in the wild through my life, Rumours is impossible to avoid completely, but I had no idea that the songs on Rumours were responding to each other or whatever. Same goes for Tusk, which I got around the same time. But that's just my opinion, I dug the songs, Shakey & many others didn't. which is great. art is beautiful & there is no objective truth to any of this

flappy otm. ime lots of the hipster millennial FM fans powering their critical revival dont know jack shit about who was on cocaine during the recording of what album or who fucked each other. honestly i've read about it but i don't even really remember, it just didn't matter to me cuz i think of them as just, like, a band with a whole bunch of great songs. my ex didn't even know stevie and mcvie were 2 different ppl when we first met, yet would also sing their songs at karaoke or put it on the jukebox at the bar

seriously it is starting to feel like some kind of megatron:galvatron or cypher:douglock thing, not the same personality by any means, and yet...

Even when focusing strictly on Galvatron's most well-known incarnation — the G1 animated series — there has been considerable debate through the years. Some fans believe Galvatron is a psychologically distinct and discontinuous entity from Megatron, almost, or equally, as much as Scourge and Cyclonus, who demonstrate no continuity of memory or personality with their former Decepticon selves. This remains a topic of heated debate in some circles, in spite of a fairly unambiguous canon.

In the Generation 1 cartoon continuity, Galvatron evidently still self-identifies as being the same person as Megatron, albeit with greater power and a new name. Although not seen to be making a point of revealing this former identity to his troops at large, Galvatron makes his sense of self clear when Starscream asks "Megatron? Is that you?" to which he replies, "Here's a hint", before obliterating him.[1] Later in The Transformers: The Movie when Galvatron is poised to crush Hot Rod's neck, he boasts: "First Prime, then Ultra Magnus, and now you. It's a pity you Autobots die so easily, or I might have a sense of satisfaction now." Again, Galvatron is obviously speaking with no sense of discontinuity of identity or personality as he refers to past and current acts as both Megatron and Galvatron without qualification or distinction. Some might contrast this statement with his earlier line, "I, Galvatron, shall crush you, just as Megatron crushed Prime", interpreting that such a statement implies a disconnect from his former life.

tbf i may have also been thinking of the Eradicator's role in the "reign of the superman" crossover

hey it's okay -- the overlap between Galvatron and Megatron obsessed me as an adolescent

I don't remember Scourge/Cyclonus demonstrating any character traits, tbh

Some beautiful thoughts re white album here. Since my 12-year-old post, I've not only heard but own Tusk. It will never come close to displacing the white album for me, though, and tbh, I never listened to it as much as s/t or Rumours. Really enjoyed a lot of those songs live, though.

i don't think i've listened to this album since i was 16. it was never my favourite of their albums

Back in the USSR - passable musical comedy

Dear Prudence - insanely good, kind of revelatory as i remember this one being more of a pleading

Glass Onion - possibly the worst John song ever?

Ob-La-Di - childrens music

Wild Honey Pie - this is the kind of shit that makes it onto a double album

Bungalow Bill - execrable, smug musical comedy

While My Guitar Gently Weeps - would be good if it built up to a full doobie bros blue-eyed disco stomper, not feeling the horny guitar solo dirge; i don't know hooooow is the only redeemable moment but fuck some of those lyrics rhyming 'perverted/inverted/averted' stfu dude

Happiness Is A Warm Gun - scared to listen to this because i used to LOVE and--*sigh* yeah i p much hate this now. have we polled the sections of it?

Martha My Dear - always liked Paul's genre pop nerdery, but this fails quite badly as a piece of music anyone would ever want to listen to, despite some clever ideas in the arrangement

I'm So Tired - this one i used to adore; i've always loved the hypnagogic state, sleeping in, sleeping, sunday mornings, late night snacks, really everything about and around sleep. one time around the end of my beatles phase my best friend friend and i took a 50 hour busride to texas and his mother gave him some prescription sleeping pills; we took them during an overnight stretch and kept each other awake for as long as we could, listening to music and speaking in slurred, woke up in each others' arms with a busdriver ushering us off at a transfer 2 states over and 14 hours later. the song holds up for the most part

Blackbird - a beautiful, clever, perfect composition that i would pay to never hear again before i die

Piggies - more children's music. why did they make so much of this shit

Rocky Raccoon - this one's ok; the production on this is really sloppy sixties in an awful way

Don't Pass Me By - lol this is a ringo song, right? actually one of the better songs on here. who the fuck is playing that godawful fiddle tho. really in general the band on the whole album sound like shit

Why Don't We Do It In The Road - this is the kind of thing that makes it onto a double album

I Will - don't remember this one. forgettable

Julia - pretty great song; one of the only songs on here that is kind enough you feel it may have been written for an actual person

so side one is hot garbage, i'm afraid. so much here is so smug and too-clever and messy-fussy in an awful way people must have thought was 'artsy' in the late sixties but is so clearly just lazy megalomaniac arrogant males making bad jokes in the studio

Why Don't We Do It In The Road - this is the kind of thing that makes it onto a double album

otm, i hate this song, only because Paul didn't give it to John to sing (in retaliation for John doing Revolution 9 when Paul was on vacation). Paul doing it sounds silly, but i can imagine John fucking screaming this one and making it good

Birthday - more musical comedy

Yer Blues - i mean, john's voice is great, but there's really not much here because the band isn't quite up for it

Mother Nature's Son - this is ok; paul's take on Paul Simon, i suppose? would be tenth percentile in Simon's catalogue

Me And My Monkey - just bad

Sexy Sadie - lol this one i actually kinda like. another great showcase for John' voice (the best instrument in the group) also shameless horniness in song goes a long way, for me

Helter Skelter - the concept of Paul having the hardest rock song where he goes all out and shreds his vocal chords is hilarious but, i mean, he totally did it, right? the build-release is fantastic. you gotta give it up for this song, imo. i used to be able to make myself cry laughing at this moment from the U2 battle and hum cover
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2hTBVDx7QQ&feature=youtu.be&t=10s

Long Long Long - this one is like, ok someone finally gave them some good drugs lol

Revolution 1 - can't bring myself to knock this chorus (i will say the 'shoobie-doo-wops' don't ring sincere and imo they should) but the arrangement drags to a halt on the verses

Honey Pie - prob best slice of Paul genre pop on the album, and it's a good lead vocal but the arrangement just kind of dithers; something that sloppy would never make it onto a decent ragtime or concert hall 78

Savoy Truffle - holy shit this sucks lol; lyrics would be great self parody of John's loungey psychedelia but i feel like they are not so self aware

Cry Baby Cry - was going to write something about the sloppy accordion that is just audible in the first few bars of this but this is a great song. John is at his best when writing things that sound like they should be underwritten yet just aren't. some choice harmonies. ending is lazy as shit

Revolution 9 - LOL

Good Night - feels insincere, but well done

so this side was better but still, lots of straight awful songs and overall the rebellious sloppiness and kitchen sink arrangements didn't age well

i disagree with a lot of that but i loved reading it all the same. i agree with "Blackbird - a beautiful, clever, perfect composition that i would pay to never hear again before i die" so so much.

my white album top hits:

long long long
i'm so tired
cry baby cry
everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey
dear prudence
mother nature's son

me and my monkey gets so much hate, idk why, it's a better yer blues

i can accept disagree on the particulars track by track, but everyone MUST agree Tusk is the superior album. i mean,