Jeff Buckley Classic or Dud?

weird, I was just listening to mystery white boy yesterday

I can get people not digging buckley but there are some great moments on that

i never asked to be your mountain fucking SLAYS

it's funny how he imitates some of tim's vocal tics on that song, going into that throaty low register and then getting really keening and nasally. like i said upthread about "once i was," there's some great drama in that performance, too: "she says, your scoundrel father flies /with a dancer called a queen...oh the child dreams to be his hands /in the counting of the rain /but only barren breasts he feels /for her milk will never drain." remember this was at a tim tribute concert, so i feel like jeff's caught in this really sticky position of wanting to honor the music and the audience's love of that music, but he's also got some rightful bitterness toward tim. in a song like this, it seems like he's tapping into tim's own self-recrimination in order to express his own anger.

the drowning references are pretty eerie, too, in hindsight.

yeah the drowning references gave me chills the other night

the Tim/Jeff bio Dream Brother is not great but really gets into Jeff's whole uncomfortable relationship with his dad's music/legacy in an interesting way -- like he would really squirm and get uncomfortable about Tim's fans coming to his shows, hated the comparisons in reviews, but then there'd be friends who said he really studied TB's records a ton and learned things about his voice from singing his dad's songs, etc.

plus he was raised scotty moorhead and adopted jeff buckley as a stage name so yeah, quite a bit of ambivalence towards his legacy

from el wiki

Buckley flew back to New York early the following year to make his public singing debut at a tribute concert for his father called "Greetings from Tim Buckley".[38] The event, produced by show business veteran Hal Willner, was held at St. Ann's Church in Brooklyn on April 26, 1991.[38] Buckley rejected the idea of the concert as a springboard to his career, instead citing personal reasons regarding his decision to sing at the tribute.[39] With accompaniment by experimental rock guitarist Gary Lucas, Jeff performed "I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain", a song Tim Buckley wrote about an infant Jeff Buckley and his mother.[40] Buckley returned to the stage to play "Sefronia – The King's Chain", "Phantasmagoria in Two", and concluded the concert with "Once I Was" performed acoustically with an impromptu a cappella ending, due to a snapped guitar string.[40] Willner, the show's organiser, later recalled that Buckley's set closer made a strong impression.[41] Buckley's performance at the concert was counter-intuitive to his desire to distance himself musically from his father. Buckley later explained his reasoning to Rolling Stone: "It wasn't my work, it wasn't my life. But it bothered me that I hadn't been to his funeral, that I'd never been able to tell him anything. I used that show to pay my last respects."[19] The concert proved to be his first step into the music industry that had eluded him for years.[42]

speaking of creepy drowning imagery, the end of "dream brother" is kind of freaky

asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over, over, over

I found an old tape of Jeff and band doing a session on the Mark Radcliffe show on 22 August 1994, which I put onto mp3 last night. The quality's pretty good I think, though it wobbles a little in places and does get a bit hissy towards the end. Also, 'Lover, You Should've Come Over' has to be in two parts as my poor player can't make it through the whole thing in one go. The session doesn't appear to exist anywhere else that I can find, so enjoy:

Mojo Pin
So Real
Grace
Lover, You Should've Come Over
Lover, You Should've Come Over part II

thx a ton for this!

No problem. I haven't owned a tape player since I sold my car, so I didn't think I was ever going to hear it again myself - it was nice to get a chance to put in on mp3, might as well share it with the world.

You should sell these recordings to the Buckley estate. Seems like they'll put anything out on CD for a buck these days, his fans will totally eat this shit up.

i never asked to be your mountain fucking SLAYS

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, June 24, 2009 11:05 AM (4 months ago) Bookmark

the droning modal thing goes on for fuckin 9 minutes and the weird backwards guitar lines and the ghostly little feedback howl when he says 'feel the water touch my skin'

fuck

i'm always kinda embarrassed by it, but dude is basically classic. of course my best friend/girl i was in love with at age 16 is the one who get me into him, so you know

but really mystery white boy is kind of amazing in parts, like E3 said

So I was browsing The Wire's 50 best albums of 1994 list and came across Buckley's Grace on the list(?!???!!) and thought, hey, why not pull this out for what's probably my first spin in 5-6 years. And it's not half bad. I don't have any of the post-death releases which I've always imagined consist of Columbia raping Buckley's corpse over and over for a profit, but Grace is, well... it's pretty good.

but really mystery white boy is kind of amazing in parts, like E3 said

― mage pit laceration (gbx), Monday, January 25, 2010 11:04 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark

so if you're curious go there

I like some of the stuff on Sketches, too -- "Vancouver", "Morning Theft", and "The Sky Is a Landfill" stand up to any of his other work imo

Hunt down the Glastonbury bootleg if you can - it was recorded for radio by the BBC so the sound's perfect, and everything on it is spot on - way better than Mystery White Boy or Live á l'Olympia. Includes the best version of Dream Brother. Plus no Hallelujah in sight.

I've always been a big fan of the song "Jewel Box" off Sketches. Perhaps the sweetest melody he ever composed.

So I was browsing The Wire's 50 best albums of 1994 list and came across Buckley's Grace on the list(?!???!!) and thought, hey, why not pull this out for what's probably my first spin in 5-6 years. And it's not half bad. I don't have any of the post-death releases which I've always imagined consist of Columbia raping Buckley's corpse over and over for a profit, but Grace is, well... it's pretty good.

― ilxor has truly been got at and become an ILXor (ilxor), Tuesday, September 14, 2010 6:37 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

"Grace" also has a great sense of melancholy in the style of Poe, Swinburne, and Baudelaire. The album is so eerie to me. It's cool that The Wire put it on their list!

It's actually as much jazz-influenced as by pop and traditional singer/songwriters. Which is something that all of Buckley's legion of imitators have never gotten right, and is why they all bore the shit out of me.

i know every word, every pause of "grace". i don't listen to it much now but is still stuns me when i do.

The Bataclan live medley of "Je N'en Connais Pas la Fin" and "Hymne à l'amour" (from the GRACE EPs set but originally part of Live From The Bataclan) still has without question the single most surprising and exciting live audience reaction i've ever heard in my life. Since the late 90s i've been baffled and amazed by the extremes of emotion the crowd seem to go through; at times appearing to be almost *different* crowds edited together from different gigs, such is the rollercoastering of their reaction. Saying more spoils it for anyone who hasn't heard it but... it's completely jaw dropping. I'm not the world's biggest Buckley fan or anything but live.. man he clearly had something.

amazing version of dream brother on the bataclan ep, too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM_jBD716Vo

this made me go "huh..."

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/3112/screenshotgre.png

revive

Had he looked like, I dunno, say, Weird Al, would chicks have still dug him?

Listening to Grace for the first time in maybe a decade figured my tastes had changed drastically since I gave up on it, I thought I'd like it more. But no. Still overwrought, still can't make it through the whole thing.

Would have liked to hear his third/fourth album, though. I mean, I can't stand the first Tim Buckley album either.

Imagine him on American Idol, though!

many opinions make me not get ILX sometimes. the post above, is such an example

his version of "Hallelujah" is one of my least favorite pieces of music ever

ok now I fully think ILX = opposite day board

nah, I know full well I'm in the minority due to how many times his keening intrudes on my time in any given café (c'mon hipsters, find some other signifier for "cool").

you may be in the minority in public but not on this board!

John and corey, I have your back forever on this.

HOOOOOOOOOOS to thread plz

Dud

classic

Weird Al's not an unattractive dude 'cept for the wacky hair.

http://amysrobot.com/files/weirdal.JPG

relistened to all his stuff for the first time in a while. grace now sounds pretty bad, sketches sounded fantastic.

If you squint he has a bit part as a stoner on Treme.

some dude wrote this on thread "The Wire" on HBO on board I Love Everything on Jan 15, 2011

if they ever do a Jeff Buckley biopic they should really cast Ransone, both because he looks close enough and because afaict JB was about as obnoxious as Ziggy irl

apparently they ARE doing a biopic now and i plan on griping when James Franco or whoever gets the part

we've never done a Grace poll, have we? that would be fun

Or that Twilight guy will get it the part, or Keira Knightly maybe.

lol

Saddest thing is that I felt he was actually, massively improving. 'Sketches' is way, way better than Grace. I loved the direction he was taking there.

"Josh Groban, as you've never seen him before...."

yeah i was listening to Sketches recently and there is some great stuff on there