I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

yeah, i was gonna say, don't drummers do that a lot?

yah all the time

sometimes if i'm just recording a snare by itself, I'll press my whole hand on it to get that tight snare sound

Feel like Al Jackson Jr. put his wallet on snare, along with plenty of others, yeah.

1:29 here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OlA_JVbQl8

A wallet on a snare will reduce the ring, but still allows for crack. The tea towel gets rid of the ring, the crack, and just about any other resonance that might be produced. I’d argue that Ringo putting the tea towel on his snare (and sometimes his floor tom) ultimately gave birth to the 1970s LA studio drum sounds.

My snares have Remo Muffls on - an internal foam ring. My late lamented '70s Rogers kit had internal dampers that adjusted with a screw. I've always had bits of tape or gels or a wallet or whatever for ring-dampening, sure.

But here's the thing - I get to interact directly with the batter head. Especially when using brushes on a coated head, it's a whole world of texture and response that you don't get through a towel. I agree that the sound is good, but there are other ways to get that sound without hampering the man's interaction with his instrument.

I mean, like "Hey John, your guitar is too loud, but instead of turning you down, I'm gonna ask you to play with gloves on." Same thing imo

but from there, he popularizes the 12-string

George’s was the second 12-string that Rickenbacker had ever made; it was really a prototype. So George was singlehandedly responsible for that sound and approach being heard.

I’d argue that Ringo putting the tea towel on his snare (and sometimes his floor tom) ultimately gave birth to the 1970s LA studio drum sounds.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, November 30, 2021 3:33 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i spent a lot of time with abbey road earlier this year and there were moments when the album felt really "70s" to me in a way, whereas their other stuff feels obviously very "60s"

It seems like a bunch of bands had a clear “sounds like ‘60s”/“sounds like ‘70s” line of demarcation. One that springs to mind is the Kinks’ ‘60s-sounding Arthur, followed a year later by the very different- /‘70s-sounding Lola vs. Powerman (which, granted, came out in 1970). I assume it’s down to something more than just studios moving to transistorized desks (as Abbey Road had just prior to Abbey Road), but I dunno.

When in doubt: compressors!

Paul is totally Robbie Robertson at this point

I think that's another thing throwing off the Beatles here: so many British acts were absolutely spooked by the Band. George certainly was, Eric Clapton certainly was, even Fairport Convention (the most English of bands) was obsessed with the Band. That might have explained the impetus to sit around in a circle writing songs, getting back to basics/their roots, etc. But of course what worked for the Band barely even worked for the Band. You can't just put everyone in a room and declare "OK, now we're just going to casually come up with some incredible stuff," especially when you're the Beatles and you've not just come off a long period of not performing together but made some of their best music messing around in the studio.

And John, is John a great guitarist or piano player? No, not particularly, and it's always for the better.

I've always loved his quote, "I’m OK, I’m not technically good, but I can make it fucking howl and move. I was rhythm guitarist. It’s an important job."

Just had an image of strung-out Levon chasing Todd Rundgren around Bearsville, or whatever happened back then.

The Woodstock Playhouse, I guess

re: The Band, I keep thinking of starting a poll of UK responses to Big Pink, but I can never get a list I’m happy with.

(Off the top of my head: Get Back/Let It Be, Fairport’s Unhalfbricking, Jack Bruce’s “Theme From An Imaginary Western,” Blind Faith, Humble Pie’s Town and Country, probably a couple of Traffic records, most of Led Zeppelin III…)

Derek and the Dominos for sure.

Muswell Hillbillies, belatedly? Exile on Main Street, peripherally?

ok i finally tuned into the wavelength of this thing and now i can’t turn it off

I am just rubbernecking on this thread for the time being.

Don't mind me, I will just sit behind this guitar amp. Nothing to see here.

either the bad editing choices are front-loaded in ep 1 or i’ve just gotten used to them

insane to me that they appear to have prepared the Apple basement for recording by covering the walls with hard metallic sheeting??

Don't mind me, I will just sit behind this guitar amp. Nothing to see here.

― Duck and Sally Can’t Dance (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, November 30, 2021 6:07 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

say hey to the hare krishnas for me

The bad editing is front-loaded, yes. It is either just how the material worked (they had a lot more usable audio than usable video), or a way to weed out casual viewers so that only the truly dedicated see it through to its glorious conclusion.

Tracer, they appear to be hinged panels that can be reflective to different levels

Anyone mentioned Godard's Sympathy for the Devil in connection with this? It's playing a rep theatre here in a couple of weeks--from the description I read (don't think I've seen it but not 100% sure), sounds similar but considerably shorter.

I wondered if that was a remnant of Magic Alex’ doings. According to Harrison, the “72-track studio” that Alex built there was just 72 tiny speakers placed around the room. I was hoping we’d get to see what he wrought.

xp

re: The Band, I keep thinking of starting a poll of UK responses to Big Pink, but I can never get a list I’m happy with.

(Off the top of my head: Get Back/Let It Be, Fairport’s Unhalfbricking, Jack Bruce’s “Theme From An Imaginary Western,” Blind Faith, Humble Pie’s Town and Country, probably a couple of Traffic records, most of Led Zeppelin III…)

In general, there was a back-to-roots movement that was happening at that time and you can trace the influence to both Dylan and the Band (mainly the Basement Tapes). Grateful Dead, the Byrds (not to mention Gram Parsons and his Burrito Brothers), and I'm tempted to add Elvis's resurgence as well - his comeback recordings went more towards Memphis Soul than country rather than the showbiz Hollywood soundtracks he had been doing. The Stones independently moved in a similar direction, from TSMR to Beggars Banquet.

I'm not sure if anyone's written a book about it, but there ought to be.

*Memphis or Southern soul then country

Yeah, it’s definitely true that there was a general oh-man-I-gotta-get-my-head-together-in-the-country sentiment among a number of bands/musicians, but the UK response is interesting to me (and unique) due to a number of factors. Some tried to just plain mimic the Band; some decided their “roots” were in English folk music; and others decided their “roots” were in Black American folk blues. Overall, it was a massive collective LSD hangover, but the Brits — especially Cream and the Beatles — reacted the most severely to Big Pink. Bands like the Grateful Dead or the Byrds just turned down a bit, or swapped electric guitars for acoustic, but UK bands seemed to re-think their entire approach (or, like Cream and the Small Faces, just broke up).

(A notable exception is the Who. Townshend was never a massive Band fan, though he admired them, and the closest they got to a Big Pink response was “Let’s See Action,” released four years after the Band’s record.)

Anyone mentioned Godard's Sympathy for the Devil in connection with this?

I definitely thought about it! I think on my DVD there is an option to just watch the just Stones footage but I don't know if there's any additional material. From memory it was definitely a definitive '60s band in the studio' document but it generally feels more purposeful and with less interpersonal complexity? Like Brian Jones is kind of fading away in plain sight but it's all subtext.

And of course there is all the other political material intercut - which I love but would be a hard slog if you were only there for the Stones.

I think John Wesley Harding deserves a lot of credit for the back to roots thing, that predates Big Pink and Sweethearts of the Rodeo or I think anything else mentioned

there was a general oh-man-I-gotta-get-my-head-together-in-the-country sentiment among a number of bands/musicians, but the UK response is interesting to me (and unique) due to a number of factors. Some tried to just plain mimic the Band; some decided their “roots” were in English folk music;

Seems like yr R. Thompson and Martin Carthy and other Fairport type folkies were already there. They didn't need to depart for the country and embrace folk music, it was already in their bloodstreams, like.

I think John Wesley Harding deserves a lot of credit for the back to roots thing, that predates Big Pink and Sweethearts of the Rodeo or I think anything else mentioned

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

otm. George befriended Dylan during this period.

Ok but imagine telling Norma Waterson or Sandy Denny about Big Pink and saying "you gotta get into stripped-down folk music, maaaan, it's so groovy," they'd be like "yeah we know."

the UK folk thing is a whole nother can of worms, separate tradition

Nah, Fairport definitely influenced massively by Big Pink, though their reaction was not to go back to roots of American music but to British music:

In Fairport's case, it convinced them that their early dalliance with transatlantic influences was best forgotten. "Music from Big Pink showed us that Americana was more suited to Americans, and we needed to explore Britannicana, or whatever the equivalent of that was," says Thompson. "They seemed to nail American roots styles so well, and blend them so seamlessly: country, R&B, blues. At that point, we thought, 'We'll never be that good at American music. We should be looking at something more homegrown.'"

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/aug/03/folk

Silver wings totally sounds like the M.O. of Magic Alex.

I should mention that whenever John played lead guitar he was his own man too, i.e. Plastic Ono Band, "Walking on Thin Ice," and even "Get Back."

Lennon said his best playing was on Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band.

yep

Some of my fave Beatles guitar solos are Paul.

When Musician ran its list of the 100 Best Guitarists in 1993, they cheated and cited "John-Paul-George."

i loved watching George work out that one song on piano with Billy Preston, figuring out chords and stuff , he said something to the effect of he wouldnt have gotten it if he had tried to work it out on guitar
(?cant remember which song now?)

Old brown shoe I think

yes that was it

aka Alfred’s Favorite Song

xxxxxpost Still haven't heard the debut, but Fairport soon did just great by Joni (whose own recording of "Eastern Rain" may never have surfaced?), and Dylan (still my fave "I'll Keep It With Mine," by miles), also "Mr. Lacey" (About a mischievous conceptual artist, also in Jeff Nuttal's Bomb Culture, I think, and also think he did the bumpkin Rod The Mod casually-flapdancing on the clothesline in video for Herbie H.'s "Rockit") is yer basic electric shuffle. Also nailed "Percy's Song" and enough other Dylan to fill the real good Fairport and Friends' A Tree With Roots. But yeah, they said listening to The Band got them back to focusing mostly on British music.
Nevertheless, they later felt secure enough, also the urge, to come back to this, as described by Xgau:
Rock On [A&M, 1972]
In which Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, and eleven other English folkies redo twelve American songs, and I bet the Silver Beatles loved every one of them. The conjunction brings out the passionately droll in all the principals, especially Denny and Thompson, but the great moments are "The Loco-Motion," with Linda Peters playing Little Eva, and "Nadine," which Tyger Hutchings delivers deadpan, as if reading off cue cards after a quick runthrough. B+

aka Alfred’s Favorite Song

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl),

lol

Is that referring to The Bunch, dow?

Oops, sorry, The Bunch it is by indeed.

Def. weird to hear Fairport (more or less) do Buddy Holly.