Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics

Why is it clueless, though? I get it’s a cliché, but if it rings true to all these musicians, what is the criticism?

They could maybe try talking about in less clichéd terms? Any mention of rooms right out for a start.

Is there a thread on I Love Sports for athletes saying, “I’m just gonna give it 100% and leave it all on the field”?

They could maybe try talking about in less clichéd terms? Any mention of rooms right out for a start.

I think athletes talk that way so much, week to week, every game, that that’s transcended cliche.

The quotes in this thread are almost as tedious as interviews with athletes!

― Halfway there but for you, Sunday, 21 March 2021 00:08 (seven months ago) link

...but then again, this is one important way that records are made. And it's more pleasing to most rock listeners to heat a band talk about going back to a live sound than saying, "we decided on this record we would Pro Tools every individual sonic element until it sounded like digital static".

If so many professional musicians say the same thing on so many separate occasions, it must surely be true?

I'm sure for some bands like perhaps Duran Duran above, someone is the 'music' guy who puts together the tracks, sends to the vocalist who sends back the vocals and everything is just overdubbed and looped together - really no different technique wise than any hip hop or electronic music. They might have records that have never been played live together until they start rehearsing to tour. I'd say for some it is probably novel for them to get all back together and try to get that garage/basement vibe back.

Lots of Metal is made the same way that's why there are so many bands out there that get slagged for not being able to pull of their own records. They often literally cannot play what they have edited/sequenced together.

Is there a thread on I Love Sports for athletes saying, “I’m just gonna give it 100% and leave it all on the field”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5uQBQzr8T0

:33

i feel like musicians probably don't read enough interviews with other aging rock musicians to realise how cliched the phrasing is

"We just want to go back to the sound of 5 players on a court"

xp OTM - or equally likely, they’re not pressed about trying to impress nerds like us who read lots of rock interviews.

I think there's a synth pop reversal of this thread premise - ie synth bands of the early eighties, as they push on into the nineties they go a bit rock and get out the guitars etc... and then at some point they decide to 'go back to basics', throw out their guitars and plug in the synthesisers again. I distinctly recall reading something along those lines in an interview with Phil Oakey in the 90s or 2000s.

I'm sure for some bands like perhaps Duran Duran above, someone is the 'music' guy who puts together the tracks, sends to the vocalist who sends back the vocals and everything is just overdubbed and looped together - really no different technique wise than any hip hop or electronic music. They might have records that have never been played live together until they start rehearsing to tour. I'd say for some it is probably novel for them to get all back together and try to get that garage/basement vibe back.

Lots of Metal is made the same way that's why there are so many bands out there that get slagged for not being able to pull of their own records. They often literally cannot play what they have edited/sequenced together.

Yes, this sounds about right. Nonetheless I'm suspicious about how back to basics a lot of these back to basics albums actually are if, for instance, back to basics means sounding like a Duran Duran 12" - granted that that might seem like a garage/basement vibe to Duran Duran.

I suspect a lot of these bands jam out the vibes in a live-ish fashion during the tracking phase, whereupon the producer gets to work editing it to fuck / comping the vocal takes together etc cause the band don't quite get that they're not exactly Led Zep when it comes to the musicianship.

Also they probably hardly ever see each other anymore and can't stand to be in the same room if they can possibly avoid it.

Yeah these proud statements of "just five guys in a room" aren't so much about the music, but about the marvel that these people can stay in one room for the duration of one song.

Just five guys in a zoom

I feel like a bunch of synthy and New Wavey early 80s bands started as four-piece rock bands with traditional rock instrumentation, so it IS more going back than "going a bit rock."

That feels reasonably close to true in the cases I'm thinking of - Duran, JD / New Order, Devo, T. Heads, Cure, Costello, Flock of Seagulls, etc. Pretty much have always had guitar / bass / drums along with keys. Am I missing something?

Just five guys in a zoom

_Just five guys in a zoom_

Lol

five guys in a room, one went out for a pee during the solo

... and never came back.

That gets to the point, though—as some of us have been experiencing in our non-musician lives since last year, there’s a big diff btw collaborating “in a room” and doing it remotely or in a mediated fashion.

xpost lol Tom

Is there a thread on I Love Sports for athletes saying, “I’m just gonna give it 100% and leave it all on the field”?

― juristic person (morrisp), Sunday, October 31, 2021 2:19 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

it's much more complex though, athletes are constantly on edge, there's not like 20,000 people screaming FUCK YOU to simon le bon if he flubs a note, everything a famous player says will be instant grist for the 24-hour ESPN news cycle, twitter, etc, so saying these things that are "safe" is really self-protection in many ways, and you can see the results usually when a player veers from that script which everytime they get put on blast on TV and the internet for the week they learn the lesson to double down on those cliches. no musician operates under anything like day-to-day, week-to-week pressure

and the heavy racial component to how athletes are perceived

you find an app you love in this world
just hang on tooth and nail
the Zuck is always at the door

xpost some of the shit people Tweet at athletes on twitter after a simple flubbed play would be enough to get them locked up if anybody actually enforced internet threats.

hell, there was one player (I forget who) where he was hurt and a late scratch and a lot of people harassed him for "hurting their fantasy teams"

it's actually an interesting contrast - famous musicians perform almost exclusively to people who admire and worship them while athletes spend a lot of their careers performing in front of a screaming mob of people who actively hate them and want them to fail

i think both these things are bound to warp the way you interact with the world in different ways

Your point though (and others above) seems to be that musicians deserve to be taken to task for using a mild cliche in interviews; that’s what I don’t get. I know it’s a little funny, but calling them “clueless,” saying they should “be more self-aware,” “I bet they don’t even really like each other” (etc.)… it all sounds a little Comic Book Store Guy.

They don’t owe us insightful remarks about the creative process (although some do deliver that).

Your point though (and others above) seems to be that musicians deserve to be taken to task for using a mild cliche in interviews; that’s what I don’t get. I know it’s a little funny, but calling them “clueless,” saying they should “be more self-aware,” “I bet they don’t even really like each other” (etc.)… it all sounds a little Comic Book Store Guy.

― juristic person (morrisp), Monday, November 1, 2021 10:26 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i never said this i don't really care if they use cliches or not

just saying professional athletes is a much different dynamic

though i don't think lightly ribbing some rock band about it is a big thing either

Kind of taking this a bit seriously? (xxp)

the interesting thing is opera - opera singers DO get booed for making mistakes, sometimes to the point where they walk-off mid performance. But outside of this, live performances are full of homers. part of it is "not being able to hear well at a loud concert", but if you go to a show where the vocalist just isn't singing well, often times they get cheered like they gave the performance of a lifetime. sure, there's a few documented instances like where Whitney Houston got booed, but usually those are egregious situations or situations where the singer has baggage that the fans are already incorporating into their feelings.

like the first time I saw Black Sabbath, Ozzy sounded abysmal. they had lowered keys of songs and something was up with his hearing, he could not find his note for just about any of the songs, so he was outright in a different key than his band.

he got roars and catcalls and OMG HE'S STILL GOT IT, people saying "wow Ozzy was on fire" and tbh he sounded like someone had set him on fire. even people listening to the youtube vids where you could hear more accurately in the sobering light of day.

xxp My point with the athlete example was that "giving 100%" probably feels as accurate to them as "four guys in a room" feels to musicians; these cliches seem to express something meaningful to these ppl who do things that I can't, artless as the expressions may sound to idle dude on couch (me).

People don't really expect athletes to speak anything other than cliches though, do they?

xxp My point with the athlete example was that "giving 100%" probably feels as accurate to them as "four guys in a room" feels to musicians; these cliches seem to express something meaningful to these ppl who do things that I can't, artless as the expressions may sound to idle dude on couch (me).

― juristic person (morrisp), Monday, November 1, 2021 10:39 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

no i'm saying it think it's largely a rote set of words they've learned over time are safe to say and prevent them from getting themselves in trouble so and they are largely just reciting them. i think a lot of musicians the four guys in a room thing actually has some nostalgia for a time when they were coming up, still liked each other, etc

it's like imagine having to do a press conference everytime you finish a guitar solo

I think there's a synth pop reversal of this thread premise - ie synth bands of the early eighties, as they push on into the nineties they go a bit rock and get out the guitars etc... and then at some point they decide to 'go back to basics', throw out their guitars and plug in the synthesisers again. I distinctly recall reading something along those lines in an interview with Phil Oakey in the 90s or 2000s.

― Zelda Zonk, Monday, November 1, 2021

well, Human League got a bit rock and got out the guitars in 1984.

xp Musicians often complain about having to do press for every album cycle, answer the same questions every time, etc.!

that happens every few years not every day, the equivalent would be having every concert you perform broken down in detail and hashed over for a few days, plus the music press is largely fawning

Also players have coached, owners, leagues, entire power structures that have direct control over them, in the extreme, you can see Colin Kaepernick who is still blacklisted from the NFL for his political views

Having to answer some dumb questions for Variety and Rolling Stone every 3 years isn't remotely the same

Are you guys just debating the strength of the metaphor? FWIW I agree that rockers saying rock marketing cliches in this case is not something they may be aware of, or would even care at all if it was pointed out to them.

Was gonna say - we're going much deeper into this analogy than the spirit in which I intended it

ILX in a nutshell

How about when novelists, who are (actual) wordsmiths and also only do interviews when they have a project to promote, say things like "I don't know where they story's going until the characters take me there," etc.

It means they are marketing savvy

xp Musicians often complain about having to do press for every album cycle, answer the same questions every time, etc.!

Perhaps they could avoid this by not performing old material every tour. I'm not suggesting "play the new album in full" shows, 'cause I hate those, but I've always kind of admired the radicalism of Fela Kuti, who would play songs for a while, then record them, and once they were on an album, he'd drop them and start playing new stuff. If bands, like (some) standup comedians, were presenting an entirely new hour of material every year, they'd probably get questions they'd find more interesting.

We are talking about albums of new material; the questions are just the same every interview. "What was it like to be back in the studio again?" etc.