Tusk Vs The White Album

Julia / Me and My Monkey / Glass Onion / Revolution 9 / While My Guitar Gently Weeps / Long, Long, Long / Good Night / Piggies / Dear Prudence / Savoy Truffle / Happiness is a Warm Gun. there's a lot going on there

No there isn't. Aside from 'Revolution 9', 'Good Night' and 'Piggies', that's just a series of folk or rock songs.

Y'see, I can't see why The Beatles would inspire murder. I leave that kind of thing to people who read things into music that aren't there. Or the legitimately mental.

Because I gorged on TWA and Beatle lore in my youth, I have more time for Tusk, but after the kids discovered the Wondrous Punkness of Tusk twenty years ago I pulled back from it too. What do I listen to now?

Kidding. I love them both but "Sara" more than anything on TWA.

What do I listen to now?

Tango in the Night, of course!

But yeah, Beatles lore schlore mythology schmythology.

i went to a beatles convention in 1978. the band Apple played. and they had a showing of Magical Mystery Tour. i bought a Black Sabbath record. the future was upon me...

I was big on Tango in the Night before the kids with their Balearic fetishes discovered synth pads.

tusk is great but for me it's hard to deal w/ the rest of the album after the heights of "sara." same goes with rumours and "dreams" tbh

i always just want to go back to those songs

my sister bought me Tusk for Christmas because i loved hearing that song on the radio and when i got the 2XLP i just used to listen to that song! so, it took me some time to be a fan of the rest of it. (i even remember thinking, you could have just bought me the 45...)

The one that I keep returning to on Tusk is 'That's All For Everyone' - it's not much of a song at its core, but the overall sound of it is incredible. Gorgeous harmonies.

and "Brown Eyes"

and "Over and Over"

McVie's on fire on this record.

They all are, I guess.

Yeah, 'Brown Eyes' is the same kind of thing... it's not really a great song, but the production is so incredible that it doesn't matter.

'Over and Over' is an utter classic - love the little drum fill that comes out of nowhere in the outro.

It might not be much of a song but I feel it’s the main influence behind Tame Impala.

what do you mean "not much of a song" turrican? repetition =/= lazy or half-baked. it's a mantra, a song you can live inside. there's a great anecdote in Carol Ann Harris' book Storms (which btw, documents a ton of horrible, horrible abusive behavior by Lindsey) where he had spent a few days off in between legs of the Rumours tour in early 1978 building his home studio. the first thing he did in there was 'That's All for Everyone' - when it was finished, they sat on the floor crying and listening to it over and over again.

When I say it's not much of a song, I mean that it's not much of a song. I said nothing about "lazy" or "half-baked" ... again, you're reading things into things that aren't there.

Turrican: "The overall sound of it is incredible. Gorgeous harmonies."

Flappy Bird: "Wahhhlazyhalfbakedwhatchumean?"

Turrican: "..."

No there isn't. Aside from 'Revolution 9', 'Good Night' and 'Piggies', that's just a series of folk or rock songs.

― Gholdfish Killah (Turrican), Friday, October 27, 2017 3:20 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's an oversimplification- those songs go WAY out into their own worlds, every song on the White Album feels like a separate room in a large house. the paranoid meta-mess of 'Glass Onion' is completely distinct from the clouds-parting optimism of 'Dear Prudence,' and 'Savoy Truffle' is just as much of a bizarre genre pastiche as 'Piggies,' with equally wild production choices (the overdriven horns). 'Happiness is a Warm Gun' is a cut-up masterpiece, and only 2:53 long (!!). even 'Julia' and 'Long, Long, Long', which feature mostly the same instrumentation, are imbued with the personalities and sensibilities of their authors. 'I Will,' 'Julia,' and 'Long, Long, Long' are so much more nuanced than simple folk songs. I could go on and on but the truly captivating and powerful aspect of TWA is its insane sequencing, and the deeply unsettling and unresolved feeling when it's all over. You don't know what to take from it or make of it all.

'Not much of a song,' what do you mean? Lacking in chords? more lyrics?

It's not an oversimplification at all - it's calling a spade a spade, rather than spouting received wisdom from the pages of some Beatle-fellating wankfest book/article, or buying into the mythology and all the bullshit surrounding the music that doesn't even matter.

Now, after forcing myself to read through your post which even fails at being elaborately worded bullshit, here we go...

the paranoid meta-mess of 'Glass Onion' is completely distinct from the clouds-parting optimism of 'Dear Prudence'

This has nothing to do with genre, and 'Glass Onion' isn't really paranoid, although I could perhaps understand why it unsettles the more unhinged end of the Beatle fan spectrum. In any case, a writer writes an uptempo song then a midtempo song... fucking mindblowing, man!

'Savoy Truffle' is just as much of a bizarre genre pastiche

There's nothing bizarre about this song at all. It sounds like a song written and recorded in 1968.

And what "wild" production choices on 'Piggies'? It's no 'Strawberry Fields Forever' ... Jesus, it's not even the outro of 'Itchycoo Park' or 'Bold as Love' ... Overdriven horns? Gimme a break.

'Julia' and 'Long, Long, Long', which feature mostly the same instrumentation, are imbued with the personalities and sensibilities of their authors.

Fucking hell! Songs are imbued with the personalities of their authors! In other news, grass is green! This, like, applies to every song ever written including The Beatles' own entire catalogue. Clutching at straws much?

I feel like you two have this fight every day

xpost:

It basically sounds to me that you've read too many Beatle books/articles and let it colour your perception of the music. Most of the time what you're describing isn't what the music is, but more what you want it to be. You're reading stuff into it which isn't even there.

I guess Charles Manson did the same, though.

On a related note, you do sure fucking use the word "insane" a lot.

shakey - me too. I respect your opinion turrican but I fundamentally disagree with your constant assertion that art can be "objectively good" or "objectively bad." this shit is all subjective. it's fun to talk and squabble about preferences but there is no universal truth to the quality of any piece of art.

xxp my opinion and impressions of The White Album as stated were formed years before I read any Beatles books. the record has always freaked me out.

Well, I suppose that says more about you than the record!

thanks for the analysis, who do i make the check out to

The idea of someone listening to 'Don't Pass Me By' while looking out through their keyhole with a bead of sweat trickling down their brow absolutely tickles me. Sing it, Ringo!

Remove Bookmark from this Turrican

is there really a turrican or just a bot that posts "personally, i find this song rather silly" over and over again

Photo of Turrican:

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f2/ab/b2/f2abb266763ceacca25065bff1af30c1--monty-python-funny-people.jpg

btw i agree w/ flappy bird, the white album has a very spooky feel to it. it's full of abrupt changes in tone and sudden transitions and songs that just sort of clatter to a halt, and things like "cry baby cry" or "revolution 9" or "happiness is a warm gun" or the bizarre outro to "long long long" do feel quite sinister. even "don't pass me by" sort of falls apart in a weird, chaotic way at the end. i don't think of it as horror-movie scary so much as the uncanny, unsettling feeling you might get from looking at an old abandoned house or reading about unsolved crimes late at night or something. much of that is due to lennon, whose nonsense stories and drawings also have a very menacing, lewis carroll-esque feel to them, full of barely-buried hints of violence and rage, and this feels like the album where that side of him comes out most fully. the only other songwriter of that era who gives me a similar vibe is syd barrett, but his vision was much gentler.

It's rawer and rougher than the direction they seemed to be headed in.. there's a real "the house lights have been turned on" unvarnished/atmosphere-less thing going on. or maybe it's just more like hanging out with them in someone's living room

Helter Skelter is totally scary from a musical pov, absolutely sealed by Paul's (?) off-key pitch-bending guitar thing.

xpost:

It basically sounds to me that you've read too many Beatle books/articles and let it colour your perception of the music. Most of the time what you're describing isn't what the music /is/, but more what you want it to be. You're reading stuff into it which isn't even there.

I know, I'm one to talk

the living room comment... I mean that it's more folksy and casual but also you're seeing them de-romanticized and with zits and bad breath and stuff

agree w everyone's "spookiness" feels for the white album. it reminds me a little of old cartoons where Donald Duck is going insane and is paranoid or something. difficult to explain but yeah the album captures a whole spooky attic feeling to it.

the ending of "Long Long Long" is super spooky, the scratchy guitar noise and drone, that ghostly wail...

yeah, i've long advocated for the white album as creaky old haunted house. not actively jump-scare scary but yes, something uneasy or curdled or sick. there seems to be a lot of emptiness around the instruments and vocals somehow, like they were all recorded late at night and the studio was kind of cold and there were footsteps in the hallway.

on when i get to the bottom i go back to the top of the WHITE ALBUM POLL i compared it to "mouldy old dough" and that still clicks with me, in that that song probably doesn't read as creepy at all to lots of people - just a jaunty little britisher throwback - but once i heard it that way, it was permanently the soundtrack for a bad-trip scene in an imaginary movie. a lot of the white album is like that, and i think that feeling is only heightened by the parts that aren't like that, the songs that are genuinely warm and fuzzy and blanket-like, or happy and encouraging and upbeat, while you're listening to them.

i've only just started listening to tusk recently and can't comment tbh. so far it just seems like a crowd of fragments and underwritten songs that will occasionally part to make way for something much more fully-realized. i don't have a problem with that idea but it reminds me of like, a compilation of TMBG "dial-a-song" numbers with each pushed to a full three-minute length.

Just you wait.

The ending on 'Long, Long, Long' is, what, less than 30 seconds on a double LP? There's that and 'Revolution 9', which I guess takes it up to 9 minutes. On a double LP.

Boredom with the record making process is the vibe that I mostly get from The Beatles as well as boredom with being a group and individual egos spiralling out of control - which is why there was next to no quality control, each individual thought everything they were writing was fantastic, and they can't-be-arsed rushed production. Spookiness? Fuck no. It's a better recorded version of Let It Be with slightly better songs.

*they=the

Boredom with the record making process is the vibe that I mostly get from The Beatles as well as boredom with being a group and individual egos spiralling out of control

Most of the time what you're describing isn't what the music is, but more what you want it to be.

yeah no - these sessions were labored over and there are tons of overdubs and stuff. not lazy/rushed, and anything that feels ragged or empty is imho a deliberate aesthetic choice after the pepper/mmt era. especially given that they were overflowing with material. some of it conveys a sense of glumness and exhaustion but that's because they had some heavy shit on their minds.

^ point exemplified by the cover, if Turrican's seen that

xxpost:

'xcept I am describing what the music is. Play the record back to back with, say, A Hard Days Night or Revolver and it speaks for itself. You can hear the excitement is there in the tracks on those records, and the quality control is there and the band are all going in the same direction. All of those things are absent on The Beatles.

There may be overdubs aplenty on portions of The Beatles, but quite a lot of it is sloppy as fuck, and still undoubtedly rushed, and quite a fair bit of the songwriting isn't up to snuff. You could say that in some ways The Beatles was a reaction against psychedelia, but c'mon it was 1968 and pretty much everyone who wasn't Small Faces (who released their psychedelic record a year late) were going "back to basics" ... but bands like The Stones were at least understood that if you're gonna go "back to basics", the songs better be good.

CD Player: "Well, somewhere in the black mountain hills of Dakota there lived a young boy named Rocky Raccooooooon-ah!"

Random Beatles Fan: "Fuck, man!" *bead of sweat drips off their forehead as they shut themselves in their wardrobe*

Outc, listen to "albatross"

I'm open to discussing the different things people get out of this record but strawmanning the "scary" argument to mock the posters making it doesn't really encourage me to do that tbh.

Having a sense of imagination is fun