Post a controversial music opinion

xxp Oof I kind of agree, except that "Pharaoh's Dance" is a masterpiece

BB is easily my least favorite electric Miles record, live or studio. It's like A Love Supreme in a way: it's transitional in that there's far more fully-realized work before and after it, but it feels like a necessary step; and it's overrated largely due to however many decades of "THIS IS THE DEFINITIVE yadda yadda."

I wouldn't say Miles was flailing, though: the 1969-70 live stuff with Shorter is uniformly ace (the 3/7/70 show is one of my favorite Miles recordings ever, absolutely relentless), and even when a lesser figure like Steve Grossman comes in, Chick Corea manages to compensate with a noisy approach he apparently abandoned immediately after leaving Miles.

The only time during that period when Miles sounds less than focused to me is the '71 stuff with Ndugu Chancler, who didn't have the drive or sense of orchestration that Jack DeJohnette and (especially) Al Foster had.

I love Dark Magus and Agharta though.

i don't care how the sausage got made In a Silent Way is one of the greatest album's ever released

The only time during that period when Miles sounds less than focused to me is the '71 stuff with Ndugu Chancler, who didn't have the drive or sense of orchestration that Jack DeJohnette and (especially) Al Foster had.

Ha, I find the Chancler live recordings fascinating and wish Sony would devote a volume of the Bootleg Series to just shows from that 1971 European tour. (I talked to Gary Bartz about it recently; unfortunately, the audio wasn't good enough to use it for a podcast.)

I agree with you ums

I have spoken before (and probably posted to this end) about how my lack of reverence for Laughing Stock is rooted in the fact that it took so, so long to record, whereas In A Silent Way was recorded in a day; that Laughing Stock's influence on bands like Radiohead et al. has been less about the textures of the album and more about the "let's spend endless days in the studio experimenting instead of practicing so we can do it quickly" approach to album making

This thread is less about being "controversial" and more about a bro-down over classically bro-y artists, albums, and sub-genres

dunno whether debating influential Miles Davis recordings is more classic sausage party than doing so re the merits of pink floyd albums

What would an unbroified controversial music opinion look like?

thinking bitches brew is miles' worst fusion-era record is practically like critical consensus at this point, not sure why it was posted here

Tori Amos>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Kate Bush

xp

Can't argue with that (form and content both).

I applaud Shakey for his true controp. (and disagree violently obv)

I don't get Kate Bush at all. No emotional resonance whatsoever, just theatre.

haha I totally don't believe that was just trying to come up w an opinion that met pomenitul's criteria

I wouldn't put as many ">"s there, but in a lot of ways I prefer Tori to Kate ... tho I like both.

like when I'm in emo "me-time" mode, Little Earthquakes is way more likely what I put on than a Kate Bush album

Confessional vs. literary. I'll take literary for $200, Alex.

Side 2 of Yellow Submarine > Side 1 of Yellow Submarine

"Tango Whiskeyman" is the only good song Can ever recorded.

I don't get Kate Bush at all. No emotional resonance whatsoever, just theatre.

― pomenitul, Tuesday, January 29, 2019 7:11 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's Nick Cave for me

^ both of them here (Birthday Party excluded)

Theatre doesn't have emotional resonance?

I understand not liking her, but theatre/resonance aren't a binary imo

there is a certain way of thinking

a wrong and terrible way of thinking but still

affectlessness as signifier of authenticity and other nonsense

Theatre doesn't have emotional resonance?

― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, February 1, 2019 7:58 AM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post PermalinkTom Waits falls into this category for me too

it's more just like theater qua theater,...it's top-heavy with presentation.

Tom Waits also falls into this category for me

Co-sign on Tom Waits and Nick Cave.

guys working the character a little too hard and failing to wink

Nick Cave = probably 2 or 3 albums worth of good stuff
Tom Waits = probably 12 or 13 albums worth of good stuff
Kate Bush = flawless and fuiud
Disliking "theatre" = oh fuck off everything's performance

would you watch an actor on stage who reminds the audience that "It's only a play, mate"?

theatricality > schtick

I think for the most part music shouldn't involve suspension of disbelief

a category mistake

PBS was showing some Closing Time-era Tom Waits a couple weeks back and I found it so embarrassing! Two hours of this painful cod-hobo business

There's no question that all the world's a stage, yadda yadda, but that's precisely why an escape from theatricality seems so desirable to me. This implies a self-avowedly impossible, doomed quest for 'authenticity' (no, it isn't real but my wish for it to be is) rather than affectlessness. Art that plays up its own de facto inauthenticity tends to be a tiresome tautology in my book (with exceptions, of course, such as Roxy Music).

I think for the most part music *always* involves suspension of disbelief

I don't need to believe that David Bowie is, variously, a harlequin or nazi or a astronaut. He's just asking me to play along, so I'm in on it. Whereas for me w/ Waits or Nick Cave I get the sense that they actually want me to buy into these personalities, and I just fail to get there.

I don't really get more of an 'escape from theatricality' from "Cornflake Girl" than from "Running Up That Hill", though. I sort of get that there's more of a guts-spilling autobiographical quality in Amos's work and more of a third-person storytelling quality in Bush's but I don't know that I agree that this quite maps onto the binary you're setting up. I like Bush a lot more because I think she has a better voice, songs that say more to me, and more interesting music (but I like things by Amos).

Just to be clear, I don't conceive of confessionalism as an escape from theatricality – on the contrary. Authenticity for me means a) that inauthenticity is an insuperable condition; b) that it nonetheless falls short; c) that art must acknowledge this insuperability while simultaneously yearning for something beyond it, which is the impossible itself. Confessionalism often misses the first point in my experience. So it's more of a porous binary (as all are).

(i.e. Amos's delivery and presentation strike me as very affected.xp)

When I listen to Kate Bush, I don't get the sense of a 'beyond' (she merely foregrounds the theatrical tautology of existence) at all. But that's just me, of course – I don't think there's any kind of rule to be wrung from this.

look i don't like ange

Kate Bush is a seriously honest musician with a tendency toward moments of theatricality that rub me the wrong way-- sometimes it's just an "I like mime" kind of note ("Babooshka", many of her videos), other times it's an "I like to put on funny accents" kind of note ("There Goes A Tenner", "The Dreaming"), other times it's just like "wow I'm going to be silly silly silly" ("Wow", "Army Dreamers"). But she is oftentimes writing "honestly" and when she does ("The Man With The Child...", "Breathing", "Sat In Your Lap", "Hounds Of Love", "Running...", "The Sensual World", most of "Aerial") she is untouchable. I can't honestly say that I enjoy any of her albums front-to-back aside from "The Sensual World" but writing off her entire catalogue because of her tendency sometimes to chew-the-scenery is not my beer

Tori Amos is kind of the opposite, I've typed endlessly about how I think there was an irreversible shift that occurred in her song-writing as her star rose, imo a response to the obsessive traits that her fans embodied, and thus in Tori mk. 2 a kind of "closing off", a deliberate move toward obscurantism ("Boys For Pele" onward). "Leather", "Happy Phantom" and "The Wrong Band" aside, I hear little-to-no points of comparison between Tori and Kate-- Tori is brutal where Kate is not, Kate is theatre where Tori is not.

Both artists are consigned to being tied to former experiences and former selves for me, (Tori was my teens, Kate was my early 20s), and neither have an active part in my current listening habits. Comparing the two isn't really a game I enjoy, I think both are very important in different ways

Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson seems a more apt comparison than Kate Bush and Tori Amos

writing off her entire catalogue because of her tendency sometimes to chew-the-scenery is not my beer

This thread requires that we sacrifice something to it every few days or so.

Those theatrical things are some of my favourite songs by her, more than a lot of the 'honest' ones!

Nick Cave = probably 2 or 3 albums worth of good stuff

hell no

also people should really watch Once More With Feeling before they accuse Cave of being all theater, it's intensely theatrical also a deeply felt expression of grief over the death of his son, just killed me

I realise I'm being harsh on him but I never really want to listen to him nowadays

Still enjoy the gleeful sproinginess of the Birthday Party tho

cave is way more complicated and earnest than he’s being classified here

waits too but like y’all are EXTREMELY wrong about cave