The Cure: Classic or Dud?

Thx sic

best album ever obv

Strictly Kev of DJ Food interviewing Andy Vella, mainly about his work for Fiction's dance sub-label Desire

Lol is doing a tweet-along thing dedicated to Seventeen Seconds this evening, apparently.

Just watched Rick Beato's "what makes this song great?" analysis of Just Like Heaven on YouTube. He highlighted Robert Smith's vocal harmonies. I've been listening to this song for over 30 years and I'm ashamed to say I've never noticed them. Listening to it now, I know I'll never un-hear them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPNHwwXh3Ks

Man thanks for the reminder that we've got the Royal Albert Hall thing this weekend.

What's that? Happy to be unintentionally of service!

Thread with details:

Show me! Show me! Show me Halloween!

It is only 3 days until the exclusive one-off live stream of The Cure’s 2014 Royal Albert Hall performance for Teenage Cancer Trust. pic.twitter.com/RIKTYhmdgZ

— The Cure (@thecure) October 28, 2020

$7.15 total and that's for three chances to watch, so why not?

Yeah this is pretty great and then some. Two more chances to watch it later today!

they were the best in the 80s as they lost me after mixed up and they were good before the 80s too!

Much thanks to Ned Ragget for helping me get sorted on this awesome broadcast tonight!

Do what I can!

Is there a thread for Rick Beato? His videos have been on rotation during quarantine, love how he discusses more advanced music theory than similar channels yet makes it simple enough and explains in detail for non-musicians to understand.

I love his videos of him and his young lad, Dylan, who has perfect pitch and can sing and name the individual notes of crazy, atonal 9-note clusters, it's super entertaining.

I like Beato's videos when he's talking about specific songs and how they work.

But when he strays from that into what is/isn't good music, he can be a real dud rockist. He favors blues-based music and chops-based music, which is not surprising from someone of his age and temperament. But the range is somewhat narrow. Even when he praises something outside the narrow canon, he does so using a framework that is based on that canon.

Ah yes, he’s definitely an insufferable rockist, but at least he has the real talk to explain why “rock is real music” to him. I don’t expect someone with his age and background to think otherwise. So instead of rolling my eyes at some of his other content I mostly limit myself to his song analysis which are very interesting for a non-musician (or a very amateur one) like myself.

Well the song analysis + some of the music theory videos. It’s mostly the ranking and opinion videos which I don’t care about.

Dylan, who has perfect pitch

Pet peeve/trivia based on something I learned: there is no such thing as perfect pitch. For example, pianos in the US and Europe are often tuned to slightly different pitches, but if there was such a thing as "perfect" pitch they would be tuned the same. The truth (as I understand it) is a lot cooler, in that you can actually train your ear to pick out notes and the like, which is no doubt what Beato did with his kid. I asked my guitar teacher about it once, and he told me at school everyone had to learn it essentially by rote, just the equivalent of working with flash cards until you've got it down and it becomes second nature. That's how he, say, can listen to a Steely Dan song and pick out the weird chords being played. Still awesome to watch the kid do it!

Anyway, I like Beato because his enthusiasm for banalities reveals some really cool stuff. For example, there was one video where he dissected "More Than a Feeling," and it was without a doubt the most I'd ever thought about that song in my life. And I learned a lot! Another one he tries to determine which are better, thicker or thinner guitar strings. Sometimes he surprises me with deeper cuts, as it were. There was one video he did of the best bass tones/sounds, and he put Curve on the list. How did he hear about Curve?

For example, pianos in the US and Europe are often tuned to slightly different pitches, but if there was such a thing as "perfect" pitch they would be tuned the same.

... Huh?

This doesn't follow logically at all. You can still innately hear different notes and give them distinct names AND have regional differences in what frequency those notes are tuned to (A440 vs A442, or baroque pitch which is A415 in modern times but didn't actually have a tonal center during the baroque period and depended on the physical characteristics of the organ you were playing with and could fluctuate anywhere from A400 to A450)

DJP otm

It's like saying "there's no such thing as signed languages because if there were, they'd be the same in the US and the UK"

Yeah. Not to pile on, but I think there probably is a part of the brain that has perfect pitch for everybody but relative pitch is more useful so that’s what most of us have access to.

there's no such thing as signed languages because if there were, they'd be the same in the US and the UK

Now *this* isn't logical, because signed languages are distinct, just as spoken languages are. But perfect pitch (again, as I understand it; DJP, you're a choir guy so of course you would know) implies there is one "right/correct" pitch. Yet if your ear were attuned to A450, *that* would be your perfect reference pitch, and if your ear were attuned to A400, *that* would be your perfect reference pitch. I suppose it's just a matter of perspective, whether you read perfect pitch as being able to pick out notes perfectly, or meaning that there is some "perfect" pitch that some people are just attuned to. I've always read it as the latter, but I guess I'm wrong. Maybe there should be a better term for it than "perfect pitch."

Though actually I guess that makes sense, not that there is one natural perfect pitch but perfect in the sense that one may speak perfect Spanish.

Perfect pitch is the ability to pick out notes perfectly. There is no one unified tuning that everyone across the world uses.

They just need to reissue Wish on vinyl and then do an album by album 12" reissue campaign so I can complete my collection.

there's also no such thing as "perfect Spanish" or "perfect" any language?

I think the equivalent would be literacy.

like, the ability to read and comprehend without any struggle.

anyway, I get what you all mean now.

Perfect is the enemy of GBDFA.

I assume someone with perfect pitch, confronting with a slightly different standard of tuning than they have learned, would simply say "these are the pitches, but they're all a quarter-tone flat/sharp".

^^^ this has been my experience, usually combined with a lot of irritated cursing

(As a witness I should add; I don’t have perfect pitch)

I assume someone with perfect pitch, confronting with a slightly different standard of tuning than they have learned, would simply say "these are the pitches, but they're all a quarter-tone flat/sharp".

Oh great, another opportunity to post my favorite John McPhee anecdote about Bill Bradley.

Last summer, the floor of the Princeton gym was being resurfaced, so Bradley had to put in several practice sessions at the Lawrenceville School. His first afternoon at Lawrenceville, he began by shooting fourteen-foot jump shots from the right side. He got off to a bad start, and he kept missing them. Six in a row hit the back rim of the basket and bounced out. He stopped, looking discomfited, and seemed to be making an adjustment in his mind. Then he went up for another jump shot from the same spot and hit it cleanly. Four more shots went in without a miss, and then he paused and said, “You want to know something? That basket is about an inch and a half low.” Some weeks later, I went back to Lawrenceville with a steel tape, borrowed a stepladder, and measured the height of the basket. It was nine feet ten and seven-eighths inches above the floor, or one and one-eighth inches too low.

Life is long and complex and there are many uncertainties in it.

But one thing seems certain to remain forever: a young-ish John McPhee writing about a young Bill Bradley will always provide - for me - a tiny glimpse of what expertise means. Because I am a dilettante and expertise will always elude me, but at least I will know a little bit about how to describe expertise using English sentences.

I love the story that was in the New Yorker about some neuroscientist working with Brian Eno to study how the brain perceives the passage of time. Eno told a story of Larry Mullen Jr. hating click tracks but being made to play along, yet complaining in one instance that the click was off. Eno kept insisting that it had recently been calibrating and was perfectly in time, and Mullen kept complaining that something was off. After the session, Eno told the engineer to check out the click, and indeed, it was off by an almost invisible amount!

“I was working with Larry Mullen, Jr., on one of the U2 albums,” Eno told me. “ ‘All That You Don’t Leave Behind,’ or whatever it’s called.” Mullen was playing drums over a recording of the band and a click track—a computer-generated beat that was meant to keep all the overdubbed parts in synch. In this case, however, Mullen thought that the click track was slightly off: it was a fraction of a beat behind the rest of the band. “I said, ‘No, that can’t be so, Larry,’ ” Eno recalled. “ ‘We’ve all worked to that track, so it must be right.’ But he said, ‘Sorry, I just can’t play to it.’ ”

Eno eventually adjusted the click to Mullen’s satisfaction, but he was just humoring him. It was only later, after the drummer had left, that Eno checked the original track again and realized that Mullen was right: the click was off by six milliseconds. “The thing is,” Eno told me, “when we were adjusting it I once had it two milliseconds to the wrong side of the beat, and he said, ‘No, you’ve got to come back a bit.’ Which I think is absolutely staggering.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/04/25/the-possibilian

Oh yeah! I read that one too and had a similar reaction. A perfect parallel. Thanks Josh, because I'd forgotten.

i couldn't watch that rick beato guy for more than a minute, idk how anybody can stand that shit, excruciating

I sympathize, map. Clearly you just can't handle the life-changing message of how Steely Dan went from a Bbmaj6 to an F#min13, and how they inserted a 5/4 bar over that change, and that's why "Doctor Ricki Blue" is the pinnacle of 20th century art music.

Lol I told YouTube to stop recommending his videos awhile back

I've watched more than a few Beato videos but his mileage varies. Some songs he points out some things I'd never paid attention before (and I love when he has the song stems and can play parts individually), and other times he really has nothing to say. Pretty rockist, as y'all have mentioned

A great piece on Wish from a board vet!

https://nobilliards.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-cure-wish.html

I have always held that Robert / Simon / Pearl / Roger / Boris was the best lineup of The Cure. I now stand corrected:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TnmSyg5I_4

Pretty funny. Has any band ever sent another band onto one of those things in their stead?

Wow, what a combo - adorable. I had never seen/heard of that clip. Should have played Banafishbones.

Should have played Banafishbones.

this statement applies to every show the cure ever played. even if they already planned on playing that song. play it twice ffs.

absolutely classic clip. boris was such a professional that he can't even fake it badly! lol

i love that clip where they all wore dresses. i think it was a french tv performance of 'why can't i be you?' pearl (pre-transition) looks absolutely badass the entire time.

man what an amazing band. i love them all so much.

i was wrong! it was 'boys don't cry'!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcvHA6xOrkw