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

The first time I picked up a guitar it didn't have strings on it.

Looking forward to a full record of someone violently strumming an out of tune acoustic guitar (all open strings because you don’t know how to fret notes yet).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTQEVXLAfc4

Looking forward to a full record of someone violently strumming an out of tune acoustic guitar (all open strings because you don’t know how to fret notes yet).

https://corwoodindustries.com/

Found this in The Wallflowers’ Wikipedia page:

When in the studio, the band were intent on using as little recording equipment as possible. Dylan explained: "If I could have had it my way I would not have seen a microphone or a cable anywhere."

Dylan goes unelectric!

Dylan unrecorded !

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81JmWMfPv2L._AC_SY450_.jpg

Great title, not great subtitle

Charlie Daniels not known for subt(it)lety

lol

lol that jake Dylan quote, it’s like yeah I know what you mean but it still sounds completely psychotic

lol that jake Dylan quote, it’s like yeah I know what you mean but it still sounds completely psychotic

Would rather read an interview with the engineer in charge of taping microphones to the ceiling out of his field of vision, or sneakily clipping one to the brim of his hat just before he starts singing...

The Wikipedia page says: However, finding a producer who was willing to work with them proved to be difficult. The band was intent on recording live and few producers were willing to produce that way. Paul Fox eventually stepped in and agreed to produce the album.

This was the band's first album, btw. It's kinda funny to read between the lines: "Yeah, Bob Dylan's kid wants to make a record, and record it 'live'... Sorry, I'm all booked up..."

The album also sounds kind of thin and shitty, if you listen to it.

Jakob [to engineer]: "OK, can we listen to that one back?"

engineer: "Yeah, absolutely."

Jakob: "...um...I'm not hearing anything...?"

engineer: "No, see, Jakob, this is exactly what you asked for: no mics. How do you like your new 'back to basics' sound? Also, I'm still on the clock."

the equivalent of this for nu metal bands that were covered in kerrang ! in the 1990s was always "this is our heaviest album yet".

In British literary circles a couple decades back, there was a joke about how one of the most unlikely book titles would be "My Struggle," by Martin Amis.

(Sorry to kill the joke with explanation, but the implication is that it was probably very easy for the sun of a massively successful author to get a book deal.)

I'm thinking that one could construct a similar joke about how the Wallflowers needed to pay their dues by touring in a decrepit minivan, playing in tiny clubs to nonexistent audiences, etc. etc. until finally a brave A&R guy decided to take a chance and give them a record deal.

erg, "son," not "sun." sorry

https://img.discogs.com/SFp5xjKhZFuN8UUg96Ou3FYDlpE=/fit-in/600x628/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-16254996-1606061803-7585.jpeg.jpg

Jansen/Barbieri/Karn - Playing In A Room With People

haha that is the ultimate back to basics title

'Despite a pair of duets with country icons Dolly Parton and Rodney Crowell, Jewel’s Picking Up the Pieces is mostly an intimate, back-to-basics album, focused on the same folksy introspection that made her debut Pieces of You a hit 20 years ago. It’s appropriate, then, that the new video for “Pretty Faced Fool” is simple and straightforward. In the clip above, Jewel strums the acoustic ballad in a recording studio, while Christmas lights glow in the background.' https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/watch-jewels-back-to-basics-pretty-faced-fool-video-169060/

Would prefer "we wanted to go back to the basics - an expensive analog mixing desk, a rotating cast of crack session players and cocaine by the ounce."

Anything recent fit that bill?

This is not recent, but see the second paragraph

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.today.com/today/amp/wbna5452205

This is a few years old, but it fits.

Haake tells Metal Hammer: “This album is recorded live. It’s the first time we’ve done that in 20, 25 years. It was time limitations that stopped us doing it before. And it’s been interesting.

“If you put it all together using computers then you often have to fix problems after the fact. I’ve gone back to records where I’ve not known every drum part. And once you do that you can start with drums and then just add layers of guitars and then bass and it all sounds perfect.

”Obzen and Koloss are great albums but, to me, they are a little too perfect. It didn’t really capture what we sounded like honestly.

“But where we recorded live you get to hear the push and pull, one person might be a little ahead and the other might be a little behind. If you kill that, you can kill the energy.”

Haake adds: “So for us it was just about going back to those albums that inspired us when we were growing up, that were important to us in our formative years, and all of those bands had that energy. The albums in the 80s and early 90s had the rawness that I’m talking about – that’s what we wanted to recapture.”

https://www.loudersound.com/news/meshuggah-recorded-violent-sleep-of-reason-live

Perfect

wow that truly has it all in terms of back to basics

*chef's kiss*

What's funny about that is that Obzen always sounded looser and "jammier" (and like they'd been listening to a whole fuckin' lot of Tool) than its immediate predecessors...which was why I didn't like it.

What's the least basic band that claimed to go back to basics?

Tom Jones: Getting Back To Basics On 'Spirit In The Room'

Not the first time Metal Hammer covered a band doing that:

Earlier, we referenced Metallica’s past as a key player in the burgeoning thrash-metal scene of the mid 80s. It’s a period they themselves were forced to revisit on Death Magnetic, under express instruction from their new producer, Rick Rubin.

“Rick kept telling us: ‘Think like you used to think in 1985. Approach it like you did in 1985. Listen to the same records you did in 1985.’ Everything was about transporting yourself back to 1985,” Lars divulges.

Rick, of course, was encouraging a back-to-basics approach. He wanted Metallica to simultaneously recapture the fire of their early days and dispel the painful memories of working with Bob Rock on St Anger.

https://www.loudersound.com/features/metallica-death-magnetic-album-interview-2008

Nicki Minaj Reveals Why She Went Back To Basics

Here's another Green Day one from some 2010 sessions that might not even have ended up on anything.

"It's just been songwriting right now. Instead of doing it later on, we decided to start doing stuff now. ... It's all back to the basics again. Just getting in a room together and start jamming," Armstrong said. "We set up all of our old gear, which was like an experiment. We set up all of our equipment from 1992, and we sat in a room. We got in, and I was like, 'Come on, guys, we're getting back in!' and I [start playing] and go, 'This sounds like sh--!' Everything sounded so bad."

"Me and [drummer] Tre [Cool] were looking at Billie going, 'Really, you've got to pull out that POS amp?' " bassist Mike Dirnt laughed. "I mean, it really sounded like crap."

green day "jamming" is up there with the worst music i can imagine

I'm just getting a kick out of "Me and [drummer] Tre [Cool]".

sounds like they needed some green that day

St Vincent on her new video and “dirt under the fingernails” album, which is like blues for 2021.

“This is just a performance video of me singing a song, dancing and just doing everything in a very practical way. It was going in the same spirit as the music where it’s just a performance. It’s not got heavy-heavy production, but we just did it in the room to capture a moment.”

"return to form"

Most basic band to go back to basics？

Probably AC/DC:

To anyone outside the hard rock tent, it’s laughable to hear that there once was a time when AC/DC yearned to get back to basics.

https://www.loudersound.com/features/ac-dc-the-final-salute-flick-of-the-switch-fly-on-the-wall

Was thinking ramones

I kinda disagree with that article's premise. When I ranked all of AC/DC's albums for Stereogum, there were plenty of titles below each of those. Here's what I said about them:

Fly On The Wall is the noisiest, nastiest-sounding AC/DC album. Like its predecessor, 1983’s Flick Of The Switch, it was produced by the Young brothers, recorded in Montreux, Switzerland between November 1984 and February 1985. But where Flick had a thick, meaty roar to the guitars, rumbling bass, and cleanly mixed, pounding drums, Fly is much more blown-out sounding. The guitars have a harsh, shearing-metal sound, and the drums are pushed through that ’80s gate that makes the snare sound like a battering ram striking a door and the cymbals crash like a shattering windshield. Cliff Williams’ bass is entirely absent, blended so thoroughly with the rhythm guitar that he might as well not be there. (The change in the band’s songwriting style in the post-Mutt Lange era, from aggressive but supple boogie to crashing hard rock riffs, really didn’t serve Williams well.)

This was the first AC/DC album since the Australian version of High Voltage not to feature Phil Rudd on drums. His replacement, Simon Wright, was barely 20 years old and a near-total unknown when he joined the group. His playing was as rock-steady as his predecessor’s, but the fluidity Rudd brought to the band was definitely missing; the drums on Fly slam where they should thwack.

Brian Johnson is even more tucked away in the mix than he was on Flick. This suits his performance well, though, because this was the first album on which his vocals started to suffer. You can only scream at full strength for so long without ripping your throat up, and from day one, Johnson was almost totally lacking in the subtlety and dynamics Bon Scott had brought to the group. Here, he’s hoarse, screechy, and frequently incomprehensible, so frankly, it’s a relief to hear him drowned out by the guitars.

There are several good songs on Fly On The Wall. The title track, “Sink The Pink,” and “Shake Your Foundations” all have bone-crunching riffs and shout-along choruses; each allows the band to work minor variations on their post-Back In Black style that keep them in tune with contemporary metal while still sounding very much like themselves. It’s more or less the same trick Ozzy Osbourne pulled on The Ultimate Sin. “Playing With Girls” is the fastest song on Fly, a high-stepping boogie-metal track. But it’s balanced out by “Danger,” a turgid ballad that was inexplicably the first single.

Fly On The Wall isn’t great. Three albums after what they had to know was their commercial peak, they were short on ideas, they’d lost their drummer, and Johnson’s voice wasn’t the powerful instrument it had been in 1980. Still, they were able to sell a million copies based on past glories and raw power, and honestly, there are times when its ugly, noisy mix is just the brain-scrubbing blast that’s required.

I actually ranked Flick of the Switch *above* Highway to Hell...

As soon as the tour in support of For Those About To Rock We Salute You wound down, AC/DC headed back to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, where they’d recorded Back In Black, without producer “Mutt” Lange for the first time since 1979. They were handling this one themselves, and after the (artistically if not commercially) disappointing For Those About To Rock, it was the right decision.

Their shortest album, at 37:05, and sheathed in a cover that looks like a teenaged fan might have drawn it on his notebook during a boring class, Flick Of The Switch could easily have been another letdown. But it’s not. In fact, it’s a collection of 10 songs that fucking rock, some of them harder than any material the band had released to date with Brian Johnson up front.

The one thing that must be acknowledged is that lyrically, the record is pretty weak, with only one real exception. Johnson wrote some great stuff on Back In Black, but inspiration had apparently run dry by this point, because half these songs are seriously meaningless — strings of words that lead from verse to chorus without a single memorable line. The only song with any lyrical impact is “Bedlam In Belgium,” for the simple reason that it actually tells a story, albeit one that actually predated Johnson’s tenure with the band. The gig that turned into a riot was in Kontich, Belgium in October 1977, on the tour in support of Let There Be Rock, and you can read the full story, from someone who claims to have been there, right here.

Fortunately, the relatively weak lyrics are balanced out by some of the most ferocious riffing in the band’s ’80s catalog. AC/DC made a conscious effort to recapture the rawness of earlier albums here, and they pulled it off. Johnson is in the middle of the mix, on an equal plane with the Young brothers’ guitars and Phil Rudd’s drums (this would be his final album with the band until 1995, but it’s a hell of a sendoff), and the whole thing roars and slams from front to back. Some songs (“Deep In The Hole,” “Rising Power”) have the funky strut of “Back In Black,” while “Badlands” is stomping blues-rock, and “Landslide” and “Brain Shake” are as fast as classics like “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)” or “Whole Lotta Rosie.”

One more caveat, though. While it’s tough to make these kinds of accusations in the realm of blues-based hard rock, where everybody’s working with the same chords and scales, “Landslide” sounds distressingly similar to Ted Nugent’s “Motor City Madhouse.” It’s not just a similar riff; the whole fast-picking thing Angus is doing is exactly what Nugent did on his song, in 1975. It feels like straight-up thievery to me. But what the hell — they make it their own, and the song rocks. (And in possible karmic payback, it sure seems like Whitesnake lifted the riff from “Badlands” for the chorus melody to “Slow An’ Easy,” from 1984’s Slide It In.)

AC/DC didn’t need to make a brilliant album after For Those About to Rock We Salute You, but they did need to make one that proved they could still kick ass. They did.

Was thinking ramones

― calstars

That was my first idea too, but I couldn't find any mention of "back to basics" in Ramones in interviews. Lots of quotes of "compared to prog rock and disco, we took it back-to-basics", but nothing about themselves.

I don't think the Ramones ever did that, honestly. They always pretty much sounded like themselves, but they quite consciously moved "forward" (whatever that might mean in a given year) on every album.

Road To Ruin: Let's write some acoustic songs!
End of the Century: Let's work with Phil Spector!
Pleasant Dreams: Let's work with Graham Gouldman!
Subterranean Jungle: Let's make a catchy New Wave album!
Too Tough To Die: OK, this one was a "back to basics" move, with Tommy producing, but they still had that one Dave Stewart-produced song.
Animal Boy: Let's use (more) synthesizers!
Halfway To Sanity: Let's make a metal record!
Brain Drain: Let's work with Bill Laswell!

Yeah too tough 2 die is the one

The first sad subtext of this thread is how the passing of time pushes bands (and by extension, all people) to the repetition of a limited number of options in their creative repertoire. I guess the next move after the "back-to-basics" record is the "dealing with mortality" album; Dylan released his 24 years ago and is still around, presumably having dealt with it already.
The other sad subtext is how repetitive and uniform interviews with musicians are. The quotes in this thread are almost as tedious as interviews with athletes!

People shouldn’t be asked to discuss their work, imo.

They’ll either lie to you or they’ll be wrong

Just here for the team

Givin a hundred and ten percent

Just jammin in a room