Post a controversial music opinion

john zorn's presence in music has been a net loss overall.

You're thinking of Mike Patton.

Lol frogbs

zorn / patton energy has aged appallingly imo

xp me too re cartoon gets right to it rly

right but solo isn't what the horns do -- imo the horns punctuate rather than take center stage. i like it!

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Monday, March 27, 2023 5:56 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Are we talking technical proficiency ? The horns are maybe not essential to the funk groove but they bring energy and personality and are integral to the melodic themes. Colonial mentality, Expensive Shit, Water no Get Enemy, Go Slow, Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake Am, Why Black Man Dey Suffer, Alu Jon Jonki Jon ... all the most glorious Kuti songs have soaring sax / horns lines. They don't have a clean sound like James Brown, but that's also part of Fela's live feel.

― Nabozo, Tuesday, March 28, 2023 1:35 AM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

True the sum of the parts is way more important than individual virtuosity in Fela's music, with the except of Tony Allen probably. The horn writing is perfect and no one needs to be an amazing soloist, similar to James Brown. All the same there are lots of wide open sections given to solos, aside from the written and vocal sections, and those are maybe not the strongest parts.

On paper it should be extremely my thing and I like him fine in other contexts but I have never enjoyed a single album Wadada Leo Smith has made as a leader. This post inspired by two different jazz friends haranguing me this week to listen to the recent thing with Nels Cline, which on admittedly distracted first listen just sounds to me like very capable electric Miles cosplay. I'm open to recommendations and not giving up yet, but I've probably listened to a dozen of his records and none of them ever stick

You're thinking of Mike Patton.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, March 31, 2023 9:46 AM

tbf, they're buddies so (eyeroll+toss of the hand)

but yeah, he's essentially also an enemy of music. like if life really was just a big metaphorical chess match, people like john zorn and mike patton are playing as knights deep in opposition turf.

stating of bias: worked with a bunch of zorn/butthole surfers/patton obssessives and they ruined that stuff forever in my ears. gen-xers and their fascination with the dirty armpit of music, amirite?

I'd argue that Zorn has many, many recordings that don't indulge in the kinds of antics to which you object.

bar kokhba? or the gift? or any of the delightful film works entries?

i'd trade the existence of them (and any knowledge thereof, along with literally everything else on the label) for the two yuka honda albums. that's it.

don't mean to be a jerk about it, but that's a huge dud from me.

also i'm wrong: there was a third yuka album on tzadik. it was several years after her previous one, so i missed it. GOSH WISH I COULD HEAR IT.

Zorn's own music and concepts annoy me in some nameless way (I rolled my eyes so hard they nearly fell out of my head when I read that he makes his Hermetic Organ albums "in a trance") but he attains god-tier staus fpr the Tzadik label alone which has so much great non-Zorn stuff on it.

yes, not having Tzadik on streaming or download is annoying

for real, love or hate him, i would've just assumed he'd have been one of the big proponents of bandcamp. seems like a huge goof on tzadik's part. do you think he has chosen to stay low profile out of fear of @ntisemit!sm? asking out of genuine curiosity and ignorance here. not meaning to be rude. i don't like his music, but it has nothing to do with his heritage and i actually really don't want to delete tzadik catalogue. but yeesh, some of that stuff. ugh!

Curious what about bar kokhba you find so massively dud-ish? Seems like just a lot of really nice solo performances of masada tunes.

I love John Zorn. Re: Patton, my contentious opinion is that Chuck Mosley was the far superior frontman to FNM

Zorn DOES NOT keep a low profile the dude loves to make big booming speeches and stuff and he's always playing live. I think he's a huge zionist.

Also he's been dropping some of the best albums of his career the last couple of years!

Totally agree with crut re: hey ya! That shit is annoying!!

Not really an opinion but a feeling, I guess: few things make me feel more deeply uncomfortable than seeing people on Monday obsessively talking smack about a living musician and then spending the day Tuesday eulogizing a dead one

I agree, one should continue to talk smack about dead musicians.

:)

Sakamoto is surely as close to unsmackable as it gets though!

I think he's a huge zionist.


^i don't know either way but this is a loaded one liner to throw out there, is that based on something?

I love John Zorn. Re: Patton, my contentious opinion is that Chuck Mosley was the far superior frontman to FNM

― it’s Balenciaga, not Baleenciaga (flamboyant goon tie included), Monday, April 3, 2023 2:01 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Agreed. I like Patton too, and think many of his lyrics were brilliant, but he was always assuming different roles, whereas Mosley delivered gloomily humorous poetry from his heart.

i heard "hey ya!" at a burger place a week ago and was just like, how was i ever brainwashed into liking this migraine headache of a song lol

I've seen Zorn live many times and every time has been at least interesting and often galvanizing. Not sure his recordings have ever fully captured that energy.

Masada does, I think. Those albums are amazing

I remember especially liking the mid-90s albums by the original quartet line-up. Unfortunately it seems those are way out of print and hard to find.

I don't mind Hey Ya so much as the cultural reception of Hey Ya and its iconic status as THE hip hop pop song of that era, and yes it's really annoying.

i heard "hey ya!" at a burger place a week ago and was just like, how was i ever brainwashed into liking this migraine headache of a song lol

― ꙮ (map), Monday, April 3, 2023 10:36 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Had the same reaction recently when I heard it while wandering around Target. Heard “get lucky” on the same trip and had a similar reaction but then again that whole daft punk album quickly fell apart for me within months of release.

I feel like the other song that screams "lol 2003" is "I Believe ina Thing Called Love"

Is that one still played, like on rock radio?

Honestly I rarely even hear “Hey Ya!”; I didn’t realize it had an iconic status of whatever. If anything, I would’ve guessed it was underplayed now, relative to a big hit it was.

get lucky is just tedious the other two are actively obnoxious not sure if that's to their credit or not

I never heard "Hey Ya!" on the radio enough for it to repel me.

"The Way You Move," though! That fucker lingered well into late '04 as a recurrent down here.

I don’t hear hey ya enough to be driven insane but it’s out there.

I never heard "Hey Ya!" on the radio enough for it to repel me.

"The Way You Move," though! That fucker lingered well into late '04 as a recurrent down here.

― the very juice and sperm of kindness. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 5, 2023 10:01 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's a bummer that for a lot of general music fans, the first two Outkast songs they think of aren't even top 100 Outkast songs.

“Ghettomusik” still bangs though, as does “The Rooster”

it does feel churlish to focus on a couple of duds from a group with such an amazing discography

Is that one still played, like on rock radio?

i haven't heard that Darkness song on the radio in years, but it's still a karaoke night favorite apparently

i get the fatigue about "Hey Ya", though I still think "The Way You Move" is a nice pop-rap jam and I don't hear it as much.

this is a good day to pop in Aquemini tbh

I don’t mind Hey Ya but that’s because I now associate it with some very goofy and good memories of people just embracing its idiocy many years after it was popular— ie, we were all drunk and dancing like idiots

“Ms. Jackson” is the Outkast song that’s most well remembered of them in my age group.

“Hey ya” was huge but not as huge as “way you move”, both got radio airplay in mexico but on parties/clubs the one you’d hear is the latter. “Hey ya” is an awkward song to dance to… maybe it’s the time signature.

It does a great job at hiding it tho

it's 4/4 but has a 5-bar chord progression which is a bit awkward yeah but that's also one of the things that makes it interesting

Five bars of 4/4, but also two extra beats stuck in between bars 3 and 4.

Part of the other reason this one endured is the main riff being simple acoustic chords, so lots of fratboys who brought guitars to parties or musicians that perform covers at bars and restaurants would play it incessantly. For years.

It even wound up in an episode of Scrubs, Ted's a capella group performing it at Janitor's wedding

some of y’all hating on Hey Ya like the most unlistenable shit made on this planet and should hush.