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One of the Zappa books describes a foreign tour, probably in continental Europe in 1969 or 70, where the audiences expected him to "lead them" and be some sort of political guru. Riots may have resulted. A woman in his entourage describes how this disillusioned him of what remained of his political idealism. I'm pretty sure this was all before his assault.

Yes, I've read that too, I'm sure she said it freaked him out (and even scared him) more than disillusioned him per se iirc.

Yes.

Beefheart said Zappa was just exploiting the guy and marketing him as a freak, and objected to Zappa calling his label "Bizarre" Records. To be honest, apart from one or two songs which had proper arrangements (not by Zappa though) Zappa didn't exactly put much effort into the Wild Man Fischer album.

― How old Cary Grant? (Tom D.)

He definitely did have a kind of "field recording" approach to some of the artists he recorded, like Fischer, the GTOs, and Beefheart (as well as to a lot of his _own_ recordings). Maybe that's just him being lazy, but look. I have a long history of severe mental illness. I'm not gonna sell short the amount of spoons it takes to spend hours in the studio with a guy who has as many problems as Fischer did. He also had the guy up on stage performing his songs live at Mothers concerts.

Were the arrangements on "Merry-Go-Round" and "Circle" not by Zappa? They sure as hell _sound_ like his work.

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One of the Zappa books describes a foreign tour, probably in continental Europe in 1969 or 70, where the audiences expected him to "lead them" and be some sort of political guru. Riots may have resulted. A woman in his entourage describes how this disillusioned him of what remained of his political idealism. I'm pretty sure this was all before his assault.

― Halfway there but for you

Fall '68. The lyrics to "Holiday in Berlin" (sung live by the Flo & Eddie band) talk about the incident.

I was talking with friends just this morning about the Abbie Hoffman incident at Woodstock '69 - Abbie Hoffman tried to start a revolution, Pete Townshend responded with "Fuck off my fucking stage!" and smacked him in the face. Hoffman wrote "Woodstock Nation" (which I haven't read) something like a week after anyway. When you're hardly an idealist to begin with...

Listening to the 500 Songs podcast about him earlier this year, found out he was firing people from his band for taking psychedelics, in 1967!

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

Would that be Ray Collins? I mean, it's interesting who he fired and who he didn't fire. For decades Roy Estrada was in and out of jail for child molestation. Zappa didn't seem to have a problem with that.

In this case at least I'll give Zappa credit for being openly hypocritical. He did do drugs and would admit to it, that drug being nicotine.

Nah, with guys like Zappa, who will talk a lot of shit basically all the time, what interests me is what they _don't_ talk about. What didn't Zappa talk about? Cheating on his wife. He'd go on the Howard Stern show and talk about anything and everything with him, but when Stern asked him if he cheated on his wife, he shut that topic of discussion down, firmly.

He did, of course, cheat on his wife. This doesn't require supposition. Dutch TV came to his house in 1970 and filmed him for a documentary. He talks about sleeping with groupies and catching venereal diseases from them. He doesn't after that. He just writes bitter, resentful songs portraying groupies, and eventually _all women_, in unflattering terms. He goes on tour and plays the big rock star fucking groupies while his wife's left at home raising their kids. Even when he's at home he's never around. He's locked away in his home studio obsessing about music. Fucking terrible father. And raised Catholic? Raised with guilt and shame? You can shit-talk religion all you want, but that stuff doesn't just disappear.

Nah. I don't think he was any different from any of those other guys. I don't know that he thought he was any different, either. God, "Honey Don't You Want A Man Like Me", that's him trying to write a "dirty" song. That's one of the most fucking depressing songs about heterosexual relationships I've ever heard, and to me... to me, someone who writes a song like that is informed by lived experience.

One of the Zappa books describes a foreign tour, probably in continental Europe in 1969 or 70, where the audiences expected him to "lead them" and be some sort of political guru. Riots may have resulted. A woman in his entourage describes how this disillusioned him of what remained of his political idealism. I'm pretty sure this was all before his assault.

― Halfway there but for you, Friday, November 24, 2023 2:20 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

there was a good article about the Moody Blues crowds around the Lost Chord era which was kind of like this. people looked at them as though they were some sort of gods willing to lead them on a spiritual journey and the members of the band were like....uhhh we're just some dudes. seemed to freak 'em all out, especially since people would apparently just randomly follow them around and you never quite knew what their intentions were.

I'll say, I have tried my best to get into Zappa, watched the documentary which was on TV last year (think it's a famous one?)
All the time the music just struck me as "yes, this is clever music which will make people feel smart to be into it" but never anything that grabbed me at all - until right at the end he was making improvised jazz with a group of jazz musicians and finally I could hear "yes, this is someone creating something they care about"

there was a good article about the Moody Blues crowds around the Lost Chord era which was kind of like this. people looked at them as though they were some sort of gods willing to lead them on a spiritual journey and the members of the band were like....uhhh we're just some dudes. seemed to freak 'em all out, especially since people would apparently just randomly follow them around and you never quite knew what their intentions were.

― frogbs

stories i've heard is that the italian crowds were the ones you had to really watch out for, all kinds of political intrigue. of course the infamous "peter green incident" happened in germany, so really, the impression i get is that you could run into that situation damn near anywhere on the continent. i mean, shit, look at the reason aphrodite's child were a french band... they were fleeing the greek military junta (by the way does anyone know of people who did a worse job of military rule than that greek junta?) trying to get to england, which of course where all the happening stuff was... and they just happened to be passing through france in june of '68...

so the hell with it. they lived in france.

Beefheart: Classic

Zappa: Dud

stories i've heard is that the italian crowds were the ones you had to really watch out for

An Italian-Canadian friend was unimpressed by this tendency; said the Italian crowds rioted for anyone, "even Burton Cummings".

They were still rioting long after everyone else stopped rioting too!

Cosmic Dancer sucks

the song???? that's insane. it's so beautiful.

i was dancing when i was twelve too buddy whaddya want a medal

what's it like to be a loon?

If loving that song is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

i was dancing when i was twelve too buddy whaddya want a medal

Yes, but when Lou Reed was eleven his parents said the answer was to become a dancer, can you say the same?

Mine is a specifically ILX heresy: I don't care for Mitch Mitchell's playing in the JHE as much as everyone else does, I find it too busy and unsubtle very often. I think I even (looks around nervously) prefer Ginger Baker's playing, and would have liked to hear what he could have done with Jimi... But I admit, I am not knowledgeable about drumming technique and style, this is just a (maybe uninformed) listener's opinion.

I was about to jump on Tracer and realized what thread this is. Fair play.

haha yes Tracer I luv u but that is just an outrageous heresy that I cannot hang with, good post

Glumdalclitch, you understood the assignment of the thread, and that is definitely a controversial opinion.

In my own personal view, Baker wanders more and Mitchell is more in the groove. The other classic comparison is the very beefy and steady John Bonham vs. The completely unpredictable Keith Moon.

Of those four, Bonham is the standalone paragon. But Mitchell is also justifiably beloved because of how he interacted with Jimi.

Please note, I play drums with decent seriousness. And I confess I don't really get the appeal of Baker or Moon (or, for that matter, Neil Peart or Danny Carey or the other progsters). Yes I can see that it is "difficult" and/or "complex," but difficulty and complexity are not my favored metrics for music.

If you want difficulty, spend some time with Scarlatti and/or Diabelli. Difficulty does not equal enjoyable listening (which is among the least controversial music opinions, I know, sorry).

Jimi and Mitchell fans might want to check out the documentary “Music, Money, Madness . . . Jimi Hendrix In Maui” about their involvement in the making of the film “Rainbow Bridge” which features a free show that the JHE played on the side of a volcano in Maui. Apparently due to the wind conditions recording the show was difficult and they didn’t get any usable drum sounds, but Mitchell was able to study the visual of himself and figure out what he was playing and overdub the same part in time with the rest of the band at Electric Ladyland.

xpost Peart is very underrated and a groove drummer, especially in the 80s period, he does very interesting syncopated things with his ride cymbal and tom fills but he's never getting in the way, I actually don't think he's like Carey much at all

even in his 70s proggiest the songs MOVE

I think he's unfairly characterized

lol I meant underrated AS a groove drummer not and, he's certainly not underrated

Limelight is a great example, he's not playing anything super complex, he's driving the song, and some of the clever touches he does add like the rest/cymbal hit on "ap - proach - es the un-real" or the grab cymbal accents on beyond the guilded cage I think add interest an momentum to the song, they are "hooky" fills not Tool shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiRuj2_czzw-

Peart was criticised a lot in olden times for not having the same swing as a lot of 70s hard rock drummers - Bonham, Paice, Cozy Powell etc. These were guys who'd come up through playing blues and soul in the 60s and had a fundamental hairy funkness in their musical DNA, which Peart really didn't. But compared to the Portnoy types who came later he's fucking Ziggy Modeliste.

i was dancing when i was twelve too buddy whaddya want a medal

songs should never be about things the listener has also done. you love someone? not in my ears you don't

well he’s the one calling 12 “so soon” no it’s not strange and it’s not soon

It’s probably not a controversh opinion that T Rex’s lyrics are hot nonsense.

Are you saying "Standing in the road like a Pasolini toad" is nonsense?

isn't "so soon" in reference to being 0? (while 8 is "so late")

you're probably right

but it's the wheedling way he sings it too

the strings are great, the beat is great, the guitar solo is ALL TIME but i skip it every time it comes on. sorry marc

love Cosmic Dancer
without the strings it is very repetitive, to the point that it sounds unfinished, like the germ of an amazing song.
the string arrangement is a little corny and has its moments for sure but there are some obvious moves.
there is some miraculous alchemy going on with the two together

every T Rex lyric is like a tropical outer space glitter utopia where everybody stays 22 years old forever

idk the strings are SO SQUARE and the song is SO GROOVY, it shouldn't work, why does it work?

xxxxpost by the early 80s Rush was pretty in thrall to the Police and you can hear a lot of Stewart Copeland creeping in to his playing

i liken it to a balloon

damn i live cosmic dancer and i'm still unsure if he was dancing out of a womb or a room seems likely both really

lol love not "live." don't want that life

I'm your cosmic dancer
Dancer for money

I think the song is about contemplating reincarnation and inspired a deeper emotional reaction in the listener after Bolan’s death

Drummer Bill is killing it. Visconti unstoppable in ‘71. Great song

Peart is very underrated and a groove drummer

some real truth here. when I saw them on the Clockwork Angels tour I realized that yeah in the 70s everybody was blown away by his power & the giant kit but a lot of the time he's just rolling along back there, guiding things forward, you would almost call it mellow if there weren't so much goin on

I saw Rush twice, in 2011 and again in 2013, and there was a big change in his drumming in between those two tours. In 2011 his groove was amazing on the actual songs, but his big solo featured some truly horrifying attempts to swing (like, imagine your worst nightmare of a teenaged, priapic Buddy Rich), while in 2013 he had become a much more supple player and was interacting not only with his bandmates but with an eight-piece string section in a way that was breathtaking. And I remember reading an interview with him somewhere in between where he talked about just how hard he had to study, and how much he had to un-learn, in order to actually get a grip on jazz rhythm. This might be it.

Did Peart ever say something about this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrMBIH2TBpU

no, because that way lies endlessly being asked about it, but I'll bet 10,000 people he knew casually fwd'd him the link to the clip from the moment it became available until the day he died

he didn't have to say anything, because his work speaks for itself xp

the krupa the dude plays at the end is truly smokin though it can't be denied

Whenever people criticize Bolan’s lyrics, i want to say “you don’t really understand the way lyrics work, do you”

go ahead i can take it

i was just teasing with the lyrics, they’re fine

trying to put my finger on it… unusually for t rex it’s not a shuffly blues vamp, it’s one of bolan’s fantasias and to my mind this sort of song needs a bit more melody to it, some structure to give it wings, but it just kind of drones on, the only real release or turnaround when he says “out, out out out” which is fine but it could have been so much more imo. and his singing, which i usually love, waspish and menacing and seductive, just sounds insipid to me here

huh i kinda dig on his mesmerized drony spacey flotation mode as well as his uh waspy menace i don’t need seduction. all the time.

I think the singing is great, especially the way his voice breaks a little on the “is it wrong?” lines. It sounds vulnerable and really sells what could otherwise be a goofy lyric.