Today Rock Town Hall has gone where no rock music discussion blog has gone before. Townspeople General Slocum and BigSteve have received their mixes and are hunkering down and living with what fate’s dealt them. For 3 days, these music buffs will hear no other music than what’s been provided on their mix!
Other Townspeople have been receiving their mixes and will begin filing their reports. As these brave souls share their listening experiences, you will be encouraged to help them through the use of insider tips on appreciating the mix, empathy, and whatnot. You may be their lifeline.
To give you an idea of what’s playing at General Slocum’s place, click here.
Today, in the Comments section, the good General shared his disdain for Smokey Robinson’s “Being With You”. I’m curious to know what he thinks of one of my favorite tunes from this mix, The Radiants’ “Hold On”.
To give you an idea of what’s spinning at BigSteve’s pad, click here.
Today, in the Comments section, he discussed his love for the antiquated sound of the Fender Rhodes as well as his disdain for the sound of Stanley Clarke’s voice. You can hear examples of both in the track “Journey to Love”. You can also hear Deodato’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001)”, which he described as featuring a guitar player he could have sworn was John McLaughlin.
Tune in, won’t you?
My Hear Factor disc, a prog/fusion collection, arrived without a track listing, and so my first listen last night was cold. Actually I recognized a good chunk of it, and I didn’t hate it as much as I was afraid I would. Mr. Mod, should I post the track listing so everyone knows what I’m talking about?
You may post the track listing up front or as you go along in your initial post. Your call. YOU ARE THE MAN.
Ok, so this is my Hear Factor mix CD:
Siberian Khatru – Yes
Miles Beyond – Mahavishnu Orchestra
Journey To Love – Stanley Clarke
Come Dancing – Jeff Beck
Fat Albert Rotunda – Herbie Hancock
Symptom Of The Universe – Black Sabbath
Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001) – Deodato
No Quarter – Led Zeppelin
Son of Orange County – Frank Zappa
The Musical Box – Genesis
Larks Tongues In Aspic, Part Two – King Crimson
As I said, I didn’t get the track listing until after I’d listened to it. I guessed that the first track was Yes, but I didn’t know what it was from. I recognized the Mahavishnu track, but I wasn’t sure about the next three, though I surmised some Jeff Beck involvement.
I thought the next track sounded like Ozzy’s voice, but I wasn’t expecting Black Sabbath here, so I guess Hawkwind. Of course, I recognized the Deodato track, and the LZ, though I didn’t know the name of the song.
I was pretty sure that was Zappa. I recognized Peter Gabriel’s voice, but I’m not familiar with early Genesis. And I also identified King Crimson, though I wasn’t 100% sure of it was Lark’s Tongue.
So my first impression is that this was a pretty easy listen, despite the fact that only Crimson is really in my ballpark. A single track by any of these artists goes down pretty easy, where I might choke on a whole album. The music is relatively challenging, because it’s so busy, but it’s not as bad as jumping into a vat of worms.
Well, I followed the directions Mr. Mod, sent, but apparently my posts were lost in the mists of the world wide web. I can’t recreate it all here, so sadly, I will have to try to write tomorrow. I anticipate that, like the mix I created, the mix I received was made earnestly, and therefore is unable to truly “bug” anyone on this blog, beyond the repetitiveness of listening to one mix, or one genre for such a stretch, which I never do even with my favorites. But more tomorrow. Good night.
General, let’s talk offlist today, and I’ll see that you can navigate The Back Room. The most obvious question, though: Did you hit SAVE when you were done composing your post? The rest of you, drop me a line if posting from The Back Office confuses you. Thanks.
By the way, Townspeople, not all mixes could be outright annoying. In some cases, as what Townsman General has expressed, it might be the focus over an extended time that is challenging. In some cases, you may have lucked out and received a mix you actually like without reservations. We try.
How’s it going out there, Hear Factor participants? Are you hanging in there? Do you need a shoulder to lean on?
A few thoughts after another day of listening:
I love the electric piano. Almost every track here has Fender Rhodes on it, and not the bell-like setting. As with a lot of stuff here, it probably sounded very modern at the time, but now it sounds quaint and date-stamped.
The growl of a Hammond organ is a welcome sound amid all the Moog squiggles.
Vocals are a bad thing as a rule. The best vocal tracks here are obviously the Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath tracks. Stanley Clarke or George Duke or Jon Anderson should not be allowed to sing about the cosmos. Ever. Has anyone (besides maybe Hendrix?) ever done the cosmic lyrical thing very well?
I was listening to Zarathustra, and I thought ‘damn that’s McLaughlin on guitar!’ It isn’t. It’s someone named John Tropea, but his sound (neck pickup on a Les Paul through a Vox?) is a dead ringer for Bitches Brew-era McLaughlin.
Odd time signatures should only be used when riffs require or at least indicate their use. The melodies on Miles Beyond and Lark’s Tongue lend themselves to the time signatures so that you hear the melody not the time signature, whereas Yes seems to start with the time signature and play to it.
A lot of this stuff is really not that complex. There are long stretches of soloing over two-chord vamps.
Gotta run to yoga now. More later.
Well done, Steve. Sadly, my textures don’t vary so much, and I am big enough to admit that I am small enough to think not much more than, “Boy these songs sure do work hard. The tempo sure is right up the middle of ‘bouncy.’ The tambourine, the reverb, yep, they’re still with me.” I think more than driving me crazy, this stuff mostly just bores the crap out of me. I know, they’re durable pop songs, they’re fine, many of them. But as a mix, it is tedious to me. My response has been, and I can see this might be cheating, to walk over to put some music on, remember the Hear Factor, and simply opt for silence. I’m not listening to other music, except when my wife puts it on (she refuses to subject herself to Motown for our noble experiment.) But I am listening to no music at all much more often. Here’s a play list of the disc I got:
It’s the Same Old Song – The Four Tops
This Old Heart of Mine – The Isley Brothers
The Love You Save – The Jackson Five
Signed, Sealed, Delivered – Stevie Wonder
Going To A Go Go – Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
Being With You – Smokey Robinson
Nothing But a Heartache – The Flirtations
Ain’t Nothin’ But a House Party – The Show Stoppers
Hold On – The Radiants
Somebody’s Been Sleeping – 100 Proof (Aged In Soul)
Pay to the Piper – Chairmen Of the Board
Homicide Dresser – Billy Harner
I’m Gonna Love You a Long Time -Patty & the Emblems
A Mighty Good Lover – The Vashonettes
Blowing Up My Mind – The Exciters
Let’s Get It On – Marvin Gaye
Sexual Healing – Marvin Gaye
I Want to Take You Higher – Sly & The Family Stone
Night Fever – The Bee Gees
Cowboys to Girls – The Intruders
Oh No, Not My Baby – Maxine Brown
Tainted Love – Gloria Jones
Ooh It Hurts Me -The Cavaliers
So, the first track, I obviously know pretty well, but here is the one upside to this Motown mix: I never listen to this stuff at home, and hearing it in decent sound, undistracted, can be illuminating. I would never have remembered the very prominent bari sax in that “Same Old Song.” Very nice. The second Smokey tune is awful. It’s got synthetic drums, or drums recorded so that they sound like a machine. Schmoove to a fault. I like the 100 Preef track, I didn’t know that one. Bee Gees, meh. When I was fourteen or fifteen, my brother took my sister’s copy out in the back yard and shot it with a twelve-guage. When we went back in, we realized there was another copy they were playing. But the humor and release endured. It’s hard for me to hear any of that as music, exactly, like Zeppelin IV, or Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” “Tainted Love” still does that great toggle-effect of reminding you of Soft Cell and then kicking their asses, back and forth.
You know, I think this person put a lot of their fave tracks on here, and it isn’t just “the most Motown-y sounding stuff to bug someone who dislikes Motown.” So also, Steve’s mix could have been a brutal delving into the pointless excesses of prog. But in my case, I would never listen to such a mix myself, either, so I think the demographic tendency, and relative integrity, of the RTH herd is generally going to steer wide of the most inflammatory exchanges and so on. And though this will offer less opportunities for fetishistic “healing,” I say all the better!
General Slocum wrote:
Bravo! This is just the sort of high-brow dismissal I would have expected from you! I knew your initial optimism was doomed.
I did not make this mix, but I know he does love those songs. That was the point – not to jam the most miserable stuff that one of us can tolerate down another’s throat. I’m glad you two are giving this a go. I look forward to the next wave of participants’ reports.
By the way, Smokey’s “Being With You”, although recorded using the worst late-70s “Quiet Storm” techniques is a pretty great song. At least I think so. I think it makes a lot of sense for a person who’d already been into classic Smokey considering the times and his age at that time. I can appreciate the self-conscious sentimentality of the song.
Steve Howe is a much better guitar player than many people give him credit for. One of rock’s great might have beens — Yes with a singer who owned a pair of testicles.
Mr. Mod looks forward to the piss & vinegar that presages the healing:
I knew your initial optimism was doomed.
I demur:
No, my original forecast was that I liked some of this stuff, but that a bunch of it would bore me. I was, as so often, functionally prescient! My optimism was just that I would not be driven to areas of pain or insanity. So far, so good…
The harder they come…
I’ll be posting some more of the tracks the two of you have been living with later tonight.
Steve cautions:
Stanley Clarke or George Duke or Jon Anderson should not be allowed to sing about the cosmos.
I say:
I have a soft spot for Journey to Love, for no good reason. I don’t generally hear the lyrics, which is well. He only doesn’t bug me with those double-tracked vocals because he is so guileless. It’s not Hendrix, whose vocals I enjoy a great deal, but it comes from a similar place. And Stanley did indeed give up vox around that time. Jon Anderson is only saved for me by being so ludicrous. He’s instrumentally sound, singing-wise, you know, in that the sounds he makes are nice general additions to what’s going on. But those lyrics, and the delivery! What the hell? I always thought a vocalist that stepped up to the plate could have been the utter death of that band. But that could just be growing up listening to it, and accepting it somewhat unconditionally from early on. George Duke, I usually enjoy for the texture of his voice, and the lack of self-consciousness. He jumps right in, warts and all…
More tracks to sample along with our first two participants! Dig in!
This mix is very well constructed. It’s bookended with some classic prog, there’s a nice chunk of funk in spots 3-5, and there are a couple of outliers (the Zep and Sabbath) that people would not ordinarily think of as prog or fusion. It’s like it’s trying to define the parameters of a style.
By far my least favorite cut is the Genesis. I’m a big Gabriel fan, but I’ve never explored his early work with the band. As I said before, a lot of this music seems aimed at adding a layer of complexity to rock music that may or may not be needed. The Genesis song seems to ape complexity by stringing together a bunch of fairly simple bits without any real organizing principle. Add some mysterious lyrics and affected singing and you have instant depth. Maybe I’m a little prejudiced and haven’t spent enough time with it, but the mock classical ending was a really bad idea.
Funny story. I happened to glance at the tracklisting and noticed the (2001) after the title Also Sprach Zarathustra. I thought “Damn it’s some kind of update/remix, and I didn’t even notice!” because that’s what a date in parenthesis like that usually means. So I go back and listen to it intently trying to find some evidence of modernization, when it hit me that it’s just the name of the movie that used the original in its score. What an idiot.
A few other thoughts:
Jeff Beck can really play the guitar, and anyone who can get the George Martin/Geoff Emerick team to produce/engineer them should do whatever it takes.
George Duke really does throw himself into the silly lyrics he’s been given to sing. I think this may actually be the version of Zappa’s band I saw lo these many years ago.
Thew rising electric piano riff of Miles Beyond always reminds me of The Wind Cries Mary. Even with all the aerobic arrangements, the Mahavishnu Orchestra really had something here. They’re firing on all cylinders.
Well, it won’t be a spoiler of any relevance if I fess up to having made Steve’s mix, will it? Pretty obvious, or at least no surprise. It’s funny, but a lot of it could have been a paean to the Fender Rhodes, of which I am a huge fan, too, in that period. A juicy sound. I was totally unaware that all those songs had that element. I, too, was baffled by the Zarathustra title. I downloaded that, but one day I’ll dump that lp into the computer. It’s that album with the embossed gatefold cover of the silver golem on a sunny street. Eerie photo. I bought it when we played that song in jazz band in high school. The Zep and Sabbath, and the Hancock and Beck – I was thinking more that since almost all of this I listened to during the junior high-thru-10th grade years, I was creating a mix that expressed the mind set I was in then, more than a tighter genre. And in that light, you can hear what is similar about “No Quarter” and “Siberian Khatrou.” More a way of highlighting a certain worldview across genres. If I had made mix tapes in 1976, this could have been one. I’m somewhat with you on the Genesis. There’s something depressing about their sound then. I still can enjoy it, in the right mood, but it is less accessible. Phil Collins actually smokes on the drums there, but to little real effect. I think the deal was that Gabriel was a dictator of sorts then, and was all about the story telling. He believed his lyrics were more clearly understandable than they generally are. And he was into stringing together these little vignettes, like a movie changing scenes. But it isn’t easy to grasp that sense. I had an easier time surrendering to it as a teen. Unlike Yes, that band couldn’t groove its way out of a paper bag. More on the mix I received (not made by Steve, I believe) presently.
Good work, Townspeople! Keep it coming, and I hope the rest of you check out these tracks and help these gentlemen through their 3-day sessions with their respective mixes.
The Genesis song works the least for me too. I’ll try to get that up there along with a few other tracks this afternoon.
Stay tuned for the next wave of Hear Factor reports! Coming real soon!
People do forget that Phil Collins is or was quite a good drummer. I recently saw the Simpsons episode where Bart somehow discovers a natural aptitude to play the drums, but then he breaks his arm and that ability disappears. At that point he says something like, “I used to be a really good drummer, but now I’m nothing. [pause] Like Phil Collins.”
No Quarter also reminded me that JPJ was a good influence on Led Zeppelin, their secret weapon. The underwater keyboard sounds groovy, and the acoustic piano part right before the guitar solo is also cool. The drumming is way too led footed as usual, but the song has a very nice melody/chord pattern. And Plant gets through the whole thing just singing the song without going “Oooowoooo yeyeyeeaaaahhhh,” though it’s touch and go there at the outro.
Youngsters might not realize that Deodato’s Zarathustra was a big time FM radio hit. Hearing it now brings me back to car radio memories during college.
Does sally stepping into the listening booth mean that the general and I are free to return to civilian life? I didn’t find my Hear Factor experience that onerous. If it was the weekend it would be bad, but during the week I don’t have all that much listening time anyway.
Plus this mix CD functioned fine as background music, for example in the Ipod at the gym. Much of it is instrumental, so it didn’t really demand my attention the way songs do. And enough of it was vaguely familiar that I wasn’t jolted or terrorized.
I admit to being surprised at someone being hurt by Motown. It’s supposedly the style of music that makes people least likely to change the station when listening to the radio. But if you were in the mood to listen to music often and you were restricted by this experiment, I guess I could understand experiencing some discomfort.
Oh yeah, and when is the mixer of the CD that made the general’s week miserable going to fess up?
I believe you and the General, BigSteve, are on your final day of this bold experiment. Any final insights or questions from the peanut gallery are welcome. At midnight tonight, you’re both off the hook, Thanks for playing!
I’ll ‘fess up. I’m not ashamed. How 75 minutes of some of the greatest soul songs in the world could make anyone’s life miserable I don’t know. And I don’t care.
I don’t think a track list for this disc was ever posted:
The Four Tops – It’s The Same Old Song
The Isley Brothers – This Old Heart Of Mine (Is Weak For You)
The Jackson Five – The Love You Save
Stevie Wonder – Signed, Sealed, Delivered
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – Going To A Go-Go
Smokey Robinson – Being With You
The Flirtations – Nothing But A Heartache
The Show Stoppers – Ain’t Nothin’ But A House Party
The Radiants – Hold On
100 Proof (Aged In Soul) – Somebody’s Been Sleeping (In My Bed)
Chairmen Of The Board – Pay To The Piper
Billy Harner – Homicide Dresser
Patty & The Emblems – I’m Gonna Love You A Long Long Time
The Vashonettes – A Mighty Good Lover
The Exciters – Blowing Up My Mind
Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On
Marvin Gaye – Sexual Healing
Sly & The Family Stone – I Want To Take You Higher
Bee Gees – Night Fever
The Intruders – Cowboys To Girls
Maxine Brown – Oh No Not My Baby
Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
The Cavaliers – Ooh It Hurts Me
As you can see, it isn’t all famous, “overworn” songs (although for me, I could never get tired of the Motown hits; I’ve heard them all hundreds, even thousands of times and, God or whoever willing, I will listen to them another thousand times before I kick).
The title of the comp is Soul Don’t Get No Better Than This and I made it a few years ago for something to shovel snow or cut grass to or something. I wasn’t intending to play this Hear Factor game but coincidently in the midst of Mr. Mod’s promoting, I stumbled across this disc. I thought it would fit what Mr. Mod wanted. It certainly represents me, it’s got a variety of popular and not so well known. And it’s got a good beat and I can dance to it!
The DJ Fesses, and Proclaims:
How 75 minutes of some of the greatest soul songs in the world could make anyone’s life miserable I don’t know. And I don’t care.
I resay, for anyone who’s falling for Mr. Mod’s lines:
This CD didn’t make me miserable. My all caps rant was facetious, if your eye was drawn to the bold type. I was jerking Mr. Mod’s reality-show chain, there. I don’t like Motown, but I’m not allergic to it. The production get’s overbearing quickly for my ears. It’s like Brahms – all wash and wall of whatever, but people sure do love it. I have one or two Motown records and one or two Brahms records – I just don’t reach for them often. In my own mind, and I know this is blurry area here, I don’t consider Motown “soul.” I consider Al Green, Aretha, Otis, later (68 or so on) Stevie and Marvin Gaye, I consider that soulful, or “soul.” But that jittery-knee beat that’s in so much Motown is the antithesis of soulfulness to me, so isn’t “soul” with a few exceptions. When I read the title, I never would have expected such a motown-fest.
I hear it like I always heard Iggy’s “Some Weird Sin.” What lyrics! What a message and song, and then it’s got that showbiz quasi-shuffle bouncing along like a montage in a teen feel-good flick, and you lose the song. So I see why Motown makes people feel cheerful and what not. It’s just never had that effect on me. I get claustrophobic.
But thanks for the mix! I did indeed discover a few things I never knew that will stay in my iTunes, &c.
Well, strictly speaking, it’s not a Motown-fest. Only 8 of the 23 songs are Motown songs (and that’s counting “Sexual Healing” which I think originally came out on Columbia and “Being With You” which, coming out around 1980 as it did came out after Motown ceased being Motown).
Still, I’ll agree that others have a Motown feel; northern soul, anyone?
Obviously, we don’t agree on what’s “soul”. To me, Motown damn near invented soul. You take pretty much equal parts R&B and pop and mix well and you’ve got soul as Motown perfected it. Stax/Volt, Atlantic, Aretha, Al Green, and Otis are much heavier on the R&B.
AI corrects:
Only 8 of the 23 songs are Motown songs
And agrees:
Obviously, we don’t agree on what’s “soul”
Yah. I always thought of Motown as more R&B. But I think this gets into words like latte and scone. They are both definedas various things by ardent fans, who themselves may have very narrow definitions of what constitutes these things. And by Motown, I wasn’t referring to the label of release. I just meant the midrange-heavy, tambourine backbeat, reverby, bass-lite, mid-to-up-tempo pop. Those characteristics of Motown are what keep me from digging in. And I enjoyed this mix a fair amount, but it grew thin on me fairly soon, as Mr. Mod intended (though I fell short on being tortured appropriately.)
Townsman General said:
Let’s get this straight, People: the only thing I intend is for us to have open ears, trade with sincerity, and let nature take its course, involving any necessary amount of healing. I do not judge the degree of healing that takes place in any of your experiences.
Mr. Mod claims:
the only thing I intend is for us to have open ears, trade with sincerity, and let nature take its course,
And yet he only half jokingly said in e-mail:
Had I given you a Motown-related mix, I would have made sure it pushed more buttons and allowed you less soul for comfort:)
I’m just saying, from the pun of the title, bringing to mind eating live bugs or other objectionable acts, to the selecting of listeners with antipathy to the style on the mix, a certain amount of conflict is the point of the excercise. I’m also saying that the nature of the people here, and the nature of their respect and fondness for music in general, make that facile, sensational style of conflict less likely. As in my case, where I wasn’t crazy about the mix overall, but did like some of it, and my whole reaction was genuine, but not dynamic enough to make good television viewing. And thank god. AND, I’m mostly just fucking around with that aspect of this. I think overall, regardless of the outcome, it’s one of the most interesting uses of the internet of heard of in a while. Although Krissy said, “It’s a shame to do all of this at a distance. It would be fun to have some of the interactions in the room.” That’s true, too, but this is cool.
General, I’m glad that we have reached agreement on the tongue-in-cheek nature of the sensationalist aspects of this exercise as well as its true and unique value. Would you rather we each give ourselves a pat on the back, or should we pat each others’ back?
And how dare you quote my private e-mails on this list! What’s next, you post those photos I sent you of me in a bikini? We’re just old friends, folks, but some things are meant to be private. Seriously, though, what I meant was that had I made you a mix with a lot of Motown stuff, I would have put more of it on that Al did. To give you fits? Sure! That night a bunch of us met up over the holidays we had some serious words on a number of issues, but none more serious than your dismissal of Motown. It saddens me that you and others who, not should, but could know better don’t. It’s not so much that I wish to torment you but to one day provide an opportunity for re-learning.
Just for the record, I’m with the General. I’m glad to hear some Motown every so often, and like it quite a bit sometimes at a bar or a party. But as a listening endeavor, no. And I would back you too, General, on questioning the notion of Motown as soul.
Mr. Mod recalls:
some serious words on a number of issues, but none more serious than your dismissal of Motown.
I refine:
I think it isn’t a dismissal, which would suggest total, or overall, rejection. I appreciate that the musicianship is top notch in most of that stuff, from singers as well as players. Many of the hooks are catchy as can be. I think I get why it’s so appreciated by others. And I’ve listened enough over the years to feel it isn’t me not giving it a chance.
When I was young, and my musical taste started to diverge from my brothers, I remember him saying there were certain things he just could never enjoy. I brought home my first period recording album, of Bach flute sonatas, and he said the sound of the harpsichord categorically depressed him. I know what he meant, but it seemed like there was this vital thing there he was missing, you know, baby with the bathwater kind of deal. Also, when I brought home my first Hank Williams record, he said the same thing of pedal steel. Now, that one, I never could get. I think it’s a beautiful sound. We lived in a time and place where country was considered a very sad-sack genre. Very out of it, and the pedal steel is a sad sound in the middle of a very sad genre singing about very sad things. But again, the beauty in it! Anyhow, he never spent much time on harpsichord or pedal steel, but heaven knows I’ve done my time with motown! And since my dislike isn’t so strong or sweeping as his was, I’m ok with it being just not my cup of tea.
I also tie this in with the strange and unclear (to me) way you use the word “rhythm.” I assume the rhythmic aspect of Motown is one of its plusses to you. Is that so? Things that you find rhythmically satisfying (like the Attractions) and unsatisfying (like the Shins) seem not so different to me, on that particular level. In any case, there is, I am convinced, a musical cognitive model that is unique to every individual. Like, say, the way people visualize the calendar. If someone says to you, next “November 10th” you probably don’t picture actual pages on a calendar, but you likely have some kind of visual, even if vague. And it has its own landscape of some sort. Some physicality. Well, likewise, I think the sound of Motown has a whole series of possibly very indirect associations to you that it doesn’t for me. In my mental aural landscape, Motown tends to shut me out, because there are no openings in it through which to glimpse the people making th emusic. It’s monolithic. Whereas in the typical Stax sound, for example, there are layers, where a bass riff pokes out, or different instruments are seen briefly within the texture shining on their own. Which would often be seen as a shortcoming in the classic Motown sound. Blah, blah, blah… good night.