Aug 012015
Mom!
This week, Mr. Moderator broadcasts (almost) live from London, England! Stay tuned for a killer track from Saccharine Trust, among other highlights.
RTH Saturday Night Shut-In 143
[Note: You can add Saturday Night Shut-In episodes to your digital library by subscribing to the Rock Town Hall feed.]
Too many minor chords? What the fuck does that mean?
I pride myself on having a grasp of other folk’s opinions/likes/dislikes/biases, particularly you Mr. Mod, but you’ve thrown me this week. First, Spirit sounded too much like they wanted to be playing jazz…and now this.
Any SNSI with Alton Ellis is aok with me, so I’ll just ignore the sneering reference to finger-picking. Next thing you know, you’ll be putting down arpeggios.
I think I recommended this last time you were in London:
http://london.kastoffkinks.co.uk/html/the_great_north_london_kinks_t.html
I need to better articulate this feeling someday. I was in the moment when I tossed that off, but too many minor chords seem to bog a song down in a certain kind of emotion and don’t offer as many opportunies for riffs. Does no one else feel this way?
You mean too many different minor chords? Very few songs have more than one or two, if they stay in the same key, three max. I think I can see that the “certain kind of emotion” represented by minor chords would be alien to certain moderators.
Yes, too many different ones. The Beatles’ “If I Fell,” for instance is beautiful and artfully crafted, but the commitment necessary to maintain that beauty through all those chord changes and harmonies makes me feel like the band is holding the hand of a precious 3 year old in his Sunday’s Best.
Are you kidding? As the resident progster, I live for chord changes, major or minor.
Hi Mod. Thanks for putting together another fun and interesting show. As you can imagine, I really liked the ESG. Mr. Royale and I were also grooving on the Fiery Furnaces. I’m curious how you got in to them, and which of their albums you would recommend for a novice like me.
Also, could you post the playlist? I’m not sure what the last track was.
My favorite Fiery Furnaces album is called EP, with 10 songs that run together. I bought it the day after I first heard “Single Again” on WFMU. The other album I really like by them is I’m Going Away (I think that’s the title). Beware of other albums, which can be loaded with F-U songs, like the one I played on this show. I’ll get a playlist later.
The last track sounded damn familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I Shazamed it. It’s a Ronnie Lane song called Roll On Babe.
I’d also recommend EP as the best starter. That was the one that hooked me after totally failing to get Blueberry Boat. My current favorite, though, is Bitter Tea. It’s one of those album length mysterious journeys that I’m so fond of, complete with backwards tracks and strange mutated dub versions of some songs recurring throughout.
Next time I’m in London on my own I want to make this tour. It was too much to drag the family on in a short time. I did, however, take my oldest son to Denmark Street, where we talked about what was going on back then and visiting music stores, including Regent Sound, now a music store, but then a recording studio, where the Kinks cut early demos, the Stones cut early records, and as 2 of the store clerks added, Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull recorded their early records.
Right, that’s what it was! I love that song. In fact, a couple of days later I was picking away on it (badly) on a beautiful Gretsch resonator guitar in Regent Sound.
Thanks for the suggestions.