Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is another man’s Poison

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  • Danielle, in reply to TracyMac,

    It occurs to me that 'I've Never Been to Me' has a spoken-word interlude and therefore may be the exception that proves my rule. It should also be noted that I know every word and can do a pretty good rendition of the entire song ('that's truth! that's LOVE!'), so maybe it's in 'so bad it's good' territory. One question remains: what *are* the 'some things that a woman ain't s'posed to see'? (James, don't you dare answer 'fisting' again.)

    Country-haters, here: have a gloriously close-harmonised and truly horrifying murder ballad by some born-again Christians, and feel the chills run down your spine. Because I love you all.

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • Chris Waugh, in reply to Kumara Republic,

    Dunno, can't see it. Youtube is blocked. The Firefox add on I installed because it was supposed to get me over (or through or under) the Great Firewall doesn't bloody work. I'll have to try and find some more effective way over the GFW. Hopefully without having to spend money on a VPN.

    But I'll take your word for it.

    Wellington • Since Jan 2007 • 2401 posts Report Reply

  • Tom Beard, in reply to TracyMac,

    ....but nothing surpasses AUTOTUNE! I cannot even stay in the room with that effect on. This includes Peter Framptom's effort from the late 70s or whenever it was.

    You may be conflating autotune with vocoders. Autotune bad (with an exception for Daft Punk), Vocoder good:

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 1040 posts Report Reply

  • philipmatthews,

    Spoken-word interludes? One of the all-time worst occurs about five minutes into this pretentious epic from Pete Wylie:

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2007 • 656 posts Report Reply

  • Biobbs, in reply to Simon Grigg,

    Hate Mull of freaking Kintyre all you want - and Silly Love Songs, and a huge number of other shitty bits but vast portions of the McCartney solo years have been pretty darn fine too.

    Sorry, but I'm not going to give a pass to the man who inflicted this excresence on the world:

    It cancels out the whole rest of his career.

    The River Mouth, Denmark • Since Jan 2011 • 114 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg, in reply to Biobbs,

    It cancels out the whole rest of his career.

    Which in effect cancels out popular music as we know it now.

    Thread over.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Biobbs,

    Those of us of a certain age will remember how inescapable this wrist-slashingly awful song was on the radio in 1974:

    Those 20 Solid Gold Hits albums have a lot to answer for.

    The River Mouth, Denmark • Since Jan 2011 • 114 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg, in reply to philipmatthews,

    One of the all-time worst occurs about five minutes into this pretentious epic from Pete Wylie

    I actually bought this turd sound unheard from Record Warehouse on the strength of his previous two singles which were both rather good.

    You can almost hear the A&R guy pitching it to him....

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Ross Mason,

    I AM surprised that ABBA hasn't featured as much as I hoped ---er...thought.

    Axel Effing broke. Wheel loose.

    Upper Hutt • Since Jun 2007 • 1590 posts Report Reply

  • Rachel Prosser,

    For me the second circle of hell is a gig where you have to wear ear plugs and the bass vibrates through you.

    For some people that is Nirvana. For me Nausea.

    I remember lasting about 15 minutes at a Black Seeds gig (after waiting for an hour or two for them to come on) It was so loud and unpleasant I left my then boyfriend and his brother to it.

    I'll take Phantom of the Opera any day. I grew up loving musicals, and still pretty much know the West End Cast album of Phantom word for word. I also recall loving " I've never been to me" as a 12 year old, love the operatic quality of Bohemian Rhapsody, and love Abba - although I don't actually play it.

    Emma do you think Adele's "Someone like you" is heading to "I will always love you" and "heart must go on" territory?

    Christchurch • Since Mar 2008 • 228 posts Report Reply

  • Scott Chris,

    ....but nothing surpasses AUTOTUNE! I cannot even stay in the room with that effect on. This includes Peter Framptom's effort from the late 70s or whenever it was.

    Depends how it's used: (BTW Frampton used a talk box not autotune)

    Auckland • Since Feb 2012 • 167 posts Report Reply

  • Jake Pollock,

    I like all music except for rap and country. #thisthread

    Raumati South • Since Nov 2006 • 489 posts Report Reply

  • Lucy Stewart, in reply to Rachel Prosser,

    I'll take Phantom of the Opera any day. I grew up loving musicals, and still pretty much know the West End Cast album of Phantom word for word. I also recall loving " I've never been to me" as a 12 year old, love the operatic quality of Bohemian Rhapsody, and love Abba - although I don't actually play it.

    I managed to go see Phantom on Broadway last month, and not only am I not sorry, I'd go see it again.

    (Then again, I always looked forward to the Christmas music when I worked summer retail jobs, which is probably a sign of....uniqueness.)

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 2105 posts Report Reply

  • Jackie Clark,

    Honestly, a little piece of me dies every time someone hates something that I love. My brother sends me vast quantities of music I've never heard of from time to time. I love that he does that but most of it just isn't for me. My tastes for music seem to be firmly in two or three camps. I'm a big nostalgia geek, so what I grew up listening to and enjoying, I still enjoy for the most part. I also seem to be very artist-centric. Once again, if I loved an artist while I was young, I mostly love them today. And someone else mentioned that music is about context - of course it is! I hear Bob Marley, and I'm 14 again (all music loved 12-16, my context is boarding school, Wellington) lying outside sunbathing. Most of the "dreck" from the 70's? Same place, same sort of feeling. Headbanging to the JJ Geils band. Or Black Betty. You get the picture. Then there's the music that I hear and instantly love - many of the modern artists have some songs I like, but it's mostly true that I won't like all their work. I am struck by Adele, for example, because she has just an astonishing voice, and I've seen her interviewed a couple of times, and I really like what she has to say. Emma kindly introduced me yesterday to a song by Mary J Blige that I instantly fell in love with. This music is stuff that speaks to the heart, and resonates with us for whatever reason. I would include the song "Sound Advice" by Breaks Co-op in that category. I never liked it when I first heard it. It was my brother's band but I didn't care. None of that first album was for me. And then, after my Dad died, Breaks Co-op did a theatre tour with Goldenhorse, and Hamish performed Sound Advice, and for the first time, I listened to the chorus, and it blew me away. "You'll never know, how much I miss you....." and that was it for me. From then on, the song was associated with my Dad, and all my love for him.
    And then there's music I like to dance/workout to. I don't care whether it's new or old, if it has a good beat, I'm in.
    There are whole genres I don't like - like Country (sorry Danielle xxx), or heavy metal, or Christian anything, or Drum and Bass. I don't think any of it's dreck , particularly. I just don't find it pleasant to listen to. What I have found most disturbing about this thread - don't get me wrong, don't stop! because mostly it's amusing - is the people_ hating. I don't care if you don't like a song, or a genre of music, but don't make stupid generalisations about the people who listen to it. We all like different things from each other, doesn't make us any lesser than.

    Mt Eden, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 3136 posts Report Reply

  • John Madden,

    Jools Holland, the enemy of great music. Can't stomach the pretentious no necked twat. If he has any musical skills they are submerged in his self important preening. Or am I just too angry?

    United Kingdom • Since Mar 2012 • 10 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia, in reply to Danielle,

    Nor in my estimation is there anything guilty about liking 1975-77 Mac. 'TUSK!'

    That's great paranoid stalker pop -- it's a real thing people (Better Be Home Soon, Every Breath You Take). But I've got to admit I love to spicks and specks... 'Go Your Own Way'.

    Passive-aggressive "why you wanna treat me so bad when I luurve you?" dude-ness has never sounded so good.

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • JacksonP, in reply to Hebe,

    Hate me if you like, my 1980s flatmates did for this. I still like it

    Those two songs, along with the rest of the album, are among my favourites of all 80s music. It still gets played regularly round here. Matt Johnson was/is a genius.

    I've kind of run out of words for this thread. Sorry if anyone felt I was criticising them and not the music. There's no accounting for taste.

    Take these for example. Sometimes I just wanna listen to epic R&B with Rappers in tow (Daft Punk thrown in for good measure). Sue me.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2011 • 2450 posts Report Reply

  • Lucy Telfar Barnard, in reply to JacksonP,

    It's the repetition that does it, mostly. I had a holiday job in an ice cream parlour which played two discs on random scramble all day: "best of" compilations for Madonna, and Roy Orbison. Now I've mostly recovered my previous enjoyment of Madonna (except for "Holiday", which still brings me out in a rash). But Roy Orbison, nooooooo. Particularly "Crying" and "Only the Lonely". I shudder to remember them.

    Also, my childhood included the pyschological torture of being dragged along to far too many of my stepfather's band practices. Although he is (and was then too) a very skilled musician, and his bandmates were too, listening to band practice is not like listening to music. You get a few bars maybe, and then a "hey, how about we try that again, but change that bit", or "oh I didn't get that bit right, can we try that again." It really is water torture, with the unpredictability of the stops and starts being like the unpredictability of the water drops falling.

    The even worse consequence of this torture is that I can't listen to anything that has that late 70s kiwi rock sound, or live bands. I can just about do big concerts, because the mixing makes it more like listening to recorded music. But I can't do live bands in pubs. They make me want to hit somebody.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 585 posts Report Reply

  • Ian Dalziel,

    Peat Muppets, you say…

    Christchurch • Since Dec 2006 • 7953 posts Report Reply

  • Danielle, in reply to Ian Dalziel,

    That version of 'For What It's Worth' *terrified* me as a child. Along with the Muppet version of Jim Croce's 'Time in a Bottle', where the scientist becomes younger and younger as he drinks potions and then at the end the experiment fails and he's old again. I was a sensitive wee soul. (If you want to give a child a pretty great 20th century pop music education - until 1982, at least - The Muppet Show is the way to go. They managed to incorporate the great American songbook, disco, singer-songwriters, country, soul, music-hall...)

    I suppose to get into the spirit of the thread I should really mention something that gives me a start of revulsion, so:

    Prog in general is difficult for me because the self-conscious virtuosity kinda makes me want to hurl, and I hate all that 'look at us stopping and starting on a dime with our weird time signatures, aren't we awesome?' schtick, but LIBERTARIAN hard-rock progginess? Yeesh.

    Charo World. Cuchi-cuchi!… • Since Nov 2006 • 3828 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to Danielle,

    Prog in general is difficult for me because the self-conscious virtuosity kinda makes me want to hurl, and I hate all that 'look at us stopping and starting on a dime with our weird time signatures, aren't we awesome?' schtick, but LIBERTARIAN hard-rock progginess? Yeesh.

    Eeeeew.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • philipmatthews,

    "What about the voice of Geddy Lee?
    How did it get so high?
    I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy?"
    -- Pavement.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2007 • 656 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,

    But I can't do live bands in pubs. They make me want to hit somebody.

    Aw, that's sad. My friends and I have had so much joy in our lives in just that context. For a while, it was like our church.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to Jackie Clark,

    I listened to the chorus, and it blew me away. "You'll never know, how much I miss you....."

    Whereas that grabbed me the first time I heard it - and I don't even listen to music for lyrics most of the time.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,

    But I can't do live bands in pubs. They make me want to hit somebody.

    are you kind of still expecting them to stop unpredictably?

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

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