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What are you listening to? Part III
- Thread starter S.B.G
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The EweTube Al Gore Rhythm just fed me this recording, I don’t think it was quite JC’s arrangement but there were a lot of similarities.
The fact that it was done live blew me away.
And then when I read it was a high school chorus, well, I had to post it. (Wish the audience could’ve shut up until the end…)
I love them. I keep trying every year to get my wife to like them. But ever since she saw the "money for nothing" video way back when, & the lyrics, she does not like them. I try to combat it with Sultans of Swing. Maybe one day it will happen!
Odd because that video created even more fans of theirs!I love them. I keep trying every year to get my wife to like them. But ever since she saw the "money for nothing" video way back when, & the lyrics, she does not like them. I try to combat it with Sultans of Swing. Maybe one day it will happen!
I’ll go with Twisting by the Pool as a good entry point to Dire Straits. Upbeat, fun, danceable, not too long!
If you don't know the Stone Roses, Mani played one of the best bass intros to a song ever (to what I consider to be one of the best singles of all time). Haunting, groovy, wormy, perfect!
Gary "Mani" Mounfield, bassist with legendary Manchester band the Stone Roses, has died at the age of 63.
www.bbc.com
Gary "Mani" Mounfield, bassist with legendary Manchester band the Stone Roses, has died at the age of 63.
Gary 'Mani' Mounfield: Stone Roses and Primal Scream bassist dies aged 63
The Stone Roses pay tribute to "our wonderful brother" Gary 'Mani' Mounfield after his death aged 63.
www.bbc.com
Cool article about six-string bass (or "Bass VI"). And the band Tortoise's bass player, for anybody here who digs 'em.
Halfway between a bass and a guitar, it’s an instrument with a cult of devotees, but it remains mostly unknown to the wider population. It has six strings like a guitar, but it’s tuned an octave lower, in the same range as a bass. It looks and plays more like a big guitar, with the strings all set close together rather than the wide spacing you’d find on most basses, which makes it good for playing chords and less apt for thumping out funky lines with your fingers and thumb. And it has a sound of its own, resonant and twangy, with less of the low-end power that you’d need to play booty-moving music. It first appeared around the dawn of the ’60s and has remained a fairly niche proposition ever since.
If you want to get a quick sense of how it sounds, put on Glen Campbell’s country-pop classic “Wichita Lineman” and fast-forward to 1:45, when Campbell plays a brief but indelible Bass VI solo that’s probably the most famous recorded showcase in the instrument’s history.
[...]
Duane Eddy has this album called Lonely Guitar, and it turns out that there's a lot of Bass VI on that record. There’'s something about the combination of the low, resonant quality, but with the twanginess of a guitar. Even on the early Cure albums, like Faith and Seventeen Seconds, Robert Smith was playing a lot of Bass VI, and that also figures into the weird, moody, lonely kind of thing. It’s super great, and it’s not in a twangy way at all. It’s still between a bass and a guitar, but more of that Joy Division-ish melody-driven bass line thing that a lot of bands were doing at that time.
There’s a Jack Nietzsche album that I really like, with a couple of originals but mostly covers of movie and TV music, called The Lonely Surfer. There’s that lonely thing again. Almost all the melodies on that album are played by Bass VI at some point, and then they’re layered with all this orchestration.
www.hearingthings.co
Halfway between a bass and a guitar, it’s an instrument with a cult of devotees, but it remains mostly unknown to the wider population. It has six strings like a guitar, but it’s tuned an octave lower, in the same range as a bass. It looks and plays more like a big guitar, with the strings all set close together rather than the wide spacing you’d find on most basses, which makes it good for playing chords and less apt for thumping out funky lines with your fingers and thumb. And it has a sound of its own, resonant and twangy, with less of the low-end power that you’d need to play booty-moving music. It first appeared around the dawn of the ’60s and has remained a fairly niche proposition ever since.
If you want to get a quick sense of how it sounds, put on Glen Campbell’s country-pop classic “Wichita Lineman” and fast-forward to 1:45, when Campbell plays a brief but indelible Bass VI solo that’s probably the most famous recorded showcase in the instrument’s history.
[...]
Duane Eddy has this album called Lonely Guitar, and it turns out that there's a lot of Bass VI on that record. There’'s something about the combination of the low, resonant quality, but with the twanginess of a guitar. Even on the early Cure albums, like Faith and Seventeen Seconds, Robert Smith was playing a lot of Bass VI, and that also figures into the weird, moody, lonely kind of thing. It’s super great, and it’s not in a twangy way at all. It’s still between a bass and a guitar, but more of that Joy Division-ish melody-driven bass line thing that a lot of bands were doing at that time.
There’s a Jack Nietzsche album that I really like, with a couple of originals but mostly covers of movie and TV music, called The Lonely Surfer. There’s that lonely thing again. Almost all the melodies on that album are played by Bass VI at some point, and then they’re layered with all this orchestration.
The Guitar-Bass Hybrid That Gives Tortoise Its Lonesome Sound
Bassist and multi-instrumentalist Douglas McCombs has made the cult-favorite Bass VI a staple of the post-rock legends’ palette.
www.hearingthings.co
Or, if @rb2112's wife is more into serious music, try Telegraph Road, on the Love over Gold album.
The lyrics capture the growth of the US, from the western expansion, to the overpopulation, and then tie in a failed love story, all in three short verses. The song itself builds slowly, has a mini climax guitar solo halfway thru, drops back down, and then slowly builds again (just like a good classical piece). After the final verse, it drops into another slow spot, but builds with more intensity, slowly, then you hear a fuse being lit… and then it explodes!
To this day, I consider Telegraph Road to be the best rock song ever written, the best rock single ever recorded, and certainly the best two guitar solos in the rock genre. Many will disagree with me, but they’re wrong. 👅
Love Over Gold is a full-length album, but only has 5 songs on it; Telegraph Road clocks in at about 15 minutes or so. The last song on side 1 (it’s a vinyl thing, ask your parents) is another incredible track, Private Investigations, that I used to audition speakers when I retired my 30-yr-old Advents to a 5.1 system (Monitor Audio) 15 years ago. The recording quality, and especially the dynamic range, were fantastic on my new CD and every audio salon I played it in wrote down what I was using. Such an incredible record.
My post is already too long, but I have to add my story about Twisting By The Pool. My first USAF assignment out of college was to Dayton OH, and I soon joined a country band south of Dayton. The band leader, after I’d been hired, asked if there’s any songs I’d like to have the band play; I mentioned Orange Blossom Special (I was a fiddler) and then Twistin By The Pool. He didn’t much care for it, but several guys in the band loved it and we learned it, added it to the set list. We first played it at a regular gig, the VFW in that town; 3rd song of the first set as the bandleader still had his doubts. The club was about half-full, and soon everyone was on the dance floor!
That song has two “false endings”, and during rehearsal I told the drummer to wait before coming back in after the first one, until the dancers just turned away to exit the dance floor, and then come back in; they immediately started dancing again. Then, I’d told the drummer to wait a bit longer (like the song) and come back in just as the dancers were getting to their tables, and come back in again. Everyone was dancing among the tables before sitting down, it was so cool! The bandleader gave me a sideways glance, that was half “okay, this worked”, and half “you *******!”
The cherry on top was, halfway thru our second set, TWO people came up to the bandleader and asked, “Can you play that Twist song again?” We did, and it was part of their repertoire from that point on.
If you don't know the Stone Roses, Mani played one of the best bass intros to a song ever (to what I consider to be one of the best singles of all time). Haunting, groovy, wormy, perfect!
Gary "Mani" Mounfield, bassist with legendary Manchester band the Stone Roses, has died at the age of 63.
Gary 'Mani' Mounfield: Stone Roses and Primal Scream bassist dies aged 63
The Stone Roses pay tribute to "our wonderful brother" Gary 'Mani' Mounfield after his death aged 63.
Ya got me hooked.
RIP "Mani".
Listed to Telegraph Road on the way home last night. A great track. Timeless.
A night of listening to Genesis and George Michael last night.
Golden oldies, and all the better for it.
Golden oldies, and all the better for it.
Now I’m getting a vision of the Freedom! ‘90 video but with a balding, pudgy drummer singing tunelessly and cavorting with supermodels…ugh!
;-)
My parents introduced me to Dire Straits when I was very young. They've got a few of his albums. Moreover, I just love Mark Knophler's guitar playing.
@VisceralRealist - in case you want to know, listening to the Durufle requiem (which I still need to find on CD, I don't have it). Some really neat (and quite sneaky) stuff happening harmonically in the Sanctus particularly, when the key change happens. I don't exactly know what is happening but the key change is very obscured until it becomes obvious later, and I am eager to go to the piano and figure it out.
In memory of the sad news of Jimmy Cliff passing on I’m playing the soundtrack to ‘The Harder They Come'
