Nirvana vs Pearl Jam

Who killed Hair Metal?- grunge. Grunge shot Hair metal and stomped all over the grave in a clown suit, happily whistling to itself.

It was an interesting time in Music, the end of the 1980s. At the beginning of the 80s it was pretty easy to determine what the trend was. You had the last gasps of punk, New Wave coming through - think Blondie. Disco was dead. and the whole synth pop was taking hold. Think Soft cell, Duran Duran, Echo and the Bunnymen. In the underground you had a lot more going on. Rap, Hip Hop was taking hold, Electronic music, originally driven by Kraftwerk, but later taken on by Gary Numan, 808 State, New Order. Then the alternative metal hardcore scene in the States, Black Flag, Fugazi, Husker Du etc.

here is some Husker Du, just because they are awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEVi0IxC0yM&feature=related

The point of the name dropping, is that by the end of the 80s most of these had developed into full on musical trends and no longer could you say that there was a kind of music that everyone listened to. Except perhaps U2 , and all should subsequently have hot pokers stuffed into their ears to take out any lasting memory of it!!! So Hair Metal , Guns and Roses dominated the charts outside of pop music, which we don't care about do we. The problem being that the scene had become so overblown, so full of itself. This was a scene that was based far more on image and style than actual musical substance anyway. So it was very predictable that a scene which was more stripped back and for want of a better word 'real'.

There are two landmark albums that will forever be associated with this rise. Nevermind by Nirvana and Ten by Pearl Jam. I will go through many of the other proponents of the , what is the right word, because it wasn't a scene, far too large for that. Let's say movement for the moment. The Grunge movement. Grunge is a terrible word for it. it as supposedly termed as the guitar sound was all grungy and the people dressed all grungy so it stuck. I don't like it, because even the major bands had very little in common musically.

Nevermind and Ten started the whole thing of. Absolutely huge in their impact not only on the music scene but also much more fundamentally as reflection of what was going on in the world. It is very obvious to say that the 80s were a decade of excess and as we went into  1990s that had to all change.  It is a little more complex than that of course. A generation of people had watched the 80s unfold and as they turned into Teenagers and young adults they wanted a music scene for their own. When Nevermind came out it was so completely different that they got into it. Once of course everyone else did.

Here is smells like teen spirit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWKbfoikeg&ob=av2el

It is 20 years this year since that came out. Which actually makes it classic rock now. Which is scary for all of us. Anyway, I was just starting university when this came out. Followed closely by Ten by Pearl Jam. Uni is the perfect time for an anti music scene. it fit perfectly to what I was into and about at the time. The whole anti mainstream, corporate rock etc. Of course, I was being fed this by large corporates.

here is Jeremy By Pearl Jam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0MX4vBWzNk&ob=av2nl

Good songs both, i think it is very fair to say. , But as you can clearly see , quite different. So, I think everyone knows what happened to Nirvana. They recorded another album, it was turned down, they then released In Utero, did MTV unplugged and then Kurt topped himself. Turns out Dave Grohl was an amazing musician and we then got Foo Fighters, who are still going strong to this day

This is Everlong. This is one of the best songs I have ever heard, i love this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyvvCuIHrJw&ob=av2el 

Is it wrong to say that it was worth not having Kurt around to get that song? Yes it probably is, but you get the idea. 

The best song by Nirvana to my mind is Dumb off of the in Utero album. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThwQPo8cUy0

To my mind that is so good because it just has the whole self loathing thing wrapped up into the deception. 

I 'm not like them , but I can pretend. That does sum up the whole outsider thing doesn't it. I think that you could make a good case for any of, Nevermind, In Utero and Unplugged being the best album by Nirvana. This is helped by the fact that there is absolutely no chance of them ever re-forming. 

The best Pearl jam song to my mind is Black. This is a great song because it is just so heartfelt. it contains the lines

I know someday you'll find a beautiful life

I know you'll be a sun

In somebodies eles's sky

But why, why, whhhyyy

can't it be , can't it be

mine

That is a good lyric. In fact, that is a great lyric isn't it. If there is a better way to express the perceived loss of a girlfriend/ boyfriend because they were just not particularly on the same wave length,or actually interested in you, then that is it.

here is the song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0CP9RVvm_4&feature=related

So there are my two favourite songs by these bands. I think that Ten , is by far the best thing Pearl Jam ever did. They have gone on to release 10 albums, and are still going. None was even as close to the level that Ten touched. Which is disappointing. I actually went and bought the next album the day it came out I was so keen to hear what else they could do. There were moments of the heights , but not many on their next album. By the third I had stopped listening. Again, by then the entire world was listening, and as I have said in other posts that is my first tip that a band has lost it's edge. 

So which band was better? That is of course very subjective and you will decide on the one you think. However this is my blog and unless you want to comment then my opinion rules. I think , and this is going back on what I said at the time, that Nirvana's music stands up a lot better than Pearl Jam's. Listening to Ten now it does seem quite dated. Nevermind and In Utero do as well. There is however an energy that still comes through them. Not so much on Ten. I guess because I only really rate Ten as opposed to any of the other albums by Pearl Jam that Nirvana were always going to win. 

On that note then I end with one of the best covers, the man who sold the world, a David Bowie song, which appears on the Unplugged album by Nirvana. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fregObNcHC8&ob=av2nm

But then for good measure, and in the interests of fairness, here is State of Love and Trust by Pearl Jam, a Neil Young cover

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUJGlI13KdE

Guns and Roses

I would like to talk about a band that had a big impact on me.

The once mighty Guns and Roses.

When Appetite for Destruction was released in 1987 it changed music for a lot of people, myself included. The metal scene at the time was dominated by Hair Metal bands. See my previous post about the ballads they released. Bands like Metallica, Slayer etc were much more underground than a lot of people will have you believe now. The point being there was Hair Metal and Thrash metal. So there was the quite obviously fake and all about having a good time, and the very earnestly real and hardcore.

Then came Appetite. It was huge, it eventually went on the sell 28 million copies and is considered by a great many people to be the best debut album of all time. People will also argue for Ten by Pearl Jam , but we will get to that in another post at some stage.

This album opens with Welcome To the Jungle. If ever there was the intent shown in the first song, then that has to be it. From the first , echo enhanced chords, is screams menace and you have to contrast it with what was around in 1987. Seriously, Bad by Michael Jackson, Who's that Girl by Madonna, Where the Streets have no Name by U2, Livin on a prayer by Bon Jovi. You can see how different it was. it is interesting that the teased hair and the clothes were all very 1987 hair metal, but that label somehow that didn't stick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_gQOfF0Ymo&feature=fvw

There was definitely something about them that made them authentic as well as just a bit glam. The album holds up very well.

My favourite song from the album now is Rocket queen, i think mainly because it is a song of two distinct parts and the second part is about a mans love for a prostitute. Now, i have never been in this situation I am very pleased to say That must be a complete mind fuck. But it appeals to my sense of hopeless love which i must have got from all those French and Russian novels i read about this time.

 Anyway, there isn't  a bad song on this album. Really, every song has something to say for it.

So , every single person I knew would at least say that Guns were their favorite band at this time. Except for one guy who said Whitesnake - but I don't talk to him anymore. Since about 1988 in fact.

So we consumed everything Gunners that we could. Every bit of news, every time they were played on TV. Looking back on it we were no better than the teenage girls we mocked for liking Bros etc. To fill this gap the record company released GnR Lies. Which was basically a re-release of a four track EP called Live like a Suicide, and four acoustic tracks. The four tracks had been released in the US in 1986, but nothing had really taken off and it wasn't released anywhere else. The four acoustic tracks were quite funny. However one of the them was Patience. Which come to think of it now was much more a metal ballad than Sweet Child of mine. However, this was played on mainstream radio to death. it is a good song. it really is. But man did we get sick of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErvgV4P6Fzc&ob=av2el

It does show off what a good guitarist duff is though. So it meant that everyone who thought that Appetite was too metal for them, were able to get into Patience. So, now pretty much the entire world was a guns and roses fan.

Except perhaps now for me. I was sick of everyone, who clearly didn't know anything about music, saying how good they were. How much better than other bands whose albums they had never heard. I got into Anthrax and Metallica around this time. I was late to that party, but some of the guys at school had their tapes and so we all traded etc.

Anyway, in 1991 we finally got the next real Guns and Roses Album. To top it off we got two albums released on the same day. Use your Illusion I and II. They were very good albums, but , and I have had this conversation a lot, it would have been a great single album. So what happened is that everyone who was more than used to putting their own tapes together, made it into a single album, cut out the lower lights and just had the good stuff.

By now Gunners were properly huge. Easily the biggest band in the world. Their music seemed to reflect this though. it was far more grandiose and orchestrated. Not bad, but it had lost that dangerous rock and roll metal edge which had made it so appealing. Take November rain, it is as bad as the worst travails of 1970s prog. And what is the film clip about really? Slash leaves the church, which is very obviously mis sized, and goes outside to play a bit of guitar outside in a desert??? I mean really. Here it is for a bit of a laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SbUC-UaAxE&ob=av3el

Please do not misunderstand, it is a very good song. But not as good as anything on Appetite.

There is are some good songs on these albums, none better than You could be mine. This was the theme song to Terminator 2 , which was a great film, and this still had that Guns and Roses edge. it is great and still gets the blood pumping to this day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzB5hFINC_k



By this time the original band was falling apart. The original drummer Steve Adler had been kicked out prior to the recording of the Use Your illusions, purportedly for heroin use, but seriously , what did you have to do really to get kicked out of the band? the mind boggles. Gunners released the albums and then went on a massive world tour. Huge, arena's everywhere they went.

it all got too much for Izzy Stadlin, rhythm guitar. Who walked out, then the tour finished. And that was it. Grunge came along and Nirvana ridiculed Axl Rose at the MTV Music awards and the spell was broken. Gunners were nowhere anymore and it was incredibly uncool to still like them. To say they were then in the wilderness is a little of an understatement. in 1993 they released The Spaghetti Incident, which is an album of covers recorded at various times and isn't really that bad.

officially it says that Slash left in 1996, but to put it into perspective, that is five years after the last album of new songs was done. So the reality must have been different. You could get by with a new drummer, rythym guitar, even bass. But when Slash left it wasn't Guns and Roses anymore.

Chinese democracy came out last year. Do not bother with that. really. it is rubbish. It is an Axl Rose project, who owns the name. It took around 10 years plus to make. And it shows. it is so over produced. So much going on and so little real direction that it loses itself up its own ass. Instead get Slash's solo album, that is good. Even if it is a collection of every music style.

me? i will always remember the gunners as the coolest guys on the planet, making the coolest music and being about as dangerous as I could imagine. In 1988 me and my family were staying in a pub in the Yorkshire dales. One my dad had seen on TV, seriously, anyway, it was properly country English pub. Tiny . They had Welcome to the Jungle on the juke box and so my brother and I played it a few times. i seem to remember they actually turned it off because people weren't happy.

that's cool.

Hair metal - the Balads

One of the guilty pleasures i have always enjoyed is the hair metal Ballad.

For people of my age who grew up during the 80s, Hair metal was basically it. For whatever reason hair Metal was very much the mainstream during the years 1984 ish to about 1989, when it imploded horribly. We should all be thankful. It is something that is looked back upon now as very strange and  is a large source of mirth. But at the time, bands like Maiden , Slayer, Anthrax etc were considered to be a long way out there. Punk had died a death and the new Wave was never quite upto much. There was Snyth pop, whoever laughs at hair metal also laughs at this, at least the metal guys didn't cry at a nice sunset chaps. Pop music was dreadful, it was the age of Stock, Aitken and Waterman, think early Kylie and Rick Astley.

With hindsight there was obviously a lot of great music being produced, but it was not like now when you could get access to almost everything. Then if it was played on the radio and the record store had it , then you could get it. Otherwise you had to borrow and tape other peoples copies. We didn't really have alternative radio in Adelaide, country Australia,  and so what you heard was what you got.

So hair metal being the mainstream meant that was what we got. Within the somewhat ridiculous posing and guys saying how tough they were and how many chicks they were sleeping with whilst wearing mascara, lace and having more time spent on their hair than teenage girls , there was the hair Metal Ballad. Every single band from this time produced at least one Ballad.

Name the bands and you can name the ballad

Poison - every Rose has it's thorn
Skid Row - I remember you
Whitesnake - Here I go again (ok only just a ballad) , Is this Love
Warrant - Heaven
Pursuit of Happiness - Pressing Lips
Motley Crue - Home Sweet Home
Extreme - More than Words
Bon Jovi - well almost every song - but let's go with Wanted Dead or Alive
Def Leppard - Love Bites
Even Guns and Roses who aren't really considered hair metal - although look at Axl in Welcome to the Jungle - released Sweet Child of mine , which is a ballad, sorry but it is.

Interestingly, this somewhat strange musical trend was started by Motley Crue, with Home Sweet Home. Now, I was a Crue fan, i still am to a certain extent, in so far as i like the pantomime aspect to them. When I was 13 ,14 though, i thought these guys were cool. The fact they had anything to do with a music trend is something not many people would actually expect. Home sweet home, was actually written by Tommy lee, who actually comes across as a pretty interesting type of guy.

Here it is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBiETZFOrFc&feature=related

It isn't  bad song, and is quite poignant in many respects. it is the song that started it all.

Now i am going to talk about a couple of the less well known songs, i mean if you haven't heard Sweet Child of Mine, then please stop reading and go and listen to every song and album I have mentioned then come back and we will start from the beginning. I think love Bites is pretty poor and haven't ever had much time from Whitesnake.

So you may have noticed i put The pursuit of happiness into the list. Now , the more observant of you will have noticed that these guys don't really belong on the list. They weren't really Hair metal, and I am sure that if they found out they were on the same list as Motely Crue they would be pretty upset. They were a band from Ontario Canada who actually released a few albums , their most famous song was I am and adult now. Anyway, they also released a song called pressing lips.

here it is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVvQmYHWJd8

So as you can see they are much more slacker rock than hair Metal. But this song came out around this time. It is a beautiful song, and as you can see from the you tube clip only 13, 000 people have viewed it. That is just criminal . To give you a comparison, 9 million have viewed Wouldn't it be nice!
I love the sentiment of this song, the whole, well this is me, take it or leave it. i will do my best but you know what you are signing up for.

Any way back to the fun.

Poison - every Rose has its thorn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c56vEgA4fjU

That is what Hair Metal looked like. That is a really weird video as well. It seems to cut from shots of the band having a great time, to a sort of a video story about a couple breaking up , and the band looking a little despondent. Anyway, the lyrics are actually pretty good. it is a massive cliche, not helped by Bill and Ted in their bogus journey. But actually, and I know i open myself to much ridicule here, the lyrics, chorus aside are pretty strong.

Here is a copy from Warrant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR-hkBGMrG8

I feel a bit for Warrant. That is not a bad song. Seriously, if that was sung by Garth Brooks it would have been an American classic. I saw an interview with the lead singer about Warrants career, Jani Lane. Jani said he was aksed to write a catchy song for their second album. So he came up with Cherry Pie. Suddenly the album became Cherry pie, the tour became the Cherry Pie tour, he was entered into Cherry pie eating contests , warrant became the Cherry Pie band and he became the Cherry Pie guy. he then said 'I want to shoot myself in the face for writning that song'

That's not so good. So here is a salute to one of the other great songs you wrote Jani. heaven is a good song and deserves a mention in my little hall of fame here.

You know you anted it and so it it is Extreme's More than words

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrIiLvg58SY

That clip has more than 11 million hits on you tube. Compare that to Pressing Lips. Where oh where is the justice in that I ask you? More than words is not a great song , really, it isn't. What is it about? That there is something more to a relationship than just talking? And you just can't fix things by saying words. Well there you go, big news flash. I am getting wound up thinking about this , so am going to leave it.

There are a lot more Ballads, seriously there are so many that you forget. That said, there aren't a lot of good ones. Most are sentimental pieces of potted emotion designed to capture your mind with a catchy chorus and not much else. it was however a great time for these songs, one that was replaced by the earnestness of grunge , where everything was so serious and real, man.

Hair metal has a place, it doesn't belong in the greatest songs of all time lists. But it deserves more than a giggle and a footnote in the annals of music history.

quick apology

So it seems there are some of you reading this - quick apology about the formatting, seems to have a bit of a mind of its own. If you think something should be there, but cant see it, please drag the mouse over it and something should appear.

Sorry for the hassle, but thanks very much for reading.

cheers

H

The greatest song ever ! part 2

So as promised, here is the second part of the greatest song ever.

I am going to mention The Beatles at this juncture. A lot, and i do mean a lot of people rate The Beatles extremely highly when taking about the best bands of all time. They then go on to say that A day in the Life is one of the best songs of all time. The whole Sargent Peppers thing, i don't really get. it isn't a bad album, but the people who claim it to be so fantastic clearly also think U2 are awesome. The Beatles were very good at pop songs and appealed to the masses, a day in the life is what exactly? a good pop song - no not really, reasonably poor melody , a acerbic piece of political satire set to music - err no. it is as far as i can see an interesting piece of music which now acts as a time capsule for what people were listening to at the time.

let's go somewhere far darker and by extension much more interesting. Three or four songs which should make most peoples top lists when they think about it.

The Cure - Love Song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks_qOI0lzho

Love the film clip. set in the cave like that, gives a weird sense of detachment. i always imagine robert smith walking around Paris in a black and white film when I hear that song. it is a great song and it means a huge amount to a lot of people. I don't think it is so much about unrequited love as about impossible love. I had to think long and hard to put that song above the Edge of the Deep Green Sea which is perhaps my favourite Cure song. Which isn't so much about love but not being able to resist temptations associated loosely with love and not liking ones self at the end of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jcw7XIDGqFI&feature=related

The next song is actually the most covered song of all time. hallelujah in this case by Jeff Buckley. Which to mine is the definitive version, as it somewhere in between the cloyingly sweet side and desperately trying to be dark side. It is a great song , which stands up to most people covering it because it was written so well in the first place. Hats off to Leonard Cohen. For comparison here is Leonard's version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTiXoMCppw&feature=related

It is a little too gospel for me.

Here is Jeff Buckley's version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTiXoMCppw&feature=related

I am still on that version. It seems to bring out the exasperation of the realisation that perhaps love isn't the walk in the flowers we can expect it to be. Which is the sort of stuff that appeals to me massively. 

The next song is seemingly completely different. it is perhaps the most perfect pop song written Wouldn't it be Nice, by The Beach Boys and specifically Brian Wilson off of the Pet Sounds album. The beach Boys was the first album I had that was properly mine. it was 20 Golden greats, and for the first few years, i was 7, i listened mainly to the a side which was a whole lot of Beach Boys surfing and girl songs, i get Around, Little Deuce Coupe, fun fun fun. etc. Then I turned the LP over and finally listened to the other side and it started with Wouldn't it be nice and God only knows. I played and played those two songs.

I loved Wouldn't it be nice for a couple of reasons. Firstly it is a beautiful song. Really, listen to not only the effortless shifts in the rhythm but also the multi part harmonies going through it. I also liked it because it seeming was about a young guy who had found a girl and he wanted to spend a lot of time with her. i was just discovering girls and this appealed in some way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L--cqAI3IUI

Anyway it turns out this isn't what the song is about at all. The song was written after a dinner party that Brian and his then wife attend where he fell in love with his friends wife. man, I found this out a few years ago, and was properly upset. it seriously hit me like a punch in the stomach about the truer nature of love and losing the naivety of youth. . . I am still not completely over it. Not sure I will ever be. Strange how that can happen when you build something up yourself. 

So which of those four is the best? honestly, i would have to say Hallelujah, it isn't the best melodically or even imagery wise, but it is so heart felt and an expression of the should that it hard to how how it can be topped. 

 

The greatest song ever! part 1

So what is the greatest song ever?

I love this question because it is simply so ridiculous. There is no way that there can ever be a consensus about the greatest song ever, there are far too many genres and music tastes for this. Interestingly a lot of the radio friendly song stations put classic Rock type songs in this category. So you usually end up with Stairway to heaven or Bohemian rhapsody or the like. Very rarely is it a song of the last 10 years. i am guessing , but i would say that this is down to people liking songs when they were younger, or before they were born and they all being basically sheep!


So, let's start with classic rock. Why not give the people what they want. The three songs in this category are Stairway to heaven, Bohemian Rhapsody and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. I have over time received a bit of grief for my love of Born to Run. but it is a brilliant song. it really is. Here is a live version

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggWZUm1ETNo

I have watched a lot of music documentaries, i mean a lot. In all of the ones that talk about the music scene in the late 1970s all of the people from the time mention that Bruce saved Rock and Roll. Cool people, Tom Petty, Ozzy, even Joey Ramone. I would say listen to his albums before Born in the USA, which as a side point , is not at all a fist pumping yay America anthem at all. it is actually a dark song about the American dream gone wrong. Born to run is so good because it tells a story about the youthful desire to get out and do something more interesting, love and incredibly anthemic. It has that you and me against everything we can find and know at the moment feel to it.

Don't misunderstand my love for Zep either though. I was and will always remain a massive Zep fan. It is just that I am sick and have been for quite some time , of people talking about Stairway as their greatest song. It is great, but from a band who produced, Kashmir, Ten years gone, Battle of Evermore, Rain Song, Rock and Roll, Ramble on etc. Stairway isn't even their best song. That said this version by Rodrigo e Gabriella is pretty amazing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNc5o9TU0t0

Ok enough about Classic rock. This could go on for days

Metal. What is the best Metal song? Well, metal is a genre inhabited by the music geeks, the obsessive, and pedantic and as such there are an enormous amount of sub genres and using an all-encompassing term like the greatest metal song is going to upset these people. So I will do two of the genres, hard rock and mainstream metal.

Hard rock. I have two main candidates for you. AC DC Back in Black. I have posted about this song before. It is a great song, it rocks, it jives and it has got rhythm. I actually have this song as my morning wake up on the alarm. I think it is almost impossible to hear this song and not to be put into a good mood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkkL_aDrIyU

See what i mean? That makes it a great song, also a great song to put on before you go out. More another time.

The other song I am going to put forward into this category is by one of my favourite all time bands Jane's Addicition. Three days off of the ritual de la Habitual album. Everything about this song is different from Back in Black. Check out the official video, it is only the introduction of the song,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K0lobxNoEc

That girl in the shower is dead by the way. How messed up is that?? That clip comes from a video Jane's put out called three days which is a short film, about 60 mins about how Perry's , the lead singer, girlfriend dies and he builds a shrine to her before anyone finds out she is dead. Man it is messed up. Anyway, the cool thing is that they actually filmed the recording of the song. Done in one take.

Listen to the whole song, minus the messed up visuals and tell me what a stroke of genius it is to be able to do this in one take.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmvG2GZ3S7o

damn. Not strictly a hard rock song, but when that comes out of a hard rock band who cares.

Mainstream metal. i think there are again three candidates for this.Metallica, Master of Puppets,Slayer- Disciple and System of a Down - Chop Suey

Here is System of a Down Chop Suey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3voawEb6Xgw&feature=channel

This is a great song because of the sheer intensity of it. the almost soaring difference in the different parts of the song. Which is about suicide and the anger felt by the person. Sums it all up pretty well i imagine. It depends of course what you want from a metal song.

Here is Slayer - Disciple

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS0mQ25ezq4



Then there is Metallica and their best work - best work without any questions (OK!) master of Puppets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYzgQUTgpXs&feature=fvsr

Check out the link,

It is actually a little bit on the prog side that song. It lacks for nothing because of it though. It is a brilliant song about cocaine. Of course the evils of it. It is a great metal song because it is so powerful, master of puppets i'm pulling your strings. What else do you want.

Honory mentions in the metal category go to Iron Maiden, Hallowed be your name and Pantera for Mouth for War and yesterday don't mean shot. great metal songs


ok, because you have been nice here is the proper version of Master of Puppets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z-hEyVQDRA

I am going to leave it there for this post. As the title says it is part one, expect part two and maybe even three. as we still have prog, pop, rap, electric and dark pop to go.

any comments are greatly appreciated, would like this to be a forum rather than a monologue of a increasingly demented music geek.!!!

pop - the bitter sweetness

Here is a news flash - jet lag sucks. I left Adelaide Australia in January 1996 and since then I have been flying around the world quite a lot , and I am still yet to come up with a fail safe way to deal with it. I am back in the UK, my home for nearly 8 years during that time away , it is cold, it is dark and my body clock has no appreciation of what time it actually is. i feels like it could be a very small hour, but the clock says it is around 7 pm.

I don't need much sleep, although i am much better with it, and so i do like this times as it gives me a quiet house and I can listen to some music and now with this outlet write about it and try to order some of my thoughts on it. People often tell me when I say that i don't sleep much that it must be great to have all that time. I often feel that i waste a lot of it. i should be investing more wisely, should have re-written that book that I wrote a few years back, should have could have but didn't . Is listening to music wasting time? Well yes, in very practical terms if there are things you should be doing, then it is wasting time, but when I think about what it is a now know, and the amount of pleasure it gives me then no, most definitely not a waste of time.

So where are we on this worst of jet lag days?


I am listening to Fosbury by Tahiti 80. Tahiti 80 are  french band with a large back catalogue that no one has heard of. i came across them when i ws living in japan as an unemployed but professional shop wanderer. it wasn't a bad life, apart from the lack of available cash. i would get up exercise , spend some time looking for a job and then go out and wander around. Inevitably I would gravitate towards a music shop. Tokyo is pretty good for this as there is a massive music culture based around everything from really far out there elctronica, see mad capsule markets, who are frankly mainstream, to what is a very interesting vinyl based second hand industry.

Anyway, in the larger stores there are a huge amount of listening posts for albums and as a westerner they are just pretty happy that you are in the store and let you listen to music for hours on end. One of the bands I came across during this time was quite obviously Tahiti 80. Specifically what was their latest release, Pieces of Sunshine and extra pieces of sunshine. I have always and probably always will love the way some people are able to write incredibly sweet pop songs about their misery. i refer specifically to aftermath on the Pieces of Sunshine album. Unfortunately, this is apparently so obscure that it isn't on the Internet at all. So here is another song, perhaps not quite as bitter sweet , but excellent none the less. Better Days will come

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyTexQ2bp_s

Why haven't more people heard about his band? This is just a brilliantly written and executed piece of pop sorrow. Much of their work is like this, although it is also a little more electronic based, which perhaps has some sort of leaning towards other Frenchies such as Air and Daft Punk. This has got me to think though.

Why are some albums so popular and others seemingly at least as good largely ignored by all except those of us music geeks? or hipsters if it makes you feel better . .

Why are Air huge? despite only one really great album? but Tahiti 80 not despite what i see as a couple of very good albums?

Compare the above song, Better days will come by Tahiti 80, to this , All I need by Air (extended version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr7JuEI6qZ4

I realise that Moon Safari is by far the better selling album and I can see why, it is a better album. But is it that much better? I think rather what happened is that the ordinary people got wind of it and it became an album that a lot of people then went out and bought, played a few times and have subsequently forgotten about. i think this happens a lot. There will be an album produced that us geeks (hipsters ) rave about , that somehow gets some traction and as such becomes a huge seller. Air, have not come close to anything as good as Moon Safari subsequently, I challenge you to come up with another album title without looking it up. But they entered the mainstream and as such more peoples lives because of it. Doesn't make them better.

So , there are two pieces of beautiful sadness. I describe them as pop, I am not sure this is the correct pigeon hole, but I am not sure there is anything more appropriate.

With that in mind I am going to go to a weird place. i am going to show you a very brief glimpse of J-pop. What a weird and very very frightening place j-pop is. I speak from a metal head perspective here. Give me pentagrams and images of an imagined devil any day over j-pop sugar sweetness. That said listen to this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muh3fW4y06I

That is Utada Hikaru, Automatic set to an Anime video for those of you who love that stuff  (i do) . Although most of the lyrics are in Japanese , you get the general sentiment I am sure. Isn't that a piece of great bitter sweetness? Now I am not really recommending that you take this as an endorsement of j-pop. As far as things go, that is about the best of it. But Utada is a good place to start if you are interested.

it does raise a point though, particularly if we are talking about pop bitter sweetness, do women do it better than men? I think there is something in this. And to prove it we have to go way back in time to a completely different place to where we have just been. We have to go to the Folk pop scene of the early 70s and compare Carole King and James Taylor. Lovers and two extremely gifted songwriters in this genre (any genre really)

here is So far away by Carole king, with James Taylor on Guitar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urt2cy7AqFs

That is all done live and shows what it is like to be an actual musician. What a voice and what a beautifully sad song.

And so as not to bias it, from the same year with Carole King on piano, here is  You've got a friend

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7RPCFfudmU

I will let you make up your own mind on that one. When it comes to the bitter sweetness of pop, then that is about as good as it gets. I am not sure which song I prefer, they are just great songs. i don't think it matters if a woman or a man sing about it, as long as it is good.


So, in a final example which perhaps shows the sheer versatility of pop. The Pet Shop Boys. I have always liked the Pet Shop Boys, and have always received a lot of grief for it. yes I get it, they are gay, and are also gay icons. They write pop music and as such you can imagine that the metal heads, and electronicans i hang out with don't really see it. However, listen to their album Introspective. here is my favourite song off the album im not scared


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Dj3ymyCl3s

That is a good song, and has that lovely dark tinge to the lyrics that pushes it into pop sweetness.

I am going to leave it there. I think i will write about this topic again at some stage. there is so much good material out there in this area. this is the only area of pop I am really interested in if I am honest. people jumping around telling everyone what a good party they are having doesn't appeal and is generally so fake it is galling. But when it comes to the darker side of it, it is clear that there are a lot of very talented song writers out there , who perhaps weren't having a great time and where able to wrap it sweetness.