Foo Fighters "Sonic Highway" documentary series on HBO

whoops i fucked up zee x's

xxxpost oh my well at least he'll take their money now even if he still probably grumbles as if he's too good for it and saves his aggression for (overrated IMO if not totally w/o merit) shellac records

croupier you're probably right

― blood on the peaves (slothroprhymes), Monday, October 27, 2014 1:42 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bullshit

which part?

I know how recording works croup I'm just lol'ing at the length of time required esp given the material involved

everyone i've heard who's recorded with him says he's super professional and pleasant, like just doing his job type vibe

Er some dude not croup sorry

xpost I know how records are made. I've made records myself. But there are really only two reasons it should take months to make a record. The first is if you're Peter Gabriel or U2 and GNR or whomever and it takes weeks and months to craft songs out of bit of studio improv and ideas. The other is if you're polishing things up to make it as commercial as possible. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with either approach. It just seems tacky to hear Grohl romanticise the mean, lean, fast, punk approach while he pursues the opposite for the sake of sounding slick and commercial or whatever.

What he said

sh@kedown i don't have the luxury of knowing him personally or knowing bands who know him, only the way his persona is sometimes presented in certain media. i didn't think a rep for saltiness was that far off the mark given some of what's been said about him and his style, but if it is, my B

so nashville is next? Where else are they going? Detroit? Olympia? LA?

it's not like a luxury it's just like tons of rinky dink midwest bands no one cares about record there all the time! it's like a studio you can go to if you want to pay for it, p affordable actually for small bands for how nice it is

i didn't mean "luxury" in a monetary sense. more like the opportunity to easily know stuff about him IRL beyond the established albini narratives dating back to big black

Yeah, Albini is pretty much a straight shooter. His reputation for prickliness stems almost entirely from his disdain for the real industry bullshit so many people put up with. He records bands, he cooks pasta, he plays poker, he likes cats and has a nice wife. If the dude was as bad as his rep he never would have meshed with Polly Harvey, or bands like Low and Bedhead.

it's funny because Albini is basically the archetype of the "normal even-tempered professional who loves to type brutally opinionated stuff about music" message board persona that so many of us embody to some degree or another. in the '80s zine culture his invective stood out but now it seems kind of commonplace and harmless.

eh dude's invective also used to be way more noxious - he brooks no fools but he doesn't play with hate speech to prove he can anymore, etc

i liked when dave grohl semi-acknowledged that while albini doesn't expect royalties (admirable considering it would be money taken from the band, not the label) he WILL jack up the price if you're on the major label dollar (there's that story about how he did surfer rosa for nothing but hit 'em hard for a follow-up thing elektra funded) - "he wants to be paid like a plumber...a KICK-ASS plumber". Albini also referenced figuring out how much the recording session is "worth" - that the rate obviously fluctuates.

A couple of years ago:

Steve, your essay The Problem With Music and the Big Black tour diary still get referred to and reposted on forums. Do you feel vindicated or oppressed by their continued presence these days?
Steve: The Big Black Tour Diary was a lark, and nobody including me or the guys who first printed it [Forced Exposure magazine] thought much of it at the time. I guess as a snapshot of the kind of loudmouth I was at the time it has value. The “Problem with Music” essay was intended to be a warning to my peers in the music scene during a period in the ’90s when the mainstream music industry was poaching bands off of independent labels with regularity. I wanted to demonstrate that it wasn’t necessarily in a band’s best interest to get involved with a monolithic industry that had no respect for them.

The industry has changed pretty dramatically since then, and virtually all the figures are out of date but the principle argument, that the mainstream of the old-school showbusiness record industry is not operated for the benefit of the bands, holds up. Thankfully there isn’t much of that record industry left, so bands are almost forced to work in a more independent way, which means they are more efficient by default.

Do you have any deep thoughts on turning 50 earlier this year?
Steve: I need bifocals now but my cock still works. Still have my hearing, all my teeth and all my hair. I take the occasional nap. Can’t complain.

he doesn't play with hate speech to prove he can anymore

tell that to OFWGKTA

oh they'll tell themselves before too long, earl sweatshirt's already calling things "offensive"

lol whoops i was unaware of the albini vs odd future beef

earl has grown up more 2 years than the rest of his collective have been in their entire 20-years-and-change existences.

dude an albini-OF beef would be all of the lols

*more in the past 2, agh

it happened! i just had no idea

http://www.spin.com/articles/hot-beef-odd-future-vs-steve-albini/

after reading that I've got Neil Young's "old man" stuck in my head

oh WOOOOWWWWWW.

"n----ring everything in sight," hoooooly shit. how did i miss this? i was actually dumb enough to be paying close attention to OF members not named earl in 2011

http://www.altpress.com/news/entry/foo_fighters_is_the_dumbest_band_name_ever_says_dave_grohl

The DC episode focused on activism much more than I expected. More footage of Mark Andersen and Amy Pickering and others talking than of footage of bands playing

and then they ended apartheid

I did like the episode in general up until the point I had to listen to a foo fighters song and see terrible lyrics flash on my screen

Ha. I thought the music to that song was worse than Grohl's shoehorning in DC history and DC punk phrases into his lyrics.

He doesn't need me to defend him or anything, but in my experience Steve (and everyone who works at Electrical) is very pleasant, professional, and easy to work with.

Also, not to blow his rep or anything but he & I got into an argument (not really, but it's funnier if I say it was an argument instead of discussion) about the level of vocals in the mix of a song, with me saying they should be quieter and him saying they should be louder.

Irony!

I enjoyed both episodes of this show so far.

I admire Albini's work ethic and like a lot of the work he's done. Otherwise, his personal politics as expressed in public often seem pretty loathsome.

2 episodes in :

buddy guy + steve albini + ian mackaye + trouble funk + chuck brown

what the fuck is to hate !!?

this is a major tv channel giving time to music i never expected too see.

cynics be damned.

(that said, i would have loved a chunk more re waxtrax .. but hey .. )

dave grohl + buddy guy + dave grohl + steve albini + ian mackaye + dave grohl + trouble funk + dave grohl + chuck brown + dave grohl

what the fuck is to hate !!?

Waiting to hear reports about Buddy Guy doing the 'jam' portion of his live show, talking about his 'good friend' Dave Group, and the busting out a shredding version of "Everlong".

hopefully, decades from now, when dave gets his medallion from the kennedy center, someone will remember that it was he who brought Big Black to HBO

tbf this series has made me consider, for the first time, in depth, why I am so completely uninterested in the foo fighters discography

oh sure, someone else might have made a montage of chicago music in an HBO doc that included kanye, chicago (the band), muddy waters...but who other than dave would have said "wait. Where's naked raygun?"

hardcore would never have gotten its due from pay cable if not for dave

da croupier : yeah i hear you re DG .. but still ..

i have yet to see a major tv channel give any time to the crews that were given airspace.

i found the show informative and given his obvious major label power, DG lite/light.

(note : i am not a foo stan at all .. just that i found the tv show a lot more interesting than i ever expected)

even if you think the foo fighters are garbage, you have to acknowledge that dave is telling people who'll watch a hbo documentary about the recording of the latest foo fighters album about a lot of cool shit they couldn't find out about otherwise...i mean, without reading

albini saw his face on hbo and it felt good. finally. recognition.

dave is telling people who'll watch a hbo documentary about the recording of the latest foo fighters album about a lot of cool shit they couldn't find out about otherwise..

and the problem with this is ??

there's nothing Grohl is doing, here or otherwise, that some way cooler person of his stature could plausibly be doing in his place, so I got no issues. If it ain't him it would just be Bono, or Jack White, or Billie Joe, or I dunno, Chad Kroeger.

...but who other than dave would have said "wait. Where's naked raygun?"

That's cool and all, but he also could've/should've said, "Wait. Where's Green?"

xpost to be fair it would actually be worse if it was jack white

for all the blandness of his band's current sound grohl is sincere to a fault rather than a smug shitlord with a "realness of music" complex

exactly.
hence why i have no issue with this series.
as a neophyte for most of the topics covered (i was an nme affilated go-go fucker though), i care not re the carrier, as the message is done with a passion rarely found in major tv gubbins.

[xpost.]

[x-xpost : yup .. he may be a corp sucking arse, but DG is giving airtime to people who would never normally get such love]

dave grohl's cousin was so cool in the chicago episode

Wax Trax daughter used to a run a little high-end gift shop down the street from where I live.

If you watch the Muscle Shoals doc, the first voice you hear, iirc, is that of Bono. But anyone who thinks Bono's presence (passionate!) in a Muscle Shoals doc will actually send people to that music is nuts. As I said earlier, the notion that Grohl talking about Buddy Guy, let alone Cheap Trick, will get fans to listen to those acts is as crazy as the belief that Probot sent more than two or three folks in the direction of King Diamond. I do like how he is emphasizing the specific characteristics of how each city inspires or leads to the music made there. I can only assume it will end with a contemporary Los Angeles board room, with dudes in suits walking in slo-mo half-focus, because that is what I hear when I hear Foo Fighters.

If you watch the Muscle Shoals doc, the first voice you hear, iirc, is that of Bono.

indeed it is! that's why it took me a few weeks to finally watch it all the way through (and it was really good for the most part)

Also guilty of the Foo doc slow-mo out of focus walk cliche.