Jeff Buckley Classic or Dud?

For me, "Sketches..." is a different story. I know it's not a 'proper' album and would never have been released in this form if Buckley had lived, but it's pretty damn good, much better than Grace. Without the opportunity to slap a load of raga-strings over the top and over-arrange the hell out of this material, it sounds really strong to me. "Everybody..." "Vancouver", "Yard of Blonde Girls", "Opened Once" are fantastic. The home demos CD, packaged along with "Sketches" is complete crap, of course. The live album sounds like a load of rock-legend showboating, but no doubt there will be more live stuff to follow. Probably best to avoid. Overall, dud I suppose.

Classic

I find his canonistion problematic, even though he was a personable and approachable fellow. One above average record and an interesting live set does not a classic make.

In case you don't get it, Jeff Buckley was never very commercial, but he did some very dissonant and difficult 4-track experiments that ended up on his second product "Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk." He also did a very harsh, grating porno-punk song in the best tradition of, of, heck I dunno. My only exposure to punk is Greenday and Elastica, and I don't even know if they're really punk.

This has to be the most un-Ned sentence ever.

agreed:

Ned, i just can't abide Coldplay either and i don't know why. No actually i do. they peddle 'cheap, emotional patriotism' - see 'the scientist'. they send shivers down my spine in a lot of very bad ways, where somehow Jeff despite being One For The Ladayz manages to touch nerve-endings in an intimate folk-rock aor ballady number without resorting to such lyrical, emotional schmaltz that seems to cling like Gwyneth to a lot of Clayplod's output. 'Grace' is a fine, fine record of it's kind.

crappy cash-in live/unreleased albums, greedy moms, walking into rivers and rampant self-mythologisation: Dud.

Agreed Matt Purdy. For me it's all about Tim Buckley. Wading through the smack-outs and jazz odyssies may dissuade some, but pan-handling Tim's back catalogue gives a clear 50% yield of PURE FUCKING NUGGETS.

Sometimes nothing, no-one, is ever going to hit the mark like a Tim Buckley classic. No-one. And for the casual listener the joy is discovering these treasures without having them rammed down your throat by anyone.

I will allow that there did get to be a point where I felt like it had gone a little too far with the posthumous releases, though. I still find the double SinE CD to be painful to listen to, I guess because it's such an intimate setting and he just seems so alive and in your face, and the video interview that came with that was devastatingly short - like 15 minutes. At some point I just wanted to stop reopening the wounds and finally quit grieving him and it was like I wasn't being allowed that. Some part of me feels that where he was planning on going musically when he left us was just so much more important than this stuff. And I didn't buy the reissue of Grace, either.

I hope no one takes offense at any of this, it's just my perspective. I don't play him often now but when I do, I prefer to listen to the last things he did, even where they are rough. I'd like to think he's still continuing on somewhere, I guess, that he's on his 4th album now and we just aren't privy to it.

And Jeff, who I was acquainted with, didn't like her either.

I was at that Sin-e show and it sounded a lot better in person than it does on the double live reissue. He was really amazing live. Fearless even.

Exactly.

Jeff, who I was acquainted with, didn't like her either.

What gave you that impression?

They were barely speaking when he died.

She's a nightmare. Check out the wedding picture of her and Tim and the look on Tim's face. He knew.

Jed: OTM re: "Morning Theft."

I'm also quite fond of "Jewel Box."

Grace is obviously a fantastic, really musically accomplished and just plain beautiful album, though it took me a while to warm to it myself. Now I consider it one of the best of the 90s. Who has heard the recent 2cd + DVD edition? Is there anything on there that hasn't already been released on the various other odds 'n sods packages that is worth hearing?

Who says I don't like Neil Diamond?

Classic.

Well, personally speaking, the notion that his mother was trolling around the `net, chastising JEFF'S FANS for discussing his music (when, the point could be made in the particular instance i was caught in, it was the BAD BRAINS who were actually getting short-changed) left quite a bad taste in my mouth, so much so that it almost completely put me off the man's music, which is a shame. I'd paste some of the comments that were made during the exchange (it was rumored that she also used a variety of pseudonymns), but .....hmmmm....I was going to say "why dig up old bones?" or "that's just water under the bridge", but I can't think of a colloquialism that isn't somehow in exceptionally poor taste.

In any case, it never struck me as a good idea that someone so close to the deceased should be in charge of his vaults. I'm sure her maternal instincts and deep feelings of loss amplified any legitimate legal grievances, so she's not really to be blamed, I suppose. Still, I can't listen to the stuff anymore without thinking of her sitting at a computer, foaming at the mouth, ripping her hair out and painting herself red with lipstick like Diane Ladd in "Wild at Heart".

It's got space, nuance, atmosphere, quiet bits that suck you in, enormous crescendos. Yes, it's OTT and baroque and dramatic at times, gut this isn't minimal techno; it's lavish, emotional rock music. I've also always preferred his originals to the covers, so "awfully produced and relies on the covers" is a nonsensical criticism to me. I skip the covers half the time.

for me the issue with buckley is not simply that it's ott, ott is fine in music, but that his vocal style seems like some white boy equivalent to whitney houston, even though he's actually going for nina simone.

I'm listening to "Mystery White Boy" lately and I have to admit this guy was pretty incredible.

"Dream Brother" scorches

did people watch that movie about the 'greetings from tim buckley' concert slash was it any good

I only learned recently that Joan Wasser aka Joan as Police Woman was a good friend of him. Somehow that makes me love her music even more.

This previously unreleased Buckley/Lucas song, No One Can Find You Here, is spectacular. On Spotify now, from a forthcoming album by Gary Lucas and an Italian JB soundalike. Maybe I need to dig into Gary Lucas' catalogue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHqfMvrmPE8

was watching this today, fucking incredible

i was a total jeff buckley stan in high school and... for good reason

all i do in this thread is talk about how much jeff buckley meant to me in high school lol

i love that frankfurt show!!

I used a jeff Buckley song as an audition piece for a musical theater troupe in hs (I did not get in lol)

what happened to the audio at 20:05?

i was a total jeff buckley stan in high school and... for good reason

This must have been at least a decade after his death, unless you're significantly older than I thought you were. Thanks for the link, btw.

nah it was only about four years after he died. i bought grace when i was 13, in 2000-2001 thereabouts

explosive fandom started when i bought sketches the next year. i think i love the first disc of sketches even more than grace, and it helped me get through a pretty traumatic year of my life. the expanded live at sin-é which iirc came out in a little bit later (2003?) opened up so many musical worlds to me at once i consider it sort of like this life-altering rosetta stone for the future of my taste. i was so in the tank that i even acquired a few of the cash-in posthumous releases—my parents definitely bought me the box set of grace singles for christmas one year, which is how i first became acquainted with big star, that was major. jeff buckley kicked ass

Love Jeff. I used to hit on this French girl by pretending not to know the translation to the words to “Je nen connais pas le fin” off the sin e EP

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxJI7hlPdnY

just... what a song. greg dulli covered this at an afghan whigs show i saw a few years ago and i died in my seat

my favorite off sketches is “yard of blonde girls”

that song is so crunchy and weirdly hot(????)

Morning Theft is my favourite Jeff Buckley song!

gifts for boot-heels to crush, promises deceived.

meet me tomorrow night... or any day you want...

xxpost yes weirdly hot is otm - has kind of a vague sleazy 70’s classic rock vibe that i like, that he hadnt really fooled around with before. i wish he could have hung around & done more stuff in that crunchy vein

unrelated: my favorite thing, period, is when he did his spoken Edith Piaf impersonation in Paris, i think it’s on the Mystery White Boy live album. he was a huge dork

idg the word crunchy in relation to this.

guitar goes crunch

^ gets it

yer both mad.

>:(

Oh look an excuse to post this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lPdj4mE6wQ

what a song

one of the very few songs totally ruined beyond salvage thanks to high school cringe as mentioned upthread

Jeff & Michael Tighe awkwardly hosting 120 minutes in 1995 - i get distracted purely by the fact that he’s smoking on camera


https://youtu.be/5Y03BeeYH3k

i saw him twice live in Melbourne - once at a community radio station rooftop gig in 1995, and once at the Palais in 1996.
I was supposed to go to his first Australian show at The Lounge too but I was sick & my friends went & ugh regrets i have had them

i was a fan, am still a fan, but after his death how he was remembered ~culturally~ didnt seem seem to have a lot to do with what it was like enjoying his music as a fan at the time & my enjoyment of him became more and more private

like now, what, 23 years later? so much of the narrative about him now is limiting & binary, either ppl complaining about Hallelujah or claiming his sainthood.
like with Cobain it was different bc he was so massive but it feels with Jeff Buckley that somehow his memory was overwritten with lots of crap that just doesnt even honor him

anyway

he was fun, magnetic, weirdly humble, & also a dorky normie who liked records.

oh my god that 120 minutes video is extremely goofy

i saw him twice live in Melbourne

God, I envy that.

I know people tend to kind of automatically, maybe lazily assume he was headed for superstardom of some kind, imo the most realistic scenario for him was more like a few more hype years and maybe one or two more big to semi-big album cycles, then settling into a solid if idiosyncratic singer-songwriter career after that, ultimately cropping up as a hip influence on the youngsters....around now, really.

(I'm not trying to downplay the tragedy of course. I wish he'd gotten to do all that!)

I know people tend to kind of automatically, maybe lazily assume he was headed for superstardom

yeah this never tracked for me, he was headed toward making weirder and more fascinating records imo

the superstar assumption is just bc of his voice but it completely discounts his personality, background & literally everything irl about him

This guy was really something… much respect (I’ve been spinning Mystery White Boy & Live at Sin-é)

He was a f’in good guitar player, man (and I’ve heard one or two).

Imagine having the dude singing a few feet from you while you were eating a muffin.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, August 15, 2013 5:48 PM (ten years ago)

Sin e is so great, I wore out that CD

Almost exactly 30 years ago he sang a few feet from me while I was having a Sunday lunchtime pint in the biker pub in Stevenage Old Town.

https://live.staticflickr.com/3023/3250195553_a56704d029_b.jpg

I went to his Olympia gig and indeed the Piaf moment was charming. One of the few things I remember about it !
I don’t know if his duet with Liz Fraser was mentioned here. I wasn’t aware of that story then.

More pics here https://flic.kr/s/aHsj9mtUAQ He was persuaded to do a second set in Stevenage that evening, third on the bill to some local punk bands at the new town youth club.

Very cool !

Amazing!

getting a 404 on that flickr link?

Not having looked at my flickr account in about 15 years I realised all the pictures of my kids were publically viewable so I quickly made them private! Think I've just made the JB pics public again.
Think