Will Oldham/Palace/Bonnie Prince Billie: S&D

thx :D

i really liked lie down in the light

superwolf might be my overall fav thing he's done

superwolf def has some of my all time favorite tracks on it, for sure

thx for sending those tunes over, gbx. no worries on the rest of it *`~unless you have a moment to spare someday~*

first palace bros singles/rarities comp (lost blues) works for me as his most solid work.

beck comparison is a good one

I think these two guys were at about the same point musically circa '93 and Beck may have even bit Oldham a bit.

also, have always admired how willing and able he is to continuously reformat and reimagine his old stuff. i've only seen him live twice (Walker last year, Boston...seven years ago?), but those shows and the live albums are seriously impressive imo. like, when i saw him in boston (@middle east), it was on the heels of Master And Everyone, so i went in expecting a pretty hushed affair. instead, he came out in eyeliner, and blazed thru the whole album, in order, front to back, wild and electric. lyrics and basic tunes aside, it was a complete transformation, and completely awesome. then he played old shit by request, all of it different from the 'originals.'

i honestly can't think of many other contemporary artists (instrumentalists aside) that play it so fast and loose with their stuff.

cf the lol strokes concert i went to a few months later which was mechanically faithful to the album. it was like someone hit shuffle on itunes.

and n/p omar, i'll see about getting the second set up later today.

gbx hook me up?

i honestly can't think of many other contemporary artists (instrumentalists aside) that play it so fast and loose with their stuff.

― BIG MUFFIN (gbx), Thursday, December 2, 2010 12:03 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dylan is the only one i can think of

yeah, that's who i was thinking of, too. was trying, and failing, to think of anyone else.

Prince (live at least)

really? prince did pretty standard version, like a little more jammed out but still basically the song, the 2 times i saw him

i mean, last time i saw dylan it took me 2 verses to figure out he was doing "tangled up in blue" fer chrissakes

Neil Young, maybe?

actually the correct answer is prob any number of jazz artists

instrumentalists aside

I haven't seen Prince in 10 years but afaict usually he is really flippant/goofy with his old material, shoving everything into a medley, dropping verses/choruses, instrumentation is usually totally different, etc. - I guess yeah they are just more jammy. which is kinda required by the fact that most of his stuff was not recorded live with a band to begin with.

I bring him up because the end result doesn't really bear TOO much resemblance to the recorded versions, even tho they are still identifiable

i honestly can't think of many other contemporary artists (instrumentalists aside) that play it so fast and loose with their stuff.

like it or not, ever jam band ever (the Dead being the most obvious example)

if anybody wd be cool enough to slip me an ILXmessage too I would dance with glee? but no worries if it's a chore
me too!

got u tylerw

like it or not, ever jam band ever (the Dead being the most obvious example)

― If Assholes Could Fly This Place Would Be An Airport, Thursday, December 2, 2010 1:30 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

jamming doesn't count imo. stretching out and elaborating is one thing, but oldham takes whisper-soft strummy beardo songs and overhauls them into shreddy electro rave-ups. like, they are occasionally unrecognizable. also, at least from what i've heard, the Dead/whoever still hang all their improv on a basic song structure, like the head of a jazz tune, you know? each iteration of a tune might be completely different, and you may not recognize it if you walk in in the middle, but eventually they'll circle back.

i mean, Greatest Palace Music is sort of a singular artifact, as far as i can tell.

Boy, there's a caveat for everyone else, huh? Oh, right, except, umm, Bob Dylan.

w/e

and yeah, except for bob dylan, because he does the same thing. jam bands ~don't~. jazz dudes DO, but they're playing jazz, and that's sorta the point sometimes. but in the realm of rock and roll or w/e, i can't think of anyone that reinvents their back catalogue as frequently and as often as oldham.

i think with jam bands like the dead, it's about extending songs, exploring them in a more expansive manner, not necessarily really changing the actual skeleton of the song. with someone like dylan, he often really reimagines the songs. there was a version of girl from north country few years back that, to my ears, had a completely different chord structure than the original (sounded like friend of the devil, actually). don't know if oldham falls into this camp -- i'm not an obsessive fan, but it is pretty rare.

if the song is entirely re-structured, including chords, what makes it the same song? that the dude remembered to repeat a refrain every so often?

I mean, P-funk does that in their own peculiar jam-bandy way when they play live. They hit a groove and then George recites as many choruses from various songs as he can think of, for ex.

whether or not the song is a "version" of Tear the Roof Off, Get Off Your Ass and Jam, Mothership Connection, Sentimental Journey, etc. is kinda a moot point

if the song is entirely re-structured, including chords, what makes it the same song? that the dude remembered to repeat a refrain every so often?
yeah, i mean, sometimes it sorta seems like Dylan is just awkwardly fitting old words into a new song, but it works on occasion -- like an visual artist painting the same landscape from a different angle, you kinda get a new vibe from the rearrangements.

yeah that makes sense, esp given the v nature of a lot of parliament songs in general (~groovy~).

in the case of oldham, it's the "same song" because it's got the same lyrics, and that's about it. phrasing, chord structure (i ~think~), delivery, instrumentation, etc. are all different sometimes.

xps

I am going to leave it to GG to express my absolute antipathy towards Dylan, she does it more eloquently than even the biggest lektual on here could or indeed a working class spaz like me could. I personally despise him and consider him one of the most contrived and overrated bags of shite from 20th century music. Will Oldham certainly isn't perfect but he is worth a thousand Dylans.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/jun/30/popandrock.poetry

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/red/blue_pics/2008/09/12/germaine_greer.jpg

Dylan-haters are the equivalent of James Brown-haters imho

like if you hate him I kinda think you don't actually like/understand popular music in the latter half of the 20th century

gauntlet THROWN

oh shit.
i don't even get what that article is saying -- she doesn't think dylan's lyrics work as poetry? fair enough. do they work as lyrics? YES.
also, "not fit to tie woody guthrie's shoes?" was this written in 1962?

woody guthrie had SHOES?? what a sellout

germaine greer has some weird opinions + she loves telling everyone abt them

if the song is entirely re-structured, including chords, what makes it the same song? that the dude remembered to repeat a refrain every so often?

I mean, P-funk does that in their own peculiar jam-bandy way when they play live. They hit a groove and then George recites as many choruses from various songs as he can think of, for ex.

― goat, camel, horse, and water buffalo (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, December 2, 2010 2:10 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's different than that though....

here's a pretty good example: tonight i'll be staying here with you original vs. the rolling thunder tour...one's jaunty pop country one is a raging 70s rocker but it's still fundamentally the same song, even if the arrangements and some of the chord voicings have been changed

like if you hate him I kinda think you don't actually like/understand popular music in the latter half of the 20th century

^^^^

i honestly can't think of many other contemporary artists (instrumentalists aside) that play it so fast and loose with their stuff.

Dan Bejar / Destroyer kinda does this but not to the same extent

I saw him on the tour for Your Blues and it was raggedy crazy electric versions of those songs (w/ Frog Eyes as the backing band)

Yep, Bejar definitely fits that category, and, FWIW, he's a far, far better songwriter than Bonnie at his best

there are recorded versions of those Your Blues reworks on the Notorious Lightning EP, fwiw.

I don't even have to make the Dylan comparisons or fuel the controversy anymore! My work here is done.

xpost - yep I almost mentioned that it became an EP. I think he used to do this kind of thing a lot more (friend who saw him at SXSW circa Streethawk/This Night barely recognized the songs until the choruses came in) and it was a little maddening b/c he didn't play out very much. nowadays he's kind of toned it down I think.

"like if you hate him I kinda think you don't actually like/understand popular music in the latter half of the 20th century"

[Disparaging Voice]Yes mate you are totally correct, the essence of 20th century popular music has simply passed me by because I dont like one strand off its entire fabric.

I hear more about the human condition in one simple song by luminaries such as Skip James or Lightning Hopkins than in Dylans entire back catalogue (and I have tried many of his albums).

Admittedly they arguably were making music in the early half of the 20th century, but quite close to his era.

Your response is just the archetypal Dylanapologist arrogance I would expect from folk who cant just settle for him being merely their own particular favoured strand of 20th century popular music. You have this pathological need to elevate him above everyone else in the world, sort of like inverted adult teenyboppers with yer Bobbie Williams. Are you suggesting he is the motherlode of all 20th century greatness? Very shortsighted, deluded and plain wrong.

Obviously because a lot of folk with pallid dungeon-tans and wavering eyes spend a lot of time disserting his greatness, he is obviously not a mere strand but a godlike enigma etc zzzzzzzzzzz. He isn't Mozart, do you realise this?

u mad