Jeff Buckley Classic or Dud?

i am here now fyi

also drunk, which is appropriate

lol...i have a mid-evening hangover myself :/

what some dude said

And while I still believe that Tim has 100x the chops, I cannot deny my affinity for his son.

^ yup

just put on "forget her," straight fire imo

It was like when Cobain blew his brains out, I mean, no big surprise there and no great loss - as something new is always coming down the highway (or, better yet, something old that you've never heard before). Holding anything up as being so untouchably precious is the enemy of truly new ideas in music.

i don't think 'no big surprise' applies to buckley, i mean the guy drowned in a freak accident after spontaneously deciding to go for a swim.

my attitude towards him is pretty much, hey, if his popularity gets more ppl to listen to his dad, cool.

his music's by no means infallible or beyond criticism but the reasons people dismiss or hate on him are generally total superficial bullshit

― lilsoulbrotherlovesdubplatestyle (some dude), Sunday, 8 May 2011 03:32 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm.

before his death (when he'd sold virtually zero records btw) people criticised him for being self-indulgent and ott. now he's dead and he's sold lots of records to uncool people, people criticise him for being anodyne and dull. figure that one out.

i think he's rad tbh, and punch myself in the balls every day for not going to see him play london in 93. i couldn't get anyone to go with me and i should have just gone on my own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHLgKxB14Lo

His earnestness and goofiness didn't mix at-all with the perceived cool of having an inherited 'prestige artist' status, flip-flopping between beautiful poetic wunderkind and goofy Rush-loving guitar nerd makes him such an easy target.

But all said and done I stil dig a lot of his music and especially like his effervescent atitude towards giving props to other artists, like the scatty way he arrives at the Nusrat cover on the expanded Sin-E CD for instance.

"Mojo Pin" is one of my favorite songs ever.

and how can anybody resist "Everybody Here Wants You"

flip-flopping between beautiful poetic wunderkind and goofy Rush-loving guitar nerd

I think you hit on what I like best about him! Like I think half my favorite songs of his are covers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubYDPqi6ht4

Por ejemplo I would have been totes happy if he just did 'sad man in him room' style cover album of 'Lamb...' *skronk*

I've still never listened to "Grace," actually.

oh you totes should, it's a favorite of mine.

O_________________________________________________________________O @ i against i

ps yes listen to grace

XP - he would have done a great Cuckoo Cocoon

yes!!!!! that is exactly what I was thinking.

oh i love his "back in nyc," basement guitar tone and all

he really accessed the evil in it

this is also where i say second disc of sketches or gtfo

xxpost I could hear him doing a very brooding and emotive "The Musical Box"

I wonder if liked XTC?

Anyhoo, my favourite of his cover versions.
http://youtu.be/__uu9kNBDS0

Sometimes I put on the Sin-e set, and it really strikes me how almost confrontational it is. Like, that voice, those songs, those covers, in a tiny, tiny room? I can imagine stumbling on something that intimate might have been pretty uncomfortable.

I think he's a great singer and guitarist, of course, and probably a great songwriter, too. It's almost shame he's judged almost entirely by "Grace," since by all accounts that album was slapped together pretty quickly. Considering it's bookended by live coffee shop meandering and an unfinished album, I can hardly think of another major, so influential artists represented by such an incomplete portrait.

Re: the covers, I appreciate that he seems equally and honestly into the Smiths, Zeppelin, Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan, Genesis or Bad Brains or whatever. I suppose his lack of irony, and that goofy persona, may be what puts some folks off, especially someone expecting an artist more analogous to, say, Nick Drake.

well and i've seen interviews where he's really self serious and """profound""" so the bad brains cover in particular with him laughing and shit was kind of a shock

in my mind he's a dork, first and foremost.

I think of him like I think of Eddie Vedder: in his natural, relaxed state he is a goob. But in yr early 20's they try to behave as serious artists and be earnest & push the goofiness down until no-one knows thats who you are. I cant stand much of the early Vedder bc of that struggle that is obvious now that he has relaxed into his fame...I think Jeff had the same discomfort with all the attention...but if he'd hung around we'd have seen more of his goofishness and it would have tempered that weird, uncomfortably fierce earnestness

yeesh I hope someone can make sense of that, edit much jeez?

Hoos, have you heard the extended Sin-E recording? There's quite a bit of silly mucking around on there.

i have not

It's good!

A lot of guys hated Jeff Buckley because their girlfriends wanted to fuck him.

haha

ladies and gentlemen,

There's only one song on Grace that I actively dislike. (And it's not "Hallelujah." My exhaustion with that song all happened after Buckley's death -- Shrek and Watchmen and everyone else who pounded it into paste.)

"So Real" is the only one I'm ambivalent to

Jewel Box on Sketches has a really beautiful melody and over-written lyrics that still work. Morning Theft is great too, the way the melody is constantly unfolding throughout the song.

Yeah, Morning Theft, Vancouver, Everybody Here Wants You are among his very best I think

nightmares by the sea

Yesss, forgot about that one

morning theft is incredible.

I really love Yard Of Blonde Girls

Something about Sweetheart struck me as tentative, especially after the awkward over-the-topness of Grace. Then I heard the second (mostly demos) disc and thought, yes, this is the Buckley I know and love. I would have been overjoyed if his actual non-posthumous second album had been those 4-track recordings.

I don't think he gets enough credit as a really skilled, inventive guitarist. Mad chords, open tunings (better still, a 12 string electric in open G - harmonic heaven), making complicated things sound easy and easy things sound complicated. Using an electric for solo accompaniment (and really making use of the extra stuff that can be done with it) when most singers would just plink out a few open chords on an acoustic.

yeah that's all v.otm — never heard the stuff he did pre-solo career, but wasn't he playing lead guitar in some kinda prog band?

poll for Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk by Jeff Buckley

i don't think 'no big surprise' applies to buckley, i mean the guy drowned in a freak accident after spontaneously deciding to go for a swim.

my attitude towards him is pretty much, hey, if his popularity gets more ppl to listen to his dad, cool.

Agreed. Upon hearing the news, my first thoughts were about the Buckley family (not that I know the first thing about them) and how tragic it might be for them. My second thought, oddly enough, was how the rumors of Simon LeBon's drowning persisted for weeks (in the pre-internet days of the mid-80s) when the actual event was measured in minutes.

Curious, how many Jeff fans do you think actually found Tim? On the ILM boards I doubt more than 20% matriculated to the elder, and in the general population it's probably less than 5%. But, yeah, the more the better.

I definitely sought Tim out after I got into Jeff.

yeah i migrated to tim from jeff. starsailor and lorca and happy/sad are completely crucial records for me now but i might only barely know them without the tremendous jeff fandom i experienced from ages 12 to okay now.

Me too. Heard Starsailor first and was blown away.

So, let's ask the question: Tim Buckley and Jeff Buckley -- in what order did you hear them?

i got happy/sad on a whim and aint quite been the same since

Whoops, made a mistake there: I heard Jeff first, dug him, then moved onto Tim, whereupon I was blown away by Starsailor.