Jeff Buckley Classic or Dud?

two biopics?

http://www.soulracer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/4-Without-Limits.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hsIxFm6VK0

I like him as sung by Genevieve Schatz.

Music starts 1:45ish.

No Dan Rossen in starring role of biopic, no credibility.

Nah, James Ransone!

Dan Rossen? Neither looks nor sounds like Buckley?

Jeff Suckley.

http://www.soulracer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/4-Without-Limits.jpg

― omar little, Wednesday, September 19, 2012 11:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lol... ive thought about doing a poll on these

Ha James Ransone would be amazing.

Here's Penn Badgley (he off Gossip Girl) doing "Lilac Wine". As far as imitations go... surprisingly not terrible?

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

i actually thought the trailer for the buckley flick he's in looked okay. Except for Kate Nash.

really? cause I thought it looked pretty awful - why is it shot like a 500 Days of Summer-type rom-com?

That said, I wasn't expecting Badgley to be the best thing about this. He sounded really good in the tiny bits of music shown.

his version of "Hallelujah" is one of my least favorite pieces of music ever

― corey, Saturday, May 7, 2011 2:34 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

i used to think this was badass when i was a teenager, just tried listening to it now and i couldnt prevent myself from laughing my damn buns off at it, hes so freaking overdramatic

I have no prob with Buckley's version; I just never thought "Hallelujah" was that good a song to begin with, at least not something that warrants over a thousand known cover versions. (The rest of Grace is great though - "Lover, You Should've Come Over" and "Last Goodbye" both feel like the soundtrack to my life).

John Cale's "Hallelujah" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> every other version (including cohen's)

his melodrama is very 90s. very Reality Bites romantic montage. still, i think that Sketches shows that his songwriting was still developing and he could have done a lot better than Grace had he lived.

tyler OTM

jeff's covers are never about giving himself over to the song, they're about JEFF BUCKLEY CAN SING REALLY WELL

Jeff Buckley at the Garage in 1994 was one of the most boring shows I've ever seen.

jeff's covers are never about giving himself over to the song, they're about JEFF BUCKLEY CAN SING REALLY WELL

disagree at least re: his van morrison covers and his weird homespun version of "back in nyc"

I heard a really nice version of Elton John's 'Curtains' once, understated.

yeah the Cale version is still legit. also props to him (or perhaps... boos to him???) for setting the template for every cover to follow

maybe i'm wrong, but it feels more like j buckley taking cale as the template set the template for every cover to follow from there? or at least the vast majority.

not rly sure why but jeff buckley is one of the few idols of my teenage years who i haven't returned to in some way. others have faded away but then i've felt compelled to revisit them over the period of ten years or so, but jeff, despite being a major teen obsession, i have no desire to listen to again.

not rly sure why but jeff buckley is one of the few idols of my teenage years who i haven't returned to in some way. others have faded away but then i've felt compelled to revisit them over the period of ten years or so, but jeff, despite being a major teen obsession, i have no desire to listen to again.

― Perfect Chicken Forever (Merdeyeux)

I had the same thing happen to me. In the late 90's I listend to Grace probably once every day and then suddenly I just stopped listening to him at all. A few weeks ago I put it on for the first time in probably eight years. I just didn't get a lot from it, not sure if I just associate it too much with with an angsty teenager. I still enjoyed the title track, Last Goodbye, So Real and Lover but I didn't care for much else.

I played Sketches right after it and enjoyed that so much more. Everybody Here Wants You is a stunning song, easily the best he did.

Agree with the whole hating Hallelujah thing, I just think it's a boring song whoever does it.

'morning theft' and 'eternal life' will stay among my favorites forever. could take or leave the rest.

sketches is just fantastic, so many great things on there

yeah, he was headed in a really interesting direction w/ some of that stuff

"Grace" popped into my head the other day, not really sure why—haven't thought about the album in a dog's age, and when I do I usually repress it immediately. great vocal on that track tho, idc if it's "melodramatic" or whatever

... also I've been listening to a lot of Shearwater so my tolerance for operatic male rocks vocals is at historic highs

*rock vocals, duh

yeah "Grace" is a pretty neat song

Re: "Grace", the section from 3:14-3:29 is one of the most gorgeous things to come out of the 90s.

i was obsessed with buckley in middle and high school and i mostly can't listen to those records anymore but i still think the dude had incredible taste in the songwriters/vocalists he took things from (his inexorable love of van morrison and nina simone makes me almost believe he was trying to combine their vocal approaches). i also thought he was a great interpreter but that's probably easier to disagree with bc "hallelujah" and "lilac wine" are straight rips of cale and simone respectively and his other covers are pretty shrill (even given that i seriously love his cover of "back in nyc")

oh lol upthread i express appreciation for that "back in nyc" cover oh well

that's ok, it's worth saying again

Safe to say that his true talent was as a song stylist and interpreter more than as an original composer, very much in the grand tradition of the greats that came before him. Along those lines, I would argue that his "Lilac Wine" towers over Simone's. His version dreamily conjures an evocative drunklust, whereas hers always struck me as a tentative, bloodless monochrome sketch. And I adore Simone.

I love his drunk impersonation of Edith Piaf in one of his live shows (I can't remember which off the top of my head)

That's a neat fifteen second to've picked. Those backing vocals really leaped out at me just now, I'd never really noticed them before. There's something very Old South about them, what is it (musically speaking)?

He tends to do that sort of thing in other places as well, although in subtler ways. Check out "Ulalume" and listen to what's happening in the back of the track vocally.

I love his drunk impersonation of Edith Piaf in one of his live shows (I can't remember which off the top of my head)

― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, August 15, 2013 6:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

L'Olympia in Paris, 1995, where Edith frequently performed. Jeff thought the French audience would appreciate a Piaf cover; he was right.

Sometimes it quietly blows my mind that he was doing these fully committed covers of Genesis, the Smiths, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, bad Brains, Nina Simone and the like in a tiny coffee shop. Imagine having the dude singing a few feet from you while you were eating a muffin.

He was a great interpreter, yes. But he also wrote some particularly fantastic songs of his own. A terrible loss.

That deluxe Sin E 2CD set is probably my favourite Buckley release.

How did they go about recording it, and what even gave them the idea? I guess it's one man and a guitar, you don't need the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, but I can't think of any other pristine live albums recorded in such a poky venue.

I think Columbia didn't really have much of an idea where to start with Buckley's recording career, he didn't have many songs or a band so for the sake of releasing something they put out a short vérité document of where he was at. It didn't even come out on Columbia in the UK.

<q>Sometimes it quietly blows my mind that he was doing these fully committed covers of Genesis, the Smiths, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, bad Brains, Nina Simone and the like in a tiny coffee shop. Imagine having the dude singing a few feet from you while you were eating a muffin.</q>

More mindblowing was seeing him turn up at my local rockers boozer in Stevenage one Sunday afternoon in 1994 and play Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Van Morrison etc etc to an indifferent gang of hungover reprobates (I took a buncha pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephentrousse/sets/72157613314694188/) (After he had a nap he played another set in town that evening at the local youth club, playing third on the bill to a couple of schoolboy punk bands)

That's extraordinary. Great photos!

That's very cool.

Buckley gets a bad rep for what he's come to represent, and the people who've name-checked him and nicked bits of his style, since he died, but his recorded and released output is pretty damn good.

agreed

I regret passing up a ticket for him

I have a mate who did the pied piper thing with him that night at the 12 Bar Club in London