Quote ILM posts that have permanently influenced the way you "hear" a song

hahaha

When I saw the thread title I was thinking "this has never happened" but that Atomic Dog reading is great. I never thought of it quite that way.

RIGHT ABOUT NOW

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v617/WidowOfDestiny/Jiggle_Panda.gif

THE FUNK SOUL BROTHER

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v617/WidowOfDestiny/Jiggle_Panda.gif

CHECK IT OUT NOW

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v617/WidowOfDestiny/Jiggle_Panda.gif

― Whiney G. Torture Garden (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, November 2, 2008 12:02 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

keep it going Whiney

― The Macallan 18 Year, Sunday, November 2, 2008 12:06 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This whole post:

When you solo in straight-ahead jazz, the notes you play will generally reflect the harmonic structure of the song -- i.e. the chords. In tonal songs that are harmonically simple, the palette of "key notes" you have to choose from remains largely the same from chord to chord, so that at any given moment there are particular pitches that you can use as touchstones or "common tones", feeling pretty sure they won't dissonate. (For instance, if you're playing a very basic B-flat blues, the notes B-flat, C, E-flat, F, and G are all "safe" in that they're present in the scales that underlie all of the chords in a B-flat blues -- B-flat 7, E-flat 7, and F7. However, a solo made up of only those notes will likely be terrible, not least because it excludes "chord-defining" pitches and can't convey any sense of harmonic motion.)

The thing that makes the title track of Giant Steps so unusual is that the chords are changing very rapidly, and each chord is fairly remote from the previous one, so those touchstones are quite few. On top of that, the song is so fast that any given common tone is fleeting -- if you play a particular pitch for longer than a measure or so, the odds are that it will clash with a chord that's changing underneath you. So basically, the experience of improvising over "Giant Steps" can feel a little like trying to play catch in one of those gyroscopic whirlythings in which they train astronauts -- your frame of reference is constantly changing, and you have to think ahead at high speed in order to make sure that each of your choices will connect with where you're going to be in two seconds.

Given all that, the fact that Coltrane was able to play melodic and memorable solos in such a context is really remarkable, let alone the fact that he played them with total mastery. He didn't just plow his way through the chords, he weaved them into the fabric of his improvisation in such a way that, while they were integral to his solo and completely implicit in it (i.e. you can reconstruct the chord changes from his unaccompanied solo), he wasn't at all governed by them: he wasn't just running down the changes, he was using them as one would use a blues or "I Got Rhythm" changes or any other ground. In other words, he made the seemingly unnatural sound natural, even effortless, and in doing so he normalized a new part of human musical experience. It would've been incredibly easy to make "Giant Steps" sound like a gimmick, but Coltrane's sheer mastery made it seem instead like an open door, full of possibilities for new harmonic approaches that both he and others -- and anyone willing to listen and work hard -- could explore.

― Phil, Tuesday, 4 June 2002 00:00 (10 years ago) Permalink

Wow, that's great. I know next to nothing about jazz, or Coltrane, but listening to the track for the first time with that post in mind I feel like I'm "getting" it.

(note, i recognize that "i know next to ntohing about jazz, or Coltrane" might as well be followed by "or music")

For instance, if you're playing a very basic B-flat blues, the notes B-flat, C, E-flat, F, and G
So he is saying play a C minor pentatonic over B-flat blues. I hadn't known this trick.

Wow what a great post

Take "Glad to see you Go" from Leave Home - straight into a Beach Boys/Eddie Cochrane morphed melody and just listen to the way that the song shifts gear slightly on lines 3 and 4 of the verse as Tommy closes the high-hat a touch under the chords and melody. The shift into the chorus is sublime and the sheer rush as it comes back to the last verse from the middle 8 ("I need somebody good, I need a miracle") is like a ride in the space shuttle - on the outside.

I think of this post and the space shuttle image every time I hear this song

i remember seeing an interview w/the sugar ray guy on tv when this song came out. he said something like, "yeah we've been wanting to work with supercat for a long time." I mean, I also want to work with supercat.

― Dominique, Friday, February 22, 2008 8:16 AM Bookmark

I actually recorded most of 'Folktronic' stark naked. Damn these overheated New York apartments!

― Momus, Tuesday, February 26, 2002 8:00 PM (11 years ago)

lol

And am I the only one that wants to laugh out loud every time they hear Stipe sing "I want to wash you with my hair" on 'Be Mine'?

― The Jupiter 8 (Turrican), Sunday, 11 November 2012 18:36 (10 months ago) Permalink

he wants to wash you with his pubes

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 11 November 2012 18:39 (10 months ago) Permalink

Well DUH Horace, obviously there's a double-entendre to "rub me the right way" -- it's not particularly complex and it's in that cliche/metaphor from the beginning. You gotta rub her, obviously, but you gotta rub her the right way. That's pretty much the opposite of an "exhortation to date-rape" -- it's a warning that if you want to get anywhere with her, you're going to have to do it her way and keep her happy.
I think there's a deeper thing here, actually. Songs for the teen-girl demographic spend a lot of time trying to capture the push/pull wariness of teen-girl sexuality, which is exactly what this song is about: body says yes, heart says maybe not; assertion to guy that basically says "respect me" and "I'm into it but I want to be treated like it's magic"; all the normal wariness of wanting to be a part of a sexual world but being daunted by the danger of winding up feeling heartbroken or disrespected or used, but since song can be fantasy this one's about taking control of all that wariness. This totally sells to plenty of early-teen girls, and it totally should: it's basically a picture of the hero who's confidently confronting all of your hesitations about the sexuality you're about to encounter.

And that's, like, a big lesson to be giving -- I mean, painting a picture for impressionable young people of how love and sex are going to work? -- so I understand the desire to be hyper-critical, to always poke holes in the always-insufficient picture that's being drawn. But there comes a point where it's not even about criticism anymore -- it's about critics or parents or whomever trying to blow up the singer's authority to even draw that picture in the first place, accurate or inaccurate as it may be. I was sort of put off by this song interpretation because it struck me as a cheap-shot of exactly that sort -- stop Aguilera from telling the kids what life's like because surely she's wrong (and yet in this instance I'd say she's hit the nail pretty much right on the head).

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, June 30, 2003 9:08 AM (10 years ago)

Oh, so now that the backlash seal has been broken, I can say that this stuff sounds like music white dudes caress their nipples to

― Herbie Handcock (Murgatroid), Sunday, August 10, 2014 10:44 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Music is all magic...you can't even HOLD it! It's just there in the air.

this is pretty fuckin otm, no irony

― Lift Your Skinny Jeans Like Antennas to Heaven (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, April 10, 2010 2:33 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm delighted to have made this thread.

no no you guys this one's pretty easy

"I look outside my window and I watch the Cars" - Paul is in London where Roy Thomas Baker is producing their debut, he sees them arriving at the studio daily for tracking
"I fear I'll do some damage one fine day" - he is thinking of covering one of their songs in his own style
"but I would not be found guilty by a jury of my peers" - old hippies will love my Cars cover no matter what it sounds like
"still crazy after all these years" - I am an axe murderer

― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, August 30, 2011 12:57 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In Underpass by John Foxx, I always think he's shouting "Underpants!"

This is mega-annoying because it's a really cool song but I can't listen to it anymore.

― jamesmichaelward, Monday, 22 October 2001 00:00 (fifteen years ago) Permalink