Jeff Buckley Classic or Dud?

If only Bmith had written songs for Suckley...

https://devonrecordclub.com/2016/10/24/jeff-buckley-grace-round-96-nicks-choice/

i love u scik, this is so good & very otm

i'm always leery of buckley writeups because ppl seem to either dismiss most of his music or gush about him so much it's embarrassing

yours hits the bullseye dead-on & captures what is great (& difficult) about his music

Nice write-up, except for all the guilt stuff. I don't think I've ever felt guilty listening to music. Grace definitely feels like music of a certain mood and time for me, neither of which I particularly want to revisit often -- too vulnerable? Too emotional/dramatic? Sort of, though I certainly still listen to music that I could call "emotional" or "dramatic" or "vulnerable". Will play this again soon for a reminder of what I'm apparently avoiding, so thanks for that!

I liked the music, wish there was more fo it . Especially with the first main band. But he seems to have been not a very nice person, at least if you believe Gary Lucas etc.

Would have loved to hear more from that band even without him, but was he the main thing sticking them together.

& I think my favourite song by him was actually written by a member of Fishbone though it sounded like it was directly biographical to Jeff.

Think I have a lot of live stuff with that band with Grondahl etc though not seen it in a while

Just listened, and yeah, still good. Great, even. If anything, I'm more impressed by his voice and singing than ever. Still remembered almost all the twists and turned by heart, so my non-play may very well be down to over-exposure when it came out, and several years after. Onto Sketches...

Middle third of disc one of sketches is a drag but the rest is really good.

I liked that, thank you. I think I'm OK with the sentimentalist in me that can still swoon at 'Lover You Should Have Come Over' (I even love the 'tear' line), though I'm wary of his dodgy poetry and dodgier flares. I've listened to Grace more in the last six months than I have in the last ten years and it's patchy, but damn the high points are high.

& I think my favourite song by him was actually written by a member of Fishbone though it sounded like it was directly biographical to Jeff.

Ooh, which one is that?

What Will You Say which is officially released on Mystery White Boy and possibly elsewhere. Seems to have been mainly written by Chris Dowd possibly with some help from Jeff.

It's been such a long time
And I was just a child then
What will you say
When you see my face?
Time feels like it's flown away
The days just pass and fade away
What will you say
When they take my place?

It's funny now
I just don't feel like a man
What will you say
When you see my face?
My face...

Mother dear, the world's gone cold
No one cares about love anymore
What will you say
When you see my face?

Father do you hear me?
Do you know me?
Do you even care?
What will you say
When they take my place?

My heart can't take this anymore
What will you say
When you see my face?
When you see my,
See my face...

I can feel your time crawling
To a slow end
I can feel my time crawling
To a slow end...

Mother dear, the world's gone cold
No one cares about love anymore
What will you say
When you see my face?

Father do you hear me?
Do you know me?
Did you even care?
What will you say
When you take my place?

Well it's so funny now
I just don't feel like I'm a man
What will you say?

Oh, right. Loved his album as the Seedy Arkestra.

he is incredibly incredibly overtalked about and overrated - and grace is definitely awfully produced and relies on the covers... but there's also a huge amount of brilliance and potential. first disk of Sketches is full of really inspired stuff.

How / why is Grace awfully produced?

oh, because definitely

Grace is wonderfully produced, it reflects Buckley's style nearly perfectly.

wtf

awfully produced how

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