Tusk Vs The White Album

Birthday - more musical comedy

Yer Blues - i mean, john's voice is great, but there's really not much here because the band isn't quite up for it

Mother Nature's Son - this is ok; paul's take on Paul Simon, i suppose? would be tenth percentile in Simon's catalogue

Me And My Monkey - just bad

Sexy Sadie - lol this one i actually kinda like. another great showcase for John' voice (the best instrument in the group) also shameless horniness in song goes a long way, for me

Helter Skelter - the concept of Paul having the hardest rock song where he goes all out and shreds his vocal chords is hilarious but, i mean, he totally did it, right? the build-release is fantastic. you gotta give it up for this song, imo. i used to be able to make myself cry laughing at this moment from the U2 battle and hum cover
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2hTBVDx7QQ&feature=youtu.be&t=10s

Long Long Long - this one is like, ok someone finally gave them some good drugs lol

Revolution 1 - can't bring myself to knock this chorus (i will say the 'shoobie-doo-wops' don't ring sincere and imo they should) but the arrangement drags to a halt on the verses

Honey Pie - prob best slice of Paul genre pop on the album, and it's a good lead vocal but the arrangement just kind of dithers; something that sloppy would never make it onto a decent ragtime or concert hall 78

Savoy Truffle - holy shit this sucks lol; lyrics would be great self parody of John's loungey psychedelia but i feel like they are not so self aware

Cry Baby Cry - was going to write something about the sloppy accordion that is just audible in the first few bars of this but this is a great song. John is at his best when writing things that sound like they should be underwritten yet just aren't. some choice harmonies. ending is lazy as shit

Revolution 9 - LOL

Good Night - feels insincere, but well done

so this side was better but still, lots of straight awful songs and overall the rebellious sloppiness and kitchen sink arrangements didn't age well

i disagree with a lot of that but i loved reading it all the same. i agree with "Blackbird - a beautiful, clever, perfect composition that i would pay to never hear again before i die" so so much.

my white album top hits:

long long long
i'm so tired
cry baby cry
everybody's got something to hide except me and my monkey
dear prudence
mother nature's son

me and my monkey gets so much hate, idk why, it's a better yer blues

i can accept disagree on the particulars track by track, but everyone MUST agree Tusk is the superior album. i mean,

wow some real hot white album takes itt

flopson otm about the strengths of “sexy sadie” and “i’m so tired” though, they’re my two favorites

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55fee672e4b033763a57ccae/t/58f3afb86b8f5b4f71b1c1f9/1492365257983/

^me putting on Tusk after slogging through White Album to dig up some challops to entertain me ilxor chums

“children’s music”

i'm not gonna do this for Tusk but i mean 3 songs in and already: 'Over and Over' is better than any song on the White Album; 'Ledge' is better than any of the goofy WA outtakes; no truer more perfectly distilled sentiment than 'i don't hold you down, but MAYBE THAT'S WHY YOU'RE AROOOOUND' so so so no contest, for me. also no clue what 'spookiness' you guys are talking about; i heard a grinning smarminess that evinced an ennui with pop, mostly loveless flapping about a studio with more budget than brains. No spooky. i mean, Tusk is an album you can fall in love to

WA is my favorite album of all time
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, October 27, 2017 9:08 AM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*feels vindicated*

“children’s music” is interesting to me because i think a lot of people on this board like stuff that i think is too childish for me and i wonder where people draw the line.

like what makes this stuff children’s music and lil peep not

ya i f/w a lot of juvenilia but i meant like, pre-K; when i listen to obladi or piggies i imagine like, 4 year olds clapping

Fleetwood Mac adult af

but what’s the criteria that makes one ok but the other not? what’s the line that gets crossed when you become a toddler that unlocks Fleetwood Mac?

on another note i would rather dress like a toddler than a teenager tbh

infants and kids actually have way better taste in music than teenagers (by far the worst demographic) but Children's Music is music made by adults trying to reverse engineer what kids like is with few exceptions extremely bad

ok, i think that’s a more interesting angle to argue from, that there’s something wrong with the intention or method of the songwriter

I love Ob La Di Ob La Da, but I understand the hate for it. fwiw was never exposed it thru to constant radioplay. catchy as fuck and really well arranged and produced

i can see how that applies to like, singing born again vegetables but do you really think the intended audience for the white album is children?

xp

i thought on ilm being catchy was not a bad thing?

just a cheap zing on 2 songs mate, rest of the album sucks in different ways. Ob La Di isn't even the worst song on there but i would still never put it on; Piggies and Rocky Raccoon it's more the lyrical content than the music

fair enough

it bears repeating that a big part of the uneasiness and uncanniness of TWA is the sequencing. it's emotional/narrative whiplash w/e i'll do Side 1:

Back in the USSR: satirical high energy rock fakeout
Dear Prudence: beautiful song soaring in the clouds, easy to categorize
Glass Onion: minor key meta-textual dissonant rocker, a beguiling song to put before
Ob La Di Ob La Da: a parody of a single, so catchy most people hate it
Wild Honey Pie: weird spidery studio experiment, a good transition into
The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill: what a death march of a song, sinister lyrics & a trudging pace
While My Guitar Gently Weeps: another 'real song,' no conceit or pose or genre exercise, ends with an incredible guitar solo
Happiness is a Warm Gun: manages to combine all the elements the songs that precede it- collage aspect, humorous/'clever' lyrics, ominous chords, then earnest emotion & passion at the end

good post

otm, i hate this song, only because Paul didn't give it to John to sing (in retaliation for John doing Revolution 9 when Paul was on vacation). Paul doing it sounds silly, but i can imagine John fucking screaming this one and making it good

― flappy bird, Tuesday, October 31, 2017 4:39 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Again, this is backstory getting in the way of the actual reason the song isn't very good, which is that it's a tossed-off 12 bar that has no real reason to exist, and given what the man is capable of, it's not good enough.

me and my monkey gets so much hate, idk why, it's a better yer blues

Heh, I always thought of it as a superior 'Birthday'

Again, this is backstory getting in the way of the actual reason the song isn't very good, which is that it's a tossed-off 12 bar that has no real reason to exist, and given what the man is capable of, it's not good enough.

Backstory has no bearing on my opinion that the song would've sounded better if John sang it. and i like the song, but Paul's delivery is bad & doesn't suit the song- in my opinion

Helter Skelter, afaik the first hard-rock song

no

― Karl Malone, Monday, October 30, 2017 10:37 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hold fire on that till Turrican confirms whether it is or not.

― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Monday, October 30, 2017 10:41 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, but the mistake that people truly make when talking about 'Helter Skelter' is pretending it's in any way top tier Beatles as a song.

It's up there with bringing up Geir out of desperation when you've got nothing left to say.

Flappy, of course it does - you even mentioned it yourself.

I really struggle to see how anyone can describe 'The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill' as a "death march" ... Firstly, it's not a "march", and secondly, it's (as said before) basically a bad campfire song.

I always liked the song & thought John would've done a better job singing it. The backstory, which i found out years later, merely confirmed my thought.

I'd believe you if you were talking about 'Oh! Darling', but I find it really difficult to believe you've made so much fuss over the vocal on a minute and a half throwaway 12 bar on a double LP.

is it that hard to imagine opinions other than your own

It's hard to imagine you having a Beatles-related opinion that isn't coloured by backstory/biography/mythology, yes.

Flopson OTM about 'Good Night' feeling weirdly insincere, also OTM about 'Blackbird' which is one of the songs on The Beatles that is a legit great song, but one which I could happily never hear again.

also no clue what 'spookiness' you guys are talking about; i heard a grinning smarminess that evinced an ennui with pop, mostly loveless flapping about a studio with more budget than brains. No spooky.

YES! This is so on the money that using the abbrieviation seems inappropriate.

I think that detached irony is part of why I like it: a bit like the Beatles playing Zappa or something? Ennui is a pretty justifiable response to pop imo.

"Sexy Sadie" and "Happiness" are the album's best rockers for me, but then again I don't hear the spookiness that y'all do.

uh sorry I mean "Savoy Truffle," not "Sexy Sadie"

Yeah, those are two of my favourites.

"White Album" gets referenced in all sorts of fun places. I can't hear "Oh Darling" without thinking of the Replacements, or "Sexy Sadie" without thinking of "Karma Police."

the fun place that is "Karma Police"

The stuff that flopson calls 'bad musical comedy' mostly does seem funny or clever to me and the 'children's music' stuff mostly feels enjoyably silly or manic.

"Oh Darling" is on Abbey Road iirc, which I'm thankful for, because I never liked it.

lol ok "desperation" - so where should i file your "random beatles fan" pantomimes of other posters' opinions then? like does it really surprise you that i would come to the conclusion that you're not participating in this conversation in good faith?

File 'em under "unlikely scenarios", if you must file 'em anywhere.

I remember when I first heard The Beatles - I actually found it quite disappointing. It felt that they'd just thrown everything on there whether it was any good or not. One of the first things I did was try and condense it down to a single LP that I felt was of the same quality as Rubber Soul or Revolver. I still think that some of the bands worst songs are on The Beatles.

Whenever anyone tries to do this, I feel like they're missing the point. They take out all the fun, ridiculous songs like Bungalow Bill and Piggies, and keep all the proper rock songs like Back In The USSR. It's like trying to put a tether on the album, when half the reason to listen to it is the feeling of never really knowing where it's going to go next. If anything TWA is the truest representation of the psychedelic experience - it's vivid, messy, emotionally all over the place, wondrous, creepy, nostalgic, hilarious and most of all unpredictable.

As a teenager first getting into the Beatles it was these dafter songs that appealed to me the most. Bungalow Bill is more than a 'campfire song with rock backing'. For a start it's about as far from rock music as the Beatles had come thus far. The chorus is happy-clappy, deliberately so, but you'd have trouble getting boy scouts to sing along to the verses. It's more like a fried, dream-logic Disney song but with grotesque Tex Avery characters playing the individual characters. I love it for the same reason I love the Beach Boys' 'Smiley Smile'. I'd take it over many of the straighter songs on TWA, but then I wouldn't change TWA because to do so would be to alter the strange whimsy and character of that album as a whole.

CD Player: "Well, somewhere in the black mountain hills of Dakota there lived a young boy named Rocky Raccooooooon-ah!"

Random Beatles Fan: "Fuck, man!" *bead of sweat drips off their forehead as they shut themselves in their wardrobe*

― Gholdfish Killah (Turrican), Sunday, October 29, 2017 6:23 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

LOL @ CD Player. Yeah that song ends in a gruesome death. For a pastiche, it has a high amount of peril and melancholy. 'I'll be better Doc, as soon as I am able'. Again though, the creepiness of TWA is felt in its flow, not necessarily in one specific song or line. Turrican, you're reminding me of that Peep Show scene where Jeremy rifles through the first book he sees in the university professor's library, reads one line and asks 'And that's meant to be good is it?'

I'd say that Glass Onion is definitely creepy in that it refers back to the Beatles' own Walrus-mythos, like a flashback to a weird nightmare you thought you'd put out of mind.
But so many songs paint pictures that are incomplete. Who is this Rocky Racoon? This Bungalow Bill? Do they know each other? Are they cartoons? Are they violent killers? These Piggies who are eating with forks and knifes - it's not made explicit but they're eating people, right? And what's happening in Cry Baby Cry? Who are these baroque people singing songs of sixpence and slaughtering blackbirds to put in pies? These songs are superficially frivolous but there's a dark undertone to all of them. Number 9, number 9. 'Wild Honey Pie' - a bunch of braying animals trying to emulate a rock song. And what's the relationship between Wild Honey Pie and Honey Pie?

TWA is quaint and creepy, perhaps because it seals the Beatles myth. It at-once self-references and expands the universe created on MMT, Yellow Sub and Peppers, but shows it in a more fracture way, like examining this colourful world through a snowglobe or a glass onion.

i wonder if different masterings affect how one receives this album. so much of what i like in it is atmosphere and vibe and i could see that being really vulnerable to a too-bright or too-punchy sound. would bring out the "kid" thing overmuch potentially. like "cry baby cry" is one of the key points in my spooky/creepy take on this record, those haunted-house piano lines banging down the stairs in between these dead-eyed doll children acting out century-old games in slow motion while miss havisham's cake rots under cobwebs in the corner. but if i'd first heard it on those awful 80s CDs it's possible i'd just hear it as some cutesy pastiche of the wondrous imaginations of children or something... like the lesser end of the elephant 6 version of this material. but my mom's vinyl copy, that's got the vibe.

if TWA is a film, it's Monty Python's Meaning Of Life, a sprawling rollercoaster of sketchy vignettes permeated by an undertone of disgust and violence

This album is exactly like a glass onion in the sense that I can see straight through it. There's nothing in there, which essentially is what the song itself seems to be about.

Whenever anyone tries to do this, I feel like they're missing the point. They take out all the fun, ridiculous songs like Bungalow Bill and Piggies, and keep all the proper rock songs like Back In The USSR. It's like trying to put a tether on the album, when half the reason to listen to it is the feeling of never really knowing where it's going to go next.

You mean that they take out the patchier, written-in-a-cigarette-break stuff and leave in the genuinely great stuff, which is an approach that makes complete sense. I think at this stage I've heard the LP enough times to know exactly where it's going to go, so fortunately I know when to have my finger ready on the skip button, or to lift the stylus.

I've always enjoyed the dark undertones of 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da', though, if we're continuing to talk about things that aren't there.

There's a bit in 'Sexy Sadie' during the outro where the piano goes slightly out of tune and I just think to myself "fucking hell, you couldn't be arsed to get someone to tune the thing!?"