yo bruce’s paraents left him the keys to the car, let’s pick up mary and rosalita and the bros and go cruising for burgers & REDEMPTION
did you know that many people misread the famous song ‘born in the usa’? it was actually about ‘nam and shit. true story.
Which Grauniad writer is this, sorry?
oh snap
yo bruce’s paraents left him the keys to the car, let’s pick up mary and rosalita and the bros and go cruising for burgers & REDEMPTION
one of the funniest things I have read in a long, long time. this should be etched into bruce’s headstone
It’s Worzel, predicting a Springsteen revival.
insofar as you can predict things that already happened.
Perhaps he missed the 1985 one because of Half Man Half Biscuit. It’s understandable.
In many ways Springsteen was the original punk rocker.
In Worzel ways Springsteen was blacker than James Brown.
you know what i’ve always said about Springsteen don’t you: Never trust the Dutch!
can > springsteen >= ayler >>>> go4
can > ayler > springsteen >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> go4
yes but ayler > can
;)
c’est posible!
but i’m a sucker for fuzzy gtrs. so i’m stickin w/original assessment
can > ayler > springsteen >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> go4
— ZR (teenagequie...), February 16th, 2007.
wtf homie
ayler > can > g04 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> springsteen
and i love springsteen, fwiw
i think i used to feel that way but go4 are just not a very good band, is the thing
I disagree, rapscallion.jpeg etc
these days i rate chunks of entertainment! as solid, they had a good sound and a few ideas but a really low hit percentage as far as decent riffs and grooves so most of the time they come off as funkless and stultifying and tedious. isolated highlights here and there after that, but i find their aesthetic largely uninteresting. springsteen’s songs are at least awesome to sing in a bar, point one of seventy in his favor here.
i find their aesthetic largely uninteresting
There’s our sticking point. I really dig their sideways boogie thing and think they neatly fit the post-Beefheart whiteboy funk mold.
But then, I like Beefheart. *shrug*
Did they have much of anything to do with Beefheart?
IIRC he was one of their myriad influences (read it somewhere in SR’s book I think).
Hadn’t noticed! : D
It is, however, notable with this fine Swedish band:
i can see a certain amount of beefheartism in the tinny guitars, but go4’s boogie isn’t sideways so much as nonexistent to my ears—they often sound like they’re afraid to actually engage with the beat. i got no problem with whiteboy funk (the big boys rule forever) but actually being funky is pretty crucial to pulling that off and i don’t think they do it. i wanna say they sound too academic, but that doesn’t really get at it either—dilettantish is closer.
That looks great! Copy on the way to me now...
Tinny guitars in Beefheart? Maybe you are talking about Doc at the Radar Station/Ice Cream for Crow period? (That was actually contemporaneous with Entertainment!, though.)
yeah, that’s what i’m talking about
Well, I say viva fucking retro one-upmanship if it means people will talk about Kraldjursanstalten (music designed to be as intense as Russian ice hockey!) as much as the Gang of Four.
xpost: as you probably know, the recording of Entertainment!, esp. the bass and drums, was deliberately “bad,” for some very specific aesthetic / political reason or other. Willful and perverse as it is, I like how the sound gestures at funk and rock but refuses to actually get down or rock out in any expected way, as if doing so would be too obvious; but if that’s exactly what you mean by academic or dilettantish, then fair enough.
influence is a stupid word but:
they often sound like they’re afraid to actually engage with the beat
This is where it gets obv that I’m a fan (=willing to defend them more than most), but I’d say they’re engaging with the beat in a jazzier way than most conventional funk: playing around the beat, in front and behind...
It’s the staccato guitar stabs, straight bass, and the straight ahead beat that keep them rooted in funk, but the rhythms they give the guitar stabs suggest jazz-style syncopation (maybe even swing?) to my ears.
xxxxxpost
xxp—hah, yes, that’s exactly what i mean by dilettantish! they’ve got their shtick together, but not their shit. i feel like they rely FAR too heavily on that pseudoacademic crutch at the expense of, you know, actually interesting—like, get over yourselves, toolboxes! that said, i’m not selling the first record anytime soon, and i used to be a pretty big fan.
also hoosteen i don’t see them as rooted in funk at all; the opposite if anything!
actually interesting music, i meant
get over yourselves, toolboxes!
Roffle! I do see your point. Still love it.
man, imagine if springsteen ditched max weinberg and whoever and got can’s rhythm section...and then replaced lil’ steven with andy gill, and dumped clarence for albert ayler! that’d be the best shit ever!
KEEP ROY BITTAN
he can stay! : )
“retro one-upmanship” = YOU WIN! UNCLE!
Yes, get Albert Ayler to replace Clarence. And perhaps replace Little Steven with Jimi Hendrix while the Boss is up there.
Get Albert Ayler to replace Clarence then get Michael Maksymenko and the other former members of Kraldjursanstalten (or if any of them aren’t available then either John French, Fred Frith, Henry Kaiser, Richard Thompson, Gary Lucas, Mark Boston, Denny Walley....) to replace the rest of them.
Then I might be persuaded to buy a Springsteen album.
but what would be enough to make you buy the guardian?
and replace bruce with eugene robinson or carla kihlstedt. now we’re talking.
“but what would be enough to make you buy the guardian?”
£9.99 per month - or £10.79 for The Guardian and The Observer.
It would be considerably more if you wanted me to actually read them ‘though, obv.
It should be noted that Max Weinberg, towards the end of the song “Born In The USA,” IS Sunny Murray.
GO4 is not a funk band.
Didn’t say they were a funk band, said they had oblique funk influences by way of the Captain’s blues-rock, which put a foot firmly in the funky camp.
“the funky camp” etc
I’m just saying if you listen to Gang of Four for booty-shakin grooves, you’re missing the point. They do make me stomp angrily around my house though.
Have you ever had a bunch of arty cds and then you realise you don’t listen to them that much. And that really you just want to kick back with the Boss?
I know i have!!!
Does that mean that Miami Steve was Sonny Sharrock?
(xpost to Marcello)
Nick Hornby’s 31 songs
1. Bruce Springsteen—Thunder Road
2. Teenage Fanclub—Your Love is the Place That I Come From
3. Nelly Furtado—I’m Like a Bird
4. Led Zeppelin—Heartbreaker
5. Rufus Wainwright—One Man Guy
6. Santana—Samba Pa Ti
7. Rod Stewart—Mama Been on My Mind
8. Bob Dylan—Can You Please Crawl Out of Your Window?
9. The Beatles—Rain
10. Ani DiFranco—You Had Time
11. Aimee Mann—I’ve Had It
12. Paul Westerberg—Born For Me
13. Suicide—Frankie Teardrop
14. Teenage Fanclub—Ain’t That Enough
15. J. Geils Band—First I Look at the Purse
16. Ben Folds Five—Smoke
17. Badly Drawn Boy—A Minor Incident
18. The Bible—Glorybound
19. Van Morrison -Caravan
20. Butch Hancock & Marce LaCouture—So I’ll Run
21. Gregory Isaacs—Puff the Magic Dragon
22. Ian Dury & the Blockheads—Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3
23. Richard and Linda Thompson—The Calvary Cross
24. Jackson Brownee—Late For the Sky
25. Mark Mulcahy—Hey Self-Defeater
26. The Velvelettes—Needle in a Haystack
27. O.V. Wright—Let’s Straighten it Out
28. Royksopp—Royksopp’s Night Out
29. The Avalanches—Frontier Psychiatrist
30. Soulwax—No Fun/Push It
31. Patti Smith Group—Pissing in a River
Between the book jacket, the thread title (dear God, it’s a quotation, isn’t it?) and that mind-numbing list, I feel so incredibly good about having tossed High Fidelity before hitting page 30.
Somehow I manage to hate Nick Hornby and swear by the movie.
This is where I’d do that Whitman quote about contradicting myself, but that’d out me as fey.
Nah, the movie’s okay. Not great, but half defensible. Hornby’s writing is fucking appalling, though.
I had an early version of the script that a friend in the movie business sent me and one of the scenes had the guys arguing about Mouse on Mars.
31 Songs, in particular its chapter on “Frankie Teardrop,” is one of the most evil and destructive books ever written.
Persistant claims by people who don’t know me that “you’ll love this book; it’s about you!” have always prevented me reading High Fidelity. I read Fever Pitch when I was about 14 and thought he was enough of a cockfarmer just from that. The film I didn’t like either.
I think the destructive influence of Hornby on music writing has by now overtaken his destructive influence on sports writing. Which is quite an achievement.
It is time, I fear, to temporarily stop playing retro one-upmanship and to start beating on Nick Hornby with 2 by 4s until our arms ache.
It is time, I fear, to permanently stop acknowledging the existence of Nick Hornby.
31 Songs, in particular its chapter on “Frankie Teardrop,” is one of the most evil and destructive books ever written.
This should be on the blurb of the next edition. But I fear the smug tosser would wear it like a badge of honour.
I’ve never even touched a copy of 31 Songs, let alone read it—precisely what does he do that’s so bad?
He wants everything to be polite, and bourgeois, and small, like him.
That’s kind of what I suspected.
it’s even got one of those “grandad tries to listen to this horrible current billboard chart music” essays. guess what: the only thing he liked was Alicia Keys.
One of the worst things about 31 Songs is that when he writes about songs I like he uses them to browbeat other songs I also like but happen to be more leftfield!
His TFC chapter is about how nice and lovely and sunny it is, unlike all that nasty, adolescent music like Suicide. Surely there’s a place for both of them? And anyway, he’s kinda got both bands wrong anyway. Doesn’t he know his hero the Boss loves Suicide and references Frankie Teardrop in State Trooper (and indeed covered Dream Baby Dream on recent tours)? And while TFC’s output has mellowed, their left field interests remain—albums with Jad Fair, playing on new Alisdair Roberts and Pastels records etc.
And—it can never be said often enough—Suicide are always at least aware of their own camp/ridiculousness.