"Which country is the strongest?
Who plays the best guitar?
Who f*cking cares
Under the stars"

Quote from: BiscuityBoyle on May 04, 2020, 11:47:59All of this is to say that I am genuinely curious why Sue felt that my apparently "innocent" (in reality nothing is innocent!) remark about Bjork was nasty.

Then send her a PM, that's really no discussion for this topic.

Fair enough.

Quote from: SueC on May 04, 2020, 07:33:25

Quote from: BiscuityBoyle on May 04, 2020, 07:28:06

Quote from: piggymirror on May 04, 2020, 01:19:38

The beauty of this album is something else. Had Debut been the only thing she's ever done, she'd still be among the all time greats.

This is such a nasty thing to say...     

It's really uncool to go around making statements like that about someone's career, person etc, as if you were some kind of universal oracle of all truth. 

So I can see that apologies are in order, @BiscuityBoyle, and I'm sorry I misinterpreted what you said.  Here's how it came across to me:  Had Debut been the only thing she's ever done (and she'd stopped recording albums after that), she'd still be among the all time greats (but now she's not).

Now I do wish there was a mild interpretation for that clanger you dropped about Jason Cooper the other day on the Banshees thread ("no point carrying on with someone like Jason"), and what Robert Smith should and shouldn't do, that I bit my tongue about.  That's the sort of stuff that I've read at regular intervals from you, along with what "is best and greatest" - and it has wearied me, and therefore I would have been unsurprised if you'd meant the Bjork comment the way I read it (which you didn't).  I enjoy listening to and discussing music with others, but I really don't enjoy personal denigrations like this, or people thinking they know better than someone in a band what they should and shouldn't have done as a band (i.e. armchair criticism, backseat driving etc).  I read a lot of opining like that on Reddit and didn't enjoy it there either - all those BS comments on how The Cure ought to have packed it in after whatever someone's favourite line-up was changed.  It's so asinine... I really enjoy what they do now, and so do lots of other people - not that popularity is a measure of quality, but I think they have a truckload of quality to them as they are now, in terms of everyone's musicianship, live performances, etc, and it's actually possible to really like The Cure's music even just based on albums they've put out in the last 20 years, and if they'd done nothing else ever, and it's so sneery to be carrying on like they've done nothing worthwhile since "the good old days."

And it would be really lovely to have "Currently Listening" as a thread where we can appreciate songs and explore new songs, not as some kind of lecture on the best and greatest.  I do acknowledge that you're starting to word things differently in recent times, and thank you for that.  It makes me far more inclined to listen to the tracks you post - and I've enjoyed quite a few of those, and hope to enjoy some more.

Apologies for the off-topic, @Ulrich - I'm genuinely sorry I mistook what @BiscuityBoyle said about Bjork, but there was a context in which that happened.  (And I really don't want to PM about this, it's better in the open, but feel free to delete it after it's been read.)

And this is the last song I listened to:

Quote from: SueC on May 04, 2020, 21:54:17it would be really lovely to have "Currently Listening" as a thread where we can appreciate songs and explore new songs, not as some kind of lecture on the best and greatest.

Indeed. Words should help appreciate music, not alienate from it. To that end, from now on I'll introduce the music I love - in this case, Copland's Piano Variations - with the well-chosen words of musicologists and critics more capable than myself.

This is from Alex Ross, whose The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a book that inspires one to listen and explore as few books I've read do.

Quote from: undefinedThe Piano Variations of 1930 is a monolithic masterpiece that threatens to surpass the ultra-modern school of Várese and Ruggles in the relentlessness of its attack. It is based on a broadly gesticulating four-note motif— E, C, D-sharp, C-sharp an octave above— that Copland probably extracted from the slow movement of Stravinsky's Octet. The theme is subjected to an astringent sequence of permutations that at times approaches twelve-tone writing. By the end, the music is heading in a tonal direction: grand triads of A major and E major ring out in the treble, though with sharp dissonances attached. A new American harmony, brash and bluesy, grows from primordial chaos.

And this is what one Leonard Bernstein had to say about it:

QuoteA synonym for modern music—so prophetic, harsh and wonderful, and so full of modern feeling and thinking

Quote from: BiscuityBoyle on May 04, 2020, 22:45:12To that end, from now on I'll introduce the music I love - in this case, Copland's Piano Variations - with the well-chosen words of musicologists and critics more capable than myself.

No thanks. I said it before: this is about "currently listening". It's not about "music theory" or what others think about the music you love. (Feel free to post it, but I won't read much of it.)

Quote from: SueC on May 04, 2020, 21:54:17And it would be really lovely to have "Currently Listening" as a thread where we can appreciate songs and explore new songs, not as some kind of lecture on the best and greatest. 

Well said. That's what this topic is there for. Anyone wanting to tell us about "all time greats" is free to start a topic on that...

More "guitar pop" 

I'm sorry to have to tell you that I laughed about this latest instalment of your terrible guitar pop, @Ulrich! 

Here's some of my own:


PS:  Beware!  The next instalment on the lugubrious letter "L" is coming soon!       

OK, the letter "L" is very generous, here's another 10 highlights...

This first one is a bit unusual for me, because I don't like a lot of overly electronic music (there are exceptions, such as Jean-Michel Jarre), but here's a song from an artist Brett originally heard on Triple J and decided to try out, which I've taken a bit of a shine to when it appeared on the playlist.  By the way, the singer is a descendant of Herman Melville, who wrote Moby Dick.


Something laid-back from Sharon Shannon:


Capercaillie frequently make it into my highlights list - gorgeous playing and singing, and their strong sense of history and place:


Nina Simone is on the mixed playlist, courtesy of Brett, and has been in the highlights for me before with that killer breakup song she wrote called I'm Gonna Leave You.  This is a completely different type of song, and a cover, but so incredibly well done... even the wistful use of the Christmas carol...


The Yeah Yeah Yeahs: I like quite a few songs by this outfit - again, this is Brett's stuff.  He says he picked this band up from an alternative radio station who featured their debut as "album of the week" - really liked it, and saw them in concert when they toured the album - excellent gig, he recalls.


The next band is again from Brett's collection.  While I'm not totally crazy about that style of music, I think it's very competent, and has great lyrics:


The next band, I've always kind of liked, and Brett happened to have a lot of their albums, which is nice.  Aaaaand... they're from Albany originally, which is the town in whose hinterland we now live - so these are our "locals" - our 84-year-old friend Bill even sold a car of his to their singer.


Here's something totally different, which I also like:


More Waterboys - they do such a diversity of music... this is from the Fisherman's Blues sessions...


The last highlight for today is from South Australian band The Audreys, who were also on the soundtrack for Rain Shadow, and I love this song...


Happy Sunday, everyone.

From the legendary Clan of Xymox concert in Lima, October 2003

I have a few more "L" highlights...

Just to make this more interesting, rather than posting the studio version as on the iPod, I found a festival clip on YT of Big Country performing Look Away all the way back in 1986.  Isn't it funny how people who looked so terribly grown up to you when you were a teenager, look so unbelievably fresh-faced to us now! 

I love Stuart Adamson's little visit into the audience around 8 minutes in, on the second track on this clip.  Wonderful moment and great leveller. 


Paul Kelly doing a song about being in the wrong kind of relationship:


I was going to have REM's Losing My Religion next, because I rather like it despite of the fact that it won a Grammy award.  But then I found this modern take which is sooo topical!  Enjoy! 


The next song is by a young singer who has really been impressing me - she was brought to my attention by a friend who sent me her song Golden.  Lost Boy is another gorgeous track, both the singing and the story... for anyone who's ever been on the "outside" for any reason, and who remembers being young, I'd recommend this.


I still like this artist - this song came out when I was in senior high school, and was my intro to his music.  I thought it was excellent to hear an adult saying, "There's noone else to blame - noone else than my sweet self..." - always a good thing when adults are honest about stuff like this instead of pretending to be some kind of unassailable, perfect grown-up...


My total favourites from the L-list are the next two songs; they mean so much to me and they're so incredibly well put together as well...

The first one is by The Cure and just floored me when I first heard it.  The whole album did, it's my favourite Cure album; and many songs on it leap out at me for different reasons.  This particular one is just such an eloquent piece on a "dead" relationship... and funnily enough, I've read YT comments that went, "Oh, this song is about a wonderful relationship!"  Not in my book... maybe you have to grow up in the misery of a family where the marriage is dead to really feel this song in your bone marrow.  My parents were a different kind of dead as the people in this song, but no matter what sort of dead, it's still sad... 


The instrumentation on that is just so superb - the music goes so wonderfully with the words.  Is anyone else hearing the bell tolling, in the guitar?  And thinking, Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tools for thee?

I could write and write about this song, but will have to postpone that to a time where I might get around to Bloodflowers on the Back Catalogue thread - not here. 

OK, and another one in that league for me is this track by The Waterboys... setting Yeats to music, and so exquisitely well...


LOVE AND DEATH

WB Yeats

Behold the flashing waters
A cloven dancing jet
That from the milk-white marble
For ever foam and fret;
Far off in drowsy valleys
Where the meadow saffrons blow
The feet of summer dabble
In their coiling calm and slow
The banks are worn forever
By a people sadly gay:
A Titan with loud laughter
Made them of fire clay
Go ask the springing flowers
And the flowing air above
What are the twin-born waters
And they'll answer Death and Love

With wreaths of withered flowers
Two lonely spirits wait
With wreaths of withered flowers
'Fore paradise's gate
They may not pass the portal
Poor earth-enkindled pair
Though sad is many a spirit
To pass and leave them there
Still staring at their flowers
That dull and faded are
If one should rise beside thee
The other is not far
Go ask the youngest angel
She will say with bated breath
By the door of Mary's garden
Are the spirits Love and Death

And that's so head-spinning I'm leaving it at that today...   

I really enjoyed that one, @Ulrich, thank you for posting it - very nicely put together.

Here's a few more "L" highlights...

Great lyrics here I think...


The next one is rather interesting, especially if you listen to it before you get the back story, and see if you can pick this up...


...Brett had this song because he heard it on a TV series he was watching, where it was played back-to-back for an entire episode, as it was the tune a person who'd abducted a bunch of intelligent young people was playing in her house as part of the brainwash to dumb them down (if I've got this right) - it's used as a piece of sort of happy mediocrity, that Mozart would have never written etc.  I personally enjoy the tinkly bit, but not the background strings - they're "elevator music" to me - and this could be an interesting thing to consider:  What's elevator music, really?  But the way they're playing strings on this, and played it on Lassie etc, meant I didn't even consider playing a violin until I heard styles of playing I really liked, in my early 20s.  I think it's a much abused kind of instrument.

I've always had a soft spot for the B-52s - so infectious, and gorgeous intertwined singing.     Friends have seen them live recently and say they're still completely fabulous. 


...and I love this traditional African singing... it sounds so beautiful.  I really enjoy getting to share in some people's cultural and spiritual traditions through their music.  Diversity is such a fantastic thing...


Though I didn't like it as a teenager - I was way too serious for this kind of thing back then - I really enjoy this song now... because thankfully our tastes can expand as we go down the road...


I'm afraid Siouxsie's Loveless didn't make it onto my highlights - it's there courtesy of Brett - I just find a lot of that stuff so icy...  but at least thanks to the "appreciation lessons" on this forum, I now don't skip the track, and can appreciate bits of it.

Suzanne Vega's Luka made a big impression on me when I was a teenager - and instead of the song, I'm posting the story behind it:



And I'm gonna skip Lovesong for the highlights here - just because I actually prefer Lullaby.  That song is on the iPod four times in a row when you play alphabetically through the song list - off Disintegration, off a best-of (nicer sound), and two live versions, of which I actually think their more recent is better played.  But this is the first Cure song I fell in love with, as a university student... and I'm going to pick the version off Trilogy, because I can't find the nicer-sound studio version on YT without the official clip which I actually don't like.  I've always enjoyed this performance of it though:


And that's the "L" highlights finally done.  It's fun to listen to your iPod in alphabetical song listing - nice mix of things.