Rant warning: Marketing the Avant-Guitar?

[whitefang]

Well it`s always been the case of something carrying the seeds of its own destruction. Thanks to the corporate music industry, that process has been genetically altered to happen much faster-GMO music. The guitar is still an amazing instrument. What did the industry give us-guitar shootouts. Who is the fastest. Who sold the most albums. What comes next-my guess was always the human voice. What happened to Journey? Steve Perry. Then American Idol came along.Sooner or later people are going to get sick of cute but interchangeable singers. There`s a new one every week. They too will fall.

 

Don't know how(or if) this fits, but I remember back in the late '90's on THE DAILY SHOW they did a bit where a small group of late teens were being polled, and they showed two photos...

 

one of JANIS JOPLIN and the other of just some nobody nondescript girl and asked the group which one was the better singer. They all pointed to the OTHER girl claiming SHE was the better singer because, "She's pretty!"

Whitefang

[p90jr]

But, yeah, I haven't been surprised by anything I've heard in quite a while... so much that I stopped looking and started enjoying traditionalism.

 

"Traditionalism"? Sounds like the "given" lame name for some genre that really isn't. Or possibly what some might call "plastic" or "commercial formula".

 

And one interesting way to put something....

 

A guy I know once( and many moons ago) referred to Frank Zappa as a "musical salmon", as in it always seemed he was purposely(and majestically) swimming "upstream" and against the current(in both noun AND adjective ).

Whitefang

 

One day I woke up with the urge to listen to Fleetwood Mac and Buckingham Nicks... rather than digging around for some punkish band pushing music in new directions (that might not be musical). My friends called it "getting old." I refer to it as "maturing."

[p90jr]

Well it`s always been the case of something carrying the seeds of its own destruction. Thanks to the corporate music industry, that process has been genetically altered to happen much faster-GMO music. The guitar is still an amazing instrument. What did the industry give us-guitar shootouts. Who is the fastest. Who sold the most albums. What comes next-my guess was always the human voice. What happened to Journey? Steve Perry. Then American Idol came along.Sooner or later people are going to get sick of cute but interchangeable singers. There`s a new one every week. They too will fall.

 

I agree... I almost said in another thread how there's what I call "guitar racing," that I was never interested in, and it became this culture... and it's almost not musical in what it concentrates on and rewards.

 

And singing has been pushed in the same direction. And interchangeability aside...

 

Marshall Crenshaw, who now carries another guitar tuned to D for some songs, said something about not thinking ahead when he was young and making records and producers were encouraging these highwire vocal performances... "I didn't think 'hey, I'll be 50 someday, and I might not be able to hit that note... since I'm really reaching for it at 25...'"

 

I think Adele's career is in peril at this point because she's done so much damage to her voice, and had some surgeries to remove nodes already...

 

But I subscribe to the old Fogerty thing... it's pop music, if you write music that is so hard only you can play or sing it, it dies with you. If anybody can hum and sing it, and a group of teenagers can parse the parts and put it together well, it will live forever and have a life of its own.

[surfergirl]

That's why we love CCR. We do about 8 of their songs or songs they have covered. A 4 piece band can do CCR, because that's what they were. We all learned from older players, so we where introduced to a a lot of 60s, 70s and 80s music. The great thing about that is to younger audiences it's new, and to older audiences it's what they want to hear.

[whitefang]

Heh.

What WE( my buddies and me) first liked about CCR, was that THEIR first "hit" was a "cover" of that cool old(ten years by the time) DALE HAWKINS tune"Suzie Q".

 

We loved Dale's record as kids, and CCR's version did breathe new life into it, so we welcomed THEM into the "fold" And anyway....it kinda goes back to that old saying....

 

"You can't know where you're going, if you don't know where you've been."

Whitefang

[skipclone 1]

Well it`s always been the case of something carrying the seeds of its own destruction. Thanks to the corporate music industry, that process has been genetically altered to happen much faster-GMO music. The guitar is still an amazing instrument. What did the industry give us-guitar shootouts. Who is the fastest. Who sold the most albums. What comes next-my guess was always the human voice. What happened to Journey? Steve Perry. Then American Idol came along.Sooner or later people are going to get sick of cute but interchangeable singers. There`s a new one every week. They too will fall.

 

I agree... I almost said in another thread how there's what I call "guitar racing," that I was never interested in, and it became this culture... and it's almost not musical in what it concentrates on and rewards.

 

And singing has been pushed in the same direction. And interchangeability aside...

 

Marshall Crenshaw, who now carries another guitar tuned to D for some songs, said something about not thinking ahead when he was young and making records and producers were encouraging these highwire vocal performances... "I didn't think 'hey, I'll be 50 someday, and I might not be able to hit that note... since I'm really reaching for it at 25...'"

 

I think Adele's career is in peril at this point because she's done so much damage to her voice, and had some surgeries to remove nodes already...

 

But I subscribe to the old Fogerty thing... it's pop music, if you write music that is so hard only you can play or sing it, it dies with you. If anybody can hum and sing it, and a group of teenagers can parse the parts and put it together well, it will live forever and have a life of its own.

 

Well I think Elton John`s voice was in question at one point-they were thinking he may not be able to sing again. That problem is not only one of age. Contractual obligations-nonstop touring and promotional appearances-are enough to put a boot down the throat of any voice. At this point I do a full on vocal performance about once a month, unless I add an open mic or karaoke with friends. When I do sing it`s usually two songs-then the next performer is up. In May the MC said it was the best singing they ever heard from me. But I stopped almost everything a few days before. No alcohol, no sugar, no dairy. I was jogging every day. It paid off but, I don`t think I could live like that for weeks or months on end. I`d go nuts. I also don`t know how I would fare if I was singing for an hour every time.

[d halfnote]

As far as vox, most pop singers come from an untrained approach to their work & wind up stressing their vocal cords b/c they sing way too loudly, in an artificially high tessitura & have other "natural" approaches to how they work, a situation driven by the difficulty of recognizing an invisible tool as one that has definite, measurably effective methods.

Some exceptions might be McCartney, ever an explorer both in & out of studio;

Jagger, who has usually striven to do what he needs to extend his career but who, as far into things as the early 1970s, was often completely out of breath in live perf

(try to find some film of his MSG performance that Dick Cavett recorded on his TV show c.1972);

Roger Daltrey.

I've not actually listened to Adele much but w/the robust quality she projects, I'd be surprised if she doesn't have at least a little coaching.

 

Opera singers & others have no prob singing at high intensity for often extended periods...but even they must be careful.

[Winston Psmith]

As far back as the Quadraphenia tour (mid-70's) Daltrey was being warned about nodules forming on his vocal cords, from straining his voice. Somehow, he's managed to last all these years?

[d halfnote]

I understand that, like Jagger, RD's quite serious abt his physical health &, even more-so, his ability to actually deliver a musically compelling perf.

[Larryz]

I'm Big Fan of John Fogerty and CCR. They were a Bay Area local boy 4 piece garage band success where I grew up. Suzie Q came out in June of 68 almost to the day I graduated from High School. As Fang pointed out it was a tune from a decade earlier by Dale Hawkins. The guitar work was all Fogerty and he put a whole new twist on the tune. They really didn't hit the big time until my birthday in '69. For SurferGirl I would recommend the Bayou Country and Green River albums as CCR had a string of their most successful hits on those two albums. They blew the doors off of Elvis, The Beatles and the Beach Boys who had been hogging the spotlight back in the 50's and 60's...

 

Fogerty wrote the CCR tunes and the lead work for all of the guitar and vocals for the most part. I have a live DVD performance The Long Road Home, which I highly recommend. You can see and hear Fogerty who has stood the test of time since Woodstock. How his voice has held up over the years is beyond me. He sounds like he strains it on every tune from the days he started out, up to and including today. My vocals are getting tired when I try to hit the high notes and now I'm having trouble with the low ones too LOL! How he has gone all of these years performing all of his oldies, amazes me.

 

+1 Like SurferGirl pointed out, CCR's music is still out there for the young and old alike...

[Dannyalcatraz]

As far back as the Quadraphenia tour (mid-70's) Daltrey was being warned about nodules forming on his vocal cords, from straining his voice. Somehow, he's managed to last all these years?

 

Hes still performing, maybe, but his voice sounded terrible the last live show of his I heard, maybe a decade ago.

[d halfnote]

Re : Daltrey

Hes still performing, maybe, but his voice sounded terrible the last live show of his I heard, maybe a decade ago.

:idk

He lacks his youthful upper range & as always, & like most rock singers, he inflects as much actually sings but to me sounds much as he ever did.

As good as the older Elvis, Tom Jones or James Brown (w/whom he shares a certain timbral quality) & I'd say better than Michael Phillip Jagger or the shocking effects time has wrought on Bob the Dyl.

[video:youtube]

[Scott Fraser]

the shocking effects time has wrought on Bob the Dyl.

 

Which have resulted in Dylan basically sounding just like Tom Waits and/or Captain Beefheart.

[d halfnote]

"WHAT ?!"

[There should be an emoji here that looks like a Danny Thomas spit-take]

[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWs5Ovad2jI

 

Nah, I don't think so, Scott.

 

Waits has always had a raspy voice but he can dial it back & Beefheart had a range, even in his later yrs that spanned from powerful Chester Burnett land to what would today be called melodic neo-soul...w/a few points outside that swath (like the yodelish warble of a track like "Spotlight Kid".

Plus Van Vliet could actually sing.

 

The Dyl as a young cat had a nasally, rough & ready timbre, softened at times into an acceptable balladeer tone or hardened to rocky snarl.

Briefly abt 1970 he & prod Bob Johnston came up w/ that "NVille Skyline" croon.

Never a classical appealing vox he was nuanced & expressive.

For quite a while, though, he's just had a burned out, almost monotone thing going on, which I don't find as anywhere near those other 2.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re : Daltrey

Hes still performing, maybe, but his voice sounded terrible the last live show of his I heard, maybe a decade ago.

:idk

He lacks his youthful upper range & as always, & like most rock singers, he inflects as much actually sings but to me sounds much as he ever did.

As good as the older Elvis, Tom Jones or James Brown (w/whom he shares a certain timbral quality) & I'd say better than Michael Phillip Jagger or the shocking effects time has wrought on Bob the Dyl.

[video:youtube]

 

OK...that performance was exponentially better than the last one I heard!

 

Perhaps he was having a bad day that time I saw him last. :idk Because that day, he was so bad, I thought his performing days were over.

[Scott Fraser]

"WHAT ?!"

[There should be an emoji here that looks like a Danny Thomas spit-take]

[video:youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWs5Ovad2jI

 

Nah, I don't think so, Scott.

 

Waits has always had a raspy voice but he can dial it back & Beefheart had a range, even in his later yrs that spanned from powerful Chester Burnett land to what would today be called melodic neo-soul...w/a few points outside that swath (like the yodelish warble of a track like "Spotlight Kid".

Plus Van Vliet could actually sing.

 

The Dyl as a young cat had a nasally, rough & ready timbre, softened at times into an acceptable balladeer tone or hardened to rocky snarl.

Briefly abt 1970 he & prod Bob Johnston came up w/ that "NVille Skyline" croon.

Never a classical appealing vox he was nuanced & expressive.

For quite a while, though, he's just had a burned out, almost monotone thing going on, which I don't find as anywhere near those other 2.

 

I actually like his take on the Sinatra canon, & the Christmas album. It's so deconstructed.

[skipclone 1]

As far as vox, most pop singers come from an untrained approach to their work & wind up stressing their vocal cords b/c they sing way too loudly, in an artificially high tessitura & have other "natural" approaches to how they work, a situation driven by the difficulty of recognizing an invisible tool as one that has definite, measurably effective methods.

Some exceptions might be McCartney, ever an explorer both in & out of studio;

Jagger, who has usually striven to do what he needs to extend his career but who, as far into things as the early 1970s, was often completely out of breath in live perf

(try to find some film of his MSG performance that Dick Cavett recorded on his TV show c.1972);

Roger Daltrey.

I've not actually listened to Adele much but w/the robust quality she projects, I'd be surprised if she doesn't have at least a little coaching.

 

Opera singers & others have no prob singing at high intensity for often extended periods...but even they must be careful.

 

Well Sir Paul has long eschewed (somehow that word always sounds like the opposite of what it means) meat, one of many things that can be an obstacle for singers.

Pop singers may start out rough and untrained, but once they are signed to a label and are basically company employees, the labels have teams of assistants-including vocal coaches-to make sure the cash cows keep producing milk. That is one reason why the whole industry resembles a gated community.

I suppose they have to balance that with singers whose whole appeal is sounding rough-ACDC comes to mind.

The out of breath issue-well look at most live performances. The singer is expected to sing and dance at the same time-why else are there wireless headphone mics? try doing that and be pitch perfect-in fact here`s an example. FWIW I sang this song live in May. The last a capella line is barely in pitch and hoarse as a western movie.

[video:youtube]

[p90jr]

That's why we love CCR. We do about 8 of their songs or songs they have covered. A 4 piece band can do CCR, because that's what they were. We all learned from older players, so we where introduced to a a lot of 60s, 70s and 80s music. The great thing about that is to younger audiences it's new, and to older audiences it's what they want to hear.

 

Yep, and it - along with early Beatles and some Stones - has been where teenagers have started playing together since it came out!

[p90jr]

As far as vox, most pop singers come from an untrained approach to their work & wind up stressing their vocal cords b/c they sing way too loudly, in an artificially high tessitura & have other "natural" approaches to how they work, a situation driven by the difficulty of recognizing an invisible tool as one that has definite, measurably effective methods.

Some exceptions might be McCartney, ever an explorer both in & out of studio;

Jagger, who has usually striven to do what he needs to extend his career but who, as far into things as the early 1970s, was often completely out of breath in live perf

(try to find some film of his MSG performance that Dick Cavett recorded on his TV show c.1972);

Roger Daltrey.

I've not actually listened to Adele much but w/the robust quality she projects, I'd be surprised if she doesn't have at least a little coaching.

 

Opera singers & others have no prob singing at high intensity for often extended periods...but even they must be careful.

 

The singer in one of the bands I play in now is a trained opera singer... and he had problems back in that phase that haunt him, now. What we do isn't taxing his range or anything... it's more that it aggravates the existing problems and we've had to cancel shows.

 

Adele is trained.

 

And strangely, that seems to be the problem. That world took a turn for the worst, apparently, in stressing power for the last 40 years or so, and it's wrecking the voices and careers of the singers.

 

Adele's Vocal Cord Surgery, And Why Stars Keep Losing Their Voices

[p90jr]

As far back as the Quadraphenia tour (mid-70's) Daltrey was being warned about nodules forming on his vocal cords, from straining his voice. Somehow, he's managed to last all these years?

 

Hes still performing, maybe, but his voice sounded terrible the last live show of his I heard, maybe a decade ago.

 

I was debating whether to mention that McCartney doesn't sound good, vocally, these days... at least not up to his own standards.

 

[video:youtube]

[Winston Psmith]

RE: Sir Paul - I scrolled through until I got to You Won't See Me, one of my favorite Beatles tunes, and one that wasn't as overwhelmed with ambient stadium sound as some of the others. I'd have to say, that was just recognizable as Sir Paul's voice, IMHO. If I'd heard it on the radio, or some streaming service where I couldn't see him, I'm not sure what I might have thought?

 

OTOH, a lot of people still get a lot of joy from seeing and hearing him. That's not a bad thing, in these times, or any time. If someone gave me a ticket, I'd be right there.

[d halfnote]

Re : Daltrey

Hes still performing, maybe, but his voice sounded terrible the last live show of his I heard, maybe a decade ago.

:idk

He lacks his youthful upper range & as always, & like most rock singers, he inflects as much actually sings but to me sounds much as he ever did.

As good as the older Elvis, Tom Jones or James Brown (w/whom he shares a certain timbral quality) & I'd say better than Michael Phillip Jagger or the shocking effects time has wrought on Bob the Dyl.

[video:youtube]

 

OK...that performance was exponentially better than the last one I heard!

 

Perhaps he was having a bad day that time I saw him last. :idk Because that day, he was so bad, I thought his performing days were over.

 

Been reading some bg material.

Circa the time frame you mentioned Daltrey was suffering definite throat probs.

[d halfnote]

Pop singers may start out rough and untrained, but once they are signed to a label and are basically company employees, the labels have teams of assistants-including vocal coaches-to make sure the cash cows keep producing milk.

I think those "coaches" are mostly A&R type producers rather than singing instructors, Skip.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That would do it, d!

[whitefang]

A lot of factors affect he voice....

 

HOW it's used, how OFTEN it's used, illness, alcohol consumption (for some but not all), other illness and age. for instance...

 

TONY BENNETT is a guy who always "took care" of his voice and throat, but listen to an old recording of his from the '50's-'60's compared to the 91 year old's voice now.

Whitefang

[d halfnote]

Re: the Paul McCantsing vid above, when I tired of tryna find the "You Won't See Me" segment & remembered it's the 21st C & searched out a more concise clip.

Gotta couple: 1st is same show, followed by another abt a yr prior.

He's husky-voiced in both but whether that's part of the ongoing decline & fall or just being rasped out in the middle of a multi-hour show :idk

Considering how consistent his shows are, maybe he's just always croaky at that part !

Finally, as I typed this a vid from 14 yrs before came up which does show us a more chipper voice on those upper range notes.

 

[video:youtube]

 

[video:youtube]

 

[video:youtube]

 

I know 1 thing fer sher---I'd love to be able to afford Abe L to play & sing