fange
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Listening to long jazz tracks
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Post by fange on Jun 27, 2021 13:15:38 GMT
Oh yeah, absolutely.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2021 13:18:25 GMT
You were doing alright until that last sentence. I don't think those things are an invention of rock critics. That way of talking/writing about artists certainly is. And particularly with artists like Bowie. You don't think Bowie was aware of those things? What he did is awash with lyrical or visual references to ideas, art, politics etc. It's not just something pretentious critics have made up! I'd say the projection is coming from you with a Lester Bangs idea of rock as some primitive, pure form that doesn't need "ideas". But Bangs was constructing his own fantasy there.
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Jun 27, 2021 13:32:00 GMT
After the break-up, Lennon really blossomed as an artist, I think, with personal and political themes and his re-embracing of the whole rock and roll rebel stance. The Beatles, though, as a collective, were basically 'about' the whole pop thing: which is not to put them down – on the contrary, in fact. The 'serious artist' thing ws something shoved on to them by critics That seems a very reductive way of seeing it, that because Lennon wrote about serious subjects he therefore became a greater artist. Lennon lost his way as a solo artist sadly. His musical invention and artistic imagination seriously diminished from his peak Beatles brilliance. Not what I meant to say at all, G. I'm saying that he wasn't interested in the pop thing any more in the years after he met Yoko, from roughly the first Plastic Ono Band album (maybe Two Virgins, but I've never listened to that) to his implosion on Rock and Roll he was applying his considerabe talent and craft in a different way, the whole sound and attitude was different, essentially antiBeatles. He didn't lose his way, he abandoned it. He went back to pop with Imagine/Walls and Bridges and so on, but personally I find that whole 'lost' period more interesting.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2021 13:44:37 GMT
But Imagine was the album after POB, so we're only talking of a "period" of one album. I don't know that he tried to move away from "pop", but by the early 70s pop could be about anything, it's parameters hugely expanded by a number of artists, most importantly Dylan and The Beatles themselves.
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Jun 27, 2021 13:45:02 GMT
It's only since the advent o f Serious Rock Criticism (Paul Morley et al) that we've had to wade through all this bullshit where terms like 'dystopian', 'nihilistic' and 'post-modern' are used to pump up bands who just wanted to sing songs and fuck women. Whoa! that all started in the mid-60s with music writers (not rock writers) taking the Beatles seriously, putting them in the contect of classical music theory, and, unintended consequences and so on, ultimately promoting the growth of prog. They were writing in the broadsheets, admittedly, but even in the inkies (and indeed in Rolling Stone, sorry to mention it) writers were hitting that serious tone and writing long think-pieces long before Morley/Penman got in on the act in the early 1980s.
And back to Bowie, He did have something to say, but it was basically, hey, look at this thing I heard/read/saw, isn't it great? - borrowed ideas and tropes, not just from camp and mime, but sci-fi, bands, newspapers and so on. His great gift was as a borrower and synthesizer, and as a one-way mirror: his great desire was to be admired and adored and projected upon, while remaining hidden.
Ultimately, I connected with some of the things he did and was left particularly cold by others. He wasn't really for me. Other people, with different contexts, at different ages, obviously got different things, which is why the poll is like it is.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2021 13:59:23 GMT
Good tunes THO! I part way agree with the above, certainly the idea of synthesising different things, but that can be a way of creating new forms of course. I would strongly depart from the assertion that there was no content beyond narcissism however. I think Bowie's music then was "about" many things - sexuality and new ideas of gender, mental breakdown, self-invention, apocalyptical dread, all of which which spoke to the time in particularly exciting ways.
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Jun 27, 2021 15:12:19 GMT
Good tunes THO! I part way agree with the above, certainly the idea of synthesising different things, but that can be a way of creating new forms of course. I would strongly depart from the assertion that there was no content beyond narcissism however. I think Bowie's music then was "about" many things - sexuality and new ideas of gender, mental breakdown, self-invention, apocalyptical dread, all of which which spoke to the time in particularly exciting ways. I don't think he was a narcissist, G, not at all, or at least no more than any other artist, and those themes were about before the 70s, especially in American literature, but let's leave it there for now, shall we?
Oh, just one more thing we haven't really covered - not much of a singer, really, was he? Which is why he got shown up so badly on YA and StS. I'll let you have the last word on that one, THO
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Post by oh oooh on Jun 27, 2021 15:18:51 GMT
Good tunes THO! I part way agree with the above, certainly the idea of synthesising different things, but that can be a way of creating new forms of course. I would strongly depart from the assertion that there was no content beyond narcissism however. I think Bowie's music then was "about" many things - sexuality and new ideas of gender, mental breakdown, self-invention, apocalyptical dread, all of which which spoke to the time in particularly exciting ways. I don't think he was a narcissist, G, not at all Really? There was a very telling scene in the BBC documentary covering his early years, where one of his woman friends (NOT girlfriends - she said she couldn't get involved) says 'he loved himself EXTREMELY'. She said that, the line stuck with me. I've always thought he was more narcissistic than even most rock stars. Anyway, we're not going to prove or disprove this one.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2021 15:33:41 GMT
Good tunes THO! I part way agree with the above, certainly the idea of synthesising different things, but that can be a way of creating new forms of course. I would strongly depart from the assertion that there was no content beyond narcissism however. I think Bowie's music then was "about" many things - sexuality and new ideas of gender, mental breakdown, self-invention, apocalyptical dread, all of which which spoke to the time in particularly exciting ways. I don't think he was a narcissist, G, not at all, or at least no more than any other artist, and those themes were about before the 70s, especially in American literature, but let's leave it there for now, shall we?
Oh, just one more thing we haven't really covered - not much of a singer, really, was he? Which is why he got shown up so badly on YA and StS. I'll let you have the last word on that one, THO
For me one of the greatest singers ever and that's the period he really comes into his own as a vocalist. His vocals on tracks like Somebody Up There..., Wild is the Wind and Word on a Wing are truly remarkable.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2021 15:40:10 GMT
Oh I disagree. He represented, and consciously so, a clear move away from the idealism of the 60s into something apocalyptical. He was one of the first to grasp that the 70s would be a very different decade, fragmented and nihilistic. That may be what he represented. To some. You're still not addressing the question of what he was trying to say. It's probably not a fair question anyway, because I think it's extremely rare for artists to be saying anything of consequence, coherently, for any length of time at all. Maybe Dylan in his early days, the anti-war stuff. But he quickly dropped all of that. Just think of him as an observer and him using words/music/style as a way of expressing his interests through a creative filter.
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Post by oh oooh on Jun 27, 2021 15:44:22 GMT
aye
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Jun 27, 2021 15:52:32 GMT
The notion that he wasn't much of a singer is an odd one.
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Post by oh oooh on Jun 27, 2021 16:00:48 GMT
I've heard it said a few times. Quite honestly I'm not sure.
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Jun 27, 2021 16:11:21 GMT
You don't like the histrionic stuff - I get that - but the idea that he wasn't much of a singer is daft.
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Jun 27, 2021 18:28:29 GMT
You don't like the histrionic stuff - I get that - but the idea that he wasn't much of a singer is daft. A better vocalist than singer.
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