“They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear, - but left the shield.”
―Philip Freneau
Saturday, February 25, 2017
A Knave's Lament
I Didn't Create the Staynes, I Only Work to Erase Them!
What ever happened to rock singers who had range and versatility and could really belt it? When I get better (I was working on this before I got sick, so now I have to wait about 6 months to a year), I'm going to be finishing and putting out a pile of music I've been sitting on for years. I'm almost 50 years old, and beat to shit, and I can still sing circles around these "rock singers" today.
Chaplin really WAS a comic genius –– a man far ahead of his time. I wonder if audiences at the time realized the explicit sexual implications in the madcap scene with the sword and the face sitting?
Yes it was funny, but Chaplin's work turned profound DISRESPECT for what-he-saw-as pomposity into a high art.
I particularly loved the I-suspect-later addition of a sound track portraying the voices of the politicians and the simpering, overdressed female officiating at the ceremony into nothing but creaky iterations of blah blah blah blah blah?
PERFECTLY true to life that is, for Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah! is all we EVER get from politicians and the simpering simpletons who dance attendance ups them.
Jersey, if you REALLY are intrigued by voices but a wide range, you should hunt for od recordings of YMA SUMAC.
Birth name: Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo Also known as "The Peruvian Songbird" Born September 13, 1922,[1][2] or September 10, 1923 Callao, Peru, (other sources cite Ichocan, Cajamarca, Peru) Died November 1, 2008 (aged 85 or 86) Los Angeles, California, United States Genres Exotica, world, mambo, lounge Occupation: Singer, artist Years active 1942–1997
FJ, I used to cover vocals on ACDC, Nazareth, Led Zep, Rush, etc. I can STILL do it. Just not at this time, but soon enough I'll be back in action. I'm very raspy, but the power and range are still there. People used to compare me to everyone from Steve Marriot to David Coverdale. Tom Waits is a horrible singer! Some of his music is pretty cool, but he's barely better a singer than Bob Dylan!
FT, hey, you got me on that one! Have to check him out! BTW, got a new post up (feeling a little better today).
Louie Armsting and Jimmy Durante were about as raspy as anyone could get, Jersey, and yet THEY could put over a sing like no one else.
It's the SPIRIT not the VOICE per se that matters most –– especially in pop and theater music, although a great voice with no passion, personality or understanding behind is pretty dull at the opera or in song recitals too. As dike Ellington said, "It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing ..." ;-)
At any rate, look up Jimmy Durante in YouTube and listen to the way he sings Young at Heart, and several other beloved old ballads. As SINGING it's godawful, but as MUSIC it's GREAT.
Well, with rock music, it's very aggressive. And it don't mean a bean if ain't got that scream. The "scream" (a catch-all for aggressiveness in the voice) is everything, but the control is the key. When you listen to Rob Halford, or Ronnie James Dio, or Bruce Dickinson, or Udo Dirkschneider, and I could go on and on, these guys really, for me, set the standard for metal music, and hard rock in general. They're all a helluva lot better than I ever could be, and I've had big pros tell me I was great (just not at a time when it would have done me any good! LOL!). When you hear Dio scream "Oh c'mon!" at the beginning of Black Sabbath's "The Mob Rules," it just sends a lighting bolt up your spine. When Udo tells you the man's got your "balls to the wall" and warns of the consequences once we "break the chains," you just want to grab a chain and follow him to battle! These guys had - and some still amazingly do - powerful, well controlled, right-on, extremely versatile, aggressive voices. You can't listen to "Run to the Hills" or "The Mob Rules" or "Night Prowler" or "Screaming for Vengeance" or "Outshined" and tell me those guys aren't amazing vocalists. You wouldn't. Bland, mid-ranged vocals and harder rock, to me, just don't do it. The fans of this particular genre think it's delightfully dreary, but for me it's just dreary. Maybe I'm missing some kind of camp. I know the guys I mentioned, were all great stylists, very campy, and quite intentionally so. A lot of tongue in cheek. Not so serious. Seriousness makes melodramatic pretense unavoidable in rock music. It can be done - see Pink Floyd or the Beatles - but it's got to come naturally.
There is an "authenticity" to a "raspy" sound... quite in vogue today. I'm also a huge Robert Plant/ Roger Daltry/ Geddy Lee/ Jon Anderson/ Steve Tyler/ Freddie Mercury fan... but then so are most rock fans.
If you're ever in the Baltimore area, I'd love to catch a set.
@ Gert - Ryan is such and Establishment/ Consumerist tool...
@ FT - As the "little hobo", Chaplin was well aware how the lower classes were perceived, especially by the middle classes, as "stains" on the social system. I'm not so sure that he was "disrespecting" high society so much as attempting to call attention to something that could use some "improvement"... especially once the historical events of the 30's began to unfold. To cause one to question, perhaps these "stains" weren't as "self-made" and "morally culpable" as the middle classes believed.
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor.
Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding like "it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."
Thirty-seconds of listening confirmed that brilliant analysis. I don't ever want –– and certainly don't need –– to hear more.
This kind of dreary, down-dragging, low-class, non-music from the cess-pits of human consciousness has persuaded far too many to believe that Misery does indeed, Love Company. Dejected, morose, dispiriting, disheartening, destructive, frankly depraved.
No wonder Gertie-Poo loves it! Its right up his Sado-Masochistic poop chute.
};^)>
Sorry, guys! But "I haven't got time for the pain."
THERSITES - I am a bastard too; I love bastards: I am a bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valour, in every thing illegitimate. One bear will not bite another, and wherefore should one bastard? Take heed, the quarrel's most ominous to us: if the son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgment: farewell, bastard. -Shakespeare, "Troilus & Cressida" (Act V, Sc vii)
What ever happened to rock singers who had range and versatility and could really belt it? When I get better (I was working on this before I got sick, so now I have to wait about 6 months to a year), I'm going to be finishing and putting out a pile of music I've been sitting on for years. I'm almost 50 years old, and beat to shit, and I can still sing circles around these "rock singers" today.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
Go kick their asses, Jersey! Why do I picture Tom Waites in my head???
ReplyDeleteG-d, I LUUUURRVE Tom Waites!
ReplyDeleteChaplin really WAS a comic genius –– a man far ahead of his time. I wonder if audiences at the time realized the explicit sexual implications in the madcap scene with the sword and the face sitting?
ReplyDeleteYes it was funny, but Chaplin's work turned profound DISRESPECT for what-he-saw-as pomposity into a high art.
I particularly loved the I-suspect-later addition of a sound track portraying the voices of the politicians and the simpering, overdressed female officiating at the ceremony into nothing but creaky iterations of blah blah blah blah blah?
PERFECTLY true to life that is, for Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah! is all we EVER get from politicians and the simpering simpletons who dance attendance ups them.
Paul Ryan on... freedom. Well worth a gander, IMHO...
ReplyDeleteJersey, if you REALLY are intrigued by voices but a wide range, you should hunt for od recordings of YMA SUMAC.
ReplyDeleteBirth name: Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo
Also known as "The Peruvian Songbird"
Born September 13, 1922,[1][2] or September 10, 1923
Callao, Peru, (other sources cite Ichocan, Cajamarca, Peru)
Died November 1, 2008 (aged 85 or 86)
Los Angeles, California, United States
Genres Exotica, world, mambo, lounge
Occupation: Singer, artist
Years active 1942–1997
FJ, I used to cover vocals on ACDC, Nazareth, Led Zep, Rush, etc. I can STILL do it. Just not at this time, but soon enough I'll be back in action. I'm very raspy, but the power and range are still there. People used to compare me to everyone from Steve Marriot to David Coverdale. Tom Waits is a horrible singer! Some of his music is pretty cool, but he's barely better a singer than Bob Dylan!
ReplyDeleteFT, hey, you got me on that one! Have to check him out! BTW, got a new post up (feeling a little better today).
JMJ
Louie Armsting and Jimmy Durante were about as raspy as anyone could get, Jersey, and yet THEY could put over a sing like no one else.
ReplyDeleteIt's the SPIRIT not the VOICE per se that matters most –– especially in pop and theater music, although a great voice with no passion, personality or understanding behind is pretty dull at the opera or in song recitals too. As dike Ellington said,
"It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing ..." ;-)
At any rate, look up Jimmy Durante in YouTube and listen to the way he sings Young at Heart, and several other beloved old ballads. As SINGING it's godawful, but as MUSIC it's GREAT.
Well, with rock music, it's very aggressive. And it don't mean a bean if ain't got that scream. The "scream" (a catch-all for aggressiveness in the voice) is everything, but the control is the key. When you listen to Rob Halford, or Ronnie James Dio, or Bruce Dickinson, or Udo Dirkschneider, and I could go on and on, these guys really, for me, set the standard for metal music, and hard rock in general. They're all a helluva lot better than I ever could be, and I've had big pros tell me I was great (just not at a time when it would have done me any good! LOL!). When you hear Dio scream "Oh c'mon!" at the beginning of Black Sabbath's "The Mob Rules," it just sends a lighting bolt up your spine. When Udo tells you the man's got your "balls to the wall" and warns of the consequences once we "break the chains," you just want to grab a chain and follow him to battle! These guys had - and some still amazingly do - powerful, well controlled, right-on, extremely versatile, aggressive voices. You can't listen to "Run to the Hills" or "The Mob Rules" or "Night Prowler" or "Screaming for Vengeance" or "Outshined" and tell me those guys aren't amazing vocalists. You wouldn't. Bland, mid-ranged vocals and harder rock, to me, just don't do it. The fans of this particular genre think it's delightfully dreary, but for me it's just dreary. Maybe I'm missing some kind of camp. I know the guys I mentioned, were all great stylists, very campy, and quite intentionally so. A lot of tongue in cheek. Not so serious. Seriousness makes melodramatic pretense unavoidable in rock music. It can be done - see Pink Floyd or the Beatles - but it's got to come naturally.
ReplyDeleteJMJ
There is an "authenticity" to a "raspy" sound... quite in vogue today. I'm also a huge Robert Plant/ Roger Daltry/ Geddy Lee/ Jon Anderson/ Steve Tyler/ Freddie Mercury fan... but then so are most rock fans.
ReplyDeleteIf you're ever in the Baltimore area, I'd love to catch a set.
@ Gert - Ryan is such and Establishment/ Consumerist tool...
@ FT - As the "little hobo", Chaplin was well aware how the lower classes were perceived, especially by the middle classes, as "stains" on the social system. I'm not so sure that he was "disrespecting" high society so much as attempting to call attention to something that could use some "improvement"... especially once the historical events of the 30's began to unfold. To cause one to question, perhaps these "stains" weren't as "self-made" and "morally culpable" as the middle classes believed.
_____ The Ass’s Lament _____
ReplyDeleteAlas! Alack! For good or ill
The world is no tea party.
When issues press, voices get shrill
And indignation hearty.
This may distress the sensitive
And rouse self-righteous ire
But Life's duress oft tends to give
Each ass a kiss of fire!
~FreeThinke
WIKI on TOM WAITS
ReplyDeleteThomas Alan "Tom" Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor.
Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding like "it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."
Thirty-seconds of listening confirmed that brilliant analysis. I don't ever want –– and certainly don't need –– to hear more.
This kind of dreary, down-dragging, low-class, non-music from the cess-pits of human consciousness has persuaded far too many to believe that Misery does indeed, Love Company. Dejected, morose, dispiriting, disheartening, destructive, frankly depraved.
No wonder Gertie-Poo loves it! Its right up his Sado-Masochistic poop chute.
};^)>
Sorry, guys! But "I haven't got time for the pain."
Many did speak ill of Thersites as well.
ReplyDeletetruth to power! ;)
ps - How many vets do you hang with, FT? I recognize a lot of them in that Tom Waits vid.
ReplyDeleteTHERSITES - I am a bastard too; I love bastards: I am a bastard
ReplyDeletebegot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard
in valour, in every thing illegitimate. One bear will
not bite another, and wherefore should one bastard?
Take heed, the quarrel's most ominous to us: if the
son of a whore fight for a whore, he tempts judgment:
farewell, bastard. -Shakespeare, "Troilus & Cressida" (Act V, Sc vii)
Not all opera's must be opera seria!
ReplyDeleteFree Stinker
ReplyDeleteAnd where is my Lord Sentinel to chastise and berate this ignoble varmiet who durst mock me perhaps with my words of mine own?
ReplyDeleteAnd where is my Lord Sentinel [...]
ReplyDeleteYour Neonazi friend? Buying more swastikas and w*nkig off about the "G-d Emperor", I imagine.
BOO!
ReplyDelete