VT’s Music Chat

[mjmooney]

I'd add to  @bickster's comments above, that in my experience, professional musicians often have much broader tastes than their fans. The punters who obsessively listen to one genre of music would be amazed at what their heroes listen to at home. I think a knowledge of musical technique can give you a greater appreciation of styles other than that which you play for a living. 

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

I'd add to  @bickster's comments above, that in my experience, professional musicians often have much broader tastes than their fans. The punters who obsessively listen to one genre of music would be amazed at what their heroes listen to at home. I think a knowledge of musical technique can give you a greater appreciation of styles other than that which you play for a living. 

Yes definitely true

[villa4europe]

13 hours ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Musicians who go out on tour with a band, but they’re not a permanent member of the band.

As a side to this from my experience these guys are an absolute gold mine for guest list tickets

a couple of my mates are absolutely brazen when it comes to it, they know various tour players from ocean colour scene who then give out free tickets for richard ashcroft gigs and stuff like that, just DM them on insta and say couldnt get a ticket for tonight any chance of a favour

[chrisp65]

The old ‘myth’ of the original Jamaican ska scene was that many of the musicians were interested in jazz and wanted to ‘do’ jazz, but ska paid the bills.

[mjmooney]

11 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

The old ‘myth’ of the original Jamaican ska scene was that many of the musicians were interested in jazz and wanted to ‘do’ jazz, but ska paid the bills.

Not just ska. Most pro touring and session players in the late 50s would have been jazzmen at heart, but they did rock'n'roll/pop sessions because the music was laughably easy to play and paid well. 

[veloman]

23 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Not just ska. Most pro touring and session players in the late 50s would have been jazzmen at heart, but they did rock'n'roll/pop sessions because the music was laughably easy to play and paid well. 

An example from my book Roots of Rock Drumming; ace session player Bobby Graham was asked to play on a record by the God awful Dave Clarke Five . Clarke , who could hardly actually play, kept telling him to simplify it so Clarke could play it. He ended up just playing "4 to the floor with everything ,hi hat, bass drum and snare drum" Clarke said that was perfect.

[Seat68]

1 hour ago, veloman said:

An example from my book Roots of Rock Drumming; ace session player Bobby Graham was asked to play on a record by the God awful Dave Clarke Five . Clarke , who could hardly actually play, kept telling him to simplify it so Clarke could play it. He ended up just playing "4 to the floor with everything ,hi hat, bass drum and snare drum" Clarke said that was perfect.

He is no Mike Love but Dave Clark could certainly give him a run for his money, from hired hands, to Ron Ryan, every piece I read about him makes me dislike him more. 

[bickster]

Didn't Dave Clarke make all his money from buying the rights to loads of '60s music progs off the tellybox like Ready Steady Go for next to nothing

He's massively wealthy but its largely off the back of other peoples work and not his own.

[mjmooney]

44 minutes ago, bickster said:

Didn't Dave Clarke make all his money from buying the rights to loads of '60s music progs off the tellybox like Ready Steady Go for next to nothing. 

Correct. And he edited the programmes to feature LOTS of clips of the DC5, intercut with footage of screaming girls from Beatles concerts. Younger viewers might conclude that the DC5 were THE biggest band of the 60s. 

Edited May 25, 2022 by mjmooney

[Designer1]

I don't think I can remember a whole song by DC5, just bits and pieces.

[veloman]

I think he was an extremely astute business man and rumoured to be as wealthy as The Beatles. The band I played in supported Roy Castle and his drummer told me the "Rogers" drums paid him a fortune to use their kit 'cos everyone wanted Ludwig - as per Ringo. I had Rogers drums at the time.

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, veloman said:

I had Rogers drums at the time.

Were they any good (as compared with Ludwig, Premier, etc.) ? 

[veloman]

3 hours ago, mjmooney said:

Were they any good (as compared with Ludwig, Premier, etc.) ? 

Hmm , subjective I suppose. They were better than the Premier I had in the rock band but probably not as good as the Ludwig i had before - shouldn't have swapped 'em really. However neither were as good as the Pearl DLX I had before I packed it in. I used to change kits quite regularly in order to minimise tax liability. Yardleys/Musical Exchanges must have loved me  . Our keyboard player did the same.

[chrisp65]

I’ve re bought an album I already had today.

My original copy is easily the worst quality record I have. It’s a record that really, I should have taken back it’s so crackly, skippy, noisy. No amount of standard cleaning effort would improve it, never mind cure it.

So, I was in Spinning Discs, in Sheffield earlier today and they had a copy. So I was curious, was it just my copy that was junk, or were they all pressed and packaged in a sawmill?

So I asked him if he would open it and play it, and if it was good I’d buy it. He didn’t like that idea, he sells secondhand records also and felt it would look like he was passing off old as new. So I basically told my little story again about my rubbish copy. I think he realised he was dealing with a nutter, split the packaging and stuck it on the turntable. The silence before the music started told me it was already a better copy than I had. There was a hint of static or dirt, so he took the record off and gave it a spin on his fancy record cleaning machine (a service he apparently usually charges £3 for!). Played it again and it was immaculate.

So I’m chuffed with that. And I can tick Spinning Discs Sheffield off my list.

Might see if I can make a fruit bowl with the other one.

[bickster]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

Might see if I can make a fruit bowl with the other one.

Frame it and stick it on the wall

I genuinely had a passenger the other week who told me he loved vinyl and bought stuff off Discogs all the time. "When I get bored of the covers, I just buy some more and put the new ones in the frames"

I had to ask the obvious question and no he didn't have a record player.

 

[chrisp65]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

Frame it and stick it on the wall

I genuinely had a passenger the other week who told me he loved vinyl and bought stuff off Discogs all the time. "When I get bored of the covers, I just buy some more and put the new ones in the frames"

I had to ask the obvious question and no he didn't have a record player.

 

 

Yeeees, we have a guy in the office who regularly tells other disinterested staff that he collects vinyl. I asked him what turntable he had, he paused for a little while and then said he wasn’t sure!

I definitely took that as meaning he didn’t have one.

Or he knew better than to say Crosley Cruiser.

 

[bickster]

Well here's a rabbit hole i just fell down. So I was just looking up Lee Perry in my collection on Discogs and the search threw up The Infotainment Scam album by The Fall because it has Why are People Grudgeful? on it (A CD extra and a different version to the single) which is credited to Perry. So that got me wondering, if I had the Lee Perry original. Search turned up nothing so then I moonied the title and it has a Wikipedia page

The Fall - Why are People Grudgeful?

Spoiler

 

The Wiki page informs me that there is no song by Scratch called Why are People Grudgeful? Because what The Fall song is bits of two different songs that Mark E Smith combined

One song was...

Lee Perry - People Funny Boy

Spoiler

 

Now we have to rewind here and understand what this is. On the surface, it's Lee Perry's debut single but there's more to it than that

Perry started out working for Clement Coxsone Dodd and recorded over 30 tracks for Dodd's Sound System but they fell out over money, so Perry moved on and started working for Dodd's rival, Joe Gibbs (Dodd and Gibbs were the two big boys of the sound systems / record labels in Jamaica at the time) but again it didn't take long before Perry and Gibbs also fell out over money.

Perry decides to go it alone and records his first "Solo" single People Funny Boy on his own Upset label, he's credited as Lee (King) Perry and the producer is credited as Upset (People wrongly credit the original label as Upsetter - is absolutely wasn't)

This was Perry being pissed off, hence the Upset label and Producer, that was the message. The song is known as one of the first reggae records but it's also the one that really launched the genre, he had a big Jamaican hit on his hands and everyone loved the bassline which was just so different from all that came before it and as a result some will argue that this was the first real reggae record as the bassline set the tone for everything that came after. It also features a "sample" (not in the modern parlance) of a baby crying, which definitely sets the tone for everything Perry did afterwards, I mean he even miked up a cow in the studio for Heart of the Congos. So that moment there with the baby crying might also be one of the most important things to happen in the history of music, it's the start of Dub, it's the start of samples, it's a massive moment

Anyway the song itself was a thinly disguised attack on Joe Gibbs. Gibbs couldn't help himself, he had to retailate

Sir Gibbs - People Grudgeful

Spoiler

 

And it it is those two songs that M.E.S. combined or "mashed up" (here we go again....)

It also makes me wonder why M.E.S. only credited Perry? Was that Smith's dig at the exploitation of the money men of the music industry and giving Perry the full royalties was also an up you to Joe Gibbs by taking Perry's side. Who knows

Obviously, it is also where Upsetter / Upsetters came from

TL:DR - you are a moron

 

[blandy]

POTY @bickster

I knew none of that.

[Xann]

Quote

"I’m f***ing tired of it, to be honest with you. I’d rather listen to Steely Dan"

Who's just said this about their own music?

Spoiler

Steve Jones - Sex Pistols  

 

[chrisp65]

Steely Dan, a permanent resident on my long list, eventually I’ll pick it up somewhere…

 

lost count of the number of times I’ve absolutely blissed out to a 25 minute sample of this