Creative writing - and bass players. And drummers.
- Thread starter mjp
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And I foolishly thought I could quietly sneak away from this thread with no further feather-ruffling. Everyone was happy...:eek:
I’m someone who really likes a fairly small subset of music. Not narrow; I’m more or less equally enthralled by Dylan, Mingus, and Schoenberg. But I really, really don’t like a very large amount of music. I can’t articulate this very well, but I know it when I hear it. What I like I embrace like a pit-bull, and what I don’t like, well, you see where I’m going. To me, there’s little point in being ambivalent about much in life.
But as a musician, this is a dangerous place for me to be. I shouldn’t be critical of fellow musicians, especially those who have had 1,000% more success than I have. So, I want to state that I can indeed separate talent from personal taste. There just happen to be a large number of very talented musicians that aren’t to my personal taste. But my opinion of them should be as meaningless as this post.
Lastly, this post does not refer in any way to Larry Graham, George Porter, or Bootsy.
My comment:
Was a sarcastic response to this post:
So, let me put it this way: I recognize that Prince has a boatload of talent and I’ll admit that I don’t have any broad exposure to his work. But my general sense from what I have heard is that it tends toward the flashy (but not style over substance, because there is substance), tends toward a synthesizer-heavy sound, and is more geared toward production (i.e., a choreographed performance rather than something more improvisation-oriented). Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. I don’t want to paint with a broad brush; this is just my experience. But improvisational music is where I've been at for 30-odd years. I doubt that's going to change. The aspiration of never playing the same song twice the same way is such a refreshing concept to me. Sadly, this concept is not easily swallowed by many.
I’m someone who really likes a fairly small subset of music. Not narrow; I’m more or less equally enthralled by Dylan, Mingus, and Schoenberg. But I really, really don’t like a very large amount of music. I can’t articulate this very well, but I know it when I hear it. What I like I embrace like a pit-bull, and what I don’t like, well, you see where I’m going. To me, there’s little point in being ambivalent about much in life.
But as a musician, this is a dangerous place for me to be. I shouldn’t be critical of fellow musicians, especially those who have had 1,000% more success than I have. So, I want to state that I can indeed separate talent from personal taste. There just happen to be a large number of very talented musicians that aren’t to my personal taste. But my opinion of them should be as meaningless as this post.
Lastly, this post does not refer in any way to Larry Graham, George Porter, or Bootsy.
mjp
Founding member
Prince didn't play scheduled shows in Minneapolis clubs very often, even before he became well known, so I suppose most of the times I saw him it was a "surprise" show. But they could probably more accurately be called unannounced shows, because if you wanted to know when he was playing it wasn't too hard to find out. And you could always assume he'd be playing if the Time were booked (or any of his hundred other bands, or Sheila E., etc.).
The shows I'm talking about were all in '80 or '81. He didn't play those kind of loose shows much after 1999 came out. He still did "surprise" gigs here and there, but they became so packed that it wasn't any fun anymore.
Hahahahaha!!!! That's so funny! You got that right. mjp too.
I was going to say, about Prince, not Appollonia, and for Purple Stickpin (if you ever get a chance to hear it), I used to practice to Madhouse 8 religiously after it came out, and I swear it became my sort of "secret weapon." I never told anyone I was doing that as a regular, daily meditation, but that is how I honed my particular feel and style. I didn't copy it exactly, but I definitely used it as my foundation. Madhouse 16 is just as amazing with Sheila E on drums, but Prince and John Lewis play drum tracks on that record as well. You can tell the slight differences. Knowing Prince, he probably demanded a certain feel from Sheila. I've seen and heard her play a lot and she can almost pull off the same meter Prince does, but she still has the Latin vibe - still, all good, just not the same as funk. Nevertheless, I've never seen anything like it - Sheila E playing live with Prince.
I don't believe she was on speed either, but she managed to play a 3 hour show once. This was the Alphabet Street Tour. There was a trampoline bed in the middle of the stage. Kat was dancing and singing backup, as was Sheila from behind the drums, but during songs Sheila also ran out from her set, danced with Kat, sang while jumping on the bed with Prince and Kat while playing percussion instruments, ran back to her drums and finished songs - and did this many times during the show, plus a few long drum solos, back to dancing, etc, etc... and her playing was better than any drummer I had ever seen. So in the pocket the whole time! I was floored because I wasn't all that impressed with her playing when I saw her previously. I thought she was really good, but not Steve Gadd good. But she IS.
And that Madhouse 16 will give you a little taste of that if you are into a kind of acid jazz vibe. Maybe straight up FUNK jazz. Wikipedia says "jazz-fusion" but that makes me think of the Yellowjackets or Marcus Miller or something like that, but it's more uppity. The only warning is that the snare, the sax, and even the trumpet are all recorded "hot."
Anyway, I was going to talk about meter, but I'm just starting to feel like I'm lamenting down memory lane and starting to sound like a crazy cat lady.
OH--and I should figure out a way to insert my story about seeing the Prince and Miles Davis art show in NY. How do I do that? And who else likes Miles Davis?
mjp
Founding member
The Lovesexy tour. I was probably at the same show you were. I saw it here in Los Angeles and in Minneapolis (when I coincidentally happened to be there - I wasn't following Prince around the country like some kind of hippie). I seem to recall that Price and some of the other musicians also shot some three pointers into the basketball hoop and backboard that was there on the stage for no apparent reason during that show, yeah?
Of all the Prince shows I've seen, that tour was heaviest on the spectacle, but the music was still flowing uninterrupted the entire time, as you pointed out. I'm not a big fan of musicians doing choreography, but you have to be pretty damn good at what you do to pull that shit off.
The Madhouse records are crazy, but not easy to find. They were never made on CD, so you'll have to dust off the Victrola if you do find them. Hearing those might make you a convert Purple Stickpin.
What I'd like to hear is some of your recorded material. No doubt you developed a very singular style in that genre. That's a big undertaking in terms of a drum style, and the hours of work must have been huge.
Miles did as much as any jazz musician in shaping the medium and changing it radically more than once. I dig Birth of the Cool, but my favorites of his are with Tony Williams and Ron Carter. My Funny Valentine is a brilliant live album. Bitch's Brew is totally blowing up the genre. More than most any "fusion" efforts from true jazz players, this features interactive improv, not just solos. A major departure from most "progressive" stuff, which, almost incomprehensibly, sticks to the solo/comp formula that is both the trademark of more traditional jazz and it's predominant shortcoming.
Well, I found this:
And little else, so I gave it a listen. While it is clearly challenging music played by excellent musicians, it's not my cup o' chai. While I should leave it at this, of course I am compelled to explain why:
- It's slick and sounds composed as opposed to improvised (not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, per se, but it sounds the way Prince looks). But to me, jazz should contain a significant improvised component.
- It doesn't take risks. The only risks apparent in this piece are those indicated by the lead sheet. But musicians of their caliber, with adequate practice and rehearsal time, can nail their part 99% of the time.
- It's somewhat lacking in dynamics. While it is not in your face, it's only a few feet from your face most of the way through.
- Like too much '80s music, it sounds overly-compressed.
- It's got washy synthesizers. Talk about music making your teeth hurt.
mjp
Founding member
Actually it's two musicians; Eric Leeds, the saxophone player, and Prince playing everything else.
That track is a little tame. When I characterized Madhouse as "crazy," I was thinking more along the lines of stuff like this or this (which are from the second Madhouse record, 16). The whole project isn't really my cup of anything, but since Carol brought it up...
It suffers from 80s production values for sure, but you'd be hard pressed to find a pop record from the middle of the 80s that doesn't. Which is one of the reasons it was such a useless decade for music.
Prince and Bukowski share the same problem, that being they were sometimes too prolific for their own good. Their work, as a whole, also falls along generally similar lines; 15% crap, 80% better than just about all of their contemporaries, and 5% transcendent.
Okay, THIS is really funny. I thought I'd do a check on YouTube for some old band songs and someone made their own homemade video to one of our songs that I co-wrote. I don't quite understand the selection of pictures for the song, but you can hear the drumming and some song writing. I am NOT responsible for the awful coronet farting.
I wrote the chorus and the bridge, not the verses. I named it as well. I co-wrote it with my guitar player - in fact, it was immediately after I lent him Love is a Dog From Hell. He became a Buk fan from that time forward and we'd occasionally write together after that, but we wrote this song on the morning he finished reading those poems. Like from out of a movie he came speeding up in front of my place, ran up my steps with his guitar with a new lease on life, and excitedly asked me to break out my poetry books. I told him I didn't write like Bukowski, but he didn't care. He finally found some kind of use for me and wanted me to shed my darkness on something.
I wrote the chorus and the bridge, not the verses. I named it as well. I co-wrote it with my guitar player - in fact, it was immediately after I lent him Love is a Dog From Hell. He became a Buk fan from that time forward and we'd occasionally write together after that, but we wrote this song on the morning he finished reading those poems. Like from out of a movie he came speeding up in front of my place, ran up my steps with his guitar with a new lease on life, and excitedly asked me to break out my poetry books. I told him I didn't write like Bukowski, but he didn't care. He finally found some kind of use for me and wanted me to shed my darkness on something.