What are you listening to right now?

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQqHzPzQsMg

Because it's Friday, getting late and we all need an anthem - and who better to make it sound like we're really in a garage than the E-Street band?

"It ain't me, it ain't me ...."

Hey - Bruce actually knows the words to the second verse. I think he's the first person since 1970 to work them out.

[Pies4shaw]

Here's another shout-along anthem, just about the biggest single of 1969: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJenCSk8HZg

[stui magpie]

I had trouble watching that one, the sound quality was good but everytime they panned to the audience I got distracted by all the botox in the audience.

And yeah, the vocals in Fortunate Son sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom.

Great songs but.

[Pies4shaw]

^ When I was a kid, I couldn't afford to buy albums, mostly. I'd heard Creedence a lot, of course - they were always on the radio - but Fortunate Son never got much airplay. It was on Willy and the Poor Boys and so it was competing with Down On The Corner (surely one of the catchiest hits of all time), the novelty It Came Out Of The Sky with John channelling Little Richard, Cottonfields and their wonderful cover of Midnight Special.

Then, a mid-priced double-album called "Live in Europe" was released (list price $7.95). It was from the 1971 tour in support of the last album, Mardi Gras. By then, CCR was a trio, so some of the songs sounded a little thin to my ears. And, as I now know, John didn't want it released, which probably was why it didn't reach the shops until late 1973.

Anyway, side 2 had Fortunate Son and Lodi, neither which I'd ever heard. Fortunate Son has been one of my favourite songs ever since.

I'd never seen Fogerty perform it live but a couple of days ago I read about this version. I watched and was blown away by his guitar sound and, to be frank, his singing (but not Bruce's) is so astoundingly good, despite his age, that it moved me to tears.

Here's the original cut from Willy and the Poorboys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2rQ4QI7aiE

Should have been the US national anthem.

[Pies4shaw]

Allman Brothers, Statesboro Blues, from their final night concert at the Fillmore East, 27 June 1971. This is disc 6 of the 6-disc set called The Allman Brothers Band: The 1971 Fillmore East Recordings - it includes the complete concerts from which the live album that made their reputation was taken. Duane really was an extraordinarily inventive guitarist (as well as being technically gifted) - this is the 5th version of Statesboro Blues in this collection (there are five complete concerts and they opened every one with this song) and his playing just never repeats. The remastering is magnificent - it sounds like they are all standing just behind the speakers (I hope they're not - there isn't much space).

[Pies4shaw]

Kate Bush, The Kick Inside. Specifically, James and the Cold Gun, as I write.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJLz2hn4Wl8

[watt price tully]

Last evening meal at Kismet in Ubud Bali: shazamed these pretty cool tracks:

Dope Noir by Waldeck

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2mGMzVSUY&autoplay=1

and

Askin Alizadeh with Wash Away

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVbLNQaJtR8&autoplay=1

While having our meal we were seated next to this American guy and his 17 year old daughter. He’s been living in Indonesia for years and married an Indonesian woman. He’s high up working for US Aid and is into conservation in a big way. Next month Is his daughters 18th & she gets to release Orangutans that have been rescued and nurtured back to the jungle in Borneo / Kalimantan into protected areas. Nice birthday present!

He & his daughter were lovely. He’s a road bike rider too & he wasn’t aware of the place I did my road bike rides with 2 days ago so I could give him those details

[watt price tully]

[Pies4shaw]

Thanks, wpt. It reminds me more of Sheila Chandra's "Weaving My Ancestors' Voices" than Kate Bush - but it is certainly fabulous music.

[Pies4shaw]

Here's a real treat: Kit Armstrong playing a Franz Liszt transcription of Bach on Liszt's own 1862 Bechstein.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi2Hr6-4Zeo

I had no idea this piano still existed.

[Bruce Gonsalves]

Have just been re-united with a song from the past. Artist David McWilliams - Days of Pearly Spencer.

[David]

Interesting video arguing that melody has fallen out of fashion in contemporary music – do you have any thoughts on this, P4S?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Vn9V-tRCo

[Pies4shaw]

It's accurate, as far as it goes - but I'm not sure it goes very far.

He's totally misconstrued the function of the "riff" in Led Zeppelin, though - the "riff" is not what the singer does - Whole Lotta Love uses the 3-note riff as a means of creating a more unified structure for what would otherwise be a stock-standard blues shout (a la Muddy Water's "Mannish Boy") in which the singer carries the blues melody over a figure with limited harmonic movement (compare Whole Lotta Love with the original Willie Dixon song "You Need Lovin'", or - better still - with the cover of the Willie Dixon song by the Small Faces that is almost certainly the direct inspiration for Whole Lotta Love: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp0jZ4BGuDw ). Whole Lotta Love is also a poorly chosen example - compare with, say, the riffs to Black Dog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcBjfBpgH8Q or Heartbreaker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUFGJvYlPFk , both of which depend upon their melody.

"Poker Face" strikes me as a catchy kind of gimmick, similar to, say, "Salt Peanuts" by Dizzy Gillespie (first recorded in the mid 1940s) - both tunes make a feature of the limited melodic movement of some of the core elements (riffs, if you will) but even a cursory listen exposes that both songs rely extensively on melody - in Gillespie's case, melodies created by the soloists' improvisation and in Lady Gaga's case by the various melodic lines in the bridge and the rest of the chorus. Moreover, what comes into your head when you think of "Poker Face" is, in any event, the melody (however limited its movement may be in the most famous bits), not the soundscape behind it.

Obviously, techno is - a little like disco was - designed to drive a beat for dancing. That doesn't require melody and the texture of the sound is probably more important than the "tune". It has its "serious" parallel in the "minimalist" music of Glass and others (which is, of course, the source of the trend the author identifies in some cinematic music) - personally, I find that irritating (it always sounds a little self-conscious and conceited to me) but, equally, I love Ligeti's music - although much of his most moving work (eg, his 1966 Lux Aeterna: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iVYu5lyX5M) has no discernible melody.

But "melody", a la, say, Bellini, Schubert or Chopin - or to take the most beautiful example in the author's little video, the opening of the first movement of Sibelius' D Minor violin Concerto (here performed by the great Viktoria Mullova: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdQdRGc0nhY ) is an artefact of a particular period in composition, which reached its height with the late "Romantic" movement in the 1800s and early 1900s. These things have typically waxed and waned. No doubt, that will continue. I don't suppose we will ever really be "post melody" unless music - as we understand it - has actually ceased.

[David]

Thanks P4S! Very interesting insights.

Music to me seems such a broad phenomenon at any given point of time that it seems hard to justify any sweeping claims about "trends", though I do recall hearing the Taylor Swift song "Look what you made me do" at one point and feeling puzzled – like, this monotonous drone is popular now? But I'm sure many people in the past have felt the same about things we take for granted now like rap, etc., so I try to be open-minded!

[K]

Who is the "he" of the youtube vid? Do you have reason to think he knows what he's talking about?