Third Eye Film Society ~ View topic - Rock n' Roll, Rap n' Crap

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< Music & Theatre ~ Rock n' Roll, Rap n' Crap

Macca00

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 8:24 pm

Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 390 Location: Liverpool/England

Sinead O'Connor's only transgression was to highlight an issue which Irish society was in denial about until the dam broke a year or so later. Contemporary Ireland is so welcoming of O'Connor in a way which would have been unthinkable 15 years' ago.
Jeremy, love your conflation of the Catholic Church & the good ship, Charlotte. Only question is which one of the two is the least raddled & undignified Wink

Macca00

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 8:49 pm

Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 390 Location: Liverpool/England

Warming to my muso-agitprop mode, am I the only one who thinks that Madonna's "Hung Up" is the most overrated single of the year? Abba's "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme" was innovative. Madge's effort is depressingly derivative.
(Jeremy, you're not allowed to pass comment on this post, seeing as you're probably still in a darkened room after watching the video; I recall your drop-jawed droolings over Madonna at Live8 Rolling Eyes

Mr. Brownstone

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 9:28 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 2450

Hung Up ain't a real great tune, but Madonna has sort of fallen prey to her self-generated lowered expectations. Anything even halfway danceable and tolerable is viewed, in light of the utterly dreadful American Life or Music, as a glorious resurgence of Ray of Light-era Madonna, which was supposedly a glorious resurgence of Express Yourself-Vogue era Madonna.

Hung Up isn't even in the same league as Ray of Light or Open Your Heart, but it isn't embarrassing, which is sort of the way popular rock is treated now.

Lord knows the Foo Fighters' last album or The Academy Is or Disturbd isn't Nirvana or GnR or The Black Crowes, but I think people listen to some of 2004-05's fare and say, "well, at least it's not Limp Bizkit or P.O.D., so it must not suck entirely - maybe it means rock is resurging."

It isn't, at least not via the Foos, but it is better than Slipknot, at any rate.

I think Shannon hailed My Chemical Romance before my departure, and I just wanted to give them a shout out. Most of Helena is okay, sort of screamo whining speed pop punk, but the chorus is amazing - I daresay the best chorus I have heard since..., well, since I was 14.

_________________
"My name is Gunnery Sergeant Major Highway. And I have drunk more beer, pissed more blood, banged more quiff and knocked more skulls than all you numbnuts put together." - Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge

Macca00

Posted: Mon Nov 14, 2005 9:41 pm

Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 390 Location: Liverpool/England

"Ray of Light" was a great pop single, "Beautiful Stranger" a close second. Problem for Madonna these days is that she thinks she can claim that elixir of youth through shoddy second-hand sampling (cf her current single). She's also got a husband who makes movies for those with a short span of attention.

ehle64

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 12:09 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 7149 Location: NYC; US&A

Whatevs. Listen to the album as a whole. It's full of vibrant dance tracks. Madonna's back and people are just too cool to care.

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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is.

Mr. Brownstone

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:08 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 2450

What the fuck does Guy Ritchie's shitty movies have to do with anything?

Ray of Light is a pretty terrific pop album from a pop singer not really known for great albums. I think her only other good album is Like a Virgin, but that's just because I think Dress You Up is an under-rated pop gem.

That's actually a pretty remarkable record; to have a 20-year career consisting of at least a dozen solid pop hits with only two decent albums under your belt.

Mr. Brownstone

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:39 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 2450

I'll have to check out the whole Madonna album to see if I need to revise my statement about her having a career consisting almost entirely of significant singles entrenched in mostly mediocre albums (Virgin & Light excepted).

I'm still baffled that Itunes can't yet carry Led Zeppelin, AC/DC or Metallica. All they carry are these embarrassing "tribute" albums consisting of either electronic, acoustic girly, or thrash metal bands covering their songs in really flat production values.

Yet every day, like a dog whose owner just died, I nuzzle up to my laptop window to see if Lars Ulrich or Jimmy Page is still out of his fucking mind and won't be coming home. Again.

I re-read macca's statement, and I'm a little puzzled by something - aren't all samples, by definition, "second-hand?"

I think the sampling laws that came about in 97-98 really have done a number on hip-hop - the production on an album like Fear of a Black Planet or Ill Communication just blows away most of the stuff that comes out of recent.

Maybe that's an unfair comparison, two of hip-hop's best albums of all time versus every album of the past 5-7 years - especially with Dangermouse mashing stuff up real cool-like (I love Old School with Talib Kweli!). But at the same time, I have a hard time reconciling that the fans of hip-hop who made How I Could Just Kill a Man or My Mind Playin' Tricks on Me or No Vaseline would for one second tolerate an inexcusably awful, juvenile, incompentent Bad Boy for Life, which is, quite literally, The Worst. Song. Ever.

Macca00

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 1:17 pm

Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 390 Location: Liverpool/England

Brownstone, the observation about Guy Ritchie was meant to be incidental & not germane to my comments on Madonna's output.
Sampling is, by definition, second-hand. I hold my hands up, tautology crept in. However, sampling can still be innovative, despite the clampdown in 97-98. An obvious example can be found in the British band Alabama3.

Mr. Brownstone

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 1:50 pm

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 2450

Agreed, although I've never heard of Alabama3.

I have heard of Alabama though, who always seemed like a cross between Bob Seeger and the Oak Ridge Boys.

This is not a good thing.

Macca00

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2005 3:13 pm

Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 390 Location: Liverpool/England

Brownstone, check out: http://www.alabama3.co.uk/ .

jeremy

Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 6:15 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

Guy Ritichie made two mixed, but eminently watchable and successful films before he met Madonna. Since, he has made, two dire flops. Now this may be pure coincidence...

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jeremy

Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 6:22 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

I really like Madonna on a number of levels, but I must confess I find some of her music a little too calculating. She's got the recipe down pat: a little bit of this, a touch of that, something new, something borrowed, a soupcon of sex, bags of chutzpah; stir and leave to simmer to a disco beat. Alas, often I find it slightly forced and lacking in a certain I-don't -know-what...ingredient X.

censored-03

Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 9:41 am

Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 3058 Location: Gotham, Big Apple, The Naked City

I'm sure some of you must be tired of hearing this again, but others don't know that Madonna has been a friend of mine on and off for 23 years. I was there when she became one, if not the, strongest female icons of the 20th century, certainly she was towards the end of it, hands down. I was roommates with her brother Christopher in the Lower East Side back in '82 thru '84. In that period she went from being a down and out but spunky take no prisoners student of music and poses to a vibrant and almost super-human star. IMO she was at her best in the beginning, when she was really a ray of light, an amalgam of super-human ego writing her own urban legend. Someone who really didn't fit into the scene she was living in until it dawned on her to create her own scene.

It was a mix; she borrowed from the Euro-trash of very late disco and added to it a refined version of street-cred beats from the nabe. Hip-hop and rap beats wrapped up with an uber-conciousness of (clothes, jewelry and make-up) fashion from those very same Manhattan streets that featured punk-ethic dime store and thrift shop ethos combined with flighty tastes for exoticism and a downright rip-off of the Puerto Rican and Dominican girls that lived side by side with the punks, artists and no-wave, new-wave and just out there musicians of the East Village. She spiced it all up, yet at the same time boiled it down to a much more palatable pop stew for a public that would really never see much of that more esoteric culture (at the time at least) that she was so derivative of at the beginning. She certainly made something all her own, thus IMO superstardom came easily. A public hungry for something titillating during the "Just Say No" Reagan/Thatcher-era was ready for a sexy, nose-thumbing, provocateur.

Madonna was very un-feminist female compared what had become an almost traditionalist role for some. She would have none of that, she wanted sex and she wasn’t afraid to talk about it or afraid to play-act taking a backseat to her man, all along in reality obviously being at least half of the power of the pair wearing the pants in the house-(music). She did a very typically American thing, she made an art-form that offended the least amount of people but packaged it in a pretty rude exterior and stepped on anyone to get to her own place, a show-biz throne she would never relinquish, but certainly would seemingly pay a price for, at least if you listen to her lyrics or interviews of late. I always have given her credit for being a much better musician than she is actually given credit for by mixed critics and the public that loves her so. It is indeed a love-hate relationship never-the-less. She is quite talented musically and has been a hands-on person and star in the studio as well as with her better known stage performances, videos and photo-ops. I've made a list of what I consider to be her excellent to at least decent songs.

Lucky Star
Borderline
Burning Up
Holiday
Everybody
Physical Attraction
Dress You Up
Like A Virgin
Into The Groove
Papa Don't Preach
Crazy for You
Gone
Love Don’t Live Here Anymore (remix only)
Justify My Love
Vogue
Bad Girl
Why’s It So Hard
Inside of Me (One of her best vocal takes)
Take A Bow
Ray of Light
Sky Fits Heaven
Frozen

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Mr. Brownstone

Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 10:09 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 2450

Jeremy:

I think you're absolutely right about Madonna, which is why she's been able to remain popular - she's just pedestrian enough to find consistent appeal in the market.

If there is one aspect of Madonna thast attracts me, it's the comfortable familiarity she provides me. I was the first generation of MTV kids, so there's just something reassuring about the consistent voice of my youth continuing to echo over the television.

Macca:

You're also on to something about Guy Ritchie. Madonna almost ruined Sean Penn, taking him from At Close Range and The Falcon and the Snowman to Shangai Surprise in less than a year. Poor bastard.

Macca00

Posted: Wed Nov 16, 2005 12:11 pm

Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 390 Location: Liverpool/England

It was working with Madonna & Sean Penn on "Shanghai Surprise" that moved George Harrison to describe them as "the poison Penns".

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