I hate musical instruments

[jools]

steady now... you're messing with my childhood there. I'm afraid ELP and Yes were the first proper bands I was ever into, first LP purchase etc etc. Godlove'em

 

[Jules]

Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come!!! First band ever to use drum machines, I believe...

 

[dooce]

Jools wrote:
steady now... you're messing with my childhood there. I'm afraid ELP and Yes were the first proper bands I was ever into, first LP purchase etc etc. Godlove'em

Sorry to trample on your childhood sensitivities Jools. Actually I was a huge, obsessive fan of The Nice and while Keith Emerson was always an OTT showman with them, he went into overdrive when ELP kicked off. I saw them do a show at Coventry when he launched off into a mind-numbingly tedious 10-minute long theramin solo while using it as an, ahem, male appendage, and I think that's probably where my loathing of the thing began.........

 

[andrew_sanders]

Used to hate bagpipes until I found out the germans call them
DUDELSACK. I can't dislike them now.

 

[bobk]

Jools wrote:
steady now... you're messing with my childhood there. I'm afraid ELP and Yes were the first proper bands I was ever into, first LP purchase etc etc. Godlove'em

Most prog-rock, I would agree, was crap (but probably most of anything was). I can't remember any ELP that I'd listen to willingly these days although I listened to plenty of it in those days. I can, however, quite happily drive 200 miles with Court of the Crimson King going round and round again and again on the CD player...

cheers,

Bob

 

[peter_fitton]

Not an instrument, but I absolutely cannot abide those shrieking, wailing soprano singers that you seem to hear at least 8 out of every 10 times that you turn on Radio 3 any time during the day. I can't believe that, in 2008, there are more than about 200 people in the whole of the UK who find that style of singing anything other than completely silly and ridiculous. Unfortunately all 200 of 'em seem to work for Radio 3.

And if you're ears are not assaulted by a soprano then there's a good chance it'll be some baritone or basso-profundo type chunnering tunelessly away. Bah, quite frankly.

Also, there's that horrible electronic effect that runs through the entirety of Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene - or at least throughout the hit single part of it - that sounds kinda like a synthesized washboard player. It goes through me to the extent that if it ever comes on the radio I feel certain that it's going to induce some kind of seizure if I don't switch channels immediately.

Can't really describe it but the current Radio 5 Live news jingle utilises a similar effect, though it's not quite as bad. Ghastly.

Cheers

Peter

 

[jools]

yeh, isn't that strange!...
a couple of years back I bought Brain Salad Surgery from iTunes (the first LP I ever bought by the way) and HATED IT. What a load of self indulgent drivvel - with the exception of Kieth's solo jazz piano etude in the middle. I mean he was an astonishingly talented player, and I remember him being a guest on Oscar Peterson's TV show. they played a barrel house boogie number and he nearly blew Oscar out of the water!.. even he said that. But Greg Lake... what was he on about!?! all the lyrics are just infantile rubbish. If he'd shut up for a minute, some of it wasn't bad at all. As for Kieth's theramin antics... I guess you have to have been there - a thing that I regret to this day.. I never was. I still wonder who the lone heckler was on Pictures at an Exhibition (the first live album) who, in a quiet moment called out "Wally" - but then. we all did in those days, and for no particular reason. Unless he was us - back from the future.

Wierd tho, that some music stands the test of time. I'd go with you on the King Crimson vote. I also recently bought Aqualung by Jethro Tull and it sounds as gritty today as it did back then.

I absolutely love listening to twice-bankrupt Rick Wakeman talking about the old days. LOL. He dubunks the whole thing brilliantly. And this from a man who donned a silk, full length wizards cape and performed with a 52 piece orchestra - ON ICE!. Ha. brilliant.

Prog rock?- all good clean fun. (just wouldn't want to listen to it nowadays)

 

[jools]

Peter...

hahahahah . Totally with you there mate.
Without wishing to sound like a total pleb (and with enough formal training to know better) - most operatic music is basically fat blokes shouting, or skinny women shrieking.

So there.

Actually, radio three totally cracks me up sometimes. It's the real-life radio equivalent of The Fast Show's "Jazz Club"... They'll play some hideously dischordant, chaotic, cacophony and then have a "post match analysis" with some very high brow intellectuals discussing the composers "motivation". I'm thinking... "royalty cheques from the Kings new clothes, was his motivation, my friends"

Ha.

 

[Bobby G]

There was a very good reason for the 'Wally' shout, it became a custom for quite a while after the Weeley Festival in the early 70's; someone had lost their dog, or their mate or something, and was wandering around shouting 'Wally!', and it just kind of took off.

To my mind, there's good prog and bad prog - all of it played by 'real' musicians, the dividing line seemed to be between those who were just showing off their ability to play widdly-widdly in 17/8 (ELP, Yes, Argent etc) and those who used the musical complexity to try and create something 'other' (King Crimson, earlier Genesis, Hatfield & the North etc). Then of course you had your Brit(-ish) eccentrics who weren't strictly prog, and who had more of a sense of humour or playfulness (Robert Wyatt, Gong, Kevin Ayers, Arthur Brown etc). But, I find that a lot of it doesn't stand the test of time - mostly I find that music from that era that I've never stopped listening to I still love, whereas if you were to put on Camel's 'Snow Goose' I would have to run for cover.

 

[jools]

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Didn't you just love Bob Harris's reaction after having Camel on "The Old Grey Whistle Test" ??... "yeh, wow... like, yeh" Hahaha.

In fact, Pete Gabriel, Ian Anderson and Dider Malherbe are the SOLE reason I started playing the flute. And Didier (and Xero Slingsby) caused me to get into the sax. Them and Dick Parry's work on Dark Side of the Moon. So - prog has a lot to answer for in my development.

 

[Bobby G]

Mine too, for better or worse. I came up through the sixties, and you could just sense the bands trying to outdo each other - not necessarily in a competitive, more an artistic sense. Then of course came 1970, I started actually being able to experience this stuff live having attained the age of 14 and well, yes, prog in all its guises influenced me a great deal. But then so did many other musical forms, even though my staple diet at gigs then was prog and/or pubrock, and singer-songwriter types. Then of course punk happened and I had to do that too. Fortunately I saw sense and totally bypassed New Romanticism :whistle:

 

[peter_fitton]

Bob, to be fair Camel did produce at least one real classic: Lunar Sea from the Moon Madness album. The guitar solo on that redefines the word "blistering". One of my fave axe solos along with the one on the Pink Fairies' track Portobello Shuffle, which has to be heard to be believed.

I quite like a bit of that atonal stuff, Joolz. But the one thing that puzzles me is that despite having no tonal, melodic or rythmic centre... a lot of it all sounds the same! I think there must be some kind of secret book of dissonant scales/harmonic theory floating around somewhere that they all cop their licks from.

Back on topic, there's this thing Michael Karoli does with his guitar on Spray from Can's Future Days album that is just excruciating. It starts at about 4 mins 10 secs if you know the track, and goes on for about a minute. Again I can't describe it but it's torture. Shame cos it's otherwise a great track.

Didn't Bob Harris once apologise for the non-appearance of Blood, Sweat & Tears on the OGWT "due to the death of their saxophonist in Amsterdam at the weekend"? Classic.

Peter

 

[jools]

"I quite like a bit of that atonal stuff, Joolz. But the one thing that puzzles me is that despite having no tonal, melodic or rythmic centre... a lot of it all sounds the same! I think there must be some kind of secret book of dissonant scales/harmonic theory floating around somewhere that they all cop their licks from. "


Usually: "Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Arpeggios. Check it out, tis all in there. 😉

 

[saxplayer67]

Although I may not listen to certain instruments and genres of music, to me, all things that can make music are things of beauty.

 

[saxplayer67]

Jools, off topic but in your avatar, is obviously a tenor sax but just the shot of the octave key on the crook interested me - what make is your tenor, please? Cheers!

 

[jools]

Hi Dirk. I am reliably informed that it is a Buescher Aristocrat from about 1964/5. It's hard to tell as it had never been engraved, but had been factory sprayed a sort of metallic gold. I am sure that when it was new it looked great, but 40 years on it had started to flake off. I took it on myself to strip the whole thing down and have the original designs engraved on the bell. You can see some photos of it here:
Various saxophones and restoration projects

 

[jonf]

Jools wrote:
Hi Dirk. I am reliably informed that it is a Buescher Aristocrat from about 1964/5. It's hard to tell as it had never been engraved, but had been factory sprayed a sort of metallic gold. I am sure that when it was new it looked great, but 40 years on it had started to flake off. I took it on myself to strip the whole thing down and have the original designs engraved on the bell. You can see some photos of it here:
Various saxophones and restoration projects

Jools

I can confirm that it is definitely a Buescher Aristocrat - it's just like the one I've got.

Jon

 

[jools]

Nice one Jon. Cheers.
Does yours have the logo embossed LH pinky key? - because for some reason, mine doesn't. I suspect that it was butchered some years ago and replaced with a blank (been looking out for one for ages)

 

[jonf]

Jools wrote:
Nice one Jon. Cheers.
Does yours have the logo embossed LH pinky key?

Hi Jools

Yes, mine does. I don't know whether all Aristocrats of that vintage came with that sort of pinky key - I'd have thought they would, but Buescher used so many variations of finshes I can't be sure. Good look with finding one - must be as rare as rocking horse poo.

Jon