Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Meeting

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Larry B.
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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#141 Post by Larry B. » Tue Jun 02, 2015 4:36 am

We shouldn't be confusing music taste with objective influence, I think. Bandit doesn't like the Beatles, and that's a matter of taste. I do like them quite a bit, and there are some people who adore absolutely everything they did, including their shittiest songs. There's loads of levels there.

And another thing altogether is their influence, their significance for popular music in general. Let me go through a small list just for Sgt. Pepper's:

* Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: Introduces the 'storyline' for the album, in what is the first widely recognized 'conceptual' record (this was, obviously, taken to new heights by several other bands in later years.) Let's not forget that up to this point in history, LPs were essentially a collection of songs and it was not expected for the songs to have any connection between each other.

* With a Little Help from My Friends: The seamless transition between these two songs was also a novelty, an interesting effect that would become widely used in the coming years, especially in conceptual albums. I'm not sure if drug references were a novelty then, but this song has them.

* Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: This song has a 'signature' Lennon distorted voice (which was a recording novelty) and Harrison introduces the tambura to Western pop music. Of course, the dream-like quality of this song has been also hugely influential.

* Getting Better: Once again we see the tambura; in this song, the drum pattern is very unconventional and we must remember that this is a *pop* song; so when you get out of the norm, I think it's noteworthy. The bass line is also quite striking and influential. I think this song also has congas, which like the tambura are introduced in a context that's nothing like their native musical environments.

* Fixing a Hole: This is an odd one. Not sure what I can say about this song. Drug references?

* She's Leaving Home: Again, we have here a pop song that's nothing like a pop song. There are only strings and sort of choral voices, and it's not done in jest. This is one of those songs that as a musician or aspiring musician make you go "oh, so you can do that."

* Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite: This song plays with recording techniques, speeding up tapes, inverting tapes, chopping them up and pasting them back together, etc. It also goes along with the 'theme' of the album.

* Within You Without You: This song introduces popular music to a wide arrangement of instruments from India, which interact with a Western string section. The lyrics attempt to be deep and profoundly philosophical, which -again- is a novelty for pop music. There are odd signatures and odd keys, and the only Beatle to feature in any shape or form here is Harrison.

* When I'm Sixty-Four: This song features a more old-time jazz feel to it, with clarinets and a drummer that I'm 99% sure isn't Ringo (regardless of what the credits say).

* Lovely Rita: Can't say a lot about this one.

* Good Morning Good Morning: Odd time signature and -most importantly- double bass drum. In a pop song, and a horrible one at that. They also pull off a nice trick by 'transforming' a cock's noise into a guitar lick in the transition to the next song.

* Sgt. Pepper's (Reprise): I'm not sure if these 'reprise' versions were normal back then, but I'm assuming they weren't. Here, the band announces that the album is ending and sort of bring the theme to a close, with a tune that's familiar.

* A Day in the Life: A multi-section pop epic, which include a couple of special effects (novelty as well) and a final crescendo with a big-ass orchestra. And after the song, they created a small track that (since this was a vinyl LP) would loop infinitely as the needle reached the inner track.

They experimented with so, so many things, and they managed to create hits out of them. They influenced virtually every musician that came after them, and even those who were contemporary. In all of this, their producer was essential, obviously. He made sure they released good products and not just a mismatch of shit. At least not until #9, which doesn't count.

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#142 Post by Bandit72 » Tue Jun 02, 2015 5:00 am

Larry, as a matter of interest, what would be your reason for them for them doing such a conceptual album? Drugs? Ulterior influences? Bored of writing teenage pop songs? A mixture of all three? I understand all the points you raised in your previous post. And yes, you're right, I don't like them. But as I've said quite a number of times before, I wholly accept what they have done for popular music and how they have influenced countless respectable artists. I just sometimes feel people are blinkered withthe whole Beatlemania thing. Had they not previously been so successful, would a conceptual album like Sgt. Peppers have been brushed under the carpet? Kind of like the Tom Dissevelt track I posted after Hype's Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite. That was written in the late 50's. You play that on the radio back in the day and people would go 'what the fuck is this?'

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#143 Post by Hype » Tue Jun 02, 2015 5:19 am

Bandit72 wrote:
This is terrible. It's Kenny G in an aquarium.

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#144 Post by Bandit72 » Tue Jun 02, 2015 5:43 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Bandit72 wrote:
This is terrible. It's Kenny G in an aquarium.
Yeh, I'm not a big fan. BUT IT'S NOVEL THOUGH ISN'T IT.

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#145 Post by Hype » Tue Jun 02, 2015 6:30 am

Bandit72 wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Bandit72 wrote:
This is terrible. It's Kenny G in an aquarium.
Yeh, I'm not a big fan. BUT IT'S NOVEL THOUGH ISN'T IT.
No.

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#146 Post by Bandit72 » Tue Jun 02, 2015 6:38 am

Image

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#147 Post by Hype » Tue Jun 02, 2015 6:46 am

:lol:

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#148 Post by Larry B. » Tue Jun 02, 2015 9:15 am

Bandit72 wrote:Larry, as a matter of interest, what would be your reason for them for them doing such a conceptual album? Drugs? Ulterior influences? Bored of writing teenage pop songs? A mixture of all three?
I genuinely believe it was more about something that's usually lost in pop music in general: I think it was more about 'circumstances' and just fun. "Wouldn't it be fun to...?" and they did it. After they decided to stop touring, they tried a whole lot of shit in the studio, and what sounded fun was kept in. As simple as that.

If I remember correctly, before Sgt. Pepper's came to be they had the idea of making a sort of "tribute to England" album or EP. It was with that concept that Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields and McCartney wrote Penny Lane. But instead of obsessing about it, they quickly realized they would struggle creating more stuff and scrapped that idea, but the songs were there. And for most songs that they recorded, they didn't take weeks to write it and then polish it; the usual process was that someone came up with an idea, however rough, and then they sort of developed it for a while, recorded between 5 and 20 takes with different styles, speeds, even different time signatures. After that, the producer cut-and-pasted stuff together until it sounded good. The members of the Beatles never really needed to remember those songs nor play them ever again. There weren't any real external boundaries to their creativity, for good and bad. I mean, I think Strawberry Fields is a brilliant piece of music, but unfortunately you also get lyrics such as "why don't we do it on the road?"

They also recorded a bunch of leftover songs or demos, which were obviously deemed not good enough to feature. Similarly, Michael Jackson recorded over 100 demos for Thriller. And the process in both cases is similar: you have 100 rough ideas, you record them. You take the best 50, add a few things (even some bits from the other, discarded 50 songs). You try to improve 25 of them, and so on. Thriller had 9 songs, 7 of which were singles, 6 of which were top 10 in the US and the UK. It's a fantastic methodology that has unfortunately disappeared for the most part. Nowadays, most musicians or bands sit to write ~15 songs until they are complete, then they rehearse it for a bit and then they record them, and only 3-5 songs are trimmed in order to release a 10-12 song album. Those 3-5 leftover songs are usually released as B-sides. So it's a much more structured and narrow way to work.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think The Beatles did this because it was fun and they had the freedom (time and money) to do it.

I think it's interesting to make a comparison with The Beach Boys. They had a clear band concept: girls, cars, and the beach. That's all they were supposed to sing about, and the amount of shitty songs and albums they released is frankly staggering. But when Brian Wilson decided he didn't want to go away on tour, he composed Pet Sounds. Every Beach Boys album before and after that is absolute shit, but when Brian was set free from the creative boundaries he had, and presented with time and money to spend in the studio working and re-working the songs, and experimenting with sound effects and instrumentation, a beautiful brand of pop music that hadn't ever been seen before was born.

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#149 Post by guysmiley » Tue Jun 02, 2015 12:28 pm

well, crap. Even though I at times hate Paul. I have to say i like the song Helter Skelter. I hate to even share this in a thread about Perry, but here's a cover I've been doing recently in this shit hole called Japan.

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#150 Post by JOEinPHX » Tue Jun 02, 2015 3:59 pm

kv wrote:That's absurd...thats like discrediting Henry Ford because now there are tons of other auto makers
I'd rather have a Porsche 911 than a Model T

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#151 Post by Pandemonium » Tue Jun 02, 2015 8:29 pm

guysmiley wrote:well, crap. Even though I at times hate Paul. I have to say i like the song Helter Skelter. I hate to even share this in a thread about Perry, but here's a cover I've been doing recently in this shit hole called Japan.
That's a cool take on the song.

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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#152 Post by Hype » Wed Jun 03, 2015 4:52 am

Pandemonium wrote:
guysmiley wrote:well, crap. Even though I at times hate Paul. I have to say i like the song Helter Skelter. I hate to even share this in a thread about Perry, but here's a cover I've been doing recently in this shit hole called Japan.
That's a cool take on the song.
That is really cool. The bassline sounds so much like Whores. :rockon: Rest of the song has a muddy Soundgarden feel to it.


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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#154 Post by JOEinPHX » Sun Aug 30, 2015 1:41 pm


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Re: Perry Farrell Talks New Mystery Project, Kurt Cobain Mee

#155 Post by CaseyContrarian » Wed Sep 02, 2015 4:55 pm

Pandemonium wrote:
Six7Six7 wrote:.....rolled that bear onto the stage at the Jane's Addiction gigs.

(snip)

You're doing Styx' Mr. Roboto in 2015. Congratulations.
Excellent.
Yeah, this is probably the ANR snark of the year.

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