Random Music Talk CX: Obscured By Cobbler

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Status
Not open for further replies.
The mythology surrounding the rat has gotten to a NYC is to cbgbs as Boston is to...analogous level amongst a lot of the bands I listen to, where it's like this thing that separates old school from everyone else (as in you're a noob unless you used to go to shows at the rat). Maybe it's not so much now, but it certainly was 10 or 12 years ago when I started going to see shows in Boston (at which point the rat was long gone).

The layout of some small newish club I went to in RI several years ago I swear copied the paradise's bullshit layout with those giant pillars. I was in the pit during I think the Swingin Utters set and I turned sharply, and smashed face first into it. I remember being more concerned that security would throw me out because my nose was bleeding and I was a biohazard than being embarrassed.
 
Last edited:
Hewson said:
Goes back to the old days of 1990...

the late great WBCN used to (actually still does) host a local battle of the bands called the Rock n Roll Rumble...some former winners include The Neighborhoods and Til Tuesday, some other entrants include The Lemonheads, Morphine, Powerman 5000....

Anyway they would have preliminary rounds in some of the local clubs and finals in a bigger venue, for a while the Orpheum, then from late 80's through mid 90's the finals were at The Paradise. They would usually get a nationally known act as a "guest band" for the finals, some acts like The Alarm, Joan Jett, Peter Wolf, Soul Asylum. In 1990 the guest band was NRBQ, but Iggy Pop was enlisted as the host.
At the time a rather young me was hanging around with a couple of friends a few years older and going to shows with them which included Iggy whenever he came to Boston as well as multiple shows with The Butthole Surfers, The Dead Milkmen, the Ramones and such...these 2 guys kind of indoctrinated my young self into that scene.

So when we heard Iggy was going to be hosting we got tix assuming he'd play as well. He only played 2 songs between acts solo on guitar in a rather drunken state (the drunken state is paramount to my tale).
So we were camped out on the left side of the Paradise stage (which is maybe 12" to 18" high which puts me almost eye to eye with Iggy) and Iggy comes strolling out stage left to introduce one of the bands. As he approaches us I yell out "IGGY!!!" rather loudly with my hand up, he takes notice and puts out his hand for a hi-5. Now Iggy maybe weighs 100lbs soaking wet. So I give him a rather enthusiastic hi-5, and as he has had a few Heinekens, it knocks him off kilter, and he stumbles and just misses falling off the edge of the stage.

A few minutes later when the local band is playing we turn around and there is Iggy in the crowd about 5 feet behind us 2 fisting Heinekens. Having himself a grand old time.

We were disappointed he didn't play any kind of real set, and NRBQ frankly sucked, we left during their set, but a fun night was had by all, especially James Osterberg, all 5'1" of him.
Click to expand...

That is hilarious. :up:
 
Ringo's no joke. He was a genius and the Beatles were lucky to have him
On the eve of his 75th birthday, it's time to celebrate the musical contribution Ringo Starr made to the Fab Four
ARTS FEATURE
James Woodall 4 July 2015


‘He was the most influential Beatle,’ Yoko Ono recently claimed. When Paul and John first spotted him out in Hamburg, in his suit and beard, sitting ‘drinking bourbon and seven’, they were amazed. ‘This was, like, a grown-up musician,’ thought Paul. One night Ringo sat in for their drummer Pete Best. ‘I remember the moment,’ said Paul, ‘standing there and looking at John and then looking at George, and the look on our faces was like …what is this? And that was the moment, that was the beginning, really, of the Beatles.’

I think Ringo Starr was a genius. The world seems to be coming around to the idea. Two months ago, he was finally accepted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — the last Beatle to be inducted. About time too. On 7 July he turns 75.

Some might now plead, enough. Ringo should surely just be celebrated for being Ringo: daffy, doleful, odd. Ousting for good in mid-1962 the gloweringly sexy, Mersey-fan-adored Best, Ringo chanced upon the biggest ride in showbiz history and so became the luckiest Scouser of all time. He wasn’t spectacular; he set the Beatles’ backbeat and kept time, making up for a lack of upfront technique with his characteristic ‘fills’ — flicks and flashes across the drums between lyrics and musical phrases.

Ringo was also short, with a big nose, traditionally the least appealing Beatle. When the band played live, he shook his mop and thrashed around behind the bass drum. On TV in December 1963 the comedian Eric Morecambe called him Bongo. The idea of a slightly absurd creature with a silly name, bucking the sleeker charisma of his colleagues, somehow stuck.

A specific stab at Starr was once attributed to John Lennon himself. Apparently asked if he thought Ringo was the best drummer around, Lennon is said to have replied that he wasn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles. Were the attribution correct, Lennon might slyly have been alluding to McCartney — Paul drummed on some late Beatles. But Lennon didn’t say it. Beatles biographer Mark Lewisohn has apparently traced them to the Brummie comic Jasper Carrott, who seems to have made the quip in 1983, three years after Lennon’s murder.

The joke nonetheless played and plays into a repeated, grave misunderstanding of Starr’s role. True, he wrote only two and a bit Beatles songs (‘Don’t Pass Me By’ and ‘Octopus’s Garden’, with a credit on Rubber Soul for ‘What Goes On’, as well as one for a 1967 instrumental called ‘Flying’). He took lead vocal, with his idiosyncratic nasal glumness, on these and on eight other songs in the tally of 13 UK Beatles LPs. Yet proper focus on his musicianship reveals his indispensability to the other three. His rhythms were tight and infectious, shaping and shaped by guitars and voices: never obtrusive, always consistent. His thuds and whacks behind that bass drum helped create magnificence on nearly every track the Beatles recorded.

It began early. Many might suppose that ‘She Loves You’ (from mid-1963) opens with just those words, sung in chorus. In fact, it kicks off on a fantastically propulsive Starr tom-tom. Through a revolutionary two minutes 20 seconds he frequently plays off the beat. With thrilling use of hi-hat cymbal he opens dynamics and heightens decibels in a manner hitherto not heard on a Beatles record. Such percussive glee was a band war cry as, from 1964 into 1965, the Beatles shook the world.

In his renowned study of the group, Revolution in the Head (1994), Ian MacDonald said of ‘She Loves You’ something absolutely germane to Starr’s real importance: ‘Beyond the basic words and music lay the vital work of arranging, at which juncture the Beatles became not a duo but a quartet.’

It’s one of the astutest points ever made about them. The Lennon–McCartney songwriting machine was well oiled by the supple, moody musicality of George Harrison. But so it was by an unerring Starr. In the past two decades, nerdy concentration on precisely who wrote what, and which Beatle was most important, has often occluded a more basic truth: the Beatles were great only because of the greatness of four men composing and playing together. Without Starr in the mix, they would have sounded quite different, and probably not as wonderful.

Ringo got subtler the further the band left touring behind and the more experimental, from mid-1966, they became in the studio. Without him, there’d be no Beatles track like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, which ends the album Revolver. With its tape-loop screeches and Lennon’s eerie vocal, the whole is held together by Starr’s astonishing, off-the-beat control on slackened tom-toms. His drumming makes this piece of music shamanic and, still, utterly fresh.

Instances of Ringo’s ingenuity abound: the fills in the first minute and a half of ‘A Day in the Life’ on Sgt. Pepper; the relentless ferocity and, again, control on the White Album’s hard-rock ‘Helter Skelter’; the svelte jazz tempos of, and cymbal use in, ‘I Want You (She’s So Heavy)’ on Abbey Road; and at the end — on side two as it once was — of the same album’s valedictory medley is the only drum solo Starr performed. (He didn’t approve of drum solos.)

Lack of close listening has disallowed Ringo from being considered as complete a musician as John, Paul and George. When the Beatles took him on (manager Brian Epstein had to sack Best), Ringo was in fact a highly experienced performer, and had long been better known in Liverpool than the others put together. Thirteen years after MacDonald, another reliable Beatles chronicler, Jonathan Gould, wrote: ‘There is little question that the invitation to join the Beatles was the single luckiest thing that ever happened to Ringo Starr. But Ringo’s acceptance of that invitation was also one of the luckiest things that ever happened to the Beatles.’

Correct. The Beatles needed a fresher, better and more Beatlesy drummer than Best. As he reaches his three-quarter century, this congenial northerner surely deserves universal respect, and many happy returns, for being an essential part of one of Britain’s most fabled contributions to the 20th century.

James Woodall is the author of ‘The Story of The Beatles’ Last Song’.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 4 July 2015
Click to expand...

Ringo's no joke. He was a genius and the Beatles were lucky to have him » The Spectator
 
I didn't read that entire thing, but that 1st paragraph...this is not from the onion?
 
LemonMelon said:
It's from the desk of Ringo himself.
Click to expand...

tumblr_inline_nqdj49HLnE1r9ly8y_400.jpg
 
Really loving the new Cold War Kids album. That's all.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I saw Waxahatchee tonight. Playing at pretty much the smallest venue a burgeoning international can play at in Melbourne. One of my fav venues, despite the fact drink prices are fucking fucked and they have a $20 minimum for card purchases. Honestly, I was pretty disappointed. It probably had something to do with the fact that I've had about an hour's sleep in the past 40-odd hours and am a mixture between hungover, paranoid, exhausted and anxious, but not totally. She was playing solo, which bummed me out. My friends, for what it's worth, loved it and were glad she played solo, but they're bigger and longer fans than I am. I came in with the most recent album and all the songs she played from it lost something, at least in my opinion, because I love the sound of the songs on it with a band. One positive was she closed with this song that I did not know and it spoke to my aching heart which was pretty nice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSRAhP73l0I

Hewson said:
Did I ever tell you the story of when I almost knocked Iggy Pop off of the Paradise stage?
Click to expand...

No, but I am glad you did. I originally thought it would make me sad, but glad that was funny and he didn't care.

DaveC said:
That's a lot sweeter than any Tinder story I could tell :lol:
Click to expand...

What about Grindr? ;)

nielsgov said:
I think I'm going to unlike Best Vines on Facebook as it's the one common like I have with basically 80% of the people on Tinder. And Vines suck for the most part.
Click to expand...

Agreed. We watched a compilation video today and turned it off after a minute cos they were all terrible. The good ones are amazing, but so few and far in between.

Hewson said:
A few minutes later when the local band is playing we turn around and there is Iggy in the crowd about 5 feet behind us 2 fisting Heinekens. Having himself a grand old time.
Click to expand...

I can only hope that you mean what we call "double-parked". Because not sure about y'all, but fisting really means only one thing here.
 
You should've come to Solkyri, Cobbler. The bassist accidentally smashed a mirrorball when he got too into a song.

On an unrelated note, I am so hooked on "Binge" from Marriages' new album.
 
I hope I don't need to explain what we consider fisting?

Ax I have no idea what you're talking about but probs woulda been better than Waxahatchee.

When and how much is the Wolf Alice gig?
 
You know what woke me up today? Bagpipers marching in 4th of July parade. Because apparently no instrument says celebration of American independence and freedom from colonial British rule quite like the bagpipe. Wait a minute.
 
Last edited:
cobl04 said:
Ax I have no idea what you're talking about but probs woulda been better than Waxahatchee.

When and how much is the Wolf Alice gig?
Click to expand...

I don't know if you'd quite go for post-rock but damn do Solkyri get into it. There were only like 30-40 people there too, fucking hell Melbourne.

Wolf Alice is about $50 and they're on 23 July at the Corner. I'll be racing over from Purity Ring's early gig at 170 Russell. Should be an epic evening.

IWasBored said:
You know what woke me up today? Bagpipers marching in 4th of July parade. Because apparently no instrument says celebration of American independence and freedom from colonial British rule quite like the bagpipe. Wait a minute.
Click to expand...

I suppose the Scots wouldn't mind some freedom from British rule either... solidarity, you know?
 
So the Sleater-Kinney album is very good. Listening to Metz II now. I don't know what to think of it. I'm not exactly angry at the moment.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Hewson
Random Music Talk CXXXI: Interference Finally Gets Its Revenge on Cobbler
19 20 21
Replies
606
Views
31K
mikal
mikal
iron yuppie
  • Locked
Random Music Talk CXXIX: Gump attends a concert
32 33 34
Replies
1K
Views
46K
iron yuppie
iron yuppie
Hewson
  • Locked
Random Music Talk CXXVIII: Cobbler's 42 Hat Sucks
33 34 35
Replies
1K
Views
38K
Diemen
Diemen
bono_212
General New Wave Talk
2
Replies
35
Views
2K
gump
gump
bono_212
B&C's 2020 Albums of the Year Thread
8 9 10
Replies
295
Views
11K
lazarus
lazarus

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom