Random Music Talk CXXVII: Crickets

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(I don't do Rushmores. You'll get five and you'll like it.)

Rushmore is 5:

mount-trumpmore.png
 
I mean, I support those who feel the real Mt. Rushmore should be demolished/replaced, so have at it!


I have confusing feelings about that particular topic.


But no doubt in my mind that a top five is superior to a top four.
 
yeah, I'm moving away from Rushmore now. fuck that.

I don't think I know enough Fleetwood Mac to really name a five that come to mind, and in that I mean I don't know enough of their stuff well, I know stacks of their songs, and so many of them are fucking fantastic. It's really hard to delineate. I would argue that, pound-for-pound, Fleetwood Mac might have the best bunch of fucking killer songs of any artist. So many fucking phenomenal singles.

Dreams is my favourite, and I would argue their best song, simply because of its cross-generational appeal. I've seen both my parents (who have wildly different tastes) rock out to it, I've seen it slay at concerts with people aged in their teens up to their 80s or whatever, and I've been high at electronic music festivals with a large group of peers and we've lapped it up.

I also wanna echo Laz's comments about Christine McVie; everyone loves Stevie and with good reason, and McVie's songs are generally way poppier, but 90% of the time she pulls it off magnificently. She has an incredible talent for making really poppy, sugary songs sound essential and timeless. Little Lies, Everywhere, Say You Love Me, Don't Stop, You Making Loving Fun...
 
I will thank my lucky stars for the rest of my life that I was able to catch Fleetwood Mac in 2014 or 2015 or 2016, whenever it was, when the five of them were getting along well and performing together. I had terrible seats, but it was absolutely one of the best five or 10 concerts I've ever been to. Unreal.
 
OK, I am finally, after a lifetime of listening to "Gloria" and a decade of "No Self Control," listening to a Laura Branigan album.

LMFAO, this is so my shit, I can't believe I've wasted 32 years without it. I don't know if I've heard a more perfect album of it's kind, and I'm going to have to say that I now heart it more than I heart the album Heart by Heart. (There's a reference for you old-timers).
 
The new Cloud Nothings album is pretty cool.

Or, I think so. I seem to like a side of the band nobody else does. Life Without Sound is their album that really resonates with me; RYM dunks on it. And it seems The Black Hole Understands is going to settle in with a pretty weak rating too. I think they're a much better indie rock band than they are a post-hardcore band.
 
I think I listened to it and liked it? I honestly can't remember. I've been shit at tracking what I've heard from this year.
 
I'm listening to Merriweather Post whatever because I'm having a mild panic attack and needed some white noise (it still sucks aside from My Girls but it's working) is this a didgeridoo I hear on Lion in a Coma?
 
A classic, fantastic band that has never gotten its dues in B&C: Dire Straits.

Love Over Gold rules, and On the Night is a great live release. Telegraph Road is legitimately an all-time great song and I'll take any opportunity to sing its praises.

The rest of their discography is patchier, and the lyrics of Money for Nothing really have not aged well. Knopfler's inability to recognise that they're a bit problematic and batting it away with lazy excuses that the verse is sung "in character" reflects badly on him.
 
Yeah Money For Nothing definitely captures a very specific time when MTV was in its heyday.
To anyone hearing the song now who wasn't around then, the reaction should be :huh:
 
The single version is ok. I’m surprised they haven’t done a new edit of it for a compilation. The single edit removes the cringe factor but loses a lot of the aesthetic from the longer album version.

Apart from that, the entirety of Brothers In Arms is fantastic, although Making Movies is still my favorite.
 
the lyrics of Money for Nothing really have not aged well. Knopfler's inability to recognise that they're a bit problematic and batting it away with lazy excuses that the verse is sung "in character" reflects badly on him.

They're clearly problematic from a 2020 (or even 2000) perspective. But it's not like he was retroactively trying to make it seem innocent. He was talking about it being in character back when the song originally came out:

Knopfler described the song’s composition process in a 1985 interview with Bill Flanagan, author of the book Written in My Soul: Conversations with Rock’s Great Songwriters (1986):
The lead character in “Money for Nothing” is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/custom kitchen/refrigerator/microwave appliance store. He’s singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real. It just went better with the song, it was more muscular. I actually used “little faggot,” but there are a couple of good “motherfuckers” in there. I wanted to do a second version that way but I never had time. I’d still love to be able to do it. Even if just the band had it, because it would be the real version. I mean that is the way people speak. I think people still get the general idea. You can use other words that will suggest the general feel.

It also has to do with the context in which a song’s received. If we walk into a hardware store and hear someone say, “Look at that motherfucker” it means nothing to us, but if you hear it in a pop song …

If you hear it in New York it means nothing. If you’re living in Tallahassee then maybe it’s a different thing. There is no way that I would expect people to receive all that in the spirit in which it was intended. They’d probably think I was just being vulgar.


This doesn't come off as backpedaling or making excuses to me at all. You'd think "we got to install microwave ovens/custom kitchen delivery" would be a dead giveaway that he wasn't writing from his own first person.

I'm not saying it should be played unedited on the radio or live in concert by Knopfler/the band, but satirizing macho bullshit in this way wasn't some high crime in 1985 as far as the mainstream was concerned. But there are definitely members of the gay community back then who had an issue with it and either couldn't grasp the satire or worried that others wouldn't and that the song was reinforcing the use of the slur.

And the band has altered the lyrics on subsequent compilation recordings and in the live format (although I don't know how much better "queenie" is), so clearly he wasn't too stubborn about it.
 
I have listened to Dire Straits' debut album more than once this year. Very calming album for what it is. Knopfler has always been great at making music that sounds pleasant and middle of the road but is full of great instrumentation and songwriting.
 
My favourite song by them is Romeo & Juliet. It's so well-crafted. I'd argue Alchemy is in the very top handful of live albums ever released as well.

As for Money for Nothing, it's insanely dated of course, and was destined to be. I love the proggy intro so much, then it turns into cock rock. It's fun, and I can see why it's remained a hit for different generations through the years.But yeah, it is like the template for cock rock.
 
Holy shit, I just discovered Money for Nothing is actually 8+ minutes long?! I've only ever known what I guess is the radio edit... which cuts out those verses
 
And the band has altered the lyrics on subsequent compilation recordings and in the live format (although I don't know how much better "queenie" is), so clearly he wasn't too stubborn about it.

This is mainly what I was getting at. I mostly agree with you, that when it was released the language fit the character and it was less problematic than it would've been even fifteen years later.

But the lyrical tweak suggests Knopfler has soooomewhat missed the point of the critique. The altered line still contains the substance of the original problem, and it's not as if there aren't a whole bunch of other things he could sing that would still suit the song.

I wouldn't have gone after it if Knopfler made a more consequential revision today.
 
Romeo & Juliet is also my favorite song by them. The only problem is I get stuck in a loop when I listen to it and usually end up listening to it and the Killers cover several times in a row.
 
My favorite song on the latest Charli XCX is "enemy". Love that chorus. Banger.

#RandomMusicTalk
#RandomCharliTalk
 
A classic, fantastic band that has never gotten its dues in B&C: Dire Straits.

They were the first band I really became a fan of. For about 1 1/2 years I was into them a lot and even saw them on the On Every Street Tour (I believe some of the songs of the show I was at ended up on the On The Night live album). Not long after I got the On Every Street album I discovered U2 and my musical preferences shifted.
I still enjoy them quite a bit, every once in a while. Making Movies is probably my favourite album as it's a bit grittier in places (produced by Jimmy Iovine and featuring Roy Bittan on piano as well). Skateaway is gorgeous.
 
To those who liked Deep Sea Diver from my Desert Island playlist, they just came out with the first single off their next album. I’m loving it so far!
 
This was just in an episode of a TV show I'm watching, and honestly, I always forget about this song. I fucking love it.

 
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