Bob Dylan sings melodies?Originally Posted by revporl
Bob Dylan sings melodies?
He used to.
I once knew someone who was excited about seeing Dylan at a festival a good few years back now, I felt I had to warn him to reduce his expectations. The gig came and went, this person thanked me for doing that!
Listening to some of his 70s live stuff recently, his reinterpretations then used to be compelling.
Howe criticized Anderson for doing this to Yes music on his solo tours. And as far a Paul Simon goes, he does seem to be getting eccentric in his old age lol--actually almost got in trouble with the law allegedly accused of hitting his wife Edie Brickle.
Thank you for this. Plant, back in the day, was the shite singer who ruined what might otherwise have been a pretty good hard-rock combo. (He's become a good singer in his older days.)
Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
Zep was born out of a blues ethos. You weren't supposed to do it the same way every night. You were expected to do it different every night. Zep was improvisational, in a blues sense.
I feel cheated if I go see a band I love and they play everything the same as the recording. Why not just mime to the record if you're going to do that?
It's been done...
But yes, I saw Boz Scaggs in concert, and this was my issue with the concert. As far as I could tell he was not lipsyncing, but he stood there and sang those songs EXACTLY the same as they sounded on record, same backing arrangement and all. A few improvisations here and there would not have gone astray.
If you're Twisted Sister, you don't mess around with "We're Not Gonna Take It." If you're Europe, you don't mess around with "Final Countdown" (love those Geico commercials!). I mean, they *can*, but the reason why most people are going to one of those shows is to hear the one or two big hits.
But Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, who have over a dozen songs that people are familiar with? Why can't they mess around with their arrangements? It's not coming as a surprise if they do, either, since it's something they're known for. Personally I've never understood why people would want to hear an exact rendition of a studio song in concert anyway, but maybe that's just me.
I remember reading a book about the Grateful Dead, where the author, as a means of giving a contrasting example to the Dead's approach to live performance, noted that when he saw The Eagles, the songs sounded exactly like the record. He said he went to see them the second night because he wanted to see if they could actually pull it off two nights in a row. Years later, he was interviewing either Frey or Henley, and brought it up, and the response was "We didn't want anyone to get upset that they missed their favorite guitar lick in Hotel California".
And then there's Rush, who of course NEVER improvise. I remember that video they put out in the mid 90's, when whichever live album came out, for CLoser To The Heart. They cut together all the different versions of the song they had on video, including the original video for the studio version, I think three different concert videos from the 80's, and a new version that was filmed just for this video. And every single clip synched up perfectly to the audio (which was drawn from just the one recording). I just thought that was really weird. But hey, that's how they like to roll, as they say. Seems to me like it'd get boring to see after awhile, but I hear there's people who go to see them like a half dozen times or more on every tour. (shrug)
I tend to be of two minds about this sort of stuff. On the one hand, I like bands to do something at least a little different from the records onstage. Stretch out a little bit, change up the guitar solos, etc. This isn't classical music, you're allowed to extemporize here. I remember seeing Jeff Beck, and he managed to play around with the melodies on a couple of the tunes really effectively. And as
On the other hand, there's been instances where bands did do that, and I felt...I won't say cheated, but there were certain moments where I wanted to hear what was on the record. Yes doing Wondrous Stories live comes to mind, there's a certain keyboard lick that Wakeman played on the studio version that wasn't played when I saw them do it, which I kinda wished had been.
Yes, that has pretty much always been The Eagles stance. They typically try to replicated live as close to the record as possible, which can be an amazing thing too since not a lot of bands can do that. On more recent tours they have branched out a bit with some different arrangements, but they still stick pretty close to the vest.
I think that was true in the 80s and for some of the 90s, but Rush seem to have loosened up significantly in the last decade or so, and by the Time Machine/Clockwork Angels tours were actually including some fairly lengthy jams into their set. Even back in the 80s, Rush often used to jam out on older, pre-synth songs during their encore. That said, there were undoubtedly songs like 'Closer' that remained almost entirely as written. One presumes that they thought that was what the audience wanted to hear.And then there's Rush, who of course NEVER improvise. I remember that video they put out in the mid 90's, when whichever live album came out, for CLoser To The Heart. They cut together all the different versions of the song they had on video, including the original video for the studio version, I think three different concert videos from the 80's, and a new version that was filmed just for this video. And every single clip synched up perfectly to the audio (which was drawn from just the one recording). I just thought that was really weird. But hey, that's how they like to roll, as they say. Seems to me like it'd get boring to see after awhile, but I hear there's people who go to see them like a half dozen times or more on every tour. (shrug)
Perhaps they felt the audience wanted to hear the songs exactly as they were on the record, but I think that's how they wanted to play the music in the first place. I remember an interview Alex did back in the 80's where he said he saw Cream when he was a teenager, and was disappointed they didn't play the songs anything like the studio versions. I think he said his comment was, "You mean you can't play it like the record?". I think he also said something like "Nobody's expecting us to launch into an extended jam during Manhattan Project" (I guess that means the interview was around the time of Power Windows, then).
And they took a lot of pains to make sure the arrangements of most of their material was performable live by just the three of them. I know the early records have a lot overdubs but a certain point, they decided to only do stuff that could be played live. That's why Geddy started using the doublenecks and playing bass pedals and such, so that they could pull it off without auxiliary musicians. And I remember Alex once pointing out that he almost never has two guitar parts going at the same time, ie when there's a solo, the rhythm guitar drops out. I think it's been said they'd have one song on each album that would be "production number" ie, it'd be the one song they weren't planning on playing live so they could whatever they wanted, in terms of overdubs, but most of the time it was "Oh, make sure that's something we can play live".
Actually, if you listen to Exit...Stage Left, there's one or two places where Geddy at least changes things up ever so slightly. He plays around a bit with a couple of the synth bits in Jacob's Ladder and La Villa Strangiato. That's actually one of the things I like to hear, not so much an extended jam or whatever but something where you just sort of throw in a little variation.
The one time I got to see Rush was on the Vapor Trails tour, and the older stuff that I was familiar with, it sounded like they stayed pretty close to the script. The newer stuff I wasn't (and I'm still not) particularly familiar with, so I don't really know how much they varied away from the studio versions. But for a one time thing (or even "once a tour" thing), I thought it was great. I've just been stuck in a situation where I've been forced to miss every tour since then (including Time Machine, which still pisses me off because they filmed the damn DVD here, but I couldn't go due to money issues!)
BTW one band that I took an interesting approach was Dire Straits. On the one hand, as even cursory listen to their live album Alchemy indicates, they did stretch out onstage quite a bit. But apparently, all those extended instrumental bits, were totally worked out note-for-note. I've heard something like five or six live versions of Sultans Of Swing (including the one on Alchemy, at least two or three different bootlegs, and the Live Aid performance), and every single one has what appears to be almost exactly same extended guitar solos. Same thing for Telegraph Road, Once Upon A Time In The West, etc. I mean, it's cool, because it's different from the studio version.
I can't imagine the degree of patience and discipline you have to play not just one or even two but several guitar solos, each going on for a couple minutes or more, note for note every night. Maybe that's the real reason Mark Knopfler doesn't want to do a Dire Straits reunion: he doesn't want to deal with having to relearn that damn Sultans Of Swing solo!
This is a pet peeve of a friend of mine, and he's quite right. The final words of "We Are The Champions" are "We Are The Champions" ending on an unresolved chord, tipping the wink that this is not actually a triumphalist song: on live versions the final words are "Of The World" sung by the audience and returning the song to its harmonic home. On paper it's a tiny change but it feels massive.Well, Freddy Mercury turned audience participation into an art form (for better or worse)
I think it's self-indulgent when a vocalist stops singing so that he or she can listen to the audience; it's also unintentionally ludicrous if the audience can't get its $h!t together, as it often can't. If the audience wants to sing along, that's pretty much okay by me and if the band actually invites a singalong or clap-along I'll do it to indulge them.
I don;t have an issue with a band reinterpreting a song, like the Eagles doing an acoustic version of Hotel California. That's actually pretty cool and unexpected. It gives the audience a surprise. But then keep the melodies intact. I don't think a rock act is a jazz performance though. Rock generally doesn't do spontaneous improvization very well.
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A gentleman is defined as someone who knows how to play the accordion, and doesn't.
Someone who is very good at giving the concert audience a little bit extra is Elton John. He does lots of "improvisations", which are probably not really improvisations at all, i suspect everything is planned and rehearsed, but he makes it sound impromptu. I mean, all his fans know Bennie and the Jets back to front, but it takes a bit of imagination to draw out the ending, changing a note here and there, changing the rhythm bit by bit, until suddenly it becomes In the Mood, the Glenn Miller classic.
I have no problem with blues and improv.
I have a problem with shite screeching.
Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.
Absolutely the worst - THE WORST - and I can't believe no one has mentioned it (unless I missed it) is Metallica with Seek And Destroy. "SEARCHING! SEEK AND DESTROY! SEARCHING... (Hetfield holds mic out to audience) What? I can't hear you! One more time! SEARCHING... (audience) I STILL can't hear you!..." on and on and on, with various dumb put-downs thrown out like "what, not enough beer?" etc. A relatively simple 7 minute song stretched out to 18-20 minutes - 18-20 painfully boring minutes.
WORD!!
That shite screeching was music to my ears way back then...not so much these days.
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