I think the reason for why artists ignore certain former band songs (#6) is often because of legal matters, but I thought you all would get a kick out of this:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...k=mostpopular2
I think the reason for why artists ignore certain former band songs (#6) is often because of legal matters, but I thought you all would get a kick out of this:
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...k=mostpopular2
"Alienated-so alien I go!"
Wasn't Fogerty legally barred from singing anything he'd written for CCR? The article writer should have done a tiny bit of research. Rolling Stone, you've sunk far.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/27501...g-john-fogerty
And considering where they started, that's low!Originally Posted by rcarlberg
He wasn't legally barred from singing his own songs, but since Saul Zaentz owned the rights, Fogerty refused to put money in the guy's pockets by performing them. At least that's the way I understand it. He eventually reconsidered and began performing them again in the 1990's.
Either way, an appalling lapse for RS
I administered royalties for Fogerty and the rest of the band at Fantasy for a time. He received artist and songwriter royalties that were quite hefty. His public hate for Zaentz was even set to music! I have no sympathy for the artist or the record company- Each made a ton of money. On one hand, Fantasy risked spending money on artists that never recouped their losses but reaped the rewards when a small percentage of them succeeded. Most of the music they owned was jazz and blues that never had the kind of sales that pop music can achieve. For CCR, they created the music and deserve to be rewarded for their art but walked into the corporate offices with attorneys and their eyes wide open when they signed on the dotted line.
I feel more sorry for recording artists of the fifties who signed contracts giving them 'penny rates' for royalties. This was based on singles and 78's and many only got one-half a penny per side on record sales. Capitol Records may be commended for renegotiating some of their old artist contracts in the eighties in order to calculate royalties on a percentage basis.
Maybe you can explain, Woof, how rappers become gazillionaires when everybody downloads their songs?
no
I strongly disagree with #3.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
Heh. I stand by it. RS did exactly three worthwhile things in their history that I know of:
1) They published Tom Wolfe
2) They published P.J.O'Rourke
3) They published Hunter S. Thompson
So kudos for that, but none of that even involves music...
I go back to the first issue, and imo they didn't suck until year 3. The first 2 years they were incisive & cutting edge and 90% music. In year 3 they started to believe the hype in mainstream media calling them the darlings of the alternative press, and from that point on sucked mightily.
"My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician, and to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference"
President Harry S. Truman
No, he wasn't actually barred from it, but I think he was so pissed off at Saul Zaentz that he refused to play any of those songs when he toured in the 80's. It wasn't until he went on tour in the late 90's that he finally caved and decided it was better to "give the audience what they want" than allow whatever other logic he had using up to that point to dictate his behavior on the matter.
Fogerty once claimed the reason that he started playing Proud Mary again was because Bob Dylan came up to him backstage at a Taj Mahal show and told him that if Fogerty didn't start playing the song again, people were gonna remember it as a Tina Turner song.
And also to hilarious claymation:
(the video gives the altered title of Vanz Kant Danz, but Centerfield was first released, the title was listed as "Zanz Kant Danz", which was changed on subsequent pressings because Saul, needless to say, didn't appreciate being called out in public)
Back to the original topic: they're chiding Neil Young for playing an entire album before it was released. Dontcha know, that's an old tradition, going back to the mid 70's. Pink Floyd played Dark Side Of The Moon, half of Wish You Were Here, and prototypical versions of more than half of the Animals album for entire tours before the music was released. In the case of the two Animals songs, they were being played in 74, THREE YEARS before the final versions of the songs were released!
And Genesis played The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway in the US before the album had been released here.
Oh, and I definitely agree with the comment about ticket prices. If I'm paying 300 bucks for a ticket, I oughta be allowed to pick at least one song the band plays!
Likewise with Topographic Oceans, and I believe A Passion Play as well...? Hell, I watched Sound Of Contact play a good chunk of their album before anyone in the audience had heard it and thoroughly enjoyed the show!
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
And then you've got the Grateful Dead doing 30-45 minute versions of Dark Star or The Other One on a nightly basis during the 70-74 era. And in 71 and the beginning of 72, they were playing a lot of the songs that ended up on Jerry Garcia's debut solo album, as well as Bob Weir's.
On any given night on the Europe '72 tour, you would get a long version of Dark Star or The Other One (typically around 25-45 minutes, depending on which show you saw), plus a few songs from Jerry's record (which had only just been released in January), a few songs from Bob's (which didn't come until near the end of the tour) plus perhaps a gaggle of songs of that wouldn't be released until later that year on the Europe '72 album (and a couple songs that didn't even make it onto Europe '72 and wouldn't appear on an official release until the 90's), you're talking about an hour or more of music that was "new". Course, the Dead was also playing shows that were regularly 3-4 hours long at that point, so there was also plenty of room for "old favorites" (if not actual "hits").
I have no problem with a band playing a couple new songs that we've never heard before, but I don't want to hear a whole album that isn't released yet. Get your logistics together so that your tour starts after the album is released.
Totally agree. Some of the ticket prices these last few years are insane.
This is completely different, as SoC don't have a whole catalog of material they can choose from - their debut is pretty much all they have (unless you want to hear other Simon Collins songs, "Keep it Dark," or other Genesis covers).
Music isn't about chops, or even about talent - it's about sound and the way that sound communicates to people. Mike Keneally
The Rolling Stone article is typical of a lot of articles I see these days, where the author puts together a list of things he doesn't like about something, then insists that the whole world change everything to suit his particular taste. I saw one recently where the author of an article complained about the beer he'd had recently being too bitter, so all breweries must henceforth quit making hoppy beers and make all beers sweeter and maltier because his taste is the only one that matters, and the rest of us must all adhere to his preferences. F**k that. There are thousands of malty beers available to anyone who would seek them out. There are thousands of bitter ales available to those who prefer them. And there are thousands of watered-down light beers for those who don't really like beer and prefer to pay a lot for water. How this relates to the Rolling Stone article is that in neither case did the author do the minimum amount of research required for an article to be published, editors, if they exist, did not care, and readers, if they have any sense, would pay no attention to such articles. By the way, I had a pleasantly bitter India Pale Ale with lunch today, no thanks to the douche who wants to outlaw them.
I did, Jen. It is stupid enough to almost be funny, and it shows how low Rolling Stone has sunk since its heyday in the late '60s to early '70s. At least the article had something to do with music, a rarity for Rolling Stone now. What can I expect in a world where MTV, Music TeleVision, has nothing whatsoever to do with music anymore?but I thought you all would get a kick out of this:
1. Show up ridiculously late - inexcusable.
2. Exclude key band members - as long as it is publicized beforehand so people know who they are paying to see, no problem.
3. Play too much from the new album - If a band has something new worth hearing, by all means let them play it.
4. Only perform the hits - carbon copies of a record is not what I go to concerts to hear. Go see a tribute band and quitcherbitchin'.
5. Play anything resembling a medley - some artists have mastered a good medley, some have not. Pay attention to the masters before you try a medley on stage.
6. Ignore the music of your beloved former band - If you go to see a solo artist, he or she has a right to play solo material in preference to old band material. Go see a tribute band and quitcherbitchin'.
7. Play perverse arrangements of your songs - I have seen Bob Dylan several times and not once did I feel ripped off because he didn't play a song exactly as on the record.
8. Never vary the setlist - As long as the band is enthusiastic, I don't care if it's the same setlist. I didn't see the show in Boston, so how would I know they played the setlist there?
9. Solo - I still enjoy a good guitar solo. Bass solos were never interesting. Drum solos have outlived their time, although a lot of people now could benefit from a dose of the psychedelic drugs that made drum solos endurable. As long as the band knows its audience, it will not test their patience. Trust in the muse and let the music flow.
10. Squeeze every possible penny out of fans - inexcusable.
We're trying to build a monument to show that we were here
It won't be visible through the air
And there won't be any shade to cool the monument to prove that we were here. - Gene Parsons, 1973
Magma did it to us both times they played at NEARfest and I loved it. I remember with the first one, when they did KA, I thought to myself, "This must have been what it was like back in 72, to hear Pink Floyd play Dark Side Of The Moon before it was released, or to hear them do the Wish You Were Here/Animals material in 74-75".
OK, so the second time, technically, the "new album not yet released" was to a certain degree comprised of bits and pieces that had appeared in piece meal fashion on the mid 70's era albums, but even still, it was a trip to hear them to do the whole suite, as it existed at the time, anyway.
I don't think it was quite a full album's worth of material, but when I saw King Crimson 2001, they dropped a whole bunch of new stuff on us.
If the material is good, and it's a band I like that much, it can be an exciting experience. If it were someone like Roger Waters or someone else who has had an inconsistent track record, one might worry beforehand, but Magma and King Crimson both rocked the house, which I knew they would.
Musicians should only play the music they want to play. Yeah, it'd be nice to hear Rush play more songs off the first four albums or Cygnus X-I, but they're not into it. And if they're not into doing the stuff, then I suspect the audience won't dig it either. Maybe a certain sector of the audience might go for it, but I think most of the audience at a Rush show want to hear the band play the music they're excited about playing. If that means setting aside 45-60 minutes of the show for new material, fine, so be it.
And if you're so much of a shill that you feel you have to play all the hits (I think it was John Deacon who used that phrase when describing how Queen picked a setlist for a tour), so be it. Those kind of artists, there's a certain segment of the audience, maybe even a huge segment of the audience, those are the songs they want to hear anyway.
Last edited by GuitarGeek; 06-05-2013 at 11:38 PM.
Except when being played by John Entwistle or Phil Lesh.
But sometimes a band "road tests" music before recording the album version.
Led Zeppelin did a lot of dates before Physical Graffiti was released. Rumors were spreading about Kashmir dropping jaws in arenas before we ever heard it on vinyl.
Rush did what, 9 songs off of Snakes and Arrows. No Rush fans were bitching about that.
The Who aren't much for varying the set list but never seem to earn a bad review. I say its all in the delivery of the material.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
I'll add Stuart Hamm to that list.
Nah - they were once where the best and brightest wrote, and cared about the music.And considering where they started, that's low!
Does it matter that this waste of time is what makes a life for you?
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks