Intellectual House o' Pancakes Comments Page and Grill

(On some browsers you'll need to refresh this page in order to see the comment you just left.)

The Jestaplero! - 2008-04-29 11:33:32
Well, "Judas!" Dylan is the archetypal example. And before anyone brings up the Bee Gees I'll just make my usual point that what seems - viewed from their hits compilations - like a shocking transition from weepy pop balladeers to disco mavens when they went from "Run To Me" to "Jive Talkin'" was actually a gradual transition over three albums that incorporated more and more R&B ideas into their sound. And while I'm at it I'll make my other, usual point that most of the notorious fourth Liz Phair album that people tore their hair out and gnashed their teeth over is actually just a very good Liz Phair album, and that even the Matrix-produced tunes weren't so much of a departure.
-------------------------------
Philip - 2008-04-29 12:34:10

First thing that comes to mind is Roxy Music's evolution from noisy, weird and dangerously exciting to, finally, bland and boring "yuppie fuck music" with Avalon.

I also want to add that it's nice to hear someone sticking up for Liz Phair's notorious 4th. I adore her, and I agree with Jestaplero -- under the momentarily disorienting production sheen, it sounds exactly like Liz Phair. (5th one's good, too.)


-------------------------------
Ian of The Larch - 2008-04-29 13:20:01
How about the Byrds' Notorious Byrd Brothers followed by Sweetheart of the Rodeo? Folk Rock to Country Rock might not sound that big a stretch but there's definitely a long way from "Artificial Energy" to "I like the Christian Life"! Sweetheart of the Rodeo was (according to sources) the least commercially successful Byrds album at the time of it's release - funny how it took on classic status eventually though.
-------------------------------
Jim Allen - 2008-04-29 14:46:42
don't front on Avalon! Anyhow, I've always had a special place in my heart for mainstream '60s pop artists that put out psychedelic records in the hippie era, like Sonny Bono's first solo album, simply titled Sonny. And Del Shannon's The Further Adventures of Charles Westover, and of course the Four Seasons' Genuine Imitation Life Gazette.
-------------------------------
summervillain - 2008-04-29 14:59:36
well, without thinking about it too much, a few that come to mind U2 - Achtung Baby - I thought this was a remarkably bold album, especially coming when it did in their career. Ripping off My Bloody Valentine was the last thing I expected from them at that point. For that matter My Bloody Valentine - Loveless. There are a bunch of folks who made some stylistic adjustments to fit better with the New Wave that I thought were suprisingly good (Ian Hunter, Crack the Sky, and Alice Cooper come to mind). Cooper has pretty much disowned all his New Wave-flavored releases, but I think they're worlds better than his more recent metal phase. Prince - Around the World in a Day certainly needs a mention. Who saw that coming after "Purple Rain"?
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-29 15:12:17
Ellen Foley had a moment of coolness when Mick Jones (her boyfriend at the time) produced her album Spirit of St Louis. As for psychedelic one-off albums, I heard one last year that was impressively awesome...but I'm spacing on who it was....
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-29 15:45:05
I thought of another one, though technically the rules are bent because it was more like a band-to-solo-artist leap...but Holly Beth Vincent's strange and beautiful post-Italians solo album (confusingly titled Holly & the Italians) sounded like Japan or Visage or some such....
-------------------------------
EG - 2008-04-29 15:51:41
When Tom Waits released "Swordfishtrombones" it marked a shift from his boozy piano bar persona to his current bang-on-a-can, Weillian, carnival show-barker dude. I thought that was pretty big.
-------------------------------
Dana - 2008-04-29 16:29:37
It was the first album of theirs that I heard, so I never heard it as that major a shift, but I hear that a lot of Hefner fans were kind of freaked out in a bad way by their final, very electronic, album Dead Media. Um, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, but that feels like a technicality.
-------------------------------
Jim Allen - 2008-04-29 16:49:33
I'm gonna have to hear that Holly album!
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-29 17:01:36
I wish I still had it--it was lost in the great Mom purge of '93.

Incidentally, it is Tommy Roe who released a couple of trippy singer-songwriter albums that weren't half bad.
-------------------------------
Dan - 2008-04-29 18:13:55
Somehow it still bothers me when artists make commercials.
-------------------------------
MacGregor - 2008-04-29 19:05:47
I think Neil Young has been around the horn with musical styles but never just did a complete about face and stayed that way. Kiss fans were riled when they went disco. More seriously though, a lot of Motown artist.. Marvin Gaye, the Temptations to name a couple, had flings with more politicized soul and even psychedelia. Curtis Mayfield really took on a much harder edge after The Impressions.
-------------------------------
MacGregor - 2008-04-29 19:13:02
There's one you just mentioned... The Kinman Bros. leap from The Dils to Rank & File was pretty drastic. The brothers from Youth Brigade ended up leading a swing band. A lot of English post-punk bands changed a lot, became a lot poppier, or maybe they just learned to play. I've got early SCritti Politti stuff from John Peel sessions and they were super cool. I'd thought they were just another early MTV fluff band before I heard it. But I'm not particularly fond of Sting's reinvention into "jazz" nor Peter Gabriel or David Byrne's forays into "world music."
-------------------------------
David - 2008-04-29 21:31:35
Who can forget when Vanilla Ice went metal? Almost every Talking Heads album is radically different from the one before it. Scott Walker had a pretty abrupt post Walker Bros. transformation. There was a definite stylistic jump in the Rutles music between Ouch! and Sgt. Rutles Only Darts Club Band but I�m not sure what brought it on.
-------------------------------
amy - 2008-04-29 22:10:37
I don't really have much to offer (except loathing for Roxy Music and latter-day Liz Phair), but your question did bring to mind Dee Dee Ramone's rap album.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-29 23:18:22
That was one fa-fa-fa-funky album...
-------------------------------
2fs - 2008-04-30 01:08:36
Elvis Costello's entire career post-1980. There are also notorious downturns (some would file EC in that group - not me): Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship; Stevie Wonder; Rod Stewart...often accompanied by radical stylistic changes. If you count careers with different acts, Frank Black/Black Francis is a pretty major one: the distance from his Pixies work to something like _Honeycomb_ is pretty extreme (and the first two FB solo albums, in the middle of that trajectory, seem rather distant from both). Uh, does Pat Boone's metal album count? No? How about G.G. Allin's Christian easy-listening music (which is where he would have ended up eventually if he hadn't died...and I'm half-serious here)? Hey, new thread (hijack!): what music would dead musicians have recorded had they lived? Don't know about music...but one of my fave quotes (can't remember where it's from) presented Jim Morrison in the early '90s as a fat bearded guy beating on a drum in the woods with one of those then-contemporary "Men's Movement" deals: perfect.
-------------------------------
grigorss - 2008-04-30 01:19:16
I'm not sure if any of these represent a "big leap" for Gene and Dean, but almost every album by Ween falls into a different musical category: GodWeenSatan: The Oneness -- garage rock; Chocolate and Cheese -- Prince-ly Funk and R&B; The Mollusk -- sea shantys and ballads; White Pepper -- Beatle-esque pop; 12 Golden Country Greats -- umm... guess -- and so on. I was quite happy with all their change-ups until their latest, Cucaracha -- which is jazz fusion-y ...sorta'; it just ain't working for me, though, I must say -- a first. Oh well, they'll be other albums.
-------------------------------
Jim Allen - 2008-04-30 04:34:10
Tommy Roe, yes indeed, I have one of those. I think it's called Phantasy, if memory serves, and is quite entertaining.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-30 04:56:09
Somehow it still bothers me when artists make commercials.

Yeah...it's not supposed to bother anyone anymore, I think, but I still find it strange and offputting...
-------------------------------
MacGregor - 2008-04-30 06:37:03
The advertising thing bothers me too. I realize that money is money and all and it's hard to begrudge anybody a living, but it's a turn-off. And probably unlike other people, I don't mind as much when it's an older song as I do when it's something recent... at least the classics existed at some point as just a song. With new stuff though it's like it was written specifically to be a jingle.
-------------------------------
Dan - 2008-04-30 07:56:06
I don't begrudge artists the money, exactly. But when you change what an artist is trying to do, you can really change the art in fundamental ways. That commercial makes it seem as if Todd Haynes has had a personality transplant.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-30 09:00:38
And it's a beer commercial, which adds insult to injury somehow. And MacG, I agree with your "new song" point.
-------------------------------
ann in mpls - 2008-04-30 10:09:56
OK I thought of one--how about the first Kinks record, and all subsequent Kinks records?
-------------------------------
Philip - 2008-04-30 10:20:15
ann in mpls: Please elaborate!
-------------------------------
The Jestaplero! - 2008-04-30 10:41:43
I think the Byrds and Tom Waits examples are excellent. As for Prince's Around the World in a Day, I think that was only mildly unexpected - each album before that marked a major development from the one preceding it, and he'd indicated a fondness for psychedelia and 60's pop. If anything, it was the leap from the fairly orthodox R&B of For You and Prince to the total freakout of Dirty Mind that was most impressive stylistic jump of his career. I don't really agree that Elvis Costello or Talking Heads ever had a fundamental overhaul of their sounds - like Madonna, or the Rolling Stones, they just seem to keep doing an update on the same basic approach. Fear of Music had the African polyrhythms that came to full fuition on Remain in Light, and Speaking of Tongues was (IMO) just a dumbed-down RIL. Speaking of Elvis, he once said that Paul McCartney completely changed his musical palette when he went solo. There's something to that - but really, none of the Fabs solo albums sounds particularly 'Beatley' to me. Speaking of which, George said in Anthology that he thought Rubber Soul and Revolver were like Parts I and II of the same album, but I disagree - I think the progress from one Beatles album to the next is pretty gradual and coherent, the leap from RS to Revolver is probably the most dramatic.
-------------------------------
The Jestaplero! - 2008-04-30 10:44:08
Make that, Speaking IN Tongues.
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-30 10:44:21
what music would dead musicians have recorded had they lived?

I think if John Lennon had seen the new millennium, he would have either gone in a "folktronica" direction, or in the direction of Levon Helm: he'd move upstate full time, and host huge variety shows featuring other musicians, etc.

And if Kurt Cobain lived, he'd probably be dead by now, again.
-------------------------------
The Jestaplero! - 2008-04-30 11:13:38
Exactly which artist commercial is being discussed? Did I miss something? I heard it said once that if Lennon had lived he would have had a Neil Young-type career. I can see that to a point, but I don't think he would have gone through such a self-conscious Trans/Everybody's Rockin' stage - or one could argue that he already had done so before he died: attempted Trans-like career suicide with Sometime in NYC and made a rockabilly album with Rock'n'Roll. But I digress. The thing Lennon was working on the night he died, Yoko's Walking on Thin Ice, suggests they might have gone in a techno/dance/guitar-noise direction. That would have been cool. But no way he could ever do a Midnight Ramble-type thing: former Beatles attract way too much nuttery. Like you said about Cobain, he'd probably be assassinated, again, by now. (Everybody forgets somebody tried to kill Geroge, too - and damn near succeeded.)
-------------------------------
Ali - 2008-04-30 11:17:32
Exactly which artist commercial is being discussed?

The Chris Knox/Todd Haynes beer commercial referenced in the original post.
-------------------------------
The Jestaplero! - 2008-04-30 11:23:47
Oh! The original post! It's been so long, I forgot all about it.
-------------------------------
Ian of The Larch - 2008-04-30 13:08:54
Oh yeah - Neil Young's Trans is a good example. Didn't the record company sue him for not sounding enough like Neil Young or something. Scritti Politti's Cupid and Psyche was a bit of a shock at first as well.
-------------------------------
MacGregor - 2008-04-30 13:24:04
The Simon Reynolds book, Rip It Up And Start Again, does a fair job of chronicling Green Gartside's drastic change in vision for his music. I had figured that he had just been tempted with a U.S. career through MTV and plain sold out. Either way I didn't like Scritti Politti at all until I heard their original singles. I ranked them in their with Kajagoogoo or ABC, or even Spandau Ballet, whom I thought blew...
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-30 14:03:05
I was gonna mention Scritti. I liked the early stuff, was bored by the middle stuff including the '99 "comeback," and then loved last year's White Bread Black Beer, as if all three periods were from three distinct artists. It's also exciting when an artist produces a late-period work that eclipses everything he/she has done before...
-------------------------------
chris - 2008-04-30 15:54:09
I am happy to see some "alternative" types show up in ads. It seems like another way to raise the quality of music/video in our culture, and for some talented people to get some nice money. Nothing wrong with that. I will say in this ad Todd Haynes seems to be brought down by the medium rather than the other way around....
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-30 16:30:20
some talented people to get some nice money. Nothing wrong with that.

I'm all for talented people making nice money, but there are other ways. The implied endorsement, and then the eternal association, of whatever product the song is selling is what doesn't sit right with me. It's not immoral, or scandalizing, it's just kinda gross. I'm ok with not being cool and po-mo about it. This is my hippie side.
-------------------------------
Ian of The Larch - 2008-04-30 16:35:36
MacGregor: That Simon Reynolds book would definitely be of interest to me. Scritti's a strange one. I heard Songs to Remember when it came out (82) and liked that - kind of soulful pop with interesting lyrics and cool melodies right? Robert Wyatt is on it too! I bought the next one (Cupid and Psyche) and although I admired the songwriting it was a struggle to accept all that programming etc. Then recently I bought "Early" and finally heard the pre-Songs to Remember stuff which it turns out is the best of all - and soooo different from Cupid. Though I haven't heard much of the White Bread stuff to be honest.
-------------------------------
chris - 2008-04-30 16:50:54
Paula: Could discuss this one for days; I would just say very hard to make money without doing something someone will find kind of gross. I just like to see the good folk win one now and then....
-------------------------------
Paula - 2008-04-30 16:54:59
I would just say very hard to make money without doing something someone will find kind of gross

Right, it all comes down to what your own personal squick factor is. That's mine, and I accept it.
-------------------------------
chris - 2008-04-30 17:01:42
Ok last post on this: I understand when artist who dont have a lot do it: like you guy, or Richard Buckner, or the fall. There they are making a small sacrifice to perhaps gain artistic freedom. Now when someone already loaded like Bowie does it, thats another matter.
-------------------------------
amatt - 2008-04-30 17:13:22
Although I've only written a small handful of tunes, I would have no problem at all selling one for a commercial. Especially if it's lucrative.
-------------------------------
MacGregor - 2008-04-30 17:19:05
Chris--I can't really explain my negative reaction. I'm quite a big fan of creative packaging design and such, and image advertising falls into a similar category as packaging... and advertising with pop songs another branch off of that. I've gone to galleries and museums all over the place to view packaging design and industrial design etc... It is "an" art, for sure. But it is definitely different than art for the sake of art, in a way I can't explain. It's not so much a qualitative difference. Perhaps it's just that for years our favorite rock and pop songs existed in a realm somewhat independently of strictly commercial interests... not that the marketing of it wasn't commercialized. I just don't think I can adjust to it being picked up and moved into that "other" place.
-------------------------------
MacGregor - 2008-04-30 17:20:35
Ian--the Reynolds book is worth the price if only for the introduction which explains better than I ever could what pop music means in my life.
-------------------------------
grigorss - 2008-04-30 17:29:39
I empathize with your "squick factor" when an artist re-writes an already established song just to shill for this or that product -- but on the other hand, working on commercials lets filmmakers like Haynes, and David Lynch, and many others make a living in between feature films. If they're "brought down" by the commercial medium more than they're uplifted by it -- well, remember guys, they're making commercials; it has less in common with artistic endeavor than. lets say, house painting.
-------------------------------
Sharon - 2008-04-30 17:33:22
one artist-must-hustle-for-cash anecdote I love.. Errol Morris of Thin Blue LIne, Fog of War, Standard Operating Procedure fame often works on commercials. He directed a Chuck E. Cheese commercial on which my friend did boom. To keep their sanity, they treated Chuck E. as a deity and all the artifacts, etc. as altars and sacred objects. All hail the rodent! (the commercial was actually quite good and made that joint seem even more manic and insane than it really is!)
-------------------------------
Ian of The Larch - 2008-04-30 17:53:04
MacG: Yeah - it looks great. I've already ordered it. Thanks!
-------------------------------
2fs - 2008-04-30 22:52:58
I don't mind at all if a musician writes new music for a commercial. I mind a lot if a musician lets an existing song be used for a commercial. And that's because I don't begrudge a musician using his or her talent to make money, but I don't like it when a musician fucks with my memories of their music...which, having been released to the public, really is no longer completely the musician's music alone.
-------------------------------
Bina - 2008-05-01 00:31:40
The first question: Madonna, when she released Ray of Light and showed that she had transitioned from Queen of Pop to wannabe Queen of Electronica (positive) and Sting, when he went from making middle-aged jazz pop to releasing an album of sixteenth century LUTE MUSIC (songs from the labyrinth - NEGATIVE). I bought it - I'll buy anything if it costs fifty rupees - listened to it once, and put it in the trash can. As for songs being used in commercials, one song which was written purely as a song song but turned into an instant hit when it was used in a recent Mac ad (2007) is the lovely Yael Naim's "New Soul". Her whole album, Yael, is actually excellent.
-------------------------------
MacGregor - 2008-05-01 06:02:22
I wouldn't take a free Sting album if he had Jesus H. Christ on lead guitar! I think that away from IHoP, conversations of artists changing direction more often than not are negative. The term "sold out" is way too easily tossed out there to describe any number of musical shifts. That's always been a term I've been uncomfortable with. It often doesn't even mean a change in style but a shift to a bigger label! Such accusations skeeve me though. God forbid someone becomes popular!!!! Anyway... Sting... he smells.
-------------------------------
Sting - 2008-05-01 09:24:36
Don't diss me, Mr. MacGregor. Or I will come to your house and sing "Roxanne" til your ears bleed.
-------------------------------

add your comment:

your name:
your email:
your url:

back to the entry - Diaryland