BassTractor

Gentle Giant: The Power and The Glory"

as in: the original album, without the ghastly bonus track that was the single "The Power and The Glory".

30 minutes ago, ezbass said:

The Dregs! What a guitar player Steve Morse is. So sad that he’s had to call it a day.

Great guitar player indeed.
Sad to read he's had to call it a day. 

The Dixie Dregs (later Dregs) aren't mentioned that often.
Here's their "Cruise Control" - originally on "Free Fall" but here in its shorter version on "Unsung Heroes".

Listen to Andy West kicking some behind on that bass!
 

5 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

When I play 'Misty', it certainly doesn't sound like Errol Gardner..! 

No, using the same written notes, you make it sound exactly like Errol Gardner.
That's the very point: it's individual expression!

it certainly doesn't sound like Erroll Garner though (and as indicated, that's a good thing).
😐

😉

21 minutes ago, dmccombe7 said:

Do you mind if i ask what the bass was ?

Dave

Why would you want to know, Dave? It's rubbish and needs replacing!

2 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

Many (most..?) concert pianists, and other performers, have the score in front of them, but have practised and rehearsed enough to not read from it, as it's been committed to memory. They have spent the time beforehand, though, studying the piece (reading it, obviously, but more than that, mostly...), and playing it through a number of times. Memorising is part of the skill in reading; few will be reading from the score 'live'.

Can't talk for others, and especially not for concert pianists, but IME the reading during performance maybe is as much a habit as it is a need. Of course it depends massively: sight reading during depping is not the same as preparing a concert for three to six months.
In the latter case, I'd say the reading possibly mainly is about the aid that's in handwritten text and symbols in the score, and the whole score giving one's memory some help as to where in the piece one is (and where one wants to go).
An orchestra musician would write down specific instructions previously given by the director, for example.
Me, I'd write: "Don't slow down here. Remember the audience wants to go home and watch the evening news!"

I think there seems to be a certain moving away from reading whilst performing. I've seen more and more directors asking orchestras to play by heart and become more free  -  in several cases the whole orchestra standing and moving about somewhat.
However, what I've seen of this myself often felt a bit sheepish; these classical musicians do not always tend to be virtual Mick Jaggers.

23 minutes ago, ezbass said:

I dislike the majority of musicals with a passion. However, WSS is one of the very few exceptions.

Same here.
I'd have to check but it might even be my only exception.
 

24 minutes ago, ezbass said:

The recorded version with Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras is sublime (the documentary that went with it was great too)

A special mentioning of Tatiana Troyanos from me here.
Great choice for the part. Powerful voice used effectively. Great musical understanding.
IMHO she outshines the others by far. I wish I knew more of her work.

16 minutes ago, yorks5stringer said:

Best sent by boat I reckon....

LOL.
Yeah, feels like home.

Forgot to say that for @tom1946, such a transport firm probably is very expensive. You'd probably need to be a regular to get a good deal. OTOH, IME personal contact is everything when dealing with these firms, so who knows.

...but as a serious remark, I routinely sent six yard kayaks by lorry or boat. A bit more expensive than a 20 gram letter you take to the post office, but still. IOW, maybe it's best to not find "small parcels" carriers but transport firms catering for businesses.

Can't advise on these, but just want to say that if the PolyBrute has important parts of the MatrixBrute DNA, it probably is a beast and worthy of a good loooooong try-out. I'm particularly thinking of the quality of the oscillators/filters and their sound shaping from soft to harsh to super fat Moog-like to bell-like.

Of course it's simpler than the MatrixBrute, but that probably is a good thing.
Not saying the MatrixBrute is too complex, but that that complexity to me seems less well-fitting in a poly.

BTW, and seemingly-but-not-really off-topic, I had the Odyssey both as mono* and as iPad poly. The latter, to me, was a revelation. I'd thought the typical Odyssey sound was not good for polyphonic material. I was wrong.
(That or I was right originally and am wrong now. 😀 )

Anyway, get your hands on a PolyBrute and at least give it a chance.
 

*) paraphonic, but I still call it a mono compared to real poly.

Starting in 1969:

Five pupils from groups 1A and 1F  -  lasted a day or so 

Four pupils from groups 1A and 1F  -  lasted a day or so

Three pupils from groups 1A and 1F  -  lasted three or four days, but we did get to play at what was called the Pupils' Evening

Quand je te vois  -  named after a poem
The Group  -  not Pekka Pohjola's one, and predating his band by three or more years - still a lame name
Quaars-Liebrechts  -  a lot of noise

Quaars-Libreks  -  somewhat softer noise

Quasar Librax  -  even softer

Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra  -  is that a band name? Anyway, I said: "That nameless choir over there - you should simply call it the Amsterdam Baroque Choir", and a red/green-faced Koopman nearly blew up in my face: obviously, I had STOLEN his own, brilliantly ingenious, naming idea!!! 😱

There was more, but I forgot or they remained nameless.

You can have all these names for free.

😉

Top band indeed, and @D-L-B of this parish was in it once upon a time.
Who knows, maybe their current bass player is on BC too.

5 hours ago, Barking Spiders said:

This'll sound sacrilegious on BC, but I'm a Coldplay convert. For a long time I thought they were another bluddy Travis or Snow Patrol. Then, a couple of years ago I gave all their albums a fair listen and there are only two I'm not keen on. I do wonder if all diehard Coldplay haters out there have actually given them a fair hearing. It's like with all the Nickelback hate. IMO it's loads of people jumping on the bandwagon without actually having given them a fair listen. I'm not a particular fan of this kind of rock but I've heard many worse bands who never get the same level of hate.

Yeah, I only knew about Coldplay and Nickelback from those negative remarks.
Then, driven by curiosity, I saw a Coldplay gig on tv, and was positively surprised. Watched it several times even and found it quite agreeable.
Similarly, a buddy made me a sampler with a.o. Nickelback, and I was like: why all the negativity?
Maybe people have good reasons, Idunno, but without any further knowledge or delving, I wasn't able to see one from just listening to their music.

3 hours ago, Barking Spiders said:

Recently I was in my local music shop (Head in Leamington as it happens)
[...]
Have you written off any band on a whim only to find out much later you were not only wrong but that they've since become a fave.

You're kidding me. Thread title made me think of the Cardiacs, whom I finally came to grips with in  ...
Royal Leamington Spa (which I think is pretty well done for a tuliphead living in Norway).
A shop called Fopps or something?

I avoided them as I wasn't capable of hearing the fun and the humour, and, being lyrics-deaf, initially experienced them as aggressive and harsh in a peculiar society-hating way.
Then their sampler on offer in that shop, and a Leamington friend urging me to give it a listen. 

Lurve them these days.

@Richard R, I was just kidding, as in my tuning being terrible and your t-shirt clearly, sarcastically telling me so.
I thought it was funny. 😟 
 

On 14/08/2022 at 09:12, Richard R said:

 

My favourite playing shirt. Shame there isn't a 5 string version though.

Me, I'm just happy you haven't been in the audience when I played.
I don't take kindly to this type of harsh criticism of my atrocious tuning. 😁

Edited for clarity.

This guy's t-shirt was on the news just now, giving me a chuckle.
Tangential maybe, but then again I'm pretty sure Francis Buchholz's Warwick is a bass.

1 hour ago, Leonard Smalls said:

I would! And I think his playing is extremely musical - though there seems to be a school of thought that thinks only simple ditties or straight-ahead riffs are musical, everything else is showing off.

Personally I celebrate talent and have no problem with complexity or even atonality (which Charlie doesn't really do, more's the pity!), though ultimately it's down to taste... 

And a certain level of hypocrisy; while I celebrate talent and complexity in jazz or funk, when prog becomes even slightly folky I run screaming! Frinstance, I loves a bit of Genital Giant, until they start getting all fa diddly diddly wee, then I hates 'em. Similarly, I can't be doing with any Genesis at all - praps because it's twee pop ("Lonely Fart") or English-centric and a touch folky.

Now if they had a hint of The Funk it might be a different matter...

 

The diverse opinions in this thread interest me, but this ^ even more.
Having grown used to your and my sensitivities having many similarities, I'm surprised of the words "his playing is extremely musical". It may well be that I misunderstand the exact meaning of these words, as to me that is the single bit that's lacking, as in:

Skill level: high.
Do I like the notes: Yes! Even as a "shifty" show piece to me it seems to have more coherence than many songs that are not show pieces.
Would I play it again: Yes! I've already played it a dozen or so times.
Would I buy an album with the complete music as I imagine it (experiencing this being only some of the parts in a wider composition): Absolutely! Think bands like Cynic and the like, with this as the bass/Stick/Warr part.
Would I buy the album if it's just this? Absolutely, but only if he prioritised musical expression above speed, for example by slowing down a tiny percentage and taking more care of tone shaping and exact timing.

So: much admiration on many levels and from many angles, but not from all angles. Then again, as I boy I was bitten by the classical music cobra, so maybe I'm simply barking up the wrong tree.

BTW, I love Gentle Giant including their  "fa diddly diddly wee".
 

Oh, and Nile was quoted as saying Soul Glo was his greatest composition and his proudest moment ...
... so what does he really know, eh? 😁

55 minutes ago, Franticsmurf said:

begrudgingly 

That's it, innit, and thanks for that word, which I will now quote in my first post.

BTW, coincidentally, the above mentioned Beverly Hills Cop "Axel F" theme (used for Crazy Frog), on Beverly Hills Cop III was played by Nile Rodgers and Rich Hilton. Maybe @MacDaddy knew that and was referring to it.


Slightly off-topic, but related like cogs in cogs:
Maybe it's worthy of being mentioned that Nile himself, when trying to speak to others' souls, applies his vast knowledge of music theory (fact, not my imagination).

I think maybe music theory is not necessarily something to meet with the disdain it often gets.

Music theory is not a straightjacket, but explains why stuff works like it does, and it's amended all the time.
 

19 minutes ago, merello said:

his soon to be ex wife Sarah Buxton (look her up) 

It's quite far away, and I gather she doesn't want us turning up one by one, so I propose we take a bus and look her up together - after a proper appointment has been made.
I think we should bring the cookies and coffee ourselves, seeing as we're quite many.

Just now, MacDaddy said:

 

I will never have any respect for the Crazy Frog song!

Good point, well made.

It ain't easy indeed, but in this case the film tune IMO is nice and the novelty aspect of the song moved enough people('s money to other pockets) that at least the product deserves some respect if not the great composition inside the product.

Certainly a sympathetic view, with some merit, but if he could just switch "song" and "composition", it would sound more realistic to me, also avoiding a bandwagon fallacy:
 

Any composition in the top 40 is a great song because it speaks to the souls of a million strangers.

That I can begrudgingly*) agree with. Any such song deserves respect for speaking to souls.



*) thanks to @Franticsmurf for the perfect word

1 hour ago, Daz39 said:

It's just crackers.

You are soooooo wrong!
I can say that with great confidence, coz I knows a guy on the innerwebz who found a few notes on side 4 (Tantras: "Ritual") that were a repercussion of some notes on side 1 (Shrutis: "The Revealing Science of God").
Notes straight from Shrutis to Tantras, I tell ya! That's not crackers, that's compositional density, and, as said guy professed, people who can't appreciate that are lured by "the mating call of the short-time attention span". 
😁

(Yeah, I love that guy. 😉 )

37 minutes ago, nekomatic said:

 

Wait, what? There are people who reckon they know better than Joni Mitchell about what chord progressions she should have used? Can someone give me an example? 

In several documentaries and interviews, the criticism was referred to, but not quantified further. Sadly I have no idea who these people are, and can't give an example, but Joni has certainly felt the need to defend herself, and this has been a theme throughout her career. 

Of course there are people who not only reckon they know better than Joni, but also do in fact know better. It's just how the world is, unless of course Joni is the exact one person who knows best, and for example knows better than Herbie Hancock (whom I suspect is that name musician) or Krzysztof Penderecki to name but a few.
I'm not saying these two people are examples of people who are always right, but I can say Joni can't explain her chords to them whilst they can explain her chords to her, they can explain why the well-developed musical ear responds as it does, and how she could've reached her musical aims more efficiently with a changed chord here and there.
I think this should not surprise anyone at all, but your wording seems to indicate it does surprise. Maybe I misunderstand.

 

37 minutes ago, nekomatic said:

See, for me this is exactly what makes songs like Coyote brilliant, and it's exactly the chord progression she chooses that makes it possible. If someone's concept of music theory tells them that's wrong, it's not Coyote that needs changing to suit, it's their concept of music theory.

Yeah, but then again, I'm not aware of anyone having said Coyote is formally weak, or contains a chord that could've been exchanged with one that more firmly supported what she was aiming for. We don't wanna risk straw man argument territory, do we?

In what I've seen of this, Joni defended herself against unknown claims of unknown scope, and instead of either relaxing or using formal arguments she used a highly flawed argument from authority. I was saddened twice, so to speak: both long-time, by seeing this has gone on for five decades, and by seeing her seemingly being oblivious to the actual content in the reaction she got from this musician.
My point is that, while I basically agree with the formal side of it (not being that critical myself, that is), she'd probably be served by recognising she isn't perfect and does not need to be - especially since she's an artist with a large body of highly respected work. Of course it's her life experience and her choices, not mine.

We can still love her music, as do I and apparently as do you.

As a side note, if she were to decide to take teachings from say Herbie Hancock, this does not mean she will stop making Joni music or become one of the slick guys I dislike. Music theory doesn't work like that. Hancock would teach her to write Joni music even better, potentially giving even greater musical joy to the listener.

As to your last sentence, no: highly gifted, highly educated people like for example Herbie Hancock do not need to change their concept of music theory. There is no need this type of people be zealously subsurvient the moment Joni's name is mentioned. She is not above everyone.