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Post by somuchjoy on Feb 24, 2021 19:32:35 GMT -5
The music itself also acts as a time signature. Whether cf writes the lyrics and the band comes up with a sound from that period on the timeline or the other way around, they tend to match. Heavy covenant, eg is vintage lifter puller riff, meaning late 90s timeframe lyrics. So if you hear oasis, or cheap trick, or zeppelin, it’s not unintentional. Well, this sure is an interesting thought. We know for a fact that Craig writes the lyrics after the music's allready in place, at least that was the case up untill Open Door Policy. I think Party Pit have been mentioned as the only exception, where Franz wrote the music to fit a pre-written Craig lyric. So if there's a connection between the musical content and the references in the lyrics, that should be all Craig. About We Can Get Together: I guess you might have been talking about "mid 90s" and not 1994 specifically, but the Heavenly song is from 1996. Which heavenly song? Our love is heavenly is pretty early, no?
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Post by somuchjoy on Feb 24, 2021 19:37:49 GMT -5
Well, there was Nirvana. And STP. And Creed. And Hootie. Dead fat and/or rich. Wild dogs would disregard those bones. If dead, fat, or rich status disqualifies bands from being good, then the 70s don’t fare much better! Hmmmm. Ok, we can fight all day about the fringes/ the never wases/ the influencers from the two periods. 70s win. Hands down. But as an intellectual exercise, look at two lists. The top 25 selling rock albums from 1977 versus the same list from the entire 80s. Compare. Is there really a discussion to be had here? I really have to get back to doing nothing. Miss you all. Peace.
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Post by tableinthecorner on Feb 24, 2021 19:47:52 GMT -5
Which heavenly song? Our love is heavenly is pretty early, no? The one Craig is talking about in WCGT is Space Manatee. Check out this article: link
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Post by doctoracula on Feb 24, 2021 21:10:21 GMT -5
My last word on the matter, but I'd 100% take the music of the 90s over the 70s any day. Maybe it's because I was a teenager in the 90s? I dunno. Most 70s music doesn't resonate with me until punk hits.
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Post by skepticatfirst on Feb 24, 2021 21:54:17 GMT -5
I dunno, perhaps this is too much of a metatextual stretch [paging skeptic], but in my experience of being from the U.K. and travelling around the USA, every now and then I would bump into a committed Anglophile who would blow me away because they knew bands I had no idea had made it anywhere near successfully over in the states. Perhaps this allusion is part of one of the characters’ personalities - one of them being an Anglophile would definitely explain how Heavenly pop up on HIW too. Hard for me to say about this, honestly --- lyrics I can keep up with, but musical style references, motifs played backwards, all that stuff pretty much blows my mind. This is one discussion that's fun for me to sit back and watch. As far as characters liking music is concerned, off the top of my head there's: - Jesse: Meatloaf/Billy Joel/70's [CSongs, maybe 40B]; Kate Bush [HH]; all the 90's stuff [WCGT] - Charlemagne: Revelation Records [CFingers], which also means Youth of Today/Shelter - THS Narrator: Youth of Today/7 Seconds/Shelter [SPositive, BBreathing] - Mary: D4 [EC] - Juanita: hardcore [SBackwards]; Agnostic Front [TGatSD]; James Brown [SCity] Pretty sure I'm forgetting stuff, though!
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Post by somuchjoy on Feb 24, 2021 22:20:58 GMT -5
Which heavenly song? Our love is heavenly is pretty early, no? The one Craig is talking about in WCGT is Space Manatee. Check out this article: linkYeah, I’d trust the narrator. My bad.
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Post by somuchjoy on Feb 24, 2021 22:34:35 GMT -5
My last word on the matter, but I'd 100% take the music of the 90s over the 70s any day. Maybe it's because I was a teenager in the 90s? I dunno. Most 70s music doesn't resonate with me until punk hits. Resonate with you. I get it. Imagine though that you are so moved by a filmed concert in November 1976 and the music in and around it that it inspired you to start a band about that music. Maybe those tastes are different? Hard to argue that ths is not openly adoring of zeppelin, the band, cheap trick, ac/dc, thin lizzy, fleetwood Mac and others that were phasing out at that time. As for phasing in, off the top of my head, 1977 punk albums. Bollocks, pink flag, damned3, the clash, lust for life, rocket to Russia and blank generation. And Van Halen. Cos fuck the haters.
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Post by actslapless on Feb 25, 2021 0:43:03 GMT -5
Nah you condescend - plenty of great bands today would attribute their interest in starting out / inspiration arising directly from bands coming up through the 90s. Bands like Far, Quicksand, Jawbreaker, The Descendents, Fugazi, Alice In Chains, Nirvana (as mentioned), At The Drive In etc etc had major influence on a lot of bands I’ve loved thereafter and right up to the present day. If the 70s were so great re: influence why would you say the 80s / 90s presented a 20yr flat spot for quality music?
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Post by muzzleofbees on Feb 25, 2021 1:58:49 GMT -5
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Post by somuchjoy on Feb 25, 2021 7:02:13 GMT -5
Nah you condescend - plenty of great bands today would attribute their interest in starting out / inspiration arising directly from bands coming up through the 90s. Bands like Far, Quicksand, Jawbreaker, The Descendents, Fugazi, Alice In Chains, Nirvana (as mentioned), At The Drive In etc etc had major influence on a lot of bands I’ve loved thereafter and right up to the present day. If the 70s were so great re: influence why would you say the 80s / 90s presented a 20yr flat spot for quality music? Sorry. I was just trying to draw apples to apples comparisons in one category between just one year (1977) and the entire 90s. I focused on album sales, I guess because late 70s was still vinyl and radio. The biggest selling rock acts of 1977 are, in large part, as unassailable as they were ubiquitous on AM and FM radio at the time. Enough that cf namechecks 1977 songs and albums all the time — exodus, in color, spectres, only the good, dashboard light — even referring in the solo work to 1977 songs as the “best advice” and the “0nly guy that advises me” in “no future.” In comparison, in large part, the biggest selling 90 acts (with some serious reservations, I’ll give you metallica, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and oasis) were headed for the dustbin of history. Hootie, Alanis, kid rock, dmb, creed, stp, third eye. Ouch. It just wasn’t close on the radio. People with an ear survived 90s radio by creeping down to the left of the dial or just turning it off entirely and file sharing mp3s (which is where you likely first heard all the bands you listed?). As to your category — the influencers. There were, and are, in any given decade, bands that inspire, create new genres, and ultimately get scratched in. I was not comparing (as I said), bands that had to be dug out from the bins at local record stores or in later years shared over file servers. We can do that comparison as well. Pick my same one year versus your entire decade. Leave aside what was happening in rap (the nyc blackout!), country (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy6hbSTJU7k), and r&b (just look at the hot soul chart for 1977 and see if you can sing along), modern rock exploded. The albums released that year are a who’s who of the greatest of all times. And it wasn’t just what existing bands (television, skynyrd, Clapton, Jackson browne, billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, steely Dan) were releasing — each maybe their best albums that year. A non-exclusive list of Bands formed or signed in 1977 give or take a few months: The Attractions, Bad brains, Kate Bush, a certain ratio, dickies, dire straits, fear, Gang of Four, germs, inxs, misfits, the neighborhoods, prince, the police, psychedelic furs, scritti politti, simple minds, soft cell, the specials, the suburbs, talking heads, Van Halen, x. What became U2 played their first show, mike and Peter were in high school listening to 70s radio and combing vinyl bins, Bobby gave Tommy his bass that uncle Paul heard while walking home from his janitor beat. Just extend a few months on either side of that year — 1976 (b52s, bad manners, black flag, the clash...) and 1978 (bauhaus, the beat, the cure, the dead Kennedys, the descendents...) are similarly astounding in the bands that formed and the genres they launched. It was just a time that, for whatever reason, people were inspired to start a band, man. Look, I was 11 in 1977, so it’s not like I lived those years and am now regaling you with some sentimental “in my day” old dude bs. The only record I recall having at that time was a “Saturday night” .45 by the bay city rollers. But as an historical matter, if one were going to have holly born into one musical year, and go to hell in one musical decade, I’ve got pretty defendable choices.
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Post by doctorwu on Feb 25, 2021 9:29:53 GMT -5
Four plays in and this gets better with every listen. Odd question though - does the physical edition have any writing credits? Checking the ASCAP repertory site, it seems to be mostly written by Craig and Franz with nothing for Steve and only one credit for Tad. Does anything on the album packaging suggest otherwise? This is what I've got (via youtube credits) The Feelers (Finn, Nicolay) Spices (Finn, Kubler) Lanyards (Finn, Kubler) Family Farm (Finn, Kubler, Nicolay) Unpleasant Breakfast (Finn, Kubler) Heavy Covenant (Finn, Nicolay) The Prior Procedure (Finn, Selvidge) Riptown (Finn, Kubler, Selvidge) Me & Magdalena (Finn, Nicolay) Hanover Camera (Finn, Nicolay) Parade Days (Finn, Selvidge) Nice, thanks.
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Post by doctoracula on Feb 25, 2021 9:42:18 GMT -5
Does anyone else get a “one single savior” vibe from “parade days”?
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Post by actslapless on Feb 25, 2021 10:07:30 GMT -5
somuchjoy - although I think you may come across a bit overly sure about your view on things I’m just gonna say thanks that was a pretty amazing post and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Plenty of good points and insights in there. What are your thoughts on ODP seeing as though we are here. Are you enjoying it?!
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Post by somuchjoy on Feb 25, 2021 10:32:00 GMT -5
And now my last post on this album. I came in here having listened to parade days on a run and having been knocked down by it. I wasn’t really focusing on the inspiration for the song. What was cf’s space manatee here? Dunno. There’s some Bruce in the pacing of it and a lot of St Paul — the morning/mourning word play, the crushing “income tax deduction” deflation of at “least she’ll be around” and the way he spits “beauty technician” like “sanitation engineer”. It was Bobby’s percussion and all the childhood nostalgia that got me thinking about “Perfect Circle” which is another song that once rendered me defenseless. What I wanted to express is how disarming Craig is sometimes in songs like wcgt, and Lord, and this song. In them, there are no names. She’s just a “she”, but she comes off as the SHE. Skeptic can maybe tell me why the “she” is holly here. Minneapolis girl “born into” the sad moniker of “queen of the lakes”. What astonishes me is whoever she is, in those finished songs which may have been inspired by something totally different, he sets a place and time and tone such that you can hear her play her records for him, see her breath on a bus window, and understand the certainty that it’s never going to be that innocent again. And it’s just because we all know how this all ends, that there’s such a sinking depth to a line like “all the things they wanted for their daughter” that made it hard for me to breathe. With just a few words on top of a simple song, he can fit all the puzzle pieces in and show Her arc from a shy girl at a parish dance downward to a trainwreck at an Easter mass a decade later. Poisoned grace in a bottle. Anyway, I came to the band and then the boards at a time, with a firstborn in peril, I needed an escape and a way to blow it out on a Saturday night. Not so much now. I’ve been to one show in the last decade (as a present for that same newborn, albeit now 54 inches taller). I do download and religiously listen to new albums on runs. And, I peer in here very infrequently out of a Cassandra-like fear that no one is paying attention to the genius of it all. Nice to see that even the skeptics are willing to devote serious analysis to the band we all love. And I guess most of all I came in here to post a thank you note to a band that, with one song, stopped cold the forward momentum of someone who plays a heartless Shiva in real life, and forced a bunch of stunned song repeats like the 16 year old who once dropped the needle on gardening at night maybe 15 times in row. Out.
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robs
Hoodrat
Posts: 297
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Post by robs on Feb 25, 2021 10:41:34 GMT -5
On a more prosaic note, I love the woos in Unpleasant Breakfast!!
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Post by kayfaberaven on Mar 1, 2021 16:09:53 GMT -5
Minor question on The Feelers that's bugging me because I can't figure it out: Who is "you" in "When she asked if she could choke you"? Is this the Maestro telling the narrator (so "you" is the narrator?) or is this the narrator telling the Maestro (so "you" is the Maestro)? It's got to be the former, right? If so, then does that tell us anything more about what's going on here?
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Post by star18 on Mar 1, 2021 16:51:22 GMT -5
That is a sticky little wicket and it's confusing to me as well.
In the line previous, we hear "now while you're here in person" so the speaker (I use "speaker" to distinguish from the Narrator character himself) is talking to someone they don't see on a regular basis. That also makes me think of "tell the truth if I were you / I'd rather sleep over than telecommute" from "Star 18," another "meeting in a mansion" song. So I think your interpretation is correct that one of these characters is The Maestro (Shepherd?) In fact, there's a good amount of connective tissue between those songs -- maybe "The Feelers" and "Star 18" operate in sort of a "MPADJs/Rock Problems" relationship?
One thing I think worth noticing is that the speaker in those lines seems pretty unsure or nervous. "I was kinda, sorta hoping" is how you introduce a topic you aren't comfortable with. I imagine the Maestro to be pretty cocksure and confident so I don't think that's him.
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Post by star18 on Mar 2, 2021 20:45:10 GMT -5
In "Feelers" there's a sound effect from 1:34 - 1:40 ... is that an old camera, or a film projector?
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Post by timmytva on Mar 3, 2021 7:53:40 GMT -5
My last word on the matter, but I'd 100% take the music of the 90s over the 70s any day. Maybe it's because I was a teenager in the 90s? I dunno. Most 70s music doesn't resonate with me until punk hits. Resonate with you. I get it. Imagine though that you are so moved by a filmed concert in November 1976 and the music in and around it that it inspired you to start a band about that music. Maybe those tastes are different? Hard to argue that ths is not openly adoring of zeppelin, the band, cheap trick, ac/dc, thin lizzy, fleetwood Mac and others that were phasing out at that time. As for phasing in, off the top of my head, 1977 punk albums. Bollocks, pink flag, damned3, the clash, lust for life, rocket to Russia and blank generation. And Van Halen. Cos fuck the haters. As we know, Eruption makes a great ring tone!
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Post by tableinthecorner on Mar 3, 2021 14:22:54 GMT -5
In "Feelers" there's a sound effect from 1:34 - 1:40 ... is that an old camera, or a film projector? Good catch. I'm leaning towards projector; it sounds like this ( link), but without the whirring to me.
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Post by nosferatu on Mar 4, 2021 9:49:34 GMT -5
That is a sticky little wicket and it's confusing to me as well. In the line previous, we hear "now while you're here in person" so the speaker (I use "speaker" to distinguish from the Narrator character himself) is talking to someone they don't see on a regular basis. That also makes me think of "tell the truth if I were you / I'd rather sleep over than telecommute" from "Star 18," another "meeting in a mansion" song. So I think your interpretation is correct that one of these characters is The Maestro (Shepherd?) In fact, there's a good amount of connective tissue between those songs -- maybe "The Feelers" and "Star 18" operate in sort of a "MPADJs/Rock Problems" relationship? One thing I think worth noticing is that the speaker in those lines seems pretty unsure or nervous. "I was kinda, sorta hoping" is how you introduce a topic you aren't comfortable with. I imagine the Maestro to be pretty cocksure and confident so I don't think that's him. Hurricane J has a heavy case of the “yous”.
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Post by franknagaijr on Mar 4, 2021 12:15:14 GMT -5
I did not see a category for ODP/tHS Shitposting. I hope this is taken in the spirit in which it was intended. https://www.tiktok.com/@rt161hw/video/6935509780702219525 If the link fails, try the hashtag #CuttingRoomFloorLyrics #StayPositive
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Post by tableinthecorner on Mar 4, 2021 21:34:46 GMT -5
And that line about "back in my hometown" make me doubt that this is another Holly-in-Hollywood song. Her hometown isn't Minneapolis, it's Lynn, Massachussetts. And when she apparently leaves for California, it's Minneapolis she leaves behind. I think I have some decent evidence on Lanyards being a Holly-in-Hollywood song: - We know the narrator of Lanyards is from the middle of the US (we are led to believe Independence, MO) - The other Missouri reference in THS lyrics comes in Resurrection with "St. Louis had enslaved me." This song is about Holly and I think Craig is referring to St. Louis Park in Minneapolis, meaning a Holly/Missouri connection is reasonable even though she never actually lived in Missouri - Following that line in Resurrection, we have "Santa Ana saved me." I'm not sure if I have a full understanding of this line yet, but Santa Ana is in California so we have another example of Holly going from MO to CA. - If I remember correctly the Here Goes thread claims that upon returning from Cali, Holly started living by herself, citing the end of CatCT. "Now I'm back in Independence, Missouri" could be because she is independent and living on her own. - The narrator of Lanyards left on the Fourth of July and returned on Thanksgiving. These are two days famous for parades in the US. In Parade Days we have a similar line relating to independence: "the house is all hers now." I'm not 100% confident in all of this, mainly because the line between Mary and Holly is pretty blurred to me in Craig's lyrics. That being said, I do think there are ways to connect Lanyards to Holly. I'm curious to see if anyone can build on this.
Edit: I did see skepticatfirst say that Hollywood wasn't literal, like you mentioned, a few days ago, so when he gets to that in the Alright Alright thread it may prove me all wrong. I still think that the "independence" aspect of things will be able to link us to a character, though, whether it be Mary or Holly.Bringing this back because Craig introduced Lanyards tonight as a song about "a guy who goes out to California and comes back." Hmm. I think the "she" in the song could still be Holly, but the narrator is definitely somebody else.
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Post by actslapless on Mar 5, 2021 1:22:03 GMT -5
Hey I posted this previously with regards to background to Lanyards
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Post by star18 on Mar 5, 2021 9:44:08 GMT -5
Whoa, great little nugget from the Positive Posting FB group . . . A member there pointed out that "Pretty Many People," in addition to a Spices lyric, is also the title of a 2014 album by a band called Three Man Cannon. I hadn't heard of that band, so I looked 'em up. They're from Scranton.
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