There are no covers in my set list. I suppose there could be ... if I didn't hate them. However, I have discovered this week that my perception of them is very different from what actually exists out there. I still hate covers but my perception of why they exist has changed a lot.
I hate covers doesn't fit everything as there are covers that deserve to be hated and others not so much. If you're getting commercial tracks to sound just like the CD and then sing the vocal just like it was recorded, why should I listen to this. I might just as well listen to the CD ... and it won't expect a tip.
Then you've got girls with acoustic guitars doing their versions of various songs and, in the sixties, before Grace Slick and Janis Joplin, this was all girls were really allowed to do ... unless you wanted (cough) to be Doris Day. It's cool, tho, as this is turning musical. The songs are getting some thought, getting adapted to taste, and now they start becoming real.
It all starts getting tasty when the jammer goes after the song with the attitude that I'm going to own this bitch. lefty Unplugged doesn't often do covers but he did one from The Beatles on Monday and, you bet, he owned it. His vocals are highly-stylized and maybe you wouldn't even like the sound but one thing you know immediately: it's authentic.
Untolerable Bohemian is also one for taking a cover song and stretching it all the way around the block. The risk for him is that the listener may get defensive for the song and hate him for doing that to it. Nevertheless his art is the interpretation and it demands of him that it be done his unique way.
Phoenix J also goes out to own a song. When she covers a song, she will almost invariably jack the beat around to give it some swing and she will sing it in her own style. She will accompany herself on a guitar sometimes but I think actually she's more comfortable with a piano. The orchestration isn't so important but the intention to take a song, understand it, feel it, and then make it happen in a new way ... well, that's very important.
But all that means absolutely nothing to a whole lot of people.
A friend of mine had told me some while back that music doesn't really move him and I hadn't really understood how this could be as I have always thought it moved everyone, the only variable was whether it sucks or it doesn't. However, that's not true at all. He told me that he can't listen to instrumental music as it doesn't make any sense to him, he can't figure it out. I don't waste my time with Tea Party people, he's a very smart guy. Lack of intelligence is not the source of this.
My friend is really not drawn by music but he is drawn by girls and he wanted to hear stuff he knew from bands where he went. Fortunately, many girls want the same thing so ... romance or at least some cheap but passionate sex happens ... after the cover songs.
In talking with my friend, I come to understand that listening to an instrumental song with him isn't about taste, to him it isn't even music. For quite a few of you that's true for jazz but he said it was anything instrumental. He said he couldn't figure such things out and I'll talk to him some more about what he is trying to figure.
The epiphany came when he told me all his friends had essentially the same sensibilities with regard to music. Note again that these people are not a bunch of dimwit thugs from the Wide World of Wrestling; they're smart people ... but music means almost nothing to them. Where it takes meaning is through the lyrics as these give it structure and familiarity and, presto, this becomes a great environment for chasing girls.
Maybe you've heard of people saying jazz makes them nervous. For a very small minority, it's because they have really felt that part and they're supposed to be nervous but for others it's a cacophony of jumbled noise that means nothing, of course it upsets them.
So, when you're thinking of people going to karaoke shows that they must be a bunch of dumb asses, that's just a wee bit too dismissive, there's more to it than that.
This really is more than just a word exercise as it applies to how music lives and grows in Second Life. My position is that anyone who has never experienced Second Life is never going to put up with all the hassle of learning how to deal with avatars just to hear cover songs. Why not just go down to the corner bar to hear the same thing and sometimes you even get free beer. Perhaps I don't see far enough but I don't see how that could ever be an advertising campaign: Come for the Karaoke and Stay for the Pixel Sex. Oh sure, I'll want to interrupt my busy day for that. It makes no sense to me.
However, perhaps it makes sense to someone else. Someone in SL hears a karaoke singer and thinks, man, this is just like the CD, I love it. She tells her friend that she's just got to hear this singer as she sounds just like Celine Dion. For me that would be a reason to get a can of gasoline and a match but that's not at all true of everyone. Word of mouth advertising is the very finest kind and perhaps this has been happening already, I don't know. In any case, there's a tremendous bias toward covers in SL and it's my contention that to a large extent they've been selecting for it and the demographic has changed.
Going into demographics is needless technical gimcrackery as the point is regarding the fundamental perception of music. My thinking has always been that it is the one thing, well, besides sex, that binds us. We have had rhythm in common since we were glorified monkeys beating on logs with sticks. But now it seems some of those monkeys weren't digging it so much, at least until one of the girl monkeys sang, "My Monkey Heart Will Go On."
This doesn't change anything at all about what I play, how I play it, etc. I really don't have any expectation that people will even like it but I find some do and of course I like that. What's fascinating to me is that if I were to shanghai various friends to hear it, the problem isn't that they wouldn't appreciate it but rather they wouldn't even hear it. This is a huge revelation to me as it wouldn't matter how well I played it, they still wouldn't hear it.
My view of music changes radically as I realize all my life I've been selecting for people who like music the way I do. I want it ALL, baby. I want all the notes, I want all the colors, I want every dark demented musical thought in your head. Do this thing, I'll stay.
But!
My friend has been selecting for the opposite through his life. He and his crew are going to find some leg on a Friday night and maybe the music was ok but the main thing is finding some leg. I don't mean to disparage that. I'm just astonished at the vastly different perceptions.
It's not my purpose to eliminate cover songs, iPod singers, or anything of that nature. However, they don't give Second Life an identity that means anything. That has always come through original songs otherwise you're just aiming for the Holiday Inn and the traveling salesmen. It's logically impossible for identity to come from anything but uniqueness so why would people not promote this.
Disclaimer: this has nothing to do with me. I'm playing for Cat on Thursdays and I'm not looking for anything else although I do enjoy playing for friends sometimes. I've lived it when girls followed me everywhere and I was doing three, four, maybe five gigs in a day ... and then I did it again the next day. This isn't music, it's a fucking hamster wheel. If people want to do that then that's their choice but I seriously don't recommend it. By far the biggest reason is that when you're playing that much there is almost no time to develop new material.
I hate covers doesn't fit everything as there are covers that deserve to be hated and others not so much. If you're getting commercial tracks to sound just like the CD and then sing the vocal just like it was recorded, why should I listen to this. I might just as well listen to the CD ... and it won't expect a tip.
Then you've got girls with acoustic guitars doing their versions of various songs and, in the sixties, before Grace Slick and Janis Joplin, this was all girls were really allowed to do ... unless you wanted (cough) to be Doris Day. It's cool, tho, as this is turning musical. The songs are getting some thought, getting adapted to taste, and now they start becoming real.
It all starts getting tasty when the jammer goes after the song with the attitude that I'm going to own this bitch. lefty Unplugged doesn't often do covers but he did one from The Beatles on Monday and, you bet, he owned it. His vocals are highly-stylized and maybe you wouldn't even like the sound but one thing you know immediately: it's authentic.
Untolerable Bohemian is also one for taking a cover song and stretching it all the way around the block. The risk for him is that the listener may get defensive for the song and hate him for doing that to it. Nevertheless his art is the interpretation and it demands of him that it be done his unique way.
Phoenix J also goes out to own a song. When she covers a song, she will almost invariably jack the beat around to give it some swing and she will sing it in her own style. She will accompany herself on a guitar sometimes but I think actually she's more comfortable with a piano. The orchestration isn't so important but the intention to take a song, understand it, feel it, and then make it happen in a new way ... well, that's very important.
But all that means absolutely nothing to a whole lot of people.
A friend of mine had told me some while back that music doesn't really move him and I hadn't really understood how this could be as I have always thought it moved everyone, the only variable was whether it sucks or it doesn't. However, that's not true at all. He told me that he can't listen to instrumental music as it doesn't make any sense to him, he can't figure it out. I don't waste my time with Tea Party people, he's a very smart guy. Lack of intelligence is not the source of this.
My friend is really not drawn by music but he is drawn by girls and he wanted to hear stuff he knew from bands where he went. Fortunately, many girls want the same thing so ... romance or at least some cheap but passionate sex happens ... after the cover songs.
In talking with my friend, I come to understand that listening to an instrumental song with him isn't about taste, to him it isn't even music. For quite a few of you that's true for jazz but he said it was anything instrumental. He said he couldn't figure such things out and I'll talk to him some more about what he is trying to figure.
The epiphany came when he told me all his friends had essentially the same sensibilities with regard to music. Note again that these people are not a bunch of dimwit thugs from the Wide World of Wrestling; they're smart people ... but music means almost nothing to them. Where it takes meaning is through the lyrics as these give it structure and familiarity and, presto, this becomes a great environment for chasing girls.
Maybe you've heard of people saying jazz makes them nervous. For a very small minority, it's because they have really felt that part and they're supposed to be nervous but for others it's a cacophony of jumbled noise that means nothing, of course it upsets them.
So, when you're thinking of people going to karaoke shows that they must be a bunch of dumb asses, that's just a wee bit too dismissive, there's more to it than that.
This really is more than just a word exercise as it applies to how music lives and grows in Second Life. My position is that anyone who has never experienced Second Life is never going to put up with all the hassle of learning how to deal with avatars just to hear cover songs. Why not just go down to the corner bar to hear the same thing and sometimes you even get free beer. Perhaps I don't see far enough but I don't see how that could ever be an advertising campaign: Come for the Karaoke and Stay for the Pixel Sex. Oh sure, I'll want to interrupt my busy day for that. It makes no sense to me.
However, perhaps it makes sense to someone else. Someone in SL hears a karaoke singer and thinks, man, this is just like the CD, I love it. She tells her friend that she's just got to hear this singer as she sounds just like Celine Dion. For me that would be a reason to get a can of gasoline and a match but that's not at all true of everyone. Word of mouth advertising is the very finest kind and perhaps this has been happening already, I don't know. In any case, there's a tremendous bias toward covers in SL and it's my contention that to a large extent they've been selecting for it and the demographic has changed.
Going into demographics is needless technical gimcrackery as the point is regarding the fundamental perception of music. My thinking has always been that it is the one thing, well, besides sex, that binds us. We have had rhythm in common since we were glorified monkeys beating on logs with sticks. But now it seems some of those monkeys weren't digging it so much, at least until one of the girl monkeys sang, "My Monkey Heart Will Go On."
This doesn't change anything at all about what I play, how I play it, etc. I really don't have any expectation that people will even like it but I find some do and of course I like that. What's fascinating to me is that if I were to shanghai various friends to hear it, the problem isn't that they wouldn't appreciate it but rather they wouldn't even hear it. This is a huge revelation to me as it wouldn't matter how well I played it, they still wouldn't hear it.
My view of music changes radically as I realize all my life I've been selecting for people who like music the way I do. I want it ALL, baby. I want all the notes, I want all the colors, I want every dark demented musical thought in your head. Do this thing, I'll stay.
But!
My friend has been selecting for the opposite through his life. He and his crew are going to find some leg on a Friday night and maybe the music was ok but the main thing is finding some leg. I don't mean to disparage that. I'm just astonished at the vastly different perceptions.
It's not my purpose to eliminate cover songs, iPod singers, or anything of that nature. However, they don't give Second Life an identity that means anything. That has always come through original songs otherwise you're just aiming for the Holiday Inn and the traveling salesmen. It's logically impossible for identity to come from anything but uniqueness so why would people not promote this.
Disclaimer: this has nothing to do with me. I'm playing for Cat on Thursdays and I'm not looking for anything else although I do enjoy playing for friends sometimes. I've lived it when girls followed me everywhere and I was doing three, four, maybe five gigs in a day ... and then I did it again the next day. This isn't music, it's a fucking hamster wheel. If people want to do that then that's their choice but I seriously don't recommend it. By far the biggest reason is that when you're playing that much there is almost no time to develop new material.
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