Comments on: Oh you’ve got green eyes, oh you’ve got blue eyes, oh you’ve got grey eyes

By: Ivan

Ivan — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 12:54:10 +0000

Speaking of messing around, have you had a go with last.fm? No doubt it’s old hat by now, but I find it an almost perfect way to list to pop music.

By: Darren Brierton

Darren Brierton — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 13:07:12 +0000

Yeah, I don’t use it as much as I should, but I do use last.fm. The flash plugin can be flakey for me, but generally flash isn’t terribly stable on linux. What did you think of the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex? More importantly what did you think of Victoria Bergsman?

By: Ivan

Ivan — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 13:34:45 +0000

last.fm: glad to hear it’s not just me has problems with it on linux.

Jimmy Chamberlin Complex: it’s clearly his band. I thought the section from about 2:30 to about 3:00 was brilliant; they should have kept hat up the whole time. The rest was fairly tedious - I mean I thought the accompaniment on guitar etc actually diluted the potentially exciting drums. Maybe JC needs more percussive or edgy accompanists. I tend to find Rock ‘n’ Roll instrumentals a bit timid. Probably their rehearsals are better.

Victoria Bergsman: I had to watch it with the sound off. I can see that VB would be right down your street - one of these boys who look like girls who look like boys who … except VB is a girl of course, heh.

By: Darren Brierton

Darren Brierton — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 13:53:27 +0000

You cheeky bastard! Just what exactly are you insinuating about me?

By: Ivan

Ivan — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 21:55:52 +0000

Listening to that Jimmy Chamberlin has got me thinking. The perfect jazz/funk/rock band has always seemed just out of reach. The guitarist is the hardest one to get right: jazz guitarists just don’t wig out in the right way (maybe they care about the notes too much), and rock guitarists often sound a bit pedestrian when you’ve listened to too much crazy jazz or other modern music. These days it should be easier to find something.

By: Darren Brierton

Darren Brierton — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 22:59:46 +0000

I don’t agree about jazz-funk. There’s tons of great jazz-funk out there, and tons of great jazz-funk guitarists. But you’re right about the so-called jazz-rock stuff (which, come to think of it, is pretty much an oxymoron). The rhythm section is normally fine, it’s the guitarists and keyboard players that let the whole thing down. Either they’re too jazzy, in which case they can’t really rock out enough, or they’re too rock and everything starts sounding distinctly prog and you start expecting Rick Wakeman to turn up in a silver cloak. Jazz-rock was big in the 70s with bands like Colosseum—I really liked Colosseum when I was a kid learning to play the drums because I liked Jon Hiseman’s drumming, but I heard them for the first time in years the other day and they were absolutely bloody awful.

I don’t agree with you about the Jimmy Chamberlin Complex, though. I really like that song, and one of the reasons is that the guitar part is actually very simple. It just layers a melody over the bass and drums which is where all the action is. I could do without the keyboard solo though.

By: Ivan

Ivan — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 21:10:41 +0000

Whoa! Colosseum was one of Moira’s favourite bands!

Maybe I’ll hear some decent jazz-funk now that I’m starting to listen to last.fm. Jazzers get too jazzy with funk: they start noodling when they should be leaving jagged bits of silence (e.g., to go “Huhn!” in). Also, they can play their instruments too well - there’s no sense of danger. Give me Ornette Coleman on violin anyday, …

More to the point, any pointers to feed into last.fm would be appreciated. I haven’t listened to new pop music at all for years.

By: Darren Brierton

Darren Brierton — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 13:29:28 +0000

As far as pop goes, I dunno really. I suppose you could just try following things I’ve mentioned here: The Go! Team, The Polyphonic Spree, Gotan Project, Peter Bjorn and John, The Concretes.