From Skip Heller:

If you can find the Bacharach article I wrote for PULSE in 1995, this is gone into by BB and Dave Brubeck.

It's here: http://makeashorterlink.com/?C17D51086 ( www.bacharachonline.com/bacharach_articles/bacharach_pulse.html) Currently I can't access this site. Google Cache: http://makeashorterlink.com/?S28D52086 Regards Franz Fuchs

If you listen closely and if you investigate BB's working methods, you realize that he was very intentional about pushing the envelope. He did create breakthroughs in popular music and miraculously to a large audience. To be frank, the scope of his achievements on that score dwarf something like the sixties Miles quintet. There is always a lot of experimental and revolutionary music going on away from the so-called and self-appointed"creative" music world. Burt Bacharach is not the exception to any rules. He's typical of something else. skip h on 11/11/03 8:35 AM, Patrice L. Roussel at proussel@ichips.intel.com wrote:

But why "The Experimental Side"? This is maybe what makes Bacharach (and many others) so important. They show (for those of us who were too infatuated with the sirens of experimentation to even realize it) that great music meaning a lot to a lot of people does not have to create breakthroughs.

There is a lot of great music to be done without extended techniques or a laptop :-).

Patrice.

on 11/11/03 11:24 AM, Efrén del Valle at efrendv@yahoo.es wrote:

Yes, but when it comes to popular music, envelope-pushing practices are far less obvious and more difficult to grab. Burt Bacharach is one example. Brian Wilson could be another one. Unless you listen to their albums really, really carefully, it's difficult to notice there's something groundbreaking there because the easily recognizable tunes and the pop forms stand at the forefront, not to mention the time/generational factor. Needless to say, when you scratch the surface, these impressions change.

Maybe to "enlightened" ears. But to those who consume pop music, these developments are totally obvious, even if the audience doesn't know technical terms for those devices and techniques. The big reason Burt, Brian, Beatles etc have stayed in such high regard is because there's something extremely arresting going there. Call it the sound of the pioneer spirit. It's deeper than pop hooks. Most people who buys lots of Beatles records maybe don't listen to the stuff carefully in the sense that one might listen carefully to Elliot Carter, but they know there's something exciting going on that spearates the Beatles from, say, the Monkees or Sonic Youth or Steely Dan. I don't think generational means squat. I think what we're talking about here is power. Not is the distorted loud guitar sense or the Elvin Jones sense, but something more elemental. skip h

on 11/11/03 12:26 PM, Zachary Steiner at zsteiner@butler.edu wrote:

I'm not sure why you selected to compare the Beatles to the Monkees, Sonic Youth, and Steely Dan as these are very disparate groups, both stylistically and artistically. I'm not sure what you were getting at by comparing Sonic Youth and the Monkees, so I will refrain from taking any offense.

I chose those three because thwey are completely disparate. But I chose those three disparate groups because, as much as they deliver competently produced product to their consumers, they sure ain't no Beatles. Comparing any one of those groups to the Beatles is like comparing The Cars to the Sex Pistols. skip h

Beatles and Sonic Youth are not comparable in pure musical terms, but they do share an open-mindedness, which is a quality that makes them true originals and incredibly influential in their respective fields. Although in a very different manner and in unequal proportions, both bands have become references for many, many musicians from the very beginning of their careers. So when it comes to popular expressions and maybe unconciously, we tend to be attracted by musicians with very rich musical worlds/cultural baggages but the message we receive, because it comes in the pop form, appears apparently simplified. There are so many elements in Burt Bacharach's music, his musical world is so wide and still it sounds so pleasant and "whistleable". And the same goes with Brian Wilson, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Robert Wyatt Björk -whom I can't stand- and Radiohead, regardless of their popularity status. What they have in common is that their surfaces, unlike most of the mainstream stuff today, are "scratchable" and that's helped "Strawberry Fields Forever" survive until today and god knows how longer, and still sound fresh and, why not, groundbreaking, considering how unhealthy pop music is today.

...

I'm not sure why you selected to compare the Beatles to the Monkees, Sonic Youth, and Steely Dan as these are very disparate groups, both stylistically and artistically. I'm not sure what you were getting at by comparing Sonic Youth and the Monkees, so I will refrain from taking any offense.

I chose those three because thwey are completely disparate. But I chose those three disparate groups because, as much as they deliver competently produced product to their consumers, they sure ain't no Beatles. Comparing any one of those groups to the Beatles is like comparing The Cars to the Sex Pistols.

skip h

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Hi, Despite

each artist having unique qualities, that subliminal connection to the past (not a bad thing) is present. I want to listen to Eric Dolphy sometimes when I hear Braxton's Willisau Quartet, for instance. That just means that artists are incorporating tradition into their music, which, for Skip, is a necessity.

More than necessity, I think it's unavoidable. I remember reading a Keith Rowe interview in which he claimed to be the first tabletop guitar player, closely followed by Fred Frith, and complaining about how this is regarded standard nowadays. I couldn't help thinking about steel guitar and, although I'm quite bad for cronologies, there's no doubt that horizontality has been an approach to guitar playing for ages. Really nothing to crown yourself for. Even people as out as these AMM guys come from somewhere, and that somewhere will pop up in the music in multiple forms. I don't think there's a single musician who's managed to break away from the past completely, it's physically impossible. However strange or even unmusical your approach is, it will always be related to something somehow, unless you have zero memory and completely saturated senses. So, more than necessary, it's automatic, imho.

At least Bjork gets into your stereo.

Well, very very rarely, and certainly nothing besides "Selma Songs" which I can bear for a little while. Best, Efrén del Valle ___________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Nueva versión GRATIS Super Webcam, voz, caritas animadas, y más... http://messenger.yahoo.es

There's a great quote from the liner notes to Alan Licht's "Evan Dando of Noise?" CD: "Finally, all I can say is the one thing that consistently attracts me in music (and other things) is mystery. That's what connects Xenakis' soundscapes, Derek Bailey's improvisations, the Beach Boys' harmonies, John Fahey's tunes for me. There's something emotionally ungraspable (and, ideally, uncharted by other experiences) about the power of melody and harmony as well as of 'pure' sound."

I love innovators as much as the next guy, assuming the next guy is standing next to me in the appropriate section at Amoeba. But innovation is not necessarily wild and/or noisy or self-consciously avant-garde, and there's also the possibility of just transcending the form without inventing something new - look at the oft-cited "Pet Sounds," or Sly and The Family Stone at their best (worthy of note that "On The Corner" was inspired by Stockhausen and Sly, and careful attention to Sly songs reveals some utterly unhinged guitar work that's just exceptionally well integrated into the whole of the sound), or The Rolling Stones' multiple peaks. I think AMM are great, but they've been at it for a long time & at this point they're probably better regarded as a Euro-improv equivalent to R.L. Burnside (though thankfully without the remix records) than "avant-garde." Which I guess means Ken Vandermark = Jon Spencer. There's also something to be said for players going out in the tall weeds, whether it's Monk's band on "Brilliant Corners" or any number of great Brit DIY records, typified by Essential Logic on "Aerosol Burns." Ultimately, deciding you're an avant-garde purist is as much a prison sentence as an all-Top 40 candy diet. Chris Selvig np: Otis Redding "Dock of the Bay" LP nr: Thomas McGuane "The Cadence of Grass"

on 11/11/03 4:38 PM, squeegee media at squeegeemedia@comcast.net wrote:

Moreover, anyone keen on - other currently *very popular* artists (either Stateside or in Europe) that are, in your opinion, pushing musical boundaries of one sort or another? (Aside from Eminem, who, in my opinion, is pushing boundaries mainly in terms of rapping/etc. like crazy.....his backing music ain't really doing all that much other than framing his vocals very well)

I agree with you about Outkast, and have for quite some time. They're fantastic. Also, the Roots kill me. They work in an established style, but they're sure not predictable. skip h

on 11/12/03 4:13 AM, Efrén del Valle at efrendv@yahoo.es wrote:

Hi,

...

Moreover, anyone keen on - other currently *very popular* artists (either Stateside or in Europe) that are, in your opinion, pushing musical boundaries of one sort or another?

Pushing musical boundaries is often a lame substitute for content. Or has everyone forgotten Van Dyke Parks' first album (he's sure made up for it since, but...) A lot of the stuff whose innovations have been felt over the long haul weren't greeted as particularly visionary at the time of their release -- Joni Mitchell's HEJIRA, any Tower Of Power album, Frisell's LOOKOUT FOR HOPE. But there's tons of evidence of those records in records that follow (much as we hear echoes of Burt Bacharach in so much contemporary R&B or strands of Webern in B horror movies). If you're wondering why we haven't seen a "next Dylan" or a "next Zappa", it's because the playing field has changed so much. When those guys showed up, rock journalism was not yet an industry. But, because what critics write means everything to audiences (especially on lists like this one), the taint of expectation has made it impossible for the unexpected to happen, because everyone is waiting for the "next _________" (fill in the blank with Beck, Bjork, or the other industry-generated teen trend of your choice). Do you know how much major-label money it costs to design and build a Bjork or a Rage Against The Machine? The Radioheads of the world do not come cheap, and they're brought to you by the same folks who give you Garth Brooks. The advertising budget alone is staggering. Fortunately, that money not only buys you a big ad, but the "right" kind of press coverage. The only world that has been relatively free of this sort of thing -- and probably won't be for much longer -- is hip-hop, which is why innovation is still running rampant in that world. Being a critical darling isn;t really that impressive in hip-hop land. The want the money. Quite possibly the most groundbreaking album of the last twenty years in De La Soul's THREE FEET HIGH AND RISING. But a certain amount of racism always colors the perception of anything that comes out of non-academic black music world. The critics will suck Lester Bowie's dick in print from here to next Friday, but Prince Paul in one swoop changes a lot about American pop music and doesn't get the credit we afford Spector, Brian, or the Beatles. White bands that are affiliated somehow with counterculture get better treatment -- a band like Sonic Youth has more credibility than Prince or NWA. Which smells worse than teen spirit to me -- it smells like very PC racism. Or doesn't anyone else wonder why Run DMC aren't mentioned in the same breath as the Beatles in terms of worldwide cultural influence? I don't know that incorporating a tradition into anything is essential in order to make good music. It seems unlikely that anything all that good happens without that (the Shaggs notwithstanding). But the way music is presented in the media now that there's a whole media built around popular music has made it possible to pass off self-indulgent bullshit with the right personnel as "progressive". If you look at what was being written about pop music in 1966 (in what few real outlets there were for pop music writing back then), you see a much more careful use of words like "innovative". Dylan, Beatles, Bacharach, Brian Wilson, Zappa. Little else earned use of the term. Now, we've gotten to the point where 15 people in every issue of SPIN (your shopper's guide for what record comanies want you to think) get to be "innovative". The same people who said Beck was the "new Dylan" (which is an insult to the old Dylan, and Bob Marley, the only new Dylan who actually lived up to the job description). Zappa said the only reason he ever got a record deal was because nobody knew what was going on, so the labels were forced to take chances. Nowadays, everyone at every label knows what's going on. If they don't, they lose their jobs. No way would they make a mistake like signing a Zappa. Much safer to sign Bjork or Toby Keith. skip h