A good set of earplugs will get you thru a lot of discos and rock concerts. Actually, I’ve found they lower rock to about the right listening volume.
It depends. When I was a young man back in Montreal in the early '70s, we had a new club open up on Bishop Street, one that followed that newfangled French trend, a discothèque, and it tended to play dance music like this:
Lots to listen to there, but also very danceable. I think things started to get cheesy in the late '70s - all the genres of popular music started to harden and separate their influences out, disco from stadium rock from punk from new wave, etc., much to the detriment of music…
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Or, even better, you can just buy the music, run it through a good system, and listen to it at home! (Never fails - I get the seats right behind the drunk-girls’ night out.) Or, play it yourself. If I’m going out, I’m gonna hit a good latin club where I don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff and can actually dance.
Goddammit, i love the fucking rhodes.
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Indeed! Through my LCD-3s this is sheer joy.
Amen.
I bought my own seventythree Mark I '72 last month! I couldnt be happier.
Rhodes = cool. All I have is a Previa. Can fake it - but just not the same. Couldn’t justify better, tho, as I’m primarily a guitarist anyway. (Tho, now I kinda want a Les Paul and throw in some jazz chords and riffs I don’t usually use, lol.)
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Thanks, man! I’ve been looking for that piece for decades! Literally.
For so long, I thought it was PDQ Bach. Thanks, again.
You’re welcome!
I’ll just go ahead and apologize ahead of time, Jason, but…
I recall when Deodato’s Also spracht Zarathustra came out. It was one that period’s many attempts at legitimizing smooth (read: inoffensive) jazz by associating it with ‘serious music’. Disco was rampant, and this piece of music was assaulting my senses almost everywhere I went.
To be fair, it wasn’t the only piece like it. That period was overloaded with crossover classical music. People who would never be caught listening to a string quartet could claim that they were sophisticated. They weren’t fooling anyone, however. Deodato’s effort wasn’t Giant Box, but it sold much, much more.
With one or two notable exceptions, none of these artists could have garnered a “the finest performance of any of the Brandenburgs – live, canned or intuited – that I’ve ever heard.”.
I like to hear a little technical wizardry and complexity in my music. Alas, Deodato, Chuck Mangione, Donna Summers, Gloria Gaynor, a metronome set to 80 beats per minute…it all sounded the same. I’d rather listen to Tenney or anything Eve Egoyan wants to play.
I still don’t understand how or why so much insipid music came out of the that era, especially given that there was a well-selling solid example of what could be done already out there.
Thank goodness for CHOM-FM, broadcasting out of Greene ave. in Westmount at that time - it wasn’t the thin gruel that it was doomed to become later. Heavily invested in prog rock - Genesis, Yes, ELP, Gentle Giant, Zappa were in heavy rotation, they didn’t shy away from playing long, complex musical pieces uninterrupted by commercials. Deodato’s piece was hardly ever played there.
Eventually, I discovered soukous, bebop, Charlie Haden, and especially the earth-shattering brilliance of The Köln Concert - I was lost to the world forever after that.
However, since the topic IS favourite pieces of music,…
Aha - a high quality version without the inter-cutting between the dance / classrooms!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySyNXHwHTuw&list=PLE622B232751F8C5A
That’s from Adriano Celentano’s TV show on Rai1, Italy.
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I admire the whole thing so much I have to learn more!
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You’re confusing a couple of things, there. The Deodato piece was 1973 - disco and all the synth-orchestra stuff wasn’t happening yet. You could sit with your friends, and zone out on this and ‘White Bird’ without shifting the mood, really. Lumping this piece in with Donna Summer and the like would be like tossing Bobby Darrin and street doo-wop in the same bag. Just because they occurred generally in the same decade and pop liked to borrow doo-wop riffs didn’t make them the same thing.
The Deodato piece is a legit jazz interpretation (free interpretation and improvisation being the whole point of jazz in the first place). The commercial disco crap that occurred later was just cookie-cutter pop, even if they swiped some of the classical-goes-synth stuff in the process. Deodato was exploring newer instruments, just as those before him. Bach would at times compose on one instrument, then perform the same piece on anther. He wrote a lute suite, Julian Bream played it on guitar - nobody called it wrong. Entirely the opposite, actually.
I mean, you don’t have to like the piece. I can see where it got too much play fora while - kinda like Scott Joplin’s piece. I just hate to see it mischaracterized. Mainly, because Disco sucks way worse than bagpipes blow. Always did, always will.
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Thank you so much.
Thanks for the cartoon. This is the way to roll.
Entirely welcome, sir.
(doffs wig hat, throws horns)
ahh Deodato ! hadn’t heard this stuff in years, makes me want to listen to some chick corea or some Blackbyrds
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