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Date: 02:21:07 A.M., May 17, 2001 Name: Scottbot Email address: scottaaea@aol.com Comments: golly, they might be giants... i have to say: i cut my teeth on those guys in sixth grade. i felt almost inclined to defend them, but i can't! ;) still, it was nearly all i listened to at the time. up until that point the only music i heard on a regular basis was 'soft rock classics from the 70s, 80s and today,' in the car with my parents. at the bigging of seventh grade i lent away my dubbed copy of flood and i never saw it again. it was the first music i really listened to. if not for that tmbg tape who knows how long it would have taken me to become interested in music? i can't wait to hear about rush. |
Date: 04:22:32 A.M., May 18, 2001 Name: Phil Email address: phil-at-masstransfer-dot-net Comments: TMBG strike me as a good band to cut your teeth on. Actually, the same is sort of true of Rush, in that they're both bands who are capable of opening one's eyes to certain seldom-exploited potentials in music. Later on, when you look back, you realize the ways in which they suck, but also that they helped to make you cognizant of those things -- odd time signatures, unusual instrumentations, whatever. I came to Rush and TMBG much too late to have that experience, but I have a lot of friends who have. Hell, I've even got some friends whose taste in music is otherwise impeccable who will staunchly defend one, the other, or both (hi, Beezus!). And both bands do have two good songs ("YYZ" and "Tom Sawyer", in Rush's case). So who was my Rush/TMBG? Maynard Ferguson -- the high-note-blasting, cheesy-arrangement-playing, coke-snorting, suck-disco-pandering-to trumpeter and bandleader. I had a tape of "Maynard Ferguson's Greatest Hits" to which I used to listen constantly in 8th grade or so. And I even used to claim that Maynard Ferguson was better than Miles Davis, who I thought "sucked". (!) Much like Rush and TMBG, Maynard Ferguson was basically all flash and no substance, at least most of the time. I guess that's my problem with all three; they use techniques that, respectively, create the expectation of innovation or humor or grooviness. And in the case of Rush and MF, they have considerable instrumental prowess and flash. But they don't have anything interesting to say to back it up. So, whereas so many musicians lack the technique to back up their ideas, they lacked the ideas to back up their technique. |
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