Metal Machine Music

[Benny Bunter]

Ha! Someone's upped MMM onto youtube..

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Then there's this live version...

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Initially thought this would be a total pisstake but I think these both sound pretty cool actually...

 

[mms]

it's not the noise record i thought it would be, ie it's not incapacitants or anything... it's not hyper annihilating.

 

[STN]

for some reason i imagine it will sound like e2-e4. I imagine I'm wrrrrrrrrrrrrrrong!

Won't watch the youtube as want to give it a fair chance, loud, on some decent speakers.

 

[Benny Bunter]

for some reason i imagine it will sound like e2-e4. I imagine I'm wrrrrrrrrrrrrrrong!

Won't watch the youtube as want to give it a fair chance, loud, on some decent speakers.

Ah, give it a go, it sounds surprisingly alright. Try before you buy! I;d never heard it before and now I'm a bit more intrigued.

I do remember Lou Reed saying in an interview that the CD version was a complete travesty of the original, cancelling out all the hard work he'd put into producing the frequencies and tones and missing the point entirely, so you can imagine what he'd think of the youtube version. Or has he released a remastered CD version of it since then? Anyway, I can imagine an original vinyl copy would cost a pretty penny.

then again I suppose it would be foolish to believe half of what Lou says in interviews anyway. :slanted:

 

[Lichen]

I think nomad is falsely accusing British people of falsely accusing American rappers of falsely talking about drugs, crime and so on in order to sound hard, in order to sound hard.

So to speak.

Thank you, Bernard.

 

[Sick Boy]

Thank you, Bernard.

Exposed!

 

[Mr. Tea]

Thank you, Bernard.

???

 

[Octopus?]

There seems to be this weird double standard where only musicians with contracts are allowed to play up a persona and make it over the top without having their eyes clawed out by the peanut gallery.

Really? I thought an essential part of being an misunderstood underground artist was to create a persona and stick with it? In some cases it's the only interesting thing ABOUT the artists.

[re: other posts] Personally I greatly enjoy Tom Waits in his various incarnations but have a hard time:

a) believing he's serious about it
b) believing he has a legion of followers that believe he's serious about it
c) somehow exploiting the impoverished denizens of the united states by couching some of his lyrics/persona within the character of a hobo/beat stereotype
d) believing how worked up some people seem to be getting about him.

Nothing really to add about the last few pages.

 

[Mr. Tea]

a) believing he's serious about it
b) believing he has a legion of followers that believe he's serious about it
c) somehow exploiting the impoverished denizens of the united states by couching some of his lyrics/persona within the character of a hobo/beat stereotype
d) believing how worked up some people seem to be getting about him.

Points b) and d) are especially well made. You'd almost think there must have been legions of Bowie fans who were totally outraged to discover their idol was not, in actual fact, a spider from Mars.

 

[zhao]

Points b) and d) are especially well made. You'd almost think there must have been legions of Bowie fans who were totally outraged to discover their idol was not, in actual fact, a spider from Mars.

not a good comparison between bowie's changing persona and obvious theater and Wait's corny and tired get-up. the difference is pretty big.

and don't know about anyone else but i never got "worked up" about an irrelevant little shit like Tom Waits. i said he was a "mediocre poseur". and added "unoriginal" later. that's all. if a tune from "Nighthawks" comes on the radio or at a bar, i might even sing along.

 

[Mr. Tea]

How's he unoriginal? Whom, in particular, is he ripping off?

 

[droid]

I have to ask Zhao, as you keep referencing Raindogs, but are you familiar with Waits after his early 'sleazy 50s americana' period?

I wouldve thought youd appreciate the music (if not the vocals) from his 80's (and later) LPs. The sonics of some of his tunes, his use of homemade instrumentation, the atmospheres he creates... he's many things, but not 'unoriginal. You should check out 'Swordfish Trombones', 'Rain Dogs', or (probably my favourite) 'Bone Machine' before offering such damning criticism.

 

[Mr. Tea]

The Black Rider is great, too. Well, that's the only other one I've got apart from Rain Dogs, but I really like both of them. A mate of mine who's a massive fan speaks especially highly of Swordfish Trombones, which I should probably check out at some point.

Cue zhao telling us that hacksherly, there was a guy doing exactly what Waits does but better, twenty years earlier, and in Africa...

 

[zhao]

by "unoriginal" i mean in the records i heard he rips off very obvious blues musicians of the howling at the piano variety.

I have to ask Zhao, as you keep referencing Raindogs, but are you familiar with Waits after his early 'sleazy 50s americana' period?

I wouldve thought youd appreciate the music (if not the vocals) from his 80's (and later) LPs. The sonics of some of his tunes, his use of homemade instrumentation, the atmospheres he creates... he's many things, but not 'unoriginal. You should check out 'Swordfish Trombones', 'Rain Dogs', or (probably my favourite) 'Bone Machine' before offering such damning criticism.

ok. fair enough. it's true i don't know all his records. home made instruments sound interesting... just so put off by the schtick after a while and the whole thing just seemed so shallow to me...

 

[Sick Boy]

by "unoriginal" i mean in the records i heard he rips off very obvious blues musicians of the howling at the piano variety.



ok. fair enough. it's true i don't know all his records. home made instruments sound interesting... just so put off by the schtick after a while and the whole thing just seemed so shallow to me...

Hold on, after all that you actually haven't HEARD any of those records?
Did this guy fuck your girlfriend or something?

 

[BareBones]

The Black Rider is the one.

 

[swears]

Tom Waits always reminded me a bit of Captain Beefheart, only depressed instead of manic. This is just going off a couple of my dad's CDs...

 

[STN]

Tom Waits always reminded me a bit of Captain Beefheart, only depressed instead of manic. This is just going off a couple of my dad's CDs...

you are right, I think Waits cites Trout Mask Replica as his primary influence.

I'm shot by both sides in this argument. I don't think people actually believe his persona, but I find his persona annoying and not worth bothering with.

 

[zhao]

Hold on, after all that you actually haven't HEARD any of those records?
Did this guy fuck your girlfriend or something?

i said in the beginning i don't know ALL his records (only a few).

what is funny here is fans getting worked up about me saying that he's a mediocre poseur really, so you realize that it's a cheap schtick, but you are still so emotionally invested in this schtick to the point you'll get all huffy defending it?

Tom Waits always reminded me a bit of Captain Beefheart, only depressed instead of manic. This is just going off a couple of my dad's CDs...

Captain Beefheart was a fearless perverted scary beautiful monster of genius proportions who blasted his way through the music establishment's bourgeois bullshit, fighting the law to the end (but of course the law won), leaving a glorious bloody trail behind for following generations to stare at in wide eyed disbelief.

(if the world was not SO COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT classic rock stations would have "all Beefheart Sundays" or whatever programming gimmicks they do these days. but we all know in reality not a single of his magnificent tunes hardly ever made it onto the radio.)

while Tom Waits, sonic inventivenes in his later work or not, is over all just a puppet who plays a fantasy role for those that the Captain fought.

 

[STN]

Does zhao have to have heard ALL his records to criticize him? I'm afraid I'm not going to read every novel John Grisham has ever written before coming back to you, aged 35, and saying 'yep, they're all shit'.