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Devil's Advocate - Music

  
 
Jack The Bodiless
16:32 / 30.07.05
So I thought it might be a laugh for us to take an artist/song/album/genre that you either love wholeheartedly or hate unreservedly... and then tell everyone why it's either utterly shit or fucking wonderful. Think about how your favourite album is vastly overrated, or how that singer you loathe is tragically underrated. You can treat it as an interesting writing exercise, a way of examining and reevaluating your preconceptions and prejudices, or just as as a bit of a crack. Posts over 500 words for preference, no lists or one liners. Let's flip it over and see whether it cooks.

For example: I can't stand Marillion. I understand from the music press and from their website that they have one of the most fanatical smaller fanbases in the world, and who are referred to as a genuinely independent and inspirational band. What the fuck?! Essentially, we're talking about a prog-rock band who won't identify as prog because they're worried about public perception. A band who've ripped off U2 to keep the few fans they have left, and who then sponge off those fans to keep their tawdry careers going, getting them all to buy their increasingly ropey pop-rock singles the first week of release so they can get into the top ten and pretend they're still relevant. Which of course they can't be - they're a group of middle-aged men who still rate Yes' 'Tales From Topographic Oceans' as a serious influence, and who've attempted to ride on Radiohead's coattails to cling to a spot somewhere near the public eye. Their singer's a tiny wee hippy whose voice has deteriorated over the last five years or so to the extent that he can barely sing back catalogue songs from only a couple of albums back, and whose faux-Lennon lyrics are so twee as to be insufferably smug. Keyboard sounds that wouldn't be out of place on a Vangelis soundtrack. Achingly, tortuously long guitar solos that ape David Gilmour's more average moments in every other song. A sixty-year old drummer who seems to think that it's not a proper song unless he plays in a time signature no one else can recognise, let alone dance to. And their last album was a self-indulgent double, the last track lasting over twelve minutes with one single thread of pompous melody attempting to sustain itself throughout, and the whole CD peppered with throwaway soft rock songs that Simple Minds and James would have rejected as being too middle of the road.

But I guess some people will listen to anything with an obvious melody and a bit of widdly guitar. The Floyd still sell a huge amount of records a year, even though they haven't released any new material for eleven years. Marillion don't come anywhere close to this level of sales, and never have, even in their mid-eighties heyday. Isn't it about time they quit to become the session musicians they've really been all along?
 
 
Alex's Grandma
21:55 / 30.07.05
Au contraire, mon frere!

Marillion, it seems to me, were far and away the most significant musical, and not just musical, force to emerge from Britain during the Eighties, the Thatcher years. This is not to 'pigeonhole' Fish, or any of the other guys, as mere agit-prop merchants - they were so much more, but, all the same, by deftly avoiding the simplistic statements on offer courtesy of the likes of The Smiths, The Jesus And Mary Chain and all those other people (you know the ones I mean,) Marillion, in songs like 'Script For A Jester's Tear' 'Punch And Judy' and that masterpiece of elegant understatement 'Garden Party' ('Please do not walk upon the grass/Unless accompanied by a fellow/Hello Dad, Dad, Dad!' - Fuckin' A!) managed to lay out an ideal for living that I've been following to this day. Even though at times they weren't all that fashionable. And it's difficult to overstate their influence musically also. How many bands these days could honestly say, if they had to go through a lie detector test, that the likes of 'Fugazi' 'SFAJT' and in particular, 'Misplaced Childhood' (Good to see that's on offer for £3.99 in the latest Virgin Megastore sale incidentally - this generation needs education,) hadn't been a major influence? One looks at 'the scene' these days and all one sees is things that Fish and the boys did ages ago. Also, being able to quote the lyric, in full, of say 'Kayleigh' or 'Warm Wet Circles,' was a way for this guy, anyway, to get over the initial awkwardness of approaching an attractive stranger in the college union bar.

The Fall, on the other hand... Well he's just a tramp, isn't he, shouting about who he's going to kick out of the band next, while the musicians audibly dissolve into a state of ennervated paranoia around him. Why couldn't he have allowed them to express themselves properly, the bitter, twisted, Machiavellian gnome?
 
 
All Acting Regiment
23:10 / 30.07.05
I'd never listen to that "The Streets". He's such a chav.

Tell you what else, that Alec Empire. It's not even music. It's just shouting and noises, and do you know I just can't stand beats that are different to 4/4.

Now, Razorlight, on the other hand. They're so cool. Their lyrics mean so much to me; in fact I often listen to vain, self interested idiots who are better dressed than I am when they warble over average garage rock.

And, saying that you're better than Bob Dylan is like, nothing to do with jumping on someone's shoulders and everything to do with kicking them in the head with your anti-establishment cred.

Oh, and Bjork? Freak.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
23:18 / 30.07.05
Will someone PLEASE tell that Trent Reznor to shut the fuck up? Whiny, narcissistic little fuck, with his angst and shouting.Doesn't he realise there are nice things out there? Couldn't he sing about them for a change? Puppies, and true love, and everyone living happily ever after an' that, rather than all this doomy, gloomy "oh it's all so horrid" schtick that he's been peddling for the last decade and a half? Give it a break, man. Even Robert Smith "happies up" sometimes (although I do wish he'd do something with that hair).
And why doesn't somebody tell him that industrial rock is SO nineties it hurts? If you've got guitars, why do you need the machine that goes "bing"? And if you've got the machine that goes "bing", why do you need to pretend you're in a proper grown-up rock'n'roll band?
The only "Downward Spiral" this guy needs is the gurgly one that happens when you pull the chain.
 
 
Benny the Ball
16:11 / 31.07.05
Ain't that REM fantastic, so haunting, so moving, so perfectly...no, I can't, I'm sorry, I just can't do it. Sorry.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:01 / 31.07.05
Yeah, I agree. What a bunch of cunts. Especially the early stuff. Although these days I increasingly find myself strangely drawn to their 'oueff.'
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
10:32 / 02.08.05
See, that's more sarcasm than the kind of thing I mean - playing devil's advocate is about advancing a telling argument for a position that you don't hold, and which is ideally the diametric opposite of the position you actually hold on the subject.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - 'By The Way'

This little gem marks the end of an evolution from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' trash-funk rock beginnings, through the more polished output of the nineties, into the intelligent, soulful pop musicians that they are today. The lion's share of the credit for this move should go to Anthony Kiedis, singer and lyricist, whose influence on the other members of the band has been nothing less than seismic since their parting of the ways with ex-Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro and re-recruitment of John Frusciante. Off drugs, off drink, Kiedis is a revelation, the lynchpin of the band, his trademark stacatto barking rap and soulful croon pinning the melody to the more traditional rock framework put together by Frusciante, Flea and Smith. Lyrically, his use of abstract metaphor provides even the faster, more brutally funk-driven songs with a dreamy, ethereal quality reminiscent of classic Californian pop like the Mamas & Papas, or even the Beach Boys. 'By The Way' is a perfect example of this, and of what Kiedis' RHCP do better than probably anyone else in the world today.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:31 / 02.08.05
I do not like Jay-Z. His beats are very weak (the exception '99 Problems' is good, it is his first good beat since 'Friend or Foe' that wasn’t jacked off classic hip-hop tracks). So weak that I don’t see why they are considered hip-hop, they are SFP* beats. He can't flow. He sounds like he is trying too hard to sound like he isn’t trying hard. He has the occasional smart lyric. He is the equivalent of Vanilla Ice except he has street credibility. Which says a lot about the state of the streets. It seems lacking in the spirit which defines the essence of hip-hop, the undefinable essence of hip-hop, the moment of silence between flow and breakbeat.

*Sex For Profit, which is what I like to call modern R&B out of respect for rhythm and blues singers.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
13:47 / 02.08.05
What's all the fuss about Can then? It seems almost puerile to say it but they just do the same thing over and over and over and over and over...You get the point.

On the other hand the sparkling musicianship and droll lyricism of the Dandy Warhols make my inner questing beast holler with deli...

No, I'm just being sarcastic, aren't I? Sorry.
 
 
*
03:38 / 04.08.05
This is a brilliant idea for a thread and I'm glad it's here. Cheers, Jack. I'll give it a brief try.

Magnetic Fields. In fact, all the Stephin Merritt projects. Look, just because someone can create fifty songs in a week does not mean any of them will be good. And no, what Merritt evidently takes for an "ironic subversion" of pop music standard melodies, harmonies, and rhythms does not somehow make his music cool, it just makes it patronizingly accessible and derivative. Of course, it would have to be, wouldn't it, because I doubt he spends more than a few hours on a given song, considering how thinly spread he seems to be. This is definitely a man who has mistaken quantity for quality. The cloneishness of his music is a jarring contrast to the self-conscious irony of his lyrics. I mean, the first time I heard the refrain to "I Thought You Were My Boyfriend" I thought it was a bit humorous. After realizing that the extent of his theme was this same "Lookitme, I'm cynical about love!" the idea of listening to any of his infinite unimpressive variations lost all hope of holding my attention. In fact, so has this subject matter.
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
10:11 / 04.08.05
Now that's what I'm talking about...
 
 
Alex's Grandma
22:59 / 04.08.05
I'm not sure if I've ever had too much time for The Perfect Presciption by Spacemen 3. (Nearly typed '£' there instead of '3,' which perhaps explains the problem I have with this album.) Having sensed, back in '87, that drug culture was about to become much more fashionable than it previously had been, the Spacemen, with songs like Call The Doctor, Take Me To The Other Side, Feels So Good and so on, went about cynically exploiting what they must have seen, correctly as it turned out, as an emerging wave in UK society. Purely so they'd have a bit more cash to underwrite the (artistically justifiable - well possibly, but then again, possibly not,) smack bill.

Ultimately they never produced anything of real worth. Public school boys in rock'n'roll bands are in a tricky position, it doesn't often work out, but in this case, particularly, the consequences weren't good. To sit there trying to strum along to old blues, dub and especially VU records you can't really follow, or understand, while attempting to make up for your genuine lack of a clue about the roots of this stuff with trashy guitar fx just seems like the act of a set of over-priviledged sots.

Damn them, those guys.

(Is that any better, Dad!!!!eleven!!!)
 
 
Seth
00:54 / 05.08.05
I fucking hate Rage Against the Machine. They're just... doh!

Misread the abstract.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:35 / 05.08.05
It's easy for cynical, pampered bourgeois hipsters to sneer at Rage Against The Machine, but the fact remains that no other band in past 20 years has offered such consistently devastating critiques of capitalism, globalisation and American foreign policy, with such commercial success. Rather than seeming dated, their sound has managed to define both a certain point in the early Nineties, and another time, the time of No Logo, around the turn of the millennium, demonstrating a continuing relevance that few bands can boast. Those who doubt Zack De La Rocha's credibility as a rapper should remember that he's working with hip hop luminaries including KRS-One and DJ Shadow, with career-best results, and that guy who plays the guitar is pretty good, too. Those who like to tell the old joke about a huge crowd of Rage fans shouting in unison "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!" would be wise to ask themselves: would it be better if those kids were in the military? In the 1990s, with Clinton in the White House, many young people fell into the trap of believing that certain battles had been won, and to them, RATM’s anti-authoritarian ranting seemed pointless and childish – "stick it to the man, man!" - hahaha. Fast-forward to 2005 and suddenly it doesn't seem to pointless anymore: indeed, many music listeners have fallen over themselves to welcome any music that explicitly criticises the current administration – such as Eminem's 'Mosh', which is good as it goes, but a pale echo of RATM's fire, and too little, too late. In 2005, there’s more killing in the name than ever, and Rage Against The Machine are sadly missed.

[I'm starting to warm to this now: not all of the above is sarcastic...]
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
10:16 / 05.08.05
(Alex - that's better, son! I'm proud of you! Here's a fifty, go find a hooker!)

I think Flyboy has persuaded me that Rage... are worth giving another shot. I'm gonna go kick him in the nuts.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
10:31 / 05.08.05
Devo are just weirdos. I should listen to more great bands like The Strokes and The Killers, who give guitar music a real kick up the pants with energetic guitars and punchy vocals.

Ice T's electro output is rubbish, isn't it? It's just some guy talking over keyboards. That's rubbish. 808 drum machines sound like Gameboys and are rubbish.

God damn Coldplay are so intense I could just climax over Chris Martin's face.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
10:43 / 05.08.05
Gang of Four are crap and cannot play in time. Musicians who can't play their instruments as well as Incubus are rubbish. Technical ability is very important in music.

Modern Hip-Hop isn't going through a prolonged period of stagnation. The NME are relevent and have excellent taste.

ESG are rub. LCD Soundsystem are great!!!!

Guitar Wolf can't even speak english properly! What's the point?
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
11:30 / 05.08.05
And I'm the first person in thread you jump on because..?

Lots of posts under 500 pior to my two.
 
 
I'm Rick Jones, bitch
11:32 / 05.08.05
...for example yours, at 139.

"I do not like Jay-Z. His beats are very weak (the exception '99 Problems' is good, it is his first good beat since 'Friend or Foe' that wasn’t jacked off classic hip-hop tracks). So weak that I don’t see why they are considered hip-hop, they are SFP* beats. He can't flow. He sounds like he is trying too hard to sound like he isn’t trying hard. He has the occasional smart lyric. He is the equivalent of Vanilla Ice except he has street credibility. Which says a lot about the state of the streets. It seems lacking in the spirit which defines the essence of hip-hop, the undefinable essence of hip-hop, the moment of silence between flow and breakbeat.

*Sex For Profit, which is what I like to call modern R&B out of respect for rhythm and blues singers. "
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
10:17 / 08.08.05
?! Has some naughty person deleted a bitchy post?

FYI, it was 500 words or over for preference - none of mine approached that, and to be honest both Fly and sentimentity have proven that less is more, so I'd say that as long as it's not just one liners, it's cool. After all, the point is supposed to be to provide a convincing argument for/against something musical where the argument is opposed to your own opinions. Think outside the box, examine own opinions, all that wonderful bollocks...
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:33 / 08.08.05
Yeah, I'd quoted your original post, but deleted it because I couldn't be bothered getting into a fight with Buckwheat. I think the idea of avoiding just posting sarcastic one liners is the main thing, innit? I'll work on a few more shortly...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:45 / 08.08.05
New thread in the Policy on how Flyboy is abusing his moderator powers, anyone?

Meanwhile, I have concluded over time that I hate hate hate Leonard Cohen. The most obvious reason for this, the clearest example of the apalling disjunction between the reverence he receives and the brickbats he deserves, is that he cannot sing. He just can't sing. And not in the way that Nick Cave can't sing - his voice is the most apalling, ropy, throaty adenoidal nonsense committed to vinyl. When he performed "A Singer Must Die", he must have felt like the safest fucker in the building. With this in mind, was it monstrous self-delusion that has him confessing on "Tower of Song", by the time of the penning of which he sounded like he was reading a gas meter:

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice?

I say they nay. I say that Cohen is mocking us. He knows that a fawning music media has secured his posterity, and he can now devote himself to churning out ever less satisfying albums with his ever ropier voice.

And the lyrics! Holy rectal press, the lyrics. Again, blame perversity or blame stupidity, but has a reputation for creating gorgeous, poignant and emotionally stirring lyrics been ever so misapplied? Many talented musicians have returned to the same obsessions - the aforementioned Cave on relligion, which he knits into a richly-textured patchwork of allusions, confused symbology and his own highly personal imagery. Cohen, on the other hand, reads aloud from the Bible in Pictures, then tacks a bit on the end saying that actually it's all about Vietnam/the United States/anal play. God's sake! Sometimes he doesn't even manage that:

Like that staggering account,
Of the Sermon on the Mount,
That I don't pretend to understand at all.

Then why, why must you flaunt your ignorance, Cohen? Why do we need to know that? This may seem winsome in a girl of 19, but in a man with a voice like a bear's cock it is just pathetic. Sing songs with a point, or be quiet.

The tragedy of it is, when he isn't trying to be clever or poignant he hints at what might have been a far more satisfying career. Specifically, Jazz Police. A nice, boppy, funny little number, with a bouncy rhythm and the ragged claws of Cohen's voice largely obscured by a nice girl group who can sing properly. If ony he had thought to string together a couple of duets with Bananarama maybe he could have made it work, eh?
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
14:54 / 08.08.05
Nice thread, Jacko.

Okay, Tales from Topographic Oceans is far too often singled out as a kind of prog straw man, when in fact it bursts with ingenuity and inventiveness. Hugely ambitious, it fuses disparate genres into something that manages to be more humourous than is ever given for while creating one of the most distinctively English sounds of the 20th Century. It's contemporary Pastoral music, and wonderful for it.

Furthermore, bands like Yes and ELP were masters of their aesthetic, fusing music, graphics/tour imagery, costume and performance style into a coherent and distinctive package. Showmanship and defined aesthetic sensibilities result in a genre which is full of surprises an d often subverts the norms and expectations of 'rock star behaviour'.

(yeesh. have I persuaded myself?)
 
 
*
15:09 / 08.08.05
My first post was short because, frankly, this is harder than I thought it would be. Here is another attempt.

The Cruxshadows. This band has been sorely underestimated by people of otherwise excellent taste in goth-themed dance music. They have different challenges to meet than other artists of a similar style and audience, and so they have to go about things in a slightly different way. For one thing, the Cruxshadows have a positive message, one that is applicable to people of different faiths, although it tends to be couched in Christian imagery in their songs. It is difficult to get goth kids to buy a positive message, when their entire identities are so often wrapped up in the idea of rebellion. The Cruxshadows make their message— nonviolence, tolerance, and not using drugs— appealing to the goth set through several techniques: The lead singer's voice is rarely intelligible enough for the lyrics to be understood on a first hearing. The music is danceable, with easily recognizable beats which will appeal to their target audience. The lyrics, once they can be deciphered through Rogue's none-too-transparant vocal style, are exceedingly simple, the message unambiguous. Finally, some of their songs perform a difficult inversion, making it seem as if their listeners will be doing something radical and rebellious by not giving in to the temptation to be violent, intolerant, drug-using assholes. Some find the blatant use of music as propaganda distasteful, but I would argue that all music is propaganda of one kind or another. It's almost more ethical to be obvious about it, and in this case, it works. For many of their fans, the message is the most important part of their music. For others, the message is secondary to the danceable beats and appealing lyrical imagery, but it still gets heard. This makes the Cruxshadows effective in a way that most other goth bands (thankfully) are not, and it is this effectiveness that critics, who deplore Rogue's deliberately unintelligible style and the simplicity of the lyrics, overlook. At the very least they are to be praised for their marketing genius, as their music is frequently heard in clubs where I live although they are not on a major label and most of the other music played is somewhat the opposite in thematic emphasis.

By the way, Haus, the rant on Cohen was lurvely, thank you.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
15:10 / 08.08.05
Unlike, for example, Patti Smith, whose presentation/music is equal parts smug degraded hippie naivety and well-worn punk-by-numbers.

Her earliest albums do at least have the merit of some originality, but for decades now she has been purveying concerns that, dated and irrelevant in the mid-70s, are so irrelevant now as to be practically fictional.

Smith is responsible for launching and validating wave upon wave of appalling howling proto-feminist acoustic musicians and poets(see every lesbian pub on a sunday evening ever). She can also be considered to have done a 'Brett Anderson' decades before Suede in her milking, as a heterosexual woman, queer and gender-ambiguous imagery for wider appeal.

(this is fun!)
 
 
Jack The Bodiless
10:20 / 09.08.05
...you're all fantastic...
 
 
Jack Vincennes
11:03 / 09.08.05
It has always been a mystery to me how Tom Waits gained a reputation as a skilled songwriter. A great deal of his output in the past could be summarised in the sentence "Since you left me baby, I been so drunk". His songs that could not be put in this category -Jersy Girl, for example, or Kentucky Avenue -are touching enough in a superficial way, but repeated listens confirm them to be simply sentimental, mawkish and ultimately manipulative. At the point when his unaccountably large fanbase could reasonably have been expected to notice this, he retreated into wilful obscurity, and still appears to be confusing the very different concepts of 'banging kitchen implements around' and 'musical innovation'.
 
 
illmatic
12:00 / 09.08.05
In a Hip Hop landscape of bland conformity, the wittly titled Disposable Heros of Hiphypocrisy stand out like a beacon of what could have been. Emerging from the experimental industrial sound of the Beatnigs, Micheal Franti's band came together to produce a sound that was unique yet accessible, carried a certain understated edgy grooviness, yet most importantly carried a scathing social critque. The true heir to the throne of Chuck D, Franti is one of the few rappers who managed to stay true to the "undefinable essence of Hip Hop", with an incredibly tight (yet sharp and witty) flow, while streching the boundaries of a what is essentially a very conservative genre. His lyrics are never preachy, always fresh and new, never once slipping into monotone or self-parody (unlike today's crop of so called "rappers"), and fill the open minded listener with a sense of righteous wrath, indignation and a determination to act. In a day and age where blingin' has replaced political astuteness, where unashamed capitialists like Puffy and Jay Z rule the roost and music is more about mindless hedonism and filling wallets than elevating consciousness, the Heros stand testament to the genres creative possibilites.

If more music was like this, perhaps real change would be a possibility.
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
12:25 / 09.08.05
Oh, bless you, Ill, I was considering showing my love for the Disposable Heroes myself...
 
 
Not Here Still
12:40 / 09.08.05
That's Hiphoprisy actually, Illmatic.

The Super Furry Animals are a band who occupy a deserved niche status in British indie music.

The band, who came to prominence during Britpop and specifically the seminal 'Cool Cymru' scene, neither went on to the much-deserved success of the Stereophonics - who could actually write lyrics which meant something, rather than a dislocated series of jokes - or vanished cruelly into obscurity like the much-loved 60ft Dolls.

Instead, the group have remained a thorn in the side of music lovers as a middle-weight band. They even celebrated this in a song, Ymaelodi â'r ymylon (Banished to the Periphery, apparently...), which highlights how the Super Furry Animals remain a cultish concern.

Indeed, the song quoted above is from Mwng, an entire album in the uncommercial language of Welsh, and yet the band remain confused as to why the success they clearly wish for eludes them?

Wildly disparate in style, their albums are not so much an acquired taste as a ridiculous buffet of musical genres; and much like a brussels sprout, jam and Dairylea sandwich, they leave a nasty taste. The listener can be faced with a folk ballad which veers into techno stomping, or a song about property prices sung in the vocodered style of Bobby Brown. Such jarring juxtapositions could well be why this band receive such poor sales, but this does not appear to have occurred to them.

Still, little more could be expected, one argues, from a band who are regularly written off as mystical Welsh hippies. This hippy nature can also be seen in the stoned meander of their albums, clearly the work of men with too much time and too many drugs on their hands.

Their Merry Pranksterism also leads the band to try out onstage ideas which would have been written off as poorly thought out back in the 70s, a decade to which they are sorely indebted. Inflatable bears, quadrophonic sound, even Glow in the Dark pac-a-macs have all been used by the Super Furry Animals in their stage shows, and let us not forget the dire days when they toured festivals in a tank to make some onspecified point.

With faltering attempts at political comment, usually again in the form of poor jokes, the band have tried to hold on to a 'radical' pose which ill befits a bunch of Welsh hippies. Their refusal to take advertising money, too, shows how such a band are scared of the success which has so far eluded them. Getting a Super Furry Animals song onto an advert could lead the band into the mainstream - an area which has no need for the works of Gruff Rhys and crew.

Oh, and their name is terrible, too...
 
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
12:55 / 09.08.05
That's beautiful.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
13:04 / 09.08.05
Surely you have missed the most important thing about the Super Furry Animals, namely their association with Howard Marks? I have never had time for pop songs such as 'Play It Cool', 'The Man Don't Give A Fuck' or 'Juxtaposed With U', but their continued closeness to that counter-cultural icon and eternal rebel makes me grin.
 
 
Not Here Still
13:10 / 09.08.05
Actually, Hanging With Howard Marks is one of the few songs of theirs I like...
 
 
Haus of Mystery
13:43 / 09.08.05
You know who chafes the shit out of me? Nina Simone! She sings like a man, and the only reason anyone's even heard of her is because of that claymation video from years ago.

In fact a few other mediocre 'soul' singers have managed to claw 'careers' off the back of these wonderfully creative videos - stand up Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson, your number's up!
 
 
Alex's Grandma
09:33 / 11.08.05
I'd disgusted with what's been said above about Leonard Cohen.

Possibly the most significant writer of the 20th century, in any field one cares to name, so poetry, the novel, the acoustic confessional accompanied by experimental keyboard, Cohen has consistently shown throughout his career that he's not just some sort of dilletante who's 'done' lots of famous actresses and then effectively told 'tales out of school' on tape, while staring blankly at his metaphorical 'old man.' That he's more than that. Nor has he done been a bit boring with regard to his thoughts on religion, unlike say Bob Dylan, who Leonard Cohen is no way influenced by. 'Beautiful Losers' is the best book I've ever read. Nor is Cohen consistently quoted as an influence by 'our' pop singers just because they know for a fact that however wrecked they were the evening before (and however banal the observations they scrawled down on a beer mat about 'er indoors') they're not exactly facing a gold standard. Chris Martin from Coldplay's work is far inferior. And as for that fuckpen Scott Walker...

Some people are the Jack of all trades, and others are more like the Three of Clubs. But Leonard, he's the King!

And what's more, he's so sexy.
 
  
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