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got that line from another thread where These Blues and Feelin Just Fine were mentioned.Of all the tunes that featured regularly in the live set in the past the one I would most like to see brought back from the dead is ...
) and have seen enough performances of it to last a couple lifetimes!THIS a million times!!Zenchan wrote:Definitely the Slide Song, I have a recording of it from a bootleg marked only "Worthington Pier, 1994" that is one of my favourite things of my entire Spiritualized collection.
Oh, I was there (as I believe was plastic37). The place is actually called Worthing. First time I saw Spiritualized - Stereolab were support. It was just after Let It Flow was released, but before Pure Phase came out, so although it was a great gig, I didn't know most of what I was hearing, and therefore didn't clock The Slide Song as the event that it was.Zenchan wrote:Definitely the Slide Song, I have a recording of it from a bootleg marked only "Worthington Pier, 1994" that is one of my favourite things of my entire Spiritualized collection.
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mc wrote:If I Were With Her Now
yeah.good dope/good fun wrote:If I Were With Her Now
Argh ... Oh Baby is so boring. I always find that song to be the dullest part of the show when they play it. I'd much rather hear Life Is A Problem or the new one, Let's Dance.mc wrote:Basically, no recent ballads please. Some are great on record, but I've yet to hear any of them work live save for Oh Baby
Hmmm... I do love Life Is A Problem on record, but I find it boring live - it's the studio orchestration that really make this song for me. Granted, Oh Baby isn't his most exciting moment, but it's got a lovely build-up and crescendo.TheWarmth wrote:Argh ... Oh Baby is so boring. I always find that song to be the dullest part of the show when they play it. I'd much rather hear Life Is A Problem or the new one, Let's Dance.mc wrote:Basically, no recent ballads please. Some are great on record, but I've yet to hear any of them work live save for Oh Baby
Yeah I appreciate there are many Spiritualized songs I love, who's chord progression is not any kind of deviation from common pentatonic progressions - a good example would be Lay Back in the Sun or Medication, where Jason takes a hackneyed bluesy chord sequence and uses the simplicity in a jaw-droppingly effective musical fashion to create a work of genius - contrasting the simple chord progressions with amazing dynamics to produce beautifully simple yet at the same time gloriously nuanced and sophisticated tunes, tunes which will be remembered when the history books of our musical times are written. What makes these tunes special is an "x" factor that cannot be reduced to Grade 8 Music Theory terminology, yet totally encapsulates the notion of knowing brilliance when one hears it - a qualification for which such tracks are eminently suitable.TheWarmth wrote:You can argue that every Spiritualized song has unoriginal chord sequences. Also, lyrically, it fits in with the rest of the band's catalog. I mean, I get that you don't like the song, but I'm not buying your reasoning. I haven't had time to look in my iTunes to see the venue/date of the live recording I have. I'll get to it soon.
mojo filters wrote:TheWarmth wrote: Yeah I appreciate there are many Spiritualized songs I love, who's chord progression is not any kind of deviation from common pentatonic progressions - a good example would be Lay Back in the Sun or Medication, where Jason takes a hackneyed bluesy chord sequence and uses the simplicity in a jaw-droppingly effective musical fashion to create a work of genius - contrasting the simple chord progressions with amazing dynamics to produce beautifully simple yet at the same time gloriously nuanced and sophisticated tunes, tunes which will be remembered when the history books of our musical times are written. .
That's hitting the nail on the head for me. I feel that Jason's ballad-type songs have become much musically simpler recently, as well as more prevalent. I don't mean chord sequence-wise, because he's never been complex or original in that sense, I mean the extra little twinkles and sparkles and noises and drones that give his older ballads that almost other-worldly quality I find so intoxicating; it elevates the music and turns something simple into something complex and rewarding.The Dr wrote: but isn't it everything around the songs that make it? if spz only made acoustic albums then the songs would be musically dull and the majority of the lyrics would be nothing special. it's the choir and drones and strings etc that make the songs. otherwise it would be very underwhelming
I know my opinions aren't always popular, so forgive me if I'm not in touch with the prevailing point of view. However I thought Acoustic Mainlines went down rather well.The Dr wrote:if spz only made acoustic albums then the songs would be musically dull and the majority of the lyrics would be nothing special. it's the choir and drones and strings etc that make the songs. otherwise it would be very underwhelming
I'd say from LICD onwards he became a 'proper' or more 'traditional' songwriter than the previous 3 albums. Songs from LICD onwards have a more formulaic structure, and you can imagine the bulk of the stuff being written alone on a guitar or piano.mc wrote:I don't even know how to describe what the Jason of LGM, PP and LAG did, but he was astonishing at it
o a.m tour is, after ladies and gents and silent sound, my favorite spz show that i have been to (even more than albter hall the other year). but it was the gospel singers and strings that made it for me also i adored the stripped back style but if it was, for example, a new album of one man only campfire songs i'd (probably) find it a tad lacking. think i'm in love from the a.m is in my opinion a child compared to the full grown album version and some parts of licd are overblown. i think, as with most things, it is moderation of each thing that makes the wholemojo filters wrote:I know my opinions aren't always popular, so forgive me if I'm not in touch with the prevailing point of view. However I thought Acoustic Mainlines went down rather well.The Dr wrote:if spz only made acoustic albums then the songs would be musically dull and the majority of the lyrics would be nothing special. it's the choir and drones and strings etc that make the songs. otherwise it would be very underwhelming
Putting the 2011 RAH gig to one side, I think the whole concept revitalized older tunes, gave us a lovely introduction to some new ones, and taken as a whole represents the greatest thing in terms of output we've had from Jason since the release of Let it Come Down in 2001.
From the beautiful stripped back "Sitting on Fire", through the rousing refrain of "Amen" to the country groove of "Think I'm in Love" - it encapsulates Jason's ability to reinvent and come back better and stronger, and give us so many amazing musical memories along the way.
i adore freedom and life is a problemangelsighs wrote:yeah, I gotta stand up for Jason's more traditional song based material too. yeah, Freedom is dull at ditchwater, I don't like Life is a Problem that much either, but then some of them have been fantastic (I love Too Late for example, and Sitting on Fire, ). I think it's simplistic to generalise.
I thought the Acoustic Mainline tours were some of the best shows Jason has ever done. they showed that stripped down to their bare essentials, a lot his songs DO work as compositions aside from the sonics. there were exceptions (Feel So Sad didn't really work, nor did Shine a Light in my opinion) but on the whole the shows I saw (Edinburgh, Union Chapel) were radiant, beautiful and moving. I found the Amazing Grace era lacklustre overall but these acoustic readings gave a different spin on the catalogue that was invigorating (plus a lot of the wonderful songs from A&E were debuted and I liked them right away).
I think classic songcraft is just as much a part of the Spiritualized DNA as spacerock. there's nothing wrong with a simple, well written, song. it's all part of the universe of sound.
my theory is that the experience Jason got from the Acoustic Mainlines shows actually fed back into the electric shows when they came back. he had the nerve to strip a lot of songs back and have more traditional and natural sounding arrangements (and there was that acoustic version of Walking With Jesus too). I admit this became a problem when it was too much of a contrast with other songs in the set (the songs did kind of need 'thickening up' a bit or something, or segueing into other songs so the momentum was kept up)
i think angelsighs covered this by saying that he grew more confidence as a songwriter after the dan johnston show and subsequent a.m tourheisenberg wrote:mc wrote:IPerhaps he became more capable and developed a more natural ability as a traditional songwriter over time, and that became his main way of writing?
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i apologise, i misread the begining of your post, i wasn't accusing you of repeating a point, just reafirming your point. anyway, i'd say the writing style has always been the same (back to sp3 days) but yes licd is an album which has a much more conventional structure for all of the songs as opposed to ladies and gents which still has 'less-conventional' moments (compare cop shoot cop to won't get to heaven), whereas what i was trying to add to your point was that after he found that he could do more stripped back perfomances (although you could argue that it started with amazing grace) it gave him more confidence to remove a lot of the boomblast and having his song writing front and centre- as was said before by i can't remember whom. would a&e and shsl's 'popability' have been possible without am?heisenberg wrote:But I said around Let it Come Down era, not DJ tribute/Acoustic Mainlines. . So no, I didn't repeat an already covered point.
...I couldn't agree with this more. The last point I want to make is just that-the other thing I love about Spz gigs is that, at their best, they just seem like one long piece of music joined together and flowing beautifully.angelsighs wrote:I admit this became a problem when it was too much of a contrast with other songs in the set (the songs did kind of need 'thickening up' a bit or something, or segueing into other songs so the momentum was kept up)
Wow. What a post.Gruff wrote:I have to add I am also a fan of both 'Freedom' and 'Little Girl', even though I do completely recognise the arguments put forward by others earlier in this thread. Yes, they are fairly 'generic' ballads I guess... but for me, they are evidence of how any song can be the 'right song' if it nails how you are, for you, right now.
I was going through a horrible (and I mean horrible) time when SHSL was released. But there was something in the lyrics of those two songs, something that hit it on the head for me and counselled me through. They were total catharsis to the pain in every other area of my life, and, if somebody had said "I told Jason about what you were going through and he wrote those songs about you" I could have believed it. Those songs are neither my favourite songs on SHSL, nor are they the songs are I think are 'best'. I agree they could be be identified as slightly lack-luster and 'to a formula'. But, they speak to me and I love them...
Nice.BzaInSpace wrote:Also would love to have heard Marianne Faithfull and Candi Staton do these tunes as intended - make it so, please...
Sums it up somewhat for me too-that's what is so powerful about music, huh? (see what I did there?BzaInSpace wrote:Sorry to hear this, and worse to chime in with your bad times, but I was struck by how brutally similar a situation I was in when that album came out and I'm certain in some way it pretty much saved my life. It certainly made shit easier to deal with - 'Life Is A Problem' indeed - and that was my go-to fix for at least a year. It's probably my all-time favourite album actually and it's like there's endless lines of significance in some of those deceptively 'simple ballads'.
)It is up there with the best of the Spz work for me. Certainly one that would end up being 'umm-ed' and 'ahh-ed' over when deciding a Top Ten list (which Spz to choose!?).BzaInSpace wrote:It's probably my all-time favourite album actually and it's like there's endless lines of significance in some of those deceptively 'simple ballads'.