Your Fave is Problematic

yukbon said:
I'm not a huge fan of Polly Samson's -- I found her influence on Division Bell to be a mixed bag: it's distasteful when a band brings in a nonmember to help with the writing, and that it was the wife of the singer/guitarist/songwriter gives it an extra whiff of bullshit. But, that said, Guilmour certainly wasn't coming up with ideas on his own and her influence on the end product wasn't actually bad per se -- but she's not wrong.
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What are other distasteful examples of a band bringing in a nonmember to help with writing? Seems like it’s more common than you’d think, especially considering many artists don’t write their lyrics at all.

What’s actually distasteful is Gilmour continuing the record under the Pink Floyd name. Pink Floyd proved that they are more than Roger Waters, sure, but at what cost exactly.
 
Melt Face Molly Drop said:
What are other distasteful examples of a band bringing in a nonmember to help with writing? Seems like it’s more common than you’d think, especially considering many artists don’t write their lyrics at all.
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I mean, Desmond Child's entire career, but in particular I'm thinking of his work with Aerosmith and Kiss. Which, Kiss was trash to begin with, so making them somehow more schlocky trash is actually kind of impressive.
 
EvanBenner said:
Did we learn nothing from Tay?

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Where's the eject button on this thing called earth?

techcrunch.com

AI is eating itself: Bing's AI quotes COVID disinfo sourced from ChatGPT

One of the more interesting, but seemingly academic, concerns of the new era of AI sucking up everything on the web was that AIs will eventually start to absorb other AI-generated content and regurgitate it in a self-reinforcing loop. Not so academic after all, it appears, because Bing just did...
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Jan said:
Its off topic of the thread but i like to understand your point. Would you also include i.e. the grateful dead or Elton John in this
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Elton is kind of a strange one in that he’s solo and he sort of worked with Bernie since before he was even a solo artist or even had the name Elton John. From what I gather they both answered an NME advert and began working for Dick James and their first few songs were for other artists until they both fought to record Empty Sky. I’d argue that Bernie is a more fundamental part of “Elton John” than any musician he ever employed.
 
Jan said:
Its off topic of the thread but i like to understand your point. Would you also include i.e. the grateful dead or Elton John in this
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No, because those aren't ringers. Taupin and hunter/Barlow were part and parcel with the artists in question, not just dudes for hire who walked in with a rhyming dictionary and some songs they're willing to sell. Bernie wrote songs with and for Elton. Hunter would give Garcia shit when he didn't write music that he thought was fitting for his lyrics or was being lazy.

"Bon Jovi didn't like this one but I think it's going to work for kiss, check this out". It's not always trash, but it's at best kind of gauche.
 
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yukbon said:
No, because those aren't ringers. Taupin and hunter/Barlow were part and parcel with the artists in question, not just dudes for hire who walked in with a rhyming dictionary and some songs they're willing to sell. Bernie wrote songs with and for Elton. Hunter would give Garcia shit when he didn't write music that he thought was fitting for his lyrics or was being lazy.

"Bon Jovi didn't like this one but I think it's going to work for kiss, check this out". It's not always trash, but it's at best kind of gauche.
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How about Tony Asher and the Beach Boys. Even allowing for their best album coming out of it.
 
Joe Mac said:
How about Tony Asher and the Beach Boys. Even allowing for their best album coming out of it.
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I will admit that pet sounds aside, I have never really given the beach boys a fair shake and I am wholly unfamiliar with their music outside of the radio hits and pet sounds. I've no idea who tony asher is to them.
 
yukbon said:
I will admit that pet sounds aside, I have never really given the beach boys a fair shake and I am wholly unfamiliar with their music outside of the radio hits and pet sounds. I've no idea who tony asher is to them.
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He’s a the lyricist for the majority of Pet Sounds. Brought in by Brian Wilson for that album in an attempt to move away from their prior themes. Not a popular call with all the other members. That said Brian Wilson was well into his maniacal genius doing everything and then just getting the others in to sing their harmonies by then.
 
Joe Mac said:
He’s a the lyricist for the majority of Pet Sounds. Brought in by Brian Wilson for that album in an attempt to move away from their prior themes. Not a popular call with all the other members. That said Brian Wilson was well into his maniacal genius doing everything and then just getting the others in to sing their harmonies by then.
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Eh, I don't like it (and truth to tell, Pet Sounds (and most of the Beach Boys' stuff I'm familiar with) isn't a favorite) -- BB's strength is the music, particularly the harmonies -- but I don't necessarily hate it. From your description it's closer to Polly Samson getting shoehorned into the Floyd's music by Guilmour than Elton/Taupin putting music and words together rather then work for hire like Desmond Child.
 
yukbon said:
Eh, I don't like it (and truth to tell, Pet Sounds (and most of the Beach Boys' stuff I'm familiar with) isn't a favorite) -- BB's strength is the music, particularly the harmonies -- but I don't necessarily hate it. From your description it's closer to Polly Samson getting shoehorned into the Floyd's music by Guilmour than Elton/Taupin putting music and words together rather then work for hire like Desmond Child.
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But then it created what is considered to be one of the most seminal and beautiful pieces of art that popular music has created. Creating art isn’t always a simple or easy process.
 
Joe Mac said:
But then it created what is considered to be one of the most seminal and beautiful pieces of art that popular music has created. Creating art isn’t always a simple or easy process.
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that's fair -- and I do like pet sounds (and division bell as i mentioned earlier). it's closer to art by committee than the singular vision of an artist, and i find that kind of tacky and gauche but not without merit.
 
Did anything happen with the whole Swans and Michael Gira situation? did that get proven or not? It seems like a small bump in the road for them, similar to Pinegrove, where they were lightly "cancelled" and are now back in business.
 
wokeupnew said:
Did anything happen with the whole Swans and Michael Gira situation? did that get proven or not? It seems like a small bump in the road for them, similar to Pinegrove, where they were lightly "cancelled" and are now back in business.
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I admit I've not found a lot of primary sources on this, but I don't know what to look for short of trawling though everything that Larkin's been involved in. At any rate, the understanding is that something happened, but that what happened was consensual. I've only heard of this getting corroborated - both Gira and his ex-wife say that Gira came clean about it fairly quickly and that it resulted in the end of the relationship, other people who have worked or been involved closely with Gira say that though he was a megalomaniac when it came to working with him, he never took advantage of women, and that other people who have worked with Grimm have said she has a pattern of making false accusations. And Grimm herself when she originally made the accusation said something about "not wanting to make people feel weird about listening to Gira's work," which is a weird angle to take. Nothing ever went to court, and she doesn't seem to have continued pressing it. So from what I've seen Swans fans have settled into a kind of agnosticism about it. It's obvious that whatever happened wasn't great, after all Gira himself says this, but that it also isn't worth getting hung up on and probably isn't criminal, whether in a legal or moral sense, but also that you can't treat it like it's definitely false, and that the exact nature of it will probably not be verified outside of Gira and Grimm themselves.

Indymisanthrope said:
Sorry, for me (someone not familiar with this music whatsoever) the name is permanently tarnished by Vinyl Junkies using it as a plot point in his short, um, fiction. @Mather remembers.
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Uh, the what? I've only seen a couple of that guy's videos but I haven't the slightest on what he could've possibly said.
 
wokeupnew said:
Did anything happen with the whole Swans and Michael Gira situation? did that get proven or not? It seems like a small bump in the road for them, similar to Pinegrove, where they were lightly "cancelled" and are now back in business.
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Nothing definitive, but here's a recent-ish reddit discussion on the subject:


is probably the most germane and covers the most ground.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
When he first showed up in the last days of the old forum I visited his site. The blog section was almost entirely album reviews, with the NOTABLE EXCEPTION of two posts that consisted of what he later called “adult erotic fiction” in response to being mercilessly roasted for it.

It was a two part story about an awkward, shy man who has a sex worker over to his home and forces her to listen to Swans while he undertakes a borderline-assault on her throat and pontificates about the music. It was very weird, and very jarring in the context of a vinyl website, and Swans featured very prominently.

It was almost like the writing prompt was “American Psycho but make it about sex, and add a fedora.”
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Je. Sus. Christ.

I always knew that guy was a weirdo.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
When he first showed up in the last days of the old forum I visited his site. The blog section was almost entirely album reviews, with the NOTABLE EXCEPTION of two posts that consisted of what he later called “adult erotic fiction” in response to being mercilessly roasted for it.

It was a two part story about an awkward, shy man who has a sex worker over to his home and forces her to listen to Swans while he undertakes a borderline-assault on her throat and pontificates about the music. It was very weird, and very jarring in the context of a vinyl website, and Swans featured very prominently.

It was almost like the writing prompt was “American Psycho but make it about sex, and add a fedora.”
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Thanks for the reminder. Could we get a trigger tag?
 
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