On Music vs. Lyrics
After too long a break, J Michael Neal is blogging again. Here's what he has to say about Mark Knopfler's latest album.
Knopfler has become far and away my favorite lyricist. Understand that my default setting is to pay no attention to a song's lyrics whatsoever. Just because you hear me singing along doesn't mean that I have the slightest idea what is being said. This has its upsides and downsides. It means that Dream Theater and Yes have irritated me a lot less than they might have, letting me just enjoy the music. It also means that it took me a long time to really appreciate Knopfler.
I actually think that the majority of ordinary music fans are more interested in the music than the lyrics. Unfortunately it's the other way round for the majority of music critics, who, being writers, care more about the words. Hence we see the out of hand dismissal of bands like, well, Yes and Dream Theater, and excessive praise heaped upon the likes of Morrissey and Pulp, who's work is sometimes so much about lyrics that they forgot to put any actual music in there. Strip away the lyrics from just about any of the indie bands praised by the NME, and you're left with very formulaic four-chord plod where not only individual songs, but entire bands are completely indistinguisable.
As for Mark Knopfler, I've lost touch which what he's been up to since the days of Dire Straits. I saw them live when they were at their commercial peak, when the Brothers in Arms album was CD all the gadget-obsessed yuppies always used to show off their expensive new stereos. Dire Straits unfortunately got tagged as Corporate AOR for the three-CDs-a-year crowd, filed alongside Phil Collins or Foreigner. They were really better than that. They're overdue for critical reappraisal, and deserve to be remembered for works like "Telegraph Road" rather than the awful cheese of "Walk of Life".
Posted by TimHall at May 14, 2006 06:43 PM | TrackBackHey now, "Walk of Life" is *not* awful cheese.
It's perfectly good cheese.
Awful cheese was when somebody *else* recorded "The Bug."
Calling "Walk of life" cheese is an insult to cheese!
Posted by: Chris on May 15, 2006 08:17 PMNo, no, everything's relative.
Consider "We Built This City."
*Now* doesn't "Walk of Life" seem perfectly good?
Of course, I sort of like WBTC too, occasionally. They say you always keep a soft spot for the pop music of your late teens, so what can I say? Sometimes it's okay to just like the music regardless of (and sometimes in spite of) the lyrics (hey, most of my favorite stuff doesn't have lyrics, so there). As long as it's only sometimes, I think.
I don't think we have any Mark Knopfler solo stuff, though we have some of David's. Nothing recent, though. Which, now I think about it, pretty much sums up our music collection lately...
I suppose I'd better mention that I'm going to see Journey in just over two weeks' time. First UK shows for more that 25 years; the Manchester show sold out in five days.
Posted by: Tim Hall on May 18, 2006 10:20 PMI suppose if I mention that "Separate Ways" was my high school graduation anthem thingy that I'll really be dating myself.
ISTR Journey played Wichita not too very long ago, but I could be wrong. I seem to remember Carl saying "It wouldn't be the same without Steve Perry" and me saying "Last I heard of, the new guy sounded just like him." Might have been Kansas City or somewhere just sort-of nearby, though. In any event, we didn't go. Obviously.
REO Speedwagon played the West Bank Stage, within hearing distance of our house (as you probably saw on my LJ: http://gamehawk.livejournal.com/23685.html). It was kind of spiffy, other than I'm thinking free outdoor concerts might be a step below state fairs. (Which isn't altogether, er, fair... the River Festival has upped their button prices so they can bring in nicer acts like that. And the Kansas State Fair generally brings in some pretty big acts too, albeit mostly country. At least, they're usually big. I don't recognize any of them this year, because I don't listen to country music. I see they've got Skynyrd and Steve Miller Band, though.)
I'm thinking the last concert we went to was the Prairie Rose Wranglers, wherein I learned that there *is* a difference between country and western music, and now a whole Blues Brothers joke is spoiled for me. (And now I have "I'm My Own Grandpa" in my head, darnit. And that's one of the differences. Country music is often cheesy. Western music is, instead, often corny.)
If the new album is anything to go by, Steve Augeri sounds uncannily like Steve Perry. Unfortunately he only sings lead on half the songs; Neil Schon and Ross Valory should shut up and play the guitar (or in Valory's case, the bass)
I'm not a fan of REO Speedwagon. While Journey can be a Great hard rock band when they want to be (but with Mediocre lyrics), REO never rose above the processed cheese level, probably because they were fronted by a crooner rather than a singer. They only did one decent song in their entire career, and that was sung by the bass player.
Posted by: Tim Hall on May 19, 2006 01:08 PMSee, I never really liked REO back in the day, but it's another one of those high-school things. Aged cheese, evidently. Or cheese-as-comfort-food. Or something.
I guess when it comes down to it, I didn't like much of any pop/rock when I was in high school. When I lived in Indiana, I listened to country music (largely because no one else did), then when I m*ved to Kansas where everyone listened to country, I took up oldies. (Yes, my rebellious teenage years always took strange turns like that.)
(Speaking of strange turns, your comment filter says "m*ved to" is questionable. Oookay.)
Posted by: Karen on May 19, 2006 02:52 PMI got hit by a metric buttload of sp*m from the domain m*ved.to, so I ended up putting that into my spam filter :(
Posted by: Tim Hall on May 19, 2006 08:36 PMhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2194527,00.html
Mark Knopfler has a dinosaur named after him.
I Did Not Know That.
Posted by: Karen on May 26, 2006 01:08 AMIf any rocker deserves having a dinosaur named after him, it's Ozzy Osbourne. But what self-respecting dinosaur wants to be called an Ozzysaurus?
Posted by: Tim Hall on May 28, 2006 05:43 PM