Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Most of what constitutes sales and 'so-called' popularity is material rammed down peoples ears. I've been doing radio for 30+ years, pounding ****, promoting **** and selling it to listeners, often with regret. PM's solo stuff was an automatic add for radio, even though, lyrically speaking, he wasn't Dylan at his worst. PM did have the savvy to play into the perfect contemporary format. He knew what would sell. Lyrics, who needs stinking lyrics, might have been his creed, just as long as the song had a good hook. Radio generates chart positions which equates to sales positions. Would we view his music/lyrics during the pinnacle of his solo career the same way if he had never been with that other group? Better yet, would the record sales have been there? Because it's likely the airplay or exposure might not have been.

Again you missed my point.

Forget sales.

What do you have to offer that is better than these lyrics you disdain?

I would be interested in either your own or others work you do value. This is sincere, not sarcasm. I simply don't appreciate people who rag on others without anything to offer in return. If you're going to be off topic, why not make it worthwhile and tell us what you do think is a good lyric.

I don't believe Britney Spears writes her own material. She is also not considered by the public to be a songwriter.

I can't send you any lyrics representative of the band I play in (the Perry Weissman 3) because we don't write any...we're strictly instrumental. Two CD's out and another one currently on the way...we've had a lot of critical acclaim locally, been reviewed nationally in Cadence magazine, and got to play the CMJ festival in New York on the strength of our recordings...so we must be doing some things right.

David Byrne once remarked that lyrics are a way to fool people into listening to music...I think a lot of Paul's (solo) music was there to fool people into listening to the lyrics...

On the subject of critical analysis: I'm not a plumber, but I can spot a leaky pipe...I'm not a butcher, but I can smell rotten meat...etc., etc...

I do speak English fairly well, as do other members of this forum, so I think we're as qualified to comment on this topic as we are on the nuts and bolts of playing...besides, I've already offered a sample of my lyrical abilities on this thread...I'm not proud of 'em, but I'll stand 'em right up there with Paul M.'s 'doggerel'...it ain't my fault that Hallmark cards outsell Hunter Thompson, or that B. Spears' 'talent' is routinely classified as 'musical' by the media...

ok...good lyrics? How about anything by Gentle Giant...three decades of King Crimson albums...the entirety of Selling England by the Pound (excluding that wretched little Phil Collins tune at the end of side 1)...the Tom Waits catalog...I could go on and on, but I'll close with just two words:

Captain Beefheart

Yes, the Mascara Snake! Fast 'n' bulbous!

Bulbous, also tapered.

No, wait, you're supposed to say, "Like a tin teardrop"

Like a tin teardrop.

That's right!

"Looks like somebody's had too much to think..."

"I woke up in vomit and beer...in a banana bin..."

"...take you down to the foamin' brine, and show you the t*ts on the wooden goddess, full-sail, that tempted away your one-eyed, peg-leg father..."

Don van V. is still The King!

My arms are just two things in the way
Until I can wrap them around you
You can make my sad song happy
Make a bad world good
I can feel you out there moving
You're mine, I know I'll find you
And my head is my only house until I've found you

and the Spotlight Kid
is searchin' high and low
for his alibis
for his aly-modes

Very well said, Dane.

Ah, Tom Waits.

'Never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long. Never heard the melody until I needed the song." San Diego Serenade, '74.

Not a huge Waits fan but the man has a way with lyrics. Something a little thought provoking.

I am a huge T.W fan...saw him open up for Zappa in Phoenix, 1974...Frank came out on stage to introduce him with the house lights still up, saying, "Alright, I want everybody to sit down, shut up and listen to this guy..."

I've been taking Frank's advice ever since...

When I lived in West Hollywood back in the late '70s, I would go to Duke's Tropicana for Saturday breakfast. Tom (who lived there with Rickie Lee Jones at the time) was holding court one morning. He apparently had been up for days. It was the first time I even encountered him--before I heard his music, in fact. I went out and bought "Nighthawks" the same afternoon.

The next week I ran into him again--playing pool at Barney's Beanery with Chuck E. Weiss and Rickie.

He's Big In Japan, I hear. Along with the Ventures, another fave.

I had a business partner in '81, who claimed to "really be into music". We agreed to trade cassettes. He gave me one and I gave him one of mine. The deal was that they would be unmarked, and we would listen and trade notes. I gave him a TW compilation, thinking he would find it intriguing at the least. We kept the tapes over a weekend. On Monday he tossed it on my desk, with the remark that it was "****".

Oh, the tape he gave me?

Kenny Rankin. And he was serious...

thats the thing, im not saying i'm a critic. Im saying all of you are being critical of Paul's work, namely, silly love songs.....That was a massive song. How many number ones have any of you had?.......exactly

How many number ones has Britney had?

Again Alex, Popularity and quality do not equate.

And it's not just "Silly Love Songs".

My own 3 favorite McCartney compositions are "Uncle Albert".

It seems to me that if you're going to compare artist, you would have to make sure that what they bring to the studio/stage is on an equal basis, you know apples to apples. Comparing Macca and Britney Spears is not quite (by a long stretch of the imagination)an equal comparison, more like apples to oranges. Obviously not all popular, or should I say financially successful music is the most critically acclaimed. But if your going to critique someones body of work at least base your comparisons to another artist with the same or equal history and ability. To me that would seem a bit more appropriate - just a thought.

Man, we ain't ever gonna get this one resolved...it's like discussing evolution with someone who keeps saying, "Yeah, but I still say the world's 6,000 years old." This is precisely what comes of taking something inherent in humanity like music and making it into an 'industry'...lowest common denominatorism is going to prevail, because 'numbers don't lie'. The hell they don't...

One of the most infuriating aspects of P.M.'s 'massive' selling out is that, with a lot of other notables of 1960's culture, he seemingly couldn't wait to 'board the helicopter' and leave the rest of us standing in a rain-soaked garbage-strewn pasture in upstate New York wondering what the hell just happened..."The man in a suit has just bought a new car with the money he made off your dreams" (S. Winwood, pre-Michelob commercial days). And before anyone gets irate and starts waxing nostalgic about Woodstock, let me point out that on day three, food was brought in for the 'tribes' by the U.S. Army, as the promoters, in their utopian enthusiasm, had forgotten that while man does not live by bread alone, it's a problem if you forget to include it in the 'banquet'...

Wow, what a screed...I'm gonna go smoke one on the porch and let my keyboard cool off...

"BTW", (wasn't that a band from Canada?) thanks for sharing the Tom Waits anecdotes, JJ...outstanding! A bunch of young engineers once asked me to recommend a movie, and I told them about Down By Law...the next day they approached me awkwardly and asked "You LIKED that movie?"

Oh, well...there's some line from somewhere about pearls and swine, but I forget the exact wording. (Kenny Rankin??? You gotta be kidding...}

Yes, but the point of a song like "silly love songs" is that its supposed to be commercially appealing. The objective in writing it was to appeal to recrod buyers, not to write the next imagine. Its his ability to write great AND commercial songs that makes him and the song great

Britney is hot.....