A Music Thread [Joe Mannix]

Hitmakers have always fascinated me. Whether as producers or as musicians in their own rights who go and make music for others, they inevitably leave their own mark on whatever they make. Hitmakers can elevate people to fame and leave their signature on the tracks that did it.

Phil Spector is perhaps the quintessential hitmaker. His personal life notwithstanding, the guy knew how to make hits. His "wall of sound" was perfect for its era. It was distinctive and - importantly - big and clear in a time of low fidelity. From The Ronettes' Be My Baby to The Crystals' Then He Kissed Me and countless others, the "Spector Sound" was real and shows up throughout the era and beyond, including through covers like Rachel Sweet's medley of both of those tracks.

More recently, there are people like Rivers Cuomo of Weezer. In addition to Weezer's (and Cuomo's own) large catalogue, he also routinely writes for and performs with others, often resulting in very distinct tracks with his fingerprints all over them. "Magic" by B.o.B. became a hit because of Cuomo's catchy lyrics and his performance of the hook on the track. "Stupid Girl" by Cold doesn't feature Cuomo himself but he obviously wrote much of it.

Is there a producer, writer or other variety of hitmaker that tickles your fancy?

Exceptional Live Performances
German metal* band Rammstein has long been known for its live shows. Their shows tend to be extremely big, high-energy and full of fire and extremely elaborate pyrotechnics. The leader Till Lindemann is a pyrotechnician and it shows. When performing their international hit Du Hast at a show in Paris in 2012, all of this is on full display. The spectacle, the pyrotechnics and the on-stage energy of Lindemann are almost unreal. This is a highly-produced music video taken from concert footage and the editing definitely plays up the performance - but the scope, scale, energy and the sheer spectacle of the thing cannot be denied. It makes me wonder if Rammstein can even perform at all while Europe is in a gas crisis.

* Some may take exception to this. Rammstein is hard to classify. The German music press created a new genre identifier to describe the band, so I'll just bow to simplicity.

Great Covers
In 2015, Natalie Imbruglia did a cover of Daft Punk's 2012 hit "Instant Crush." Her version is quite different from the Daft Punk original, especially as the song progresses. This version is also very clean and clear and easy to listen to and has none of the vocal distortion effects of the original. I have heard that one of the reasons Imbruglia covered this track is that she liked the song but found it hard to understand the words. If that was her motivation, she certainly achieved the goal. I think she did a good job on this cover.

Cool Music Videos
The Foo Fighters have had a long line of amusing and fun music videos and the video for 1999's "Learn to Fly" is prime example. The band is on a trip on airplane when a midair prank by the flight attendants goes quite wrong and it is, of course, up to the band to safely land the plane. The band members all play various characters and I think is a pretty fun video.

Arbitrary picks from my collection
In no particular order and no implications of quality, here are four songs I've heard recently.

Chris LeDoux - Western Skies
A love song to the wide open spaces and life in the western prairies and mountains by one of the country/western greats.

Evanescence - Call Me When You're Sober
This is one of a multitude of Evanescence songs about love gone wrong, but it's a lot brighter than many of the others which tend toward being lachrymose or hard-edged and angry. I think it's worth listening to, but then I'd probably listen to Amy Lee singing entries from the phone book.

Cake - Stickshifts and Safetybelts
Bench seats are the essential prerequisite for fun in an automobile.

The Black Keys - Sister
A great groove and a great riff to go with it from a two-man band that always sounds quite a lot bigger than it is.

Bonus Elvis
This week marked the 45th anniversary of Elvis' death and this cannot pass unmarked in a music thread that falls on the same week. Here's his version of "Suspicious Minds."

Also, did you know that Donald Trump awarded Elvis a posthumous Medal of Freedom in 2018? I had no idea. Another thing I learned this week is that the discoverer of a new species of spider (Paradonea presleyi) named it in Elvis' honor.

Have a great rest of your weekend!

posted by Open Blogger at 07:30 PM

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