I agree. I think that you have to live the music for a long time before it starts to become a part of you, like a body part. And then with certain types of music, like blues and jazz, you need to live a lot of
life before you can really be comfortable and authentic playing the music. Life experience informs the performance and informs the songwriting. There are some great teenage songwriters out there... to use my usual example
Brian Wilson wrote "Surfer Girl" when he was 19, a gorgeous, gorgeous song. More complex than most people realize just by listening to it. But it's his later stuff that is really "him" -- his stuff from when he was in his late 20s and 30s, even when he was not well, is miles beyond "Surfer Girl". And even now, his melodies and harmonies are just incredible. His new stuff is just so densely emotional -- and
so Brian, you could never mistake it for anyone else. (
That Lucky Old Sun drops tomorrow!!)
So I feel like I need to define where I am on the continuum of "which Taylor" I like best... and that ties into the (months!) earlier discussion of live vs. recording. I love recordings... I can get a bit obsessed over finding out "what mic did they use, what guitar, what amp..." and I keep going back and forth on analog vs. digital. I think it's my perfectionist streak, the attempt to create the perfect sound (see: Brian Wilson) and get it down on tape for posterity is attractive to me. But then there's live performance, which serves an entirely different purpose. It's the oops-es and no do-overs aspects of live performance that are attractive to me, and why I only like watching people sing along to a DAT when they screw up (ahahahah). Recordings can be as canned as the tape reels, but live performances ought to be organic. So there's that.
Moving on... (and yeah, I'm feeling chatty tonight!) I think that
because recordings and live performances serve two different purposes, there can be two different "Taylors" in that respect. The jams and tags and growlys and whatnot in the live performances, the raw sexiness and joyousness and all that. And tight jeans, I totally vote for tight jeans.
But in the recordings, I see no problem with going a teeny bit glossier, more polished, tighter. (Not just the jeans this time.) NOT, I must assert, as glossy as TH-the-album. NO. That was just wrong. I mean like UTR. There was a shoestring album that sounded as polished as it needed to. I listened to that album for the first time on headphones, in the dark, in my bed (which I will swear up and down is the ONLY way to listen to any album for the first time, unless it's dance pop). And the one thing that popped out at me was --
that's solid songwriting. And then, as I continued to listen, I also thought -- that's excellent recording. Good discipline. Good balance. It was an enjoyable listening experience. Now, those songs are totally different live, there's experimentation and dancing and whooing and stuff, and that is also awesome. But here's my big point: If the songwriting is solid, we really can have it all ways. We can have a nice commercial album that will sell and bring in new fans and (gasp!) maybe get radio play. And then we can have raw hot live shows with the same songs -- just kicked up a notch. I don't know what to do for the folks who want Branson-fried-Taylor... I guess they can wait til he's in his 60s and goes for a cheesed-out nostalgia tour?
So that covered a lot of ground... or maybe I just used more words than I needed.
But I've been wanting to get that out on the internet for a while!
- - but am dropping off some things I can still find that I've run across relating to the resurgence of interest in vinyl over the past few months.
I'm so simple I thought that right there was funny.
Toto, had a couple of their albums and just last week ordered their Essentials cd along with Aerosmiths Greatest and Eric Claptons 461 Ocean Blvd. If my father had any clue how much this is costing his daughter to regroup all of her album collection from the days.
Remember the wheel barrel loads being hauled down the driveway by some lucky guy,for just a lousey $5 BUCKS!
:mad: Scared for life I tell you!