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Post by My Avatar Is A Hot Babe on Dec 7, 2021 19:16:14 GMT
Wings - Wild Life (50th Anniversary Edition)This record is very underrated IMO. McCartney seems to think anything gay didn’t sell well and weren’t critically acclaimed (Mac I, Ram, Wild Life) he dismisses as not good. He seemed confused when a interviewer asked him why he wasn’t playing songs from Ram and he seemed genuinely confused that an album that wasn’t a hit would have huge fans of it. He’s wrong. Wait, what? Anything ‘gay’? Assuming "gay" must be a typo. As I said in another thread, it’s hard to see how they can improve on the Archive Collection LP of Wild Life, which sounds fantastic, but I have the half-speed masters of McCartney and Ram, and will probably get this one too.
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Sounds.. ago
Amy Grant
This is not a secret club. This is my forum.
Posts: 1,991
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Post by Sounds.. ago on Dec 7, 2021 19:45:25 GMT
I'm somewhat of a Maccatard but Wild Life, except for a couple tracks, is a steaming, molten cesspool of shit.
Marketing copy for the latest reissue from McCartney's web site:
Following the eclectic charm and intimacy of 1970's solo McCartney and 1971's homespun lo-fi indie-pop progenitor RAM credited to Paul and Linda McCartney, Wild Life found Paul once again redefining his post-Beatles creative identity, this time beginning his tenure as a founding member of Wings. A rollicking left turn from its predecessors, Wild Life was recorded in barely more than a week [sounds like it], with more than half of the songs captured in a single take [again, sounds like it]. The end result would be eight songs running the gamut from joyous freewheeling jams [the sloppy bullshit known as Mumbo] to proto-chamber pop [??] to spare introspective musings — all bristling with a raw, jagged energy akin to the grungiest of garage bands [shoot me now]—whether on the careening blues-rock rave-up of opener "Mumbo," a reggae-tinged reimagining of Mickey & Sylvia's "Love Is Strange," or the plaintive and heart wrenching ballad "Dear Friend." [heart-wrenching because it's about his old mate Johnny Toppermost, you see]
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Post by antiram on Dec 7, 2021 20:37:31 GMT
1971's homespun lo-fi indie-pop progenitor RAM credited to Paul and Linda McCartney Crap. It was one thing when only Beatards spewed shit like that at SHF, but now even McCartney himself is spreading this lie. RAM is not a "progenitor" of indie pop. For one thing, there is absolutely nothing "indie" about it, and not much of it can be called "homespun". It was an expensive, major-label production with hired-gun studio musicians and smothering arrangements, with strings and horns and whatnot. The New York freakin' Philharmonic is on it! Lo-fi? If anything, it is a reaction to McCartney's lo-fi homemade qualities, providing the fancy arrangements he thought the critics wanted and found lacking on his debut. It was recorded at a hot New York studio, and it was an attempt to further a more "Beatley" sound. Part of the ethos of indie pop is that it consists of baroque arrangements on a low budget, such that anyone could conceivably make it in his bedroom using pretty much anything that could make noise. RAM is mostly flyweight, whimsical, semi-finished doggerel he wrote in Scotland and then burdened with an enormous production job the fey little pseudo-folk songs don't deserve. I realize some Maccaheads find tremendous comfort in this annoying album, much as they might find comfort in a bowl of Cap'n Crunch and Saturday morning cartoons. Which is fine, I don't begrudge them that I guess. But insisting that this album is important to the development of indie pop is condescending and patronizing, and kind of stupid, the kind of thing people who never have listened to indie music would claim. I might be willing to call The Left Banke a progenitor of indie pop, although as with most indie music, the Velvet Underground's shadow looms large too. Beat Happening deserves a lot more credit for inventing it than McCartney does. Heck, even Brian Wilson does. XTC? Big Star's Sister Lovers? The C86 bands? The most that can be said about RAM is that a couple of doofy Maccatarded johnny-come-lately indie musicians retrospectively fell in love with the damn record in the 90s, well after "indie pop" was a thing, and decided fruity little half-formed songs were legit. I will also concede that RAM was influential in the creation of one track on Imagine. Once upon a time, back in the late 1970's, when everybody with taste hated McCartney, I used to stick up for the guy. For this, I got no reward and was met with derision every time, but I kept arguing there was a place for his music. His awful 80's albums wound up silencing me forever; even I couldn't defend them and didn't want to. But now, new Maccatards are unwilling to accept their hero as a mildly engaging, lightweight, flawed singer/songwriter with a couple of good songs per album, and have to turn him into Superman, the handsome Man of Steel, inventor of all subgenres of rock music (including heavy metal!!) who keeps on offering up classic album after classic album without any diminishment of talent as the old man pushes 80. Personal to Macca: hey dude, if your music is so good, you wouldn't have to hype it to death. And if you're so smart, you'd know "Mumbo" isn't a blues...or anything, really. I've long maintained the only influential solo Beatles album was Plastic Ono Band, which Kurt Cobain, Oasis, and Elliott Smith were fans of. Not that I would call it a "progenitor" of anything either. And even that was mostly an early-90's thing. Sigh. I keep getting older, but my anti- RAM crusade only becomes more necessary with each passing year.
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Chungus
Sir Ringo
High time we had a definitive Who CD pressings thread
Posts: 659
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Post by Chungus on Dec 7, 2021 21:32:35 GMT
So, and let me know if I've misunderstood, but it sounds like you don't really like the Ram album.
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Post by graucho on Dec 7, 2021 22:32:07 GMT
1971's homespun lo-fi indie-pop progenitor RAM credited to Paul and Linda McCartney Crap. Sigh. I keep getting older, but my anti- RAM crusade only becomes more necessary with each passing year. Antiram, I'm with you, like 98% of the time, including when you go against the grain of what the majority seem to hold. It is often because that majority have become victim of group think, regardless of apparent political or peer affinity. However, you're never going to convince me that RAM is shite, because I think it's actually the best thing Macca did in his long and not altogether distinguished 'fading matinee idol' solo career. BTW I thought this long before it became a favourite, so I haven't been swayed by consensus. It's a fruitless crusade. You're not going to convince me otherwise!
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Post by Boozin' Susan on Dec 7, 2021 23:20:41 GMT
I’ve always thought Roy Carr & Tony Tyler’s review of RAM (in their The Beatles – An Illustrated Record book) was a decent assessment:
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Post by gobshite on Dec 8, 2021 0:05:31 GMT
^^^ I bought that book in my peak Beatard year of 1977, and it's still one of only 2 Beatle books I have shelf space for (with Revolution in the Head). I think my 12-year-old self was very lucky to find such a skeptical take (on Ram and all the solo stuff) in the first Beatle book I stumbled on.
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Post by antiram on Dec 8, 2021 2:49:58 GMT
Crap. Sigh. I keep getting older, but my anti- RAM crusade only becomes more necessary with each passing year. Antiram, I'm with you, like 98% of the time, including when you go against the grain of what the majority seem to hold. It is often because that majority have become victim of group think, regardless of apparent political or peer affinity. However, you're never going to convince me that RAM is shite, because I think it's actually the best thing Macca did in his long and not altogether distinguished 'fading matinee idol' solo career. BTW I thought this long before it became a favourite, so I haven't been swayed by consensus. It's a fruitless crusade. You're not going to convince me otherwise! My post isn't about the quality of the album per se, although I do think it is Paulie picking his nose. That's a matter of taste, and anyone is entitled to theirs. I like some dumb records too. My post is about the claim that McCartney ingeniously invented indie pop, which is a revisionist distortion of history. That bothers me, and that is what my crusade is for. It irks me when Beatards who would never play an indie record suddenly come across as musicologists purely in the service of washing their hero's balls. And now McCartney claims it too? That part I find pathetic.
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Post by Boozin' Susan on Dec 8, 2021 6:03:49 GMT
Antiram, I'm with you, like 98% of the time, including when you go against the grain of what the majority seem to hold. It is often because that majority have become victim of group think, regardless of apparent political or peer affinity. However, you're never going to convince me that RAM is shite, because I think it's actually the best thing Macca did in his long and not altogether distinguished 'fading matinee idol' solo career. BTW I thought this long before it became a favourite, so I haven't been swayed by consensus. It's a fruitless crusade. You're not going to convince me otherwise! My post isn't about the quality of the album per se, although I do think it is Paulie picking his nose. That's a matter of taste, and anyone is entitled to theirs. I like some dumb records too. My post is about the claim that McCartney ingeniously invented indie pop, which is a revisionist distortion of history. That bothers me, and that is what my crusade is for. It irks me when Beatards who would never play an indie record suddenly come across as musicologists purely in the service of washing their hero's balls. And now McCartney claims it too? That part I find pathetic. C’mon, antiram… Do you really think Paulie wrote that? It’s just breathless hyperbole – written by some schlub at UMG – designed to lighten the wallets of Maccatards everywhere. Or, more simply put: Marketing 101. Of course, it’s ridiculous to say “Ram” has anything to do with indie-pop, but it takes real chutzpah to claim that inhaling the smoke of smoldering menthol-coated tobacco into one’s lungs is actually “country fresh”.
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Post by antiram on Dec 8, 2021 14:28:31 GMT
My post isn't about the quality of the album per se, although I do think it is Paulie picking his nose. That's a matter of taste, and anyone is entitled to theirs. I like some dumb records too. My post is about the claim that McCartney ingeniously invented indie pop, which is a revisionist distortion of history. That bothers me, and that is what my crusade is for. It irks me when Beatards who would never play an indie record suddenly come across as musicologists purely in the service of washing their hero's balls. And now McCartney claims it too? That part I find pathetic. C’mon, antiram… Do you really think Paulie wrote that? It’s just breathless hyperbole – written by some schlub at UMG – designed to lighten the wallets of Maccatards everywhere. Or, more simply put: Marketing 101. Of course, it’s ridiculous to say “Ram” has anything to do with indie-pop, but it takes real chutzpah to claim that inhaling the smoke of smoldering menthol-coated tobacco into one’s lungs is actually “country fresh”. Understood, and of course I realize McCartney doesn't write the copy for his own website, which he probably has never visited. However, its presence on his own official website is a defacto endorsement of the sentiment it espouses. I just remember how ticked off I'd get at TheMess at SHF, who would never play an indie record in a million years and was ignorant of pretty much any music, claiming that RAM was the quintessential indie pop record and McCartney II invented synthpop. Or that McCartney (the album) was cutting edge for its time or that the Velvet Underground was another Beatles tribute band. These ridiculous claims have grown in currency lately and they need to be nipped in the bud. I also hope that onlookers understand that while I stand by every word in my posts, I don't take any of this seriously. My life really doesn't revolve around RAM...
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Post by hoffa_nagila on Dec 8, 2021 14:53:26 GMT
C’mon, antiram… Do you really think Paulie wrote that? It’s just breathless hyperbole – written by some schlub at UMG – designed to lighten the wallets of Maccatards everywhere. Or, more simply put: Marketing 101. Of course, it’s ridiculous to say “Ram” has anything to do with indie-pop, but it takes real chutzpah to claim that inhaling the smoke of smoldering menthol-coated tobacco into one’s lungs is actually “country fresh”. Understood, and of course I realize McCartney doesn't write the copy for his own website, which he probably has never visited. However, its presence on his own official website is a defacto endorsement of the sentiment it espouses. I just remember how ticked off I'd get at TheMess at SHF, who would never play an indie record in a million years and was ignorant of pretty much any music, claiming that RAM was the quintessential indie pop record and McCartney II invented synthpop. Or that McCartney (the album) was cutting edge for its time or that the Velvet Underground was another Beatles tribute band. These ridiculous claims have grown in currency lately and they need to be nipped in the bud. I also hope that onlookers understand that while I stand by every word in my posts, I don't take any of this seriously. My life really doesn't revolve around RAM...I believe that. But I also believe that for a lot of Beatard poaters, they do take it seriously and their life really does revolve around it.
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Post by graucho on Dec 8, 2021 19:03:38 GMT
I’ve always thought Roy Carr & Tony Tyler’s review of RAM (in their The Beatles – An Illustrated Record book) was a decent assessment: This was my first exposure to commentary on Beatles and their solo records, and I think one of the best. All sane music lovers should read it, and Beatards, just to enrage them. I guess I agree with most of that. I wouldn't call it mediocre, compared to alot of the shit the solo Beatles produced. antiram - Beatards think their heroes invented everything. I don't think they like music much. It's obsessive compulsive fandom. BTW - just found out there is an official condition called Celebrity Worship Sydrome - CWS. I guess Chappers was on the extreme pathological end of that.
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Post by antiram on Dec 8, 2021 20:20:02 GMT
antiram - Beatards think their heroes invented everything. I don't think they like music much. It's obsessive compulsive fandom. BTW - just found out there is an official condition called Celebrity Worship Sydrome - CWS. I guess Chappers was on the extreme pathological end of that. On this we agree. And aside from Chappers (oh, happy Chappy day btw!), let's not forget the guy who almost murdered Harrison too (and would have succeeded if Olivia hadn't cracked him over the head with a lamp, which for my money earns her the title Beatle Wife of the Millennium). No wonder Ringo and Paul shy away from autographs these days.
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Post by graucho on Dec 8, 2021 20:48:52 GMT
On this we agree. And aside from Chappers (oh, happy Chappy day btw!), let's not forget the guy who almost murdered Harrison too (and would have succeeded if Olivia hadn't cracked him over the head with a lamp, which for my money earns her the title Beatle Wife of the Millennium). No wonder Ringo and Paul shy away from autographs these days. God, yes that was horrific, and I think sort of downplayed in the media compared to how bad it actually was. Both of them tried to save the other.
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bradman
Better than Steve
Posts: 5,150
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Post by bradman on Dec 8, 2021 23:54:41 GMT
Harrison's gayest stuff didn't sell well, either.
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