I’ve been invited not to sing in a number of venues. And I cannot fathom how little marks on paper make your fingers do slightly different things on the strings, keys, valves. And don’t get me started trying to understand how that works with brass. And the organist’s feet…..

As I say, to the extent any rock song interests me, it’s the association with something going on at the time, big deal or little and personal. Otherwise….nada.

But very interesting discussions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4pmxLT7Zlc

You (one does) run into some odd or overlooked material scrounging the old gold and silver veins in the abandoned music mines of YouTube.

Johnny Rivers, “Sunny”, live at Whiskey A Go-Go. Try to figure out exactly what was going on there [ my rumination, not another challenge or request for a favor]…. sounds to me like he is following a half beat behind his own rhythm chording. But I kind of like it. LOL

I agree that the idiosyncrasies of personal taste are a big part of it. But I have never felt that the performers that I don’t like “all sound the same.” Maybe rap artists – although I’m not familiar with enough of them to say – but only because they rely more on rhythm than melody. The lack of melody sounds a bit “the same” to me.

Not that certain genres don’t have commonalities within the genre. For example, R&B or disco. But even within the genre, they don’t all sound the same to me.

To me, the Beatles and the Bee Gees sound very different from each other, although I can see that they are more similar to each other than each is to most other groups, at least their 60s stuff. Not similar later, at all. A few Bee Gees songs of the 60s, such as “Lonely Days,” for example, sound more Beatles-ish to me than other Bee Gees songs. But I never was at all likely to mistake one group for the other – although many people did back then.

On the subject of performing – it’s interesting that the Beatles stopped performing live early on. Crowds were so loud and hysterical that they couldn’t even hear themselves sing. But I think there was another reason – they were bored with performing by then and preferred the studio. They broke up early, too.

The Bee Gees always said they liked performing but they liked the studio even better – they loved writing the songs. But when they performed they were perfectionists and very committed to giving the audience a good show. Robin said in an interview once that Barry in particular always gave himself 100% to every song he sang when he performed. I’m not sure how that is done, but it can be done.

It is something that actors in long-run Broadway plays wrestle with, as well. Some are more successful at it than others.

Or take Beatles vs. BeeGees. To me the commonalities vastly outweigh the differences. Both are excellent harmony singers and feature prolific, melodic, accessible pop songwriting which is why both have been enormously popular.
Some dissenters for both. Commenters here are debating which is more “emotional” but that reaction may originate in the listener as much if not more than the group. Consider Rufus’ comment (3/14 9:21pm) on what went through Billy Joel’s mind when he was performing.

I’ve read that Sinatra was the first singer, or at least the first major one, to exploit the new microphone technology to sing intimately without being overpowered by the orchestra.

Perhaps age has something to do with it, then. Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s just personality and relation to music, lyrics, costume, performance, etc.

I have to say, though, that I find Dire Straits’ songs to have great variety. Tremendous variety, actually. And they also are played differently, quite differently, in each live performance. That makes them continually fresh for me even if I’m familiar with the song itself. For me, the same version also bears much repetition. I love the sound of Knopfler’s guitar, just love it. It is so melodic and twangy. And I like his voice as well. I couldn’t care less what he wears or what anyone in his band wears. Literally could not care less.

For me, if I really like a group or a singer/musician, I can listen over and over and over again. Performers who come to mind are Knopfler, the Bee Gees, Richard Thompson, Leonard Cohen, and a few others too. Some classical works as well, mostly Chopin and some Bach and Tchaikovsky.

neo on March 15, 2021 at 12:37 am said:
DNW:

You seem to be bothered by things that don’t even register on my radar screen, such as that guy in the “Walk of Life” video you linked. I may have already asked you this, but if you’ve answered I’ve forgotten your answer: how old were you in the 60s and 70s and early 80s? Because that outfit and that behavior was so so mild compared to what was pretty much the norm then, especially for many performers, I’m wondering if you were very young at the time or something like that.

You are correct that we recently addressed this.
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/03/06/reaction-videos-the-bee-gees-through-young-ears/#comment-2545349

As I see it, there are two discrete issues here pertaining to audience reactions,
1, the music, per se
2, the accompanying sales presentation and any visual messaging, if intended.

I have already acknowledged that Dire Straits came on to the scene – a rather stale one – with a novel and intriguing sound. I have acknowledged that Knopfler is a creative and interesting guitar player. And, that I am not trying to rain on anyone’s parade as this is much a matter of taste and personal vibes.

I also think that with Dire Straits though, the sound became relatively quickly formulaic, and that its ongoing appeal was mainly to fans with whom the resonance was somehow more global or organic. Thus, a real Straits fan is hearing and seeing and deriving from the performance what a casual listener is not.

How many Duane Eddy tunes can you listen to? Two? Then, it’s, “Yeah, ok, nice, I heard that already”

Hence my original question regarding the contextual significance of the lyrics, which I could not sit still long enough to extract from the performance.

From my retrospective point of view, listening to Dire Straits, is like trying to listen to The Grateful Dead, or Gordon Lightfoot: a little of it, initially experienced as refreshing and novel, goes a very long way, and soon begins to sound all the same.

So when you are hearing and not seeing, and perhaps only mildly if at all connecting with the music, you might be much more likely to grimace over other aspects you encounter which big fans readily consume as part of the feast.

2 , We won’t get into that 2nd aspect though, because it will involve us in questions of what amounts to advertising psychology. Or alternatively, one of whether the rules of advertising psychology, ego ideals, aspiration, and identification, even apply.

As for my own reactions to costuming in and of itself: Although I am in general dismissive of it, and yeah, maybe a bit contemptuous of souls who excitedly play dress-up for their acts, be they seen on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry, or up there with Kiss or ABBA … dressing grunge instead, or donning blue jeans and shit kickers instead of Jane Fonda or Space Oddity Wear, is not going to get me to sit through Fogerty’s “Centerfield” or Seger’s “Mainstreet”, either.***

But … just my preferences. No more than that.

*** Half novelty songs , which I find somewhat reminiscent of the ‘Walk of Life” for that very reason …

Glad you’re enjoying them.

Celadon – you sound like me re the Bee Gees. Some of us really get hooked.

There’s the phenomenon of overt emotion in a singer’s voice, and then there’s emotion conveyed mostly in the words or the sound. I tend to prefer the latter rather than very emotive voices, although I make an exception for the Bee Gees (especially Robin) but it’s mainly their harmonies that move me even when there are no words (for example, the “Ah”s on “Had a Lot of Love Last Night” that I inserted in my comment at 3:24 PM yesterday).

Or, in the Jackson Browne song “The Pretender,” Browne’s singing is not especially emotional on the surface, but for me there is tremendous emotion in the lyric itself and that emotion is heightened by the calmness of the singer. For example, for me, the lines:

Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor…

Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the Pretender.
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there.

I don’t expect everyone to be moved by that, but for me it’s very evocative. The veterans and the children as much as the rest. It’s the word “solemnly” that gets me about the children.