catapult magazine

as I like frozen pizza. I tried to live on it, but it’s still junk food. I know this isn’t the most popular opinion on this board, but there has been so much praise lately. Are we deifying them yet?
Anybody else find them mediocre? Or am I a lone wolf here?

i don’t think you guys get what i was saying.

once something is recorded, it’s final – cut, and print… and good musicians hate that.
because as soon as it’s sent out to get distributed, the artist realizes 12 ways the song could have been better. so, a good musician realizes that music is not like a painting or a sculpture or the gentle curves of a mazda miata, it’s perpetual, it’s constantly changing, morphing and organically shifting (uncapturable, if you will), like a cloud, or the wind as it races along the prairies.

SO, you can’t really judge a good musician by his/her recordings because they are never satisfied with their stuff, and would much rather you listen to them jam to a ry cooder album.

and don’t even get me started on how bands record now adays. they don’t even play… it’s computer generated crap, minipulated on a Mac by some nerd who thinks he’s the shit.

I’d like to put in a word about bands who use computers to record. There are many bands who use the new technology well, as humans should, not letting the machine rule the music. The computer is one of the great tools given to musicians in the last 50 years and a lot of great music has come from it, despite the danger of dehumanization.

Is U2 recording their next album with Rick Rubin? Or did I just dream that?

just because it sounds like music, doesn’t mean it’s music.

here’s an article to get U2 fans all riled up:

REM vs U2: Who was the best rock band of the 80s?

http://www.slate.com/id/2153184/

REM, a rock band? Please!

You raise some interesting points there Geoff. Care to extrapolate?

Hi Norbert,

Well I quickly flicked through the article mentioned, comparing REM with U2 and was amazed that REM was identified as a Rock Band. I suppose if you want to slap U2 on the ass you could do it with whichever band you liked the most and say, well U2 don’t do this or that like my all-time-favourite-band. For me the comparison is such a false way to validate ones own taste or opinion, but hey that’s not new to this topic is it?

For me it is like comparing the visceral with the intellectual, but it shouldn’t be in preferring one to the other. I suppose I see the difference between the 2 bands in this way. I’ve ‘followed’ U2 since the days they were performing at UK nightclubs. (The first time I saw them was in Newcastle, post ‘Boy’ and just pre ‘October’). I saw them last year in London in front of 70,000 people and I have to say that it was the best ‘church’ I’ve been to. It suddenly clicked that the songs are written for that live performance, the choruses being a kind of Psalmic response mode, where the congregation is lifted into a rousing, heartfelt and heart-pounding response to Saint Bono of Vox’s vocal part in the verse.

To then rail on the boys for not being as gifted as this or that guitarist, or whatever, misses the point entirely, it’s the communal thing that counts, both as a band and in the performance with the audience/congregation. I saw them walking behind the stage, as calm as anything and to see the Edge’s face when he saw the crowd rise to the first riff of the first song was so humbling, even inspiring. You could tell that that was what they lived for as a band!!

So, I think we need a little more honesty on these hallowed pages and instead of trying to spiritually or intellectually justify our opinions we have to be humble enough to say, hey it’s a taste thing. Over to you Norbert!

Peace,

i don’t have anything to add but i agree wholeheartedly. the one U2 concert I attended was one of the best religious experiences of my life.

Which one was that Dan?

elevation in vienna 2001. i love REM too but doubt they could match u2’s skill in bringing out religious feelings in the concert-goer.