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dragonlady7Am listening to a burned copy of a CD sent to Z to post an excerpt from on the website. (On his paper's music reviews, if you read the website version, you can click the picture accompanying them and you can always listen to a full MP3 of one of the band's songs. It's a little known feature, all of Z's design, that wowed a lot of people when he demo'd it at the Geekmeet. I mean, seriously-- you're reading music reviews and the descriptions are never any good.)
This local band, Jackdaw, is a local sensation, and they're a sort of Irish traditional / hard rock blend. Which you'd think would be right up my alley.
I read the interview with their bagpiper (this week's featured musician in Z's paper) and he's going on about their influences-- the Clash, the Pogues, the Chieftains... That's fascinating, but why, then, pray tell, do you sound so much like an anemic version of the Dropkick Murphys when they don't even merit a mention?
Seriously. At least DKM has balls and sincerity. Even if at this point doing punk covers of Irish traditional songs is about as original as squeezing your toothpaste from the middle of the tube. DKM sometimes sings about being union workers, or skinheads, or something.
Jackdaw isn't bad, but maybe I'm listening to the wrong album. This version had a song on it called "The Long Black Veil (Studio Outtake)" and it is the worst cover of that song I have ever heard. Obviously they're covering the version Mick Jagger did with the Chieftains-- their singer's nasal and unsupported, there's feedback in the opening chord, and the tin whistle is too far up in the mix while the anemic half-dead singer's way far down (mercifully, I suppose). And there's just... nothing whatsoever to make up for it. Even if they are good, and this is an atypical outtake, why the fuck would you ever release something so thoroughly, unapologetically bad????
Besides the fact that "The Long Black Veil" is not Irish. It was a folk song written exclusively for the pop folk market in the sixties, I believe. It's country/bluegrass, and the only reason you'd ever mistake it for Irish is that the Chieftains covered it once, with Mick fucking Jagger. I have an excellent live version of it in my music collection-- by Gillian Welch with David Rawlings, and even they have a sort of self-deprecating intro to it. It's not really a traditional anything song. It's a lovely piece when done well, and a marvellously melodramatic piece when done over-the-top by Mick Jagger, but Jackdaw appears to be taking it seriously and yet not doing it well, which is downright unforgivable.
Maybe I'm just a snob, but really, in this day and age of DVD extras and rare bootleg b-sides, there's such a thing as too much. Don't put your rejected shit on something you're actually trying to sell. I do believe this was actually a CD they were charging actual money for.
The rest of the album seems to be unexceptional-- softer versions of DKM-like songs only without the working-class convictions. Sort of... suburban, middle-class white-collar DKM. Maybe you could call it the Underarm-Pitch O'Reillys. Actually it sounds rather like Good Charlotte with an accordion.
It's not bad, it's just nowhere near as good as I'd sort of thought they'd be, given how much fucking local hype there is about them.
Was that bitchy enough for you? Obviously somebody has to go to work today and is in a bad mood. Ugh. I should go make sure my work shirts that I hung up to dry last night are actually wearable. But I dont want to, see, because I'm writing the bit of my novel where the Hero Nobly Sacrifices Himself and also Is A Total Badass, and it's not going well and I just want some time to work on it.
It's going to need another draft.
Motherfuckers.
Edited to add:
Also, my mouse periodically (i.e. about every twenty minutes) stops working, my keyboard stops responding every hour or so, and every time I open a page in Firefox and try to type into a text-entry box, I can't type at all, but if I alt+tab the keyboard works to take me to other applications, and when I come back to Firefox (which I can't do with the mouse because it'll usually be on the fritz at that point and need to be unplugged and plugged back in), then I can type. So leaving and answering comments is particularly dicey.
I don't think I've mentioned, but i've been having mouse problems for months, and while I thought it might be that I need a new mouse, i'm starting to wonder if something's going haywire with my USB ports instead.
I'm not buying a new $75 keyboard until I know for sure, I'm telling you that for sure.
This local band, Jackdaw, is a local sensation, and they're a sort of Irish traditional / hard rock blend. Which you'd think would be right up my alley.
I read the interview with their bagpiper (this week's featured musician in Z's paper) and he's going on about their influences-- the Clash, the Pogues, the Chieftains... That's fascinating, but why, then, pray tell, do you sound so much like an anemic version of the Dropkick Murphys when they don't even merit a mention?
Seriously. At least DKM has balls and sincerity. Even if at this point doing punk covers of Irish traditional songs is about as original as squeezing your toothpaste from the middle of the tube. DKM sometimes sings about being union workers, or skinheads, or something.
Jackdaw isn't bad, but maybe I'm listening to the wrong album. This version had a song on it called "The Long Black Veil (Studio Outtake)" and it is the worst cover of that song I have ever heard. Obviously they're covering the version Mick Jagger did with the Chieftains-- their singer's nasal and unsupported, there's feedback in the opening chord, and the tin whistle is too far up in the mix while the anemic half-dead singer's way far down (mercifully, I suppose). And there's just... nothing whatsoever to make up for it. Even if they are good, and this is an atypical outtake, why the fuck would you ever release something so thoroughly, unapologetically bad????
Besides the fact that "The Long Black Veil" is not Irish. It was a folk song written exclusively for the pop folk market in the sixties, I believe. It's country/bluegrass, and the only reason you'd ever mistake it for Irish is that the Chieftains covered it once, with Mick fucking Jagger. I have an excellent live version of it in my music collection-- by Gillian Welch with David Rawlings, and even they have a sort of self-deprecating intro to it. It's not really a traditional anything song. It's a lovely piece when done well, and a marvellously melodramatic piece when done over-the-top by Mick Jagger, but Jackdaw appears to be taking it seriously and yet not doing it well, which is downright unforgivable.
Maybe I'm just a snob, but really, in this day and age of DVD extras and rare bootleg b-sides, there's such a thing as too much. Don't put your rejected shit on something you're actually trying to sell. I do believe this was actually a CD they were charging actual money for.
The rest of the album seems to be unexceptional-- softer versions of DKM-like songs only without the working-class convictions. Sort of... suburban, middle-class white-collar DKM. Maybe you could call it the Underarm-Pitch O'Reillys. Actually it sounds rather like Good Charlotte with an accordion.
It's not bad, it's just nowhere near as good as I'd sort of thought they'd be, given how much fucking local hype there is about them.
Was that bitchy enough for you? Obviously somebody has to go to work today and is in a bad mood. Ugh. I should go make sure my work shirts that I hung up to dry last night are actually wearable. But I dont want to, see, because I'm writing the bit of my novel where the Hero Nobly Sacrifices Himself and also Is A Total Badass, and it's not going well and I just want some time to work on it.
It's going to need another draft.
Motherfuckers.
Edited to add:
Also, my mouse periodically (i.e. about every twenty minutes) stops working, my keyboard stops responding every hour or so, and every time I open a page in Firefox and try to type into a text-entry box, I can't type at all, but if I alt+tab the keyboard works to take me to other applications, and when I come back to Firefox (which I can't do with the mouse because it'll usually be on the fritz at that point and need to be unplugged and plugged back in), then I can type. So leaving and answering comments is particularly dicey.
I don't think I've mentioned, but i've been having mouse problems for months, and while I thought it might be that I need a new mouse, i'm starting to wonder if something's going haywire with my USB ports instead.
I'm not buying a new $75 keyboard until I know for sure, I'm telling you that for sure.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-16 11:30 pm (UTC)oh well...
Date: 2006-03-29 10:33 pm (UTC)-the bagpiper
Re: Get your head out of the Dropkicks' asses
Date: 2006-05-16 03:06 am (UTC)I haven't read the above comment but it doesn't look friendly, from the title. I will wait to read it until you reply with a signature.