stretch wrote:wow ..you guys can read my mind....perspective and timing are everything. I just had some Sinatra in the car stereo going and his cadence with the vocals kinda sounded like some of the stuff Jay does. A song I wrote 10 years or 5 years or 1 year ago..I hate now but, when I play it for someone new ..It's like new.
Any way I love all Jays' music..and can't really rate one over an other. Sorry...
Ah yes... Sinatra - a master of phrasing...
I must admit, that's a big part of what draws me to Jay's music - his vocal phrasing.
wow ..you guys can read my mind....perspective and timing are everything. I just had some Sinatra in the car stereo going and his cadence with the vocals kinda sounded like some of the stuff Jay does. A song I wrote 10 years or 5 years or 1 year ago..I hate now but, when I play it for someone new ..It's like new.
Any way I love all Jays' music..and can't really rate one over an other. Sorry...
I completely agree with you on this. I could vote on this poll today and tomorrow I might have a different opinion.
I think Louis Armstrong once said that there's only 2 kinds of music: "good music" and "bad music". The definitions of "good" and "bad" are left up to the individual. To me "good" music is the stuff that makes me feel alive - and that has a lot to do with my mood at the time.
As to why UT aren't more popular than they are... I think that what's important is the "quality" of your fan-base, not the quantity. I'm not saying that fans of Jay/UT/SV/Wilco music (and other great, non-mainstream music) are better people than the faceless/tasteless hordes that lap up the top 40 crap (hmmm, well... maybe we are!!), BUT I do think we are probably more passionate about music in general because music MATTERS to us. That's why we're unsatisfied with the mainstream and we have to dig DEEPER to find what we're looking for.
I always get way too philosophical when I post here, so beware.
To me the terms "best" and "greatest" and the like are bum terms to begin with. You can't apply such terms to art. Would we compare Salvador Dali's paintings and try and figure out which one is the best? To me, good music is just the same. It is art, and is not something that can be debated in that way. It involves emotions and feelings and moods and situations, and can't just be labled #1 2 or 3.
There may be days when I am feeling lonely and melancholy that Terroir Blues just hits the spot and is the best album I ever heard. There may be days when I feel upbeat and just want something to pump me up and Straightface or Flow or Question just gets me going. It all depends on my mood.
Not sure why I ramble on like this, it is just that I find choosing the "best" of an artists work is futile. For this same reason I despise awards shows, they are meaningless, total bullshit.
On a side note I have been addicted to Anodyne and March lately, again after not listening to them for awhile. What brilliant music Tupelo made. I am just flabbergasted (is that a word?) each time I hear those albums, I think "How on earth are these not the most popular successful musicians in the universe". Simply wonderful music.
Anyway, I just had a free moment and thought I would blab.
Does a musician really know what his best work is?
Both Jay and Jeff call March their best work in UT. I like Anodyne and Still Feel Gone better, and I'd bet most of this board does as well. The songs about coal miners and Christianity are fine, but I think UT was at its best singing about their particular hometown and a working band on the road.
Were are here to talk, I don't care if someone strays from the topic. For whatever reason I am not a huge fan of caryatid easy but after that I love Straightaways. Even found the songbook for the CD (Thanks for the tip ct) Picking up the signal and left a slide are two of my favorite Jay songs.
hmmm, all good stuff TB is unreal but not for people who expected Trace reborn (Scalzunfeld), and Sebastopol may be Jay's best record (Barstow is the best Gram Parsons track ever ) and WST is f-nnn way cool so I vote tainted jury, recall, mud in the water. Kidding all are great. My fav disc which has nothing to do with best is Straightaways, sorry for straying Mike.
agree totally with saratoga jay about TB. on first listen I wasn't sold. Decided to give it a try on my way up north for the weekend and I saw the light. Good shit. Ahhh, it's all good shit.
the lyrics (as always w/jay) are there. that makes it timeless right there. but it is the most personal, mature jay we've seen.
he strikes a chord w/me in many ways. and i don't care if any of my friends like jay or not.
even space junk was cool, you hear backwards stuff in commercials and movies and shit so whats the big deal. it breaks up the tunes in a reflective/haunting kinda way.
terrior blues will get better with time. hopefully the world will, too.
i use to live in sebastopol and it drove me up a wall. don't get me started...
What I want to know is . . .
"How does the city in Northern California become the title of a collection of songs? The short answer is that I just liked the sound of it, I guess. Maybe that's also the answer for why one gets involved in music where the subjective scene hypes, denigrates, glorifies, destroys, chews and spits with relentless rapidity, but where an ultimate sense of purpose is still found."
) and WST is f-nnn way cool so I vote tainted jury, recall, mud in the water. Kidding all are great. My fav disc which has nothing to do with best is Straightaways, sorry for straying Mike.