Lightning Bolt: the official album thread

[stip]

Thats like comparing apples and watermelons...

Both fruit, though

[McParadigm]

Tom Waits recorded some of his best music when he was already settled down and sober.

I thought about using that example, too....but you can be settled, sober, procreating, and cheerful on the outside, and still harbor something down deep that has the enemy's eyes.

Bad As Me is the only record that seems to come by its absence of maudlin honestly. Mule is playful but tends to carry over (sometimes directly) from that darker era, Alice and Blood are opium dreams informed by the shadowed past, and Real Gone is practically an aural concept album about the darker side of a very specific quality of Americana.

I think Tom's lesson is that, no matter how far away you get from the coldest moments in your life, it's important to carefully mark the necessary spaces for later fracking. I think Ed's too genuinely earnest to intentionally mine that way.

[Lounge Lizard]

Thats like comparing apples and watermelons...

Both fruit, though

i was taught in school that technically watermelons are berries

[verb_to_trust]

Thats like comparing apples and watermelons...

Both fruit, though

i was taught in school that technically watermelons are berries

Nobody likes a smart alec Lot LIzard

[Lounge Lizard]

Thats like comparing apples and watermelons...

Both fruit, though

i was taught in school that technically watermelons are berries

Nobody likes a smart alec Lot LIzard

I always thought it was "aleck"

[verb_to_trust]

Thats like comparing apples and watermelons...

Both fruit, though

i was taught in school that technically watermelons are berries

Nobody likes a smart alec Lot LIzard

I always thought it was "aleck"

It was a shot in the dark that your civilian name is "Alec". Either that, or a type o...

[Jorge]

Thats like comparing apples and watermelons...

Both fruit, though

i was taught in school that technically watermelons are berries

Still fruit though

[verb_to_trust]

Thats like comparing apples and watermelons...

Both fruit, though

i was taught in school that technically watermelons are berries

Still fruit though

He's talking about vegetable berries

[Heathen]

When I think of how something like The Fixer should have been performed, I always come to stuff like R.E.M's 'Shiny Happy People'. *THAT* kind of video treatment would have had everyone in here falling in love with The Fixer... if they'd done it well. The trouble is, we don't have Ed looking 'Shiny Happy', we have him looking intense and almost furious, which, conceptually, doesn't go with The Fixer at all. It looks fake.

A different video wouldn't have made this song suck any less.

[Release_Me]

The Fixer does not suck. Just saying.

[stupidmop]

When I think of how something like The Fixer should have been performed, I always come to stuff like R.E.M's 'Shiny Happy People'. *THAT* kind of video treatment would have had everyone in here falling in love with The Fixer... if they'd done it well. The trouble is, we don't have Ed looking 'Shiny Happy', we have him looking intense and almost furious, which, conceptually, doesn't go with The Fixer at all. It looks fake.

A different video wouldn't have made this song suck any less.

It would have lessened the blow.

[Heathen]

When I think of how something like The Fixer should have been performed, I always come to stuff like R.E.M's 'Shiny Happy People'. *THAT* kind of video treatment would have had everyone in here falling in love with The Fixer... if they'd done it well. The trouble is, we don't have Ed looking 'Shiny Happy', we have him looking intense and almost furious, which, conceptually, doesn't go with The Fixer at all. It looks fake.

A different video wouldn't have made this song suck any less.

It would have lessened the blow.

Nah, shit tastes like shit even when you serve it a nice plate.

[stupidmop]

You're saying you'd rather the already existing video is what goes down in history as marker for the backspacer era? In years to come people will look back and find this!

It's just so odd. It's like eddie's promising to fight to get it back again after the acid wears off.

Aaand I just made myself like it better. It's happy to the point of cheesy cause he's high as balls fine.

[Heathen]

You're saying you'd rather the already existing video is what goes down in history as marker for the backspacer era? In years to come people will look back and find this!

It's just so odd. It's like eddie's promising to fight to get it back again after the acid wears off.

Aaand I just made myself like it better. It's happy to the point of cheesy cause he's high as balls fine.

No, I'm saying: the song sucks regardless of the video and I'm not going to change my mind about a song based on its video. The video happens to suck as well but it's only fitting anyway.

[stupidmop]

Yeah you're right. I'm hoping they don't do any videos for LB, I don't really have any faith they'd pull off a cool one.

[harmless]

When I think of how something like The Fixer should have been performed, I always come to stuff like R.E.M's 'Shiny Happy People'. *THAT* kind of video treatment would have had everyone in here falling in love with The Fixer... if they'd done it well. The trouble is, we don't have Ed looking 'Shiny Happy', we have him looking intense and almost furious, which, conceptually, doesn't go with The Fixer at all. It looks fake.

A different video wouldn't have made this song suck any less.

I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek when I said that kind of video would make people love the song, though. The Fixer doesn't 'suck', the problem is that Ed's performance in the video exactly mirrors his performance on the recording. It's sincere and earnest. Michael Stipe's video performance also mirrors his recording performance, but it's all knowingly OTT and a parody in both the original recording and the video, so the video at least seems to be an extension of what the song sounds like. If The Fixer had been performed with the same sense of insincerity and satire, we would have had a video to match, and... hey presto, the song would've worked better. Ed's performance -- his headspace and attitude when he wrote it, when he recorded it, when he filmed it -- feels inappropriate. Or rather, appropriate to a Bon Jovi song. But The Fixer, as a song, didn't have to sound like Bon Jovi.

[Dr. Van Nostrand]

damn, we need some real info about this album to talk about

[harmless]

I'm just buggin' out to NIN.

[HardTI]

I'm still really digging the shit out of Lightning Bolt and MYM. This is going to be an awesome album. Excitement level is at 8.6.

[harmless]

I'm waiting to be pleasantly surprised with LB. The live version has grown on me quite a lot but its flaws haven't disappeared.